Radio Memories

Copyright © 2011 by Jim Wesley.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011905092

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4568-9718-5

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4568-9717-8

ISBN: Ebook           978-1-4568-9719-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[email protected]

95811

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

1.   Tuning in Atlanta in 1945

2.   Radio Stations Here, There, Everywhere

3.   World’s Greatest Little Station

4.   The Voice of the South

5.   My Time in the Big Time

6.   Seeing Stars

7.   More Stars, Less Fun

8.   What You See May Not Be What You Get

9.   Newsmakers

10.   No News Is Bad News

11.   Night Beat

12.   Wonderful Isle Of Dreams

13.   The Radio Format Revolution

14.   A New Way to Broadcast

15.   All Music, All the Time

16.   Hello, Hollywood!

17.   The View from the Ivory Tower

18.   My Own Business

19.   Professors and Their Lessons

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PHOTO CREDITS

In memory of my boss, mentor, and dear friend for life,

Elmo Ellis.

FOREWORD

Passion. The word confronts us in life in countless ways and meanings. Some, more so than others. There are so many things to be passionate about—sports, music, travel, entertainment, medicine, military, politics, religion and dozens of other venues. For many youngsters—more likely males than females—the advent of Radio introduced to the world circa 1920, appeared to offer a path to fame, recognition, and accomplishment with all the world out there as your theater. A youngster in Decatur, Georgia caught the bug.

Radio, making the mark some three decades before television or the transistor, occupied the mind of many youngsters—especially in the 1940s and 1950s. America at war propelled the rapidity of the delivery of news, and the obvious drama associated with reporting life, death, victory and defeat—creating a theater of the mind—just from the sound of your voice. It was an enticing prospect. Few who chose to enter that world did so based on it ever making them a fortune. What radio paid was, at the time, not configured in dollars—it was in recognition and satisfaction—and it was literally more enticing than money.

Jim Wesley’s recollections of those times pays no attention the fact that in later years it provided lots of biscuits and butter for his family table. Rather, it reveals a life of sheer fun, excitement, anticipation, mixing and mingling with famous names, and carving out a career by merely what you said and how you said it over a microphone. In radio, it was just you, your microphone, and literally thousands and thousands of ears out there waiting to hear what you were going to say next. For many of us, we might as well have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle, as music was very much a part of that earlier time in radio. One of the joys of our profession was that we might very well be taught by some of the absolute masters of the game. So it was with Jim, as it was with me. Though in the beginning, we both looked at, and turned down opportunities to go to the ‘big town markets’ (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles), we learned that the greatest teachers were often found right there in Atlanta.

For Jim Wesley, after his service under careful guidance and direction of great mentors, the time came when he could go to the big towns. He arrived however, not as a beginner knocking on the door, but as one of the nation’s true young broadcast leaders ready to make his mark. Decatur, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles. Home Depot doesn’t sell leaping ladders like that. One must earn them with hard work. Jim carried with him the credentials of one of America’s pioneer and most outstanding corporate entities—Cox Broadcasting. He faced new challenges, new opportunities, new personalities, and then he developed new concepts. In his early time, Jim, like most of us, thought that real financial success would come from being the best announcer on the block—and maybe even—being somebody’s announcer. Like Hy Averback for Bob Hope, or Ford Bond, Kenny Delmar, Don Wilson, Del Sharbutt. We thought that NBC, CBS, ABC or MUTUAL would be the Holy Grail if we could just grasp it.

But Jim caught on at the right place, at the right time, that buying and selling radio stations opened more bank doors than ever being an announcer could. He took that long leap into destiny’s ether, pledging at times just about everything he and Mary owned. And as they say, ‘the rest is history’, which you can read in these inviting pages. Be assured that not every youngster who wanted to be an announcer ended up able to endow their schools in the way that Jim and Mary have done with Georgia Tech and Emory and various churches and charities. That’s where the passion comes in. Jim had a passion for radio. He devoted a life to it, and to building a wonderful family peopled with those who love the Lord, love fellow travelers, and love each other. This is his real reward—far greater than the applause for reading the script with dulcet tones.

You’ll love this book. The simplicity of a young man who fell in love with Radio, and how he worked his way through the kilocycles to a full and fruitful life makes for great reading. I am fortunate to have been at the right place at the right time when a scared young man said: You mean ME, reading the news on WSB? Yep, you Jim. It’s five AM at WSB, and you’re on the air!

Mike McDougald

March 2011

PREFACE

Radio came to Atlanta in 1922. My beginning there was in 1933, so I missed the very early years of experimental and amateur efforts by the radio pioneers. By the time I started listening to the radio in the 1940s, the medium was off and running. Even so, my listening experience has included seven of commercial radio’s nine decades.

From about the age of five until I was a senior in high school, I lived in my grandmother’s house in southwest Atlanta. My parents were divorced, and my mother and I had to move in with her parents. Mother went to work to support us. I was left alone much of the time. I found escape and comfort from the radio. I did more than listen. I dreamed. I dreamed that someday I would be an announcer on the radio. It probably seemed an impossible dream, but I felt sure that someday it would come true. And it did!

To prepare for my future in radio, I devoured all of the information I could find on the subject. I went to the public library and checked out every book on radio broadcasting. I visited our local radio stations in Atlanta, and I was in the audience for any live broadcast I could find. And when there was no studio audience, if they would let me, I would sit quietly in the studio and watch the announcers at work on their routine music and news programs.

I listened to the radio as many hours as I could each day. Late at night, I tuned in the distant stations that covered much of the country after dark. AM radio signals bounce off of the ionosphere after sunset and scatter over vast areas hundreds of miles away. I listened to all kinds of announcers at work and copied their styles. I listened to all kinds of network and local programs, noting the subtleties in their presentation.

In my boyhood dreams of working in radio, I could never have anticipated the wild ride I was about to experience. I met and worked with an amazing collection of friends and personalities and lived through fascinating experiences that I will always treasure. Writing this book gave me the chance to travel down through the years with them again and to live the experiences again. It has been a joy. I hope that joy is contagious as I share the memories with you.

CHAPTER 1

Tuning in Atlanta in 1945

Radio brought this world to me in fifteen and thirty-minute chunks. I listened avidly, believingly, ceaselessly.

—Gerald Nachman

It is hard now to appreciate how important and influential the first radio stations were. Today we are awash in media with more than fifty radio stations in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and hundreds of radio and television services delivered by cable or satellite. Add the Internet, iPods, cellular phone services, and probably others I just cannot think of at the moment.

For twenty-five years, Atlanta was home to only four radio stations. By the time I started listening in the 1940s, all four had been through several relocations, call letter changes, and power increases. Their technology and programming had been refined, and they had settled into routine operations providing entertainment and a little news to their audiences. Most homes and many automobiles had radios, and we took for granted the services provided by our four stations.

WSB was first on the air in Atlanta, signing on in March of 1922. Like so many early radio stations it was at first an informal operation, conceived as a promotion vehicle for its owner, the Atlanta Journal. Wired together at the last minute with some borrowed equipment, the station did not take itself very seriously. Programming was hit or miss, featuring mostly amateur musicians. This was not a concern in the early days because listeners were few and far between, most of them hobbyists and amateurs themselves.

Henry Ford asked to see WSB when he visited Atlanta in 1922.

By the time I discovered WSB, the station operated with 50,000 watts of power at 750 on the dial, proudly identifying itself as The Voice of the South and Georgia’s only fifty-thousand-watt clear channel station. Programming was mostly national, supplied by the National Broadcasting Company and featured dramatic series, variety shows, comedy acts, popular big bands, symphony orchestras, and quarter-hour adult drama serials, known then and now as soap operas. There were a few locally originated newscasts, especially in the early morning and wake-up disc jockey shows.

The competing newspaper, the Atlanta Constitution, had its own radio station on the air a short time later, but had no enthusiasm for the medium and almost immediately gave the license to Georgia Tech so that the students studying engineering there could get some practical experience. This gave us the call letters WGST for Georgia School of Technology. Later, Georgia Tech officials decided not to continue operating the station, and for many years it was leased by a broadcasting company. Eventually, the university ended this arrangement and reclaimed the station. It continued to be operated as a commercial station with 5,000 watts at 920. Most WGST programming was provided by their network, the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Our Blue Network station was WAGA. Programming on WSB was from the Red network. The National Broadcasting Company operated both of these networks until forced by regulators to divest one of the two. In 1942, the Blue Network was spun off and operated independently under that name. In 1945, it rebranded itself the American Broadcasting Company.

WAGA went on the air in 1927 in Toccoa Falls, Georgia, with call letters WKBJ. In 1931 the station moved to Athens with a change in call letters to WTFI, honoring its affiliation with Toccoa Falls Institute. Along the way, the dial position shifted from 1450 to 1480 and then, after its final move to Atlanta in 1937, the station changed its dial position to 590 and operated with a power of 5,000 watts. My childhood dreams about radio did not include the possibility of ownership, but years later I was a proud owner of WAGA, by then operating as WPLO. That was quite a thrill for