It's a 101 Reload...

 

"Hey George....Jut wanted to set a part of the record straight. My first job at WIVK was news director. I replaced the great Norman Majors. Jim Dick hired me at the ripe old age of 19 years old. I found myself sitting across the hall from one of the men/legends I had listened to throughout my youth...Claude The Cat! It was great working with and learning from one of the best...not to mention seeing him switch between 3 characters (live) without missing a conversational beat! As ND at WIVK, I hired a young weekend anchor who was going to UT at the time...his name...Mike Hammond. One of my worst career moves was leaving WIVK to do afternoons on W-149! Of course at that time I was a young hippie destined to play on one of the few real rock and roll stations in the U.S. As they say...you can't cure stupid!!  LOL. My best to all for the holiday." (Mike Beach)

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RIP Bill Cody, iconic DJ and WSM 650 Nashville host for decades! Bill was also a longtime announcer at the Grand Ole Opry.

Happy Birthday wishes to Alan Sneed; you knew him on the radio in Knoxville as Alan Douglas and as one of The Brothers with Gary Adkins. 

AD went from selling beer in 1975 to DJing at W-149, which morphed into 15Q. Later in 1976 AD moved to WKGN 1340 to program the station with its AOR format.

Dick Broadcasting plucked him away to take over programming at WKDA/WKDF in Nashville, circa 1978-1980.

From there AD was PD at 96 Rock in Atlanta, PD at 97 Rock in Houston, back to 96 Rock...and his talents were recognized as he became an industry leading programmer and consultant starting in 1986.

In his career AD worked with stations in over 90 markets, including 11 of the top 12 cities. 

Alan went on to own WEYE-FM and WFYE-FM located and serving the upper East Tennessee and SW Virginia listening areas which he sold in 2012.

These days Alan is having fun living in Indianapolis.

"Bring On The Brothers"...

Elwood P Suggins...

Happy Birthday to Eddie Beacon "The Swingin' Deacon"!

The question is not "did you" work with Eddie, but "when did you" work with Eddie.

I spent 1982, The World's Fair summer, working with Eddie at 62 WRJZ My Country of Country. What a cast of happy campers we were...GM Mark Heiden, PD Steve Bridgewater (Dr Don West), Jessica James, Bob Ziegler, Martin Baker, Jim Montgomery, Bill Beason and newsies Brad Schultz, Ernie the Bartender Baker, and David Henley. 

In 2010 I reunited with Eddie (and Jimmy Vineyard) as he hosted a racing show called Bumper 2 Bumper on powerhouse 100.3 FM WNOX, a Johnny Pirkle station that featured Ed and Bob in the morning time slot.

For those who don't know, Eddie was born Clay Huskisson and adopted Beacon as his radio surname after debuting back in the 60s as Eddie Knight.

Oh, as most DJs do, Eddie has a made-up sidekick named Elwood P Suggins. 

Send your Eddie/Elwood stories to KtownRadio@gmail.com, fact or fiction.

Bandit...

 

Bob Anderson landed at WKGN in the early 70s...as Bob Parker. 

I air checked this, it's a classic via The 101 Audio Vault.

Bob was a world-famous DJ under the name Bandit and other monikers.

(foto is AI...his senior high class photo and a WKGN studio, awh modern technology).

The 101 Audio Vault travels way back (about 50 years) to Mike Beach on WETE...

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Happy Birthday to Martin Baker!

It's 1973...

 ...and on February 19 Jim Clark was new at WETE 620.

On February 26 it was Jack Diamond and Guerilla blasting the evening time slot at WKGN 1340. (Jack became even more famous as a DJ/PD in Louisville as Coyote Calhoun).

In late March Bob Baron and Jack Diamond visited Bearden Junior High (I was in the audience).

I was dial twisting that summer and listening to Ron Gregory on WOWO (incredible call letters).

In late July UT volleyball captain John Blair, and my neighbor throughout childhood, was named to the United States team and participated in the Student World Games in Moscow. 

It was happy birthday time on August 21 to WKGN News Director Joe Anderson.

That fall Mike Beach was morning DJ at W-149 and Gary Adkins hosted afternoon drive.                                                                                                                                                                           

TV featured Clayton Startime with Jim Clayton, Kathy Hill, and Karen Clayton.     

Smokey Burns joined WKGN...what an all-time great DJ name!                                                                                                                                                                             

...and holy cow, Your Dave Young debuted on WKGN 1340 on Sunday night December 16 after a long run at WNOX 990.

Where were you in '73?                                                                 

It's November 1973 at WIVK...and Bobby Denton was promoted by Jim Dick as Operations Manager. Booby joined the station in 1961. 

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Do you remember Rebel Railroad which became Goldrush Junction which became part of Dollywood.

Also, Rowdy Busch...RIP.

...more about radio ratings-

I was going over Arbitron diaries for an A/C in Las Vegas in about 1990, and one in-tab showed no listening.

Every day was carefully checked with no listening indicated. Then looked at the comments section, and it said... "I'm deaf". 

Alan Sneed (AD)

Page 3...

Happy Birthday to our friend and radio legend Possum Riley aka Paul Randall Dickerson!

George - 

Interesting to hear the WIVK promo that it was No. 1 in the Pulse ratings.

Pulse, Hooper, and Arbitron have all gone to their graves. As far as I know, Nielsen is the only game in town. I’m not sure what their methodology is, but it has to be better than its predecessors. Hooper was a telephone survey and - while it strove to reach a cross section of race, age, and gender - it only measured in-home listening. Most radio listening, even back then, was done in cars. Arbitron was a diary that started on a Thursday. I read hundreds of completed diaries on trips to Beltsville, MD. They would start out strong on Thursday, show good listenership on Friday, then people would be out of routine on the weekend so they would check “didn’t listen today” for Saturday and Sunday. By Monday, they had forgotten about the diary, so there were (probably belated) “didn’t listen” checks for Monday-Wednesday. That drove down the numbers for total listenership. In 1972, I was programming a station in Buffalo that aimed for 35-49s. The book came back and showed us gangbusters with 18-24 males. I went to Beltsville and read every diary for that sweep. I found two - TWO - diaries that had been filled out by young oldies fans. Both claimed they listened to us 24 hours a day for seven days. Yep, both of those diaries were tabulated.

...thanks for hangin’ with the Possum

Back in July 1972...wanting the entire company to celebrate together, WIVK asked Johnny Pirkle to fill in on the air, this proves that Johnny really did it all!

One of our 101 Facebook members posted an unscoped aircheck of Bobby Denton's afternoon show on WIVK AM back in 1967. I grabbed a bit of the audio.

Here's a promo via Claude Tomlinson regarding the 1967 Pulse Report results which showed WIVK as #1, followed by Bobby...

                                            

 

George...My father-in-law Bill Brabson, who went by Bill Bailey at WKGN passed away 3 weeks ago at his home in Gulf Breeze, FL. Maybe some of the Ktown Radio people remember him. Funny coincidence is that Bill worked at WLIK in Newport in the early 70s for Arthur Wilkerson at the same time I was working as a teenager just getting started for Arthur at WLIL in Lenoir City.

Dave Lambert