[BC] True Radio Confessions

[Paul B. Walker, Jr.]

WETT or now, WKHZ sounds like the first station I worked for, WQMA.

i know a few people who've worked for the station as 1590 KHZ

Paul




On 7/6/06, David Reaves <david at translantech.com> wrote:
>
> I was the CE for WETT 1983-5, during one of its "good" (FCC- compliant)
> times.
>
> As I recall, the town of Ocean City was one of those places that
> becomes empty after Labor Day until Memorial Day. And I mean EMPTY.
> It's very hard to keep a fully-staffed radio station those nine
> months out of twelve when the bottom drops out of the income. The
> upside is you could rent an apartment for almost nothing. You just
> can't expect keep the same lease after May 31.
>
> So the story I always heard was that WETT's prior non-compliance may
> have had as much to do with a desperate local economy as it did with
> lousy management/engineering.
>
> Though the old DA site had served the south end of the city well,
> reality was that over time the city had stretched up ten miles north
> along the beach to the Delaware border, while to the south was only
> the unpopulated Assateague Island State park. Lots of wild ponies,
> but no people.
>
> By the time I got there, the place had been rebuilt by new owners
> with an entirely new transmitter site, with two new patterns (DA-2)
> which were much more appropriate to serve the populated areas. They
> also bought an FM, which helped keep the cash flowing in the lean
> months. The new operation was clean and well made, especially
> considering it was for such a small facility.
>
> I measured WETT's monitor points regularly and legally, and the
> phasor always held within tolerances. We had a timer with a flashing
> "change pattern" light in the control room, and I know we changed
> patterns because, since the night (500w) signal was much more
> concentrated over the actual COL than the daytime pattern, it would
> have been obvious and counterproductive to do otherwise.
>
> When Resort Broadcasters (Elek Seymour) bought WETT, we took it from
> a full-time live operation to live mornings with satellite/automation
> the rest of the day. Elek brought us the lousiest, used beat-up piece
> of crap automation system I'd ever seen and asked me to make it work.
> Which I did, and it did work most of the time. We named it "FRED"
> (F-- ing Ridiculous Electronic Device).
>
> After I left for greener pastures (WASH-FM), I got word from the PD,
> Richard Remsberg, that one day a station promo cart refused to recue,
> and over the satellite music could be heard, repeated again and
> again..."There's nothing quite like 16-AM." A truism, for sure.
>
> I could have stayed in Ocean City forever, but the Big City was
> calling, and I was more than happy to pick up the phone. I learned a
> lot in my days at that place, and I'll always fondly remember WETT as
> the only radio station I ever worked at where I could show up in
> shorts and flipflops and not raise an eyebrow.
>
> Kind Regards,
> David
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul B. Walker, Jr.
www.walkerbroadcasting.com
walkerbroadcasting at gmail.com