Radio home number three has been very hard to write about because it ended in a bitter divorce. Just like the child, little J-O-E, in the famous Tammy Wynette song I needed shelter from the awful truth. I realize now, 18 years later, having survived a bad first marriage in real life a decade ago this radio separation thing was a walk in the park. Both marriages lasted only 10 months.
Third time around was another unique situation. This new owner held a General Radiotelephone Operator License (GROL). I was impressed with his credentials and his engineering background in both radio and TV. The honeymoon soon ended when I discovered his hardnosed, dictatorial approach to managing our staff. This radio home was now owned by one individual owner operator not a corporation or church organization like my previous employers. Imagine Fidel Castro rolled up into Adolf Hitler. So as not to defame the dead, I’ll call him Bill.
The church that had owned WSPZ had become desperate to unload this albatross hung around their neck. So desperate, in fact, that Bill wound up paying less than a tenth of the original asking price of the station less the studio building, which he’d lease from April until we moved the following summer of 1990.
Bill, 58 years old, entered with flattery, focusing his attentions on my office of program director. He seemed to value my role and appointed me architect of the new image. What an ego expedition this turned out to be for me. I came up with the new call letters WDCY-AM, representing We’re Douglas County. We realized the focus of the former owners was too broad. They had assumed our 2,500 watt signal would penetrate the Atlanta environs and marketed us as such. We decided to do a heavy local push by adding a news director and field reporters, making our presence known in the business community, covering nearby high school sports events and doing live remotes ad nauseam. Bill had some great ideas; made some tough adjustments to staff and bruised many egos along the way, but I must say that it was never boring. Bill and I were just too different. He never had a proper understanding of our Southern Gospel music format often referring to it as Barber Shop Quartet. I was an impetuous 24 year old bent on winning control over the old man’s station. Boy, was I wrong!
I believe a pivotal moment for Bill was a Gospel concert he had masterminded, not meeting his expectations, although I saw it as a success during the culmination of Southern Gospel Music Month in September of ‘90. I pled the cause of Gospel music, but he seemed soured by the experience and preferred to go to what he called Country and Western. Who called Country that anymore? Secretly, I knew a secular format would not work for me and would probably quit should we change. Anyway, for the first time ever I was forced to take an on-air partner and produce a morning show modeled after the morning zoo fluff shows popular those days. The Mabry & O’Neal Morning Show was born around November with promotions director slash occasional news reporter, Angie Mabry. We both worked hard at it but the show was incompatible with our audience. We seldom ever referred to the Gospel music or religion at all.
By February of 1991 Bill had trimmed the now bloated air staff taking on some air time himself. This change put me on-air 6 days a week thereby stealing vital time away from the office and production room tasks necessary for perfecting our sound. The balancing act proved humanly impossible and I resigned during the inevitable and ultimately ill fated format change to country and a new slogan, We’re Douglas Country.
Stay tuned
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