|
A
History of WQHI
by Bill Elliott, original Operations Manager/Chief Engineer
© 2006 by Bill Elliott
WQHI, aka HI-95, hit the
Louisville airwaves in April 1974. Consisting of a 1,400 sq. ft.
studio/office in Jeffersonville, the transmitter site was in Harrison
County, Indiana.
The strange thing about the introduction of WQHI to the Louisville market
was that it almost never happened. Here's why:
WQHI was owned and operated by a company named Whateversfair, Inc. The
principle owner, John Rutledge, had roots in Owensboro and became a highly
successful broadcaster in Florida with stations that included WLOF-AM and
WLOQ-FM in Orlando and WQXM-FM in Tampa. Specializing in high profile
Top-40 (WLOF), his love of beautiful music and big band brought success on
the FM side with WLOQ and WQXM. It may not have been public knowledge, but
John had the opportunity to purchase WVEZ in late 1972 and early 1973,
which we had planned to maintain in the beautiful music format with the
addition of big band, which would have given John his third successful FM
utilizing his proven Beautiful Music/Big Band format he had pioneered in
Florida.
A quick sidebar to the name, "Whateversfair, Inc." It was inspired by
Rutledge's signature response to new ideas. Run something by him and you
usually were given, "whatever's fair" as a response. Rutledge also had a
couple of other short-lived broadcast companies: "Great Joy, Inc.", which
was his usual positive response when things were going right, and
"Virtually Perfect, Inc.," which was how he responded when asked how he
was doing that day. He loved these lines so much, they became corporate
names.
As things progressed with the purchase of WVEZ, John received a call from
our FCC attorney and was told about a floundering company with a
construction permit that was about to expire. It was a class B frequency
on 95.7 licensed to Jeffersonville. We looked into this a little closer
and found the CP did indeed exist and the people involved were willing to
let it go. The financial details were arranged, but with the FCC being far
different way back when with ownership transfer laws, we had to proceed
cautiously to avoid unlawful transfer of control. For an exceedingly low
investment of well below $50,000.00 (that's fifty thousand), the ultimate
purchase of the station transpired. It had to be built and in operation
before the sale could be finalized, but Rutledge took that chance and
funded the project with the stipulation that a few of his Florida people
were going to operate the station. With everyone in agreement, the WVEZ
purchase was abandoned and the new "Stereo 96" project was on the drawing
board.
During this time, it was discovered further that the FCC had assigned call
signs to the station since no one had applied for any. It just so happened
the calls WQHI were next in line for FCC assignment. So we started with
the concept of beautiful music with big band on the new "WQHI, Stereo 96."
A closer look at Louisville revealed, however, that the beautiful music
market was more than likely the wrong direction for the station. A rock
format was the next choice. John was extremely hesitant to even remotely
approach anything "live" on his new station since FM was still a
relatively new arena for rock formats and there was the lack of upstart
capital. I honestly don't think John would mind this particular confession
in this day and age, but it was a subject that was definitely not
discussed in 1974!
Rutledge had good business and personal ties with the folks at TM
Productions in Dallas. Along came the "Stereo Rock" format that hit the
air waves.
We were still going with the concept of "Stereo 96" even with TM signed
up. There was one nagging problem that we could not get over. How
redundant does "Stereo Rock on Stereo 96" sound? We were sitting around
the General Manager's house while still in Florida brainstorming the logo
one evening. We had three elements in front of us: "WQHI", which was
picked by the FCC; "95.7", which was the frequency; and "Stereo 96", that
just did not go well with TM's "Stereo Rock," which they promoted heavily
in their identifiers (jingles, custom liners, etc.). Back in 1973, no one
used decimal point frequencies as on-air identifiers. It was easier to
look at your slide rule FM tuner and locate "92", "101" or whatever. The
conversation of the evening started out that the station was at "96," so
what do we put in front of it? Charlie Champion, our original program
director, all of the sudden blurted out "Hi 95" with the argument that the
"HI" part was already in the call letters and the "95" part was part of
our frequency anyway. So the station became "HI-95" that night in late
1973 due to someone arguing it wasn't "96" on the dial, but since it was
95.7, it was sure enough "HI-95"!
There were so many negatives and set-backs on trying to get this station
on the air, I sometimes think we would have never achieved our goal if
there wasn't a team effort driven to make it happen. A few of the
negatives:
-
The land that was
purchased by the previous company for the transmitter site would not
hold a tower. We had to have a "short guyed" tower designed and
installed that required four sets of guys rather than the traditional
three. The top of the hill in Harrison County was too small for the guy
wire runs, so two of them were actually ran down the hill and anchored
below the tower base itself.
-
The transmitter site was
short spaced with another station south and west from us. We had to
apply for a special waiver to directionalize the FM signal away from the
short spaced station. Working closely with RCA and the FCC in order for
this directional antenna permit to be issued, we weren't sure if the FCC
was even going to grant this waiver. Directional FMs were not a common
thing back then.
-
We tried, without success,
to locate the studios in Kentucky so we could get a good-direct
microwave shot to the tower. We applied twice to the FCC to grant us
permission to locate in Louisville as a "hardship case" due to technical
issues with microwave. The first studio location was going to be in a
three-story office building in Shively. The second application for
waiver was going to be the building where WLRS was located right out of
downtown (I am not sure if WLRS ever knew that we had an entire west end
of a floor in the building on reserve for us!). Both requests were
turned down by the Commission. We were back to finding a space to rent
in Jeffersonville or -- definitely not an option -- build studios at the
transmitter site and operate a sales office somewhere in town. The
absolute only site where we could operate our microwave that was
available at the time was the Medical Arts doctors' office right beside
the hospital in Jeffersonville. The doctors that owned the building at
first rejected, almost violently, to the idea of a radio station renting
space there. But they must have started looking at their nearly empty
building and guessed a long term tenant such as a radio station wasn't
such a bad idea. And we decided having a radio station with an address
on "Sparks Avenue" was cool, so that is where and why we ended up there!
-
Just when things were
looking good and the station was built and waiting for "Program Test
Authority" -- again, things weren't automatic at the FCC in those days
-- the 1974 tornado hit Louisville. I was putting the final touches on
the studios when I thought the building exploded. Even in
Jeffersonville, the bad weather made me never want to be in the middle
of a tornado. After trying to get home, then seeing what had happened on
TV, I honestly felt our transmitter site was gone. The twister came
right out of the hills, hit in S.W. Louisville and proceeded to do its
destruction. Our tower site was in line with the storm. There was a
curfew in place and I could not get to the tower site that night. The
next morning, I made my way out to Harrison County, and the site was
relatively intact. Just a lot of debris around the guy wires, etc. I
called our tower company back into town, and the station got a clean
bill of health: no tornado damage to the antenna and transmission line.
We got the OK from the FCC
to sign-on and, as they say, the rest is history. Our first song? "Oh My
My," by Ringo Starr. We decided our big hunk of green metal automation
machine should have a name. It became the "Boogie Machine," so we thought
it appropriate to play Ringo with part of the lyrics being, ".......can
you boogie?"
WQHI's Charlie Champion
(1974-1975)
The studios consisted of one production room that doubled as a control
room and one room for the automation. The production room was equipped
completely stereo, including the mikes. A list of the equipment is as
follows:
Ampro ten channel stereo
rotary fader console
Scully 280B-2 two-track reel-to-reel recorder
Revox two-track reel-to-reel recorder
SMC stereo cart recorder
SMC stereo cart playback
2 - Russco turntables w/MicroTrak wood tone arms
3 - Sennheiser 421 mikes
2 - Electro Voice Sentry monitor speakers
1 - Set of Gates/Harris studio furniture
Teletype brand encoding equipment to get logging information on the
carts for the automation system
All of the studio equipment
was mounted on risers for "stand-up" operation. The studio/offices were
located on the third floor of the Medical Arts building with the
production room being in the corner of the suite. We had two windows on
each corner that gave us a nice view from there.
WQHI Christmas Card depicting a clever
cartoon
version of the station's automation system
The automation was a SMC (Sono Mag Corp) Model 3060. It was a totally
sequential system that had to be programmed by either slide switches (on
the main controller) or thumbwheel switches (on the carousel controllers).
It was capable of handling 10 stereo sources, which we had full. It came
in five racks, which consisted of:
4 - Scully 270-2 reel-to-reel playback machines capable of handling 14" reels. We only used 10.5"
reels on it.
3 - SMC stereo playback cart machines. 1 for the Station ID, 1 for image
liners and 1 for jingles.
3 - 24 tray SMC Carousels for commercial playback.
3 - SMC carousel programmers. These things had fifty 24-position
thumbwheel switches on each programmer. Once each day, we had to
manually set these switches depending how the commercials were to be
played back using the daily log as a reference. No computers, all hand
set. On busy commercial days, we had to manually program these switches
twice in a 24-hour period.
1 - SMC 3060 program controller. This unit consisted of sixty 11-position
slide switches which determined the basic program clock (or format
rotation). We usually were able to set this switch unit up once or twice
a day, but sometimes it had to be changed hourly. The programmer would
control the actual sequence the tape, cart, and carousel machines would
play during an hour. The ten machines had designator numbers on them
that corresponded with the switch position number. In other words, if
you placed the first switch in position one and the second switch in
position three, the number one Scully would start followed by Scully
number three. Trust me, a monkey could program this thing. It was not
complicated at all, just a lot of switch flipping!
The audio chain was a CBS
Labs Audimax for audio leveling and a CBS Labs Volumax for peak limiting.
We never thought it was necessary to "crank" these things for loudness. We
let that nonsense up to the AMs. We tried to have the best sounding audio
possible while controlling overall levels for FCC compliance. The station
had a good "warm" sounding stereo signal.
Our Studio Transmitter Link (microwave) was two Marti transmitters
operating in discreet left and right modes.
The transmitter site consisted of a Collins 10kw transmitter and an
RCA/Dielectric 8 bay directional FM antenna. The tower was 340' tall and
was located just north and east of Elizabeth on top of the hills in
Harrison County, Indiana.
WQHI License Plate
A little about TM's Stereo Rock:
The basic library consisted of four categories, with each having its own
reel number series. The "100s" were the current songs that were grouped
together in two's. This is also the reel where the announcer lived. Coming
out of either an ID or jingle after a break, reel series 100 would roll,
play two current songs then the TM announcer would come on with the "That
was (what ever the song was) and before that (whatever the first song
was)". They used to get creative and say "That was ______________and prior
to that _______________", which I guess broke the monotony of saying the
same thing over and over again.
The "200s" were the oldies, which would usually roll right after the 100
reel would get done. "300s" were recurrent songs, which played after the
200s. If there was time left in the quarter hour before each commercial
break, the machine was programmed to run back and forth between the 200s
and 300s. The 100s always ran immediately after each stopset, which was
four times an hour.
There was also a "400" series that contained album cuts that were not
considered mainstream hits. These songs were always back announced by TM
with the name of the artist, song and album. We played these at nights
only. TM could never make their minds up whether to play the 400s or not.
They would tell us it was okay to play them, then a month later, they
would suggest they get pulled. This went on for months until we decided to
play them anyway.
So, the basic hour clock looked something like this:
Station ID
100
Jingle
200
300
200 (fill)
300 (fill)
200 (fill)
300 (fill)
Image Liner
Stopset - 2 minutes in length, no more than 3 spots (One 60 & two 30s)
Jingle
100
Jingle
200
...and so on.
Each quarter hour was the
same.
The 400s at night were
placed between the 200 and 300 categories.
The current tapes were updated every two weeks. We had about 10-15 current
tapes always in rotation. The recurrents were updated about four times a
year. They added a few reels here and there to get the former currents
back on the air in recurrent form. The oldies were updated about two times
a year. Again, a few of the former recurrents would show up in the oldies
reels eventually. The old tapes were requested to be sent back to Dallas
so they could reuse the metal reels, although a mountain of them would
pile up before they were ever shipped back!
TM's Stereo Rock was consulted by George Burns Media out of Los Angeles.
George would make a market visit about every six months. We would discuss
the overall sound and direction of the station. Although we subscribed to
TM's syndicated format, George would listen to local input and allow us to
take certain songs out of the library while placing some songs in locally.
This gave us some slightly regional sound to the station. It also gave us
the freedom to remove "Beach Baby" that played over and over in the middle
of winter. (I don't hate too many songs, but that one is high on my "kill"
list!) The playlists, reel rotation, music updates, etc., were all
furnished by TM under the direction of George Burns.
We localized the liners and station IDs with the jingles being customized
for the station by TM. The jingles were TM's standard Stereo Rock package
and they were also updated at least once a year or two to avoid a stale
sound.
TM was a great company to work with. They never questioned what we were
doing on the station and we always got good critiques when they listened
to us. I think what was unique for our situation is we weren't just the
"FM" side of a multi station operation and the automation wasn't just
sitting in a room with no one operating it. This happened a lot back then.
In some situations, the AM jocks were usually required to operate the FM
automation. They were always busy, the tapes would run out and the station
would run jingles and commercials for an hour. Since WQHI was a standalone
station staffed 24 hours a day, the automation always had someone
monitoring it and taking care of routine operational problems if they ever
came up. Keep in mind, these were the days of pre-hard drive computers.
This was an analog-driven automation system that had to have its music
reels changed once every couple of hours. If the reel runs out and was not
changed, guess what? Dead air and on-air chaos!
WQHI Promotional Coaster, complete with
record-like grooves
A few questions I have had
over the years:
-
Did we make an impact on
Louisville radio? I think so.
-
Were we the smartest radio
broadcasters in the world? I doubt it.
-
Did we believe in what we
were doing and try to do our best with available resources? Definitely!
-
Did we ever talk about or
make fun of other Louisville radio stations? Never!
-
Did other Louisville radio
stations talk about us? A big YES! I have heard, more than once, subtle
mentions of us on WAKY, WKLO and WLRS … things like, "We're live, not
like other stations you hear," or "We're not a metal machine playing
music." I guess the "metal machine" was a reaction to our TV spot audio
that contained the line "HI-95's Boogie Machine, it's a ton of metal
that thinks its rock."
Here's a personal secret: My
favorite radio station in Louisville was WAKY. The first time I ever
traveled to Louisville working on the HI-95 project, I tuned in WAKY and
heard Bill Bailey. I was in absolute awe of the station. The folks there
knew how to do radio and do it right!
I had returned to Louisville briefly in 1984 to work at WRKA. The best
compliment I ever had about HI-95 was from a telephone man working with me
at the WRKA transmitter site one evening telling me about this amazing
automatic radio station he used to listen to when he was a teenager. He
went on to tell me about how a computer ran the station and all his
friends loved it. He said he wished HI-95 never went away. This was
totally unsolicited by me, and I was very humbled hearing someone whom I
did not know talking about his favorite radio station from ten years
earlier.
I am proud to be a part of Louisville radio and its FM broadcasting
history. I hope this website lives on so people can read about Louisville
radio of the past and how it has evolved to the present.
When did WQHI become WQMF? Former WQHI
staffer Alan White writes:
"QHI stayed intact through
the end of 1980...just after John Lennon's murder. We did an all-night
call-in tribute that night...seriously broke the TM format.
"The Woods family empire of Cincinnati (WEBN) bought the station and took
over in January, 1981. They sent the old man down to assure us that they
didn't have a staff waiting at the Holiday Inn. Apparently, they were at
the Days Inn. The QHI full-time staff was picked off one by one shortly
after the Woods took over. It was a sad and heart-breaking episode. But we
all lived through it. Bob Reis got into the Heating and Air business,
where he remains to this day.
"I went to WINN 1240 for a
while. It was tough. Many paychecks bounced. I eventually went back to
work for my uncle in the electrical business. Then in 1984 I went to WKJJ
(later WDJX) and worked part-time...then fulltime for about two years. I
jumped over to WAKY in March, 1986. I worked the overnight, then became
production director. I left WAKY in March, 1987 and went to the Kentucky
News Network. I stayed at KNN for nearly 13 years, until Jacor merged with
Clear Channel. The heads rolled. Mine was one. In April 2000, I joined the
Salem Radio Group. I stayed just over four years...until I fizzled-out one
day...and walked away. Christian Radio is brutal.
"After that, I went to Metro
Networks for about a year. Split-shift traffic reports. UGH! Metro moved
me into news. During my stay at Metro, I got my foot in the door at
Cox-Louisville as a part-time board-op. I also earned my Master
Electrician license from the state of Kentucky. I got the electrical
license as a hedge against the turbulence of radio. (I'm keeping that
damned license forever!)
"In late Summer of '05, Cox
brought me on fulltime as continuity manager. I have since taken on the
additional duties of traffic manager for WRKA and WPTI (New Country). Cox
is the GREATEST place I've ever worked! I love it...and plan to stay for
the rest of my life."
|
