If you air that story one more time, I'm gonna fire bomb your radio station!

So my engineer friend hooked me up with the new owners of WWXL AM/FM in Manchester Kentucky. They didn't know much about radio and wanted a young manager to get the station up and operating like a
real radio station. William Allen Hensley and William Hugh Bishop both local businessmen bought the station mainly because they wanted one problem fixed immediately. William Allen had built a new house up on the side of the same mountain that the station's studio's were located. His new house had all the bells and whistles including a fancy intercom system that allowed conversations room to room throughout the entire house. But since the house was fairly close to the radio station and the AM ground system was old and in need of repair, the only thing you could hear on the intercom system was WWXL AM, blasting in every room. He was upset and after numerous calls to the station owners, he determined the best way to fix the problem was to simply buy the station. So he and his buddy William Hugh did just that.

My job, was to modernize the station. While William Hugh and William Allen didn't know a lot about radio, they did know that the station didn't sound good, was a mess and needed a lot of work. They were willing to invest in new equipment and construction to improve the place and I got to do some cool stuff. I bought a new FM transmitter, an automation system for the AM, designed and built a new FM studio and totally revamped the production rooms. It was a blast. Here I was 23 years old, writing checks to equipment suppliers for $30,000.

WWXL was basically a simulcast situation, sort of. They broadcast live on the AM a mix country and pop music with live DJ"s working shifts from 5am to midnight. The FM consisted of two Auto Reversing Reel to Reel tape decks. They had two 12 hour tapes featuring elevator music. Each day they would start one of the tapes at 6am, it would play to the end and auto reverse playing another 12 hours of Montavani and the Twin Piano's of Ferrante and Tiesher. They the next day they would use the other tape and so on and so on. There was NO FM studio and no way to play commercials, so they simply rigged up the AM studio so that anytime they played commercials on the AM, it would also play them on the FM, even though it would be in the middle of a song. This way they could charge advertisers more for getting the FM coverage. I've never run across another scheme as dumb as this.

So after fixing the ground system and making William Allen happy with his WWXL free intercom system, we built a new FM studio, hired some folks and put on a Top 40 station. We automated the AM and did country plus local news and of course the all important Obituaries. Sponsored by one of the 9 local funeral homes. God forbid you leave out any kin when reading the obituaries.

Lots of folks in area listened to a Knoxville Tn. station WOKI which featured a very popular night time DJ who called himself Brother John.  Everyone in town seemed to know about him, so what did William Allen and William Hugh do? They hired him. The promised he would be the morning man and PD of the FM station and promised him the world plus a piece of the station. I didn't find out about this until after the deal was done. One Monday morning Brother John showed up at the radio station wearing dirty jeans, a t shirt and sandals. He had a sleazy looking girl with him who he introduced as his girlfriend/co host. I was dumbfounded. I guess the 2 Williams thought they had pulled a real big time play, but after meeting with this guy for about an hour I think we mutually decided that we would not be working together.

So, Brother John and has co host headed back for Knoxville. I called William Allen and told him the meeting didn't go well, and to his credit he supported me and said it was my call. That night Brother John went back on the air at WOKI like nothing ever happened. 

Oops, he had signed a contract with us that included a non compete, meaning he couldn't work in radio in a 100 mile radius for one year if he left WWXL. So even though he quit after only one day, the non compete was in full effect. We ended up in Federal court in Knoxville and we won the case and Brother John had to leave WOKI and sit out working int he market for one year. While on the stand in Federal court I got the worst case of dry mouth of my life. It's very intimidating.

I assembled a staff that included some local folks but also some folks from outside Ky. To say that living there was a culture shock is a understatement. My news director was a young guy right out of college who was eager to make a name for himself. He worked hard to cover local news and was doing a good job. Everything seems to be fine until one day we got wind of a murder in town. Some local truck drivers had organized a strike for better wagers from a local Coal company. They had parked their trucks in a sort of blockade in from of the company headquarters. The guys who ran the company, I'll call him Jimmy (since I'm now sure if he is still alive) came out the main gate to confront the truckers. He never said a word, he simply walked up the first drive standing by his truck and shot him in the head. According to witnesses he them calmly walked back in to his office. The rest of the truckers got into their trucks and left. The strike was over.

I learned shortly after this that this guy had been up on murder charges a couple times before, but a jury never convicted him. The word was that he would either buy the jury or intimidate them and that, that was likely to happen this time. We had a young prosecutor in town who decided he was finally going to "get" Jimmy. He petitioned the court for a change of venue to another city. My news director came to my office to let me know he had just gotten the word on change of venue story and that he was going to break into programming on both stations with the bulletin. I told him to go ahead.

Within minutes the phone rang, the receptionist buzzed me and said "Jimmy" is on the phone for you.
That Jimmy? I said. She confirmed and put him through. It was a short conversation. He simply said
"If you air that change of venue story one more time, I'm gonna fire bomb your radio station"
And with that our days as crusading news reporters came to a screeching halt. I was assured by everyone in the building that he would indeed make good on his threat. I decided I would do everything in my power to avoid any more phone calls from "Jimmy".

That was not to be the case, details in my next time.