101 enjoys hearing from you, Ktown's raving radio fans. We received this email from Arthur Adams...
I read your blog occasionally, being a former Knoxvillian with many memories of local radio.
One thing I've remembered from the Eighties is the rock station rivalry between WOKI and WIMZ. (I think this was before WOKI went to the extraordinarily annoying "Hits 100" format.) The Police were the hot band at the time, and were touring. One of the two stations, I can't remember which, claimed that the Police weren't planning to come to Knoxville, but were really impressed by petition drives, so if they got enough signatures, we just might get a performance by the Police in Knoxville. I was attending Powell High School at the time, and, let me tell you, there were lots of petitions going around.
It came out a few days later that the Police had always planned to perform in Knoxville, and the station gathering the petitions knew that from the beginning. The other station followed up by collecting petitions so Santa Claus would visit Knoxville that year....
Another memory is a WIMZ radio-thon for Children's Hospital Phil Williams and Colvin Idol did. They stayed on the air all day for it, and the rules were simple -- you paid them to play requests, and the money went to the hospital. The fee schedule was something like this:
$10 for songs they'd normally play anyway
$100 for songs they probably wouldn't play
$1000 (or maybe $10,000) for either all-time rock classics (like Stairway to Heaven) or songs they'd never play in a million billion years. They'd take multiple donations for one song for that level.
Well, somebody at WIVK heard what they were doing, called them, and said, "we'll give you $10,000.... if you play John Anderson's 'Just a-Swangin'" (which was a very annoying country song, that was popular around the time.) Unsurprisingly, WIMZ didn't have a copy of the song, so they sent someone to WIVK studios to get a copy, and Phil and Colvin played it, complaining about the sacrifice for the kids.
I read your blog occasionally, being a former Knoxvillian with many memories of local radio.
One thing I've remembered from the Eighties is the rock station rivalry between WOKI and WIMZ. (I think this was before WOKI went to the extraordinarily annoying "Hits 100" format.) The Police were the hot band at the time, and were touring. One of the two stations, I can't remember which, claimed that the Police weren't planning to come to Knoxville, but were really impressed by petition drives, so if they got enough signatures, we just might get a performance by the Police in Knoxville. I was attending Powell High School at the time, and, let me tell you, there were lots of petitions going around.
It came out a few days later that the Police had always planned to perform in Knoxville, and the station gathering the petitions knew that from the beginning. The other station followed up by collecting petitions so Santa Claus would visit Knoxville that year....
Another memory is a WIMZ radio-thon for Children's Hospital Phil Williams and Colvin Idol did. They stayed on the air all day for it, and the rules were simple -- you paid them to play requests, and the money went to the hospital. The fee schedule was something like this:
$10 for songs they'd normally play anyway
$100 for songs they probably wouldn't play
$1000 (or maybe $10,000) for either all-time rock classics (like Stairway to Heaven) or songs they'd never play in a million billion years. They'd take multiple donations for one song for that level.
Well, somebody at WIVK heard what they were doing, called them, and said, "we'll give you $10,000.... if you play John Anderson's 'Just a-Swangin'" (which was a very annoying country song, that was popular around the time.) Unsurprisingly, WIMZ didn't have a copy of the song, so they sent someone to WIVK studios to get a copy, and Phil and Colvin played it, complaining about the sacrifice for the kids.