590 WVLK

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WVLK History
By Scott Wills

WVLK-AM 590 was first licensed in 1947, with studios located in Versailles, KY. (Thus the VLK, Versailles, Lexington, KY). They moved shortly afterwards to Lexington, in the Phoenix Hotel, where they remained until approximately 1980, when they moved to their current location in the Kincaid Towers. Throughout all of this time, Paul Dunbar (PD as he was known) was the Chief Engineer, until his retirement in 1986.

WVLK started out as a 1KW, N-DA station, but in 1959, added a fifth tower to its 4-tower pattern and became a 5KW Daytime, 1KW night station with a DA-2 license. Open wire feeders fed the nighttime array, which was always great on rainy days or during ice storms. It used a Collins 5KW transmitter until 1978 when a Harris MW-5 was purchased. The original Gates BC-1E transmitter was kept as the standby and was used on the air during commercial power interruptions because it was a single-phase unit, and the other transmitters were three phase. The 30KW generator that was installed in 1976 was only a single-phase unit, as was its 10KW backup. Needless to say, when the 10KW generator was online, most everything else at the transmitter site was offline.

WVLK-FM 92.9, "The Beautiful Island", went on the air in 1961 playing easy listening music via an automation system at the AM transmitter site. It actually was housed in a small shed at the base of Tower #1. It was an old ITA transmitter, rated at 5KW. The station was licensed at 32KW ERP, with an antenna height of 290 feet. In 1975, WVLK-FM was granted an increase to Class C status. They moved to their sister television station's tower (WKYT-TV) at 980' with 100KW ERP, utilizing a pair of Gates FM-20H3 transmitters. The old ITA transmitter was retired in 1980, and a new Harris FM-5 was installed as the backup. WVLK-FM utilized two separate sites for their main and backup transmitting plants. For years, there was no STL between their AM studio and Production Center and their FM transmitter site. All FM programming originated from the manned AM transmitter site, using the duty operators there to program the automation, load commercials and record feeds.

WVLK is unique in my experience for a station in the 73rd ADI to use transmitter engineers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They maintain two complete stereo studios at their transmitter site, the new building being completed in the late 1980s, housing the AM transmitters and phasing units, FM controls and the capability to run all operations. In my 15-month career at WVLK, I can assure you that ability to run operations from the transmitter was used as an emergency backup at least twice.

This article below was published in the Lexington Herald-Leader in Late Fall 1979.
WVLK Moves to New Downtown Studios
By Tom Carter
Of the Herald Staff

Ralph Hacker is pretty excited these days about small things. Like "hands free" telephones. Or soundproof booths which seal themselves when the doors close.

These are some of the modern trappings of radio station WVLK's new studios in the "atrium" of Kincaid Towers on Vine Street at Broadway downtown.

Hacker, vice president and general manager of WVLK, and the other 35 members of the station's staff have settled in to the new building, also the home of Kentucky Central Life Insurance.

Until last week, the station had been keeping a lonely vigil at the Phoenix Hotel on East Main Street. The station was the last tenant to move out of the old hotel, and Hacker recalls the old headquarters with quiet horror.

"Jim Jordan (WVLK's station manager) and I had offices right in the middle of everything at the Phoenix. If anybody wanted to go to the bathroom, they had to go by our office to do it, and that's a fact."

Hacker added that "The big thing here is we've got two sets of bathrooms."

New restroom facilities aren't the only changes at WVLK. The station will soon be going to a system whereby music and commercials can be programmed up to three hours in advance, a system which will increase the station's on-air "pace" appreciably.

Also, WVLK is awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission to start using a microwave system to link studios and transmitter. Now, the studio and the Yarnallton Pike transmitter are linked by telephone lines. The new system will give the station a clearer, improved sound, and less prone to interruption by accidents.

Hacker said the studio was forced off the air a few years ago when a farm truck hit a utility pole on Leestown Pike. The truck toppled the pole, snapped the telephone lines and took the station off the air.

The station's FM counterpart, an automated station which plays mostly "beautiful" music, is also operated at the transmitter.

Older residents of Lexington may recall that in the 1950s and 1960s, WVLK was one of the top station in this area of the country because of some of its personnel.

Past employees include the former "voice" of the University of Kentucky Wildcats, the late Claude Sullivan; disc jockey Artie Kaye, who is also dead; announcers Reynolds Large, now at WBKY-FM; Ray Holbrook, now a broadcasting executive in New Jersey; David Dick, now a CBS-TV correspondent; Gig Henderson, now the head of Lexington's oldest advertising agency; Van Vance, now a sportscaster at WHAS radio; Ted Grizzard, retired and still living in Lexington, and former sales manager George Webb.

WVLK (the letters stand for "Versailles, Lexington, Kentucky") was founded in Versailles by A.B. "Happy" Chandler and Colvin Rouse in 1946 and purchased by the late Garvice Kincaid in 1949. When the station was granted FCC approval to move to Lexington, it settled into the Lafayette Hotel, now known as the old Kentucky Central Building on East Main Street.

Hacker recalls the working conditions there.

"WVLK had two rooms in the Lafayette Hotel, and the control board sat on a piece of plywood which was spread across a toilet. The engineer sat in the restroom and operated the station."

The station moved to the basement of the Phoenix Hotel in 1952, and within a couple of months moved to the hotel's eighth floor, the top floor.

Hacker said that previous opportunities to get improved facilities for WVLK fell through.

Hacker said "there had been plans to renovate the Phoenix Hotel twice and nothing happened. Then, when Channel 27 (WKYT-TV and WVLK have related ownership) built its new building on Winchester Road we were supposed to move out there. We didn't. And finally a new building was built for us on Harrodsburg Road, only it was eventually sold to someone else."

At the new location, the studios are located one floor above the ground level cafeteria currently under construction.

The studio has 6,200 square feet of space, up 50 percent from its old size of around 4,200 square feet. Larger control rooms, with ceiling mounted speakers and the new cartridge systems, are located closer to production facilities and the news department. The "on air" announcer even has a television monitor where he can see a radar tracking local weather conditions.

But even in his new offices, where the wall-sized windows give a pleasant view of Lexington Center and West Main Street, Hacker won't forget the old Phoenix Hotel setting for a long time:

"Everyday we had to give ourselves a pep talk and for the last two years we had to use a service elevator to get to work. It was worse for those of us who had been at the station a long time, and remembered how nice the Phoenix used to be, and how horrible the situation had gotten.

"When we started talking about moving here, our people said, 'We won't believe it until we pay the first rent check.'"

Alan Reed Remembers WVLK

Dan Mason (Masden) helped open the door for me at WVLK as a "weekend warrior" while I was a student at Eastern Kentucky University. I was a Biology/Chemistry major at the university and I quit school in my senior year at EKU (which gave my parents a heart attack) to accept full-time nights at WVLK. (This was at the time Bill Stakelin was still GM.) As many of us know, Dan was an EKU broadcasting major who was also working weekends at the Big 59. I think I was to be his replacement. Through a series of well orchestrated moves, Dan later took over the helm of the CBS owned stations. It was his conversation with Program Director Jim Jordan ("JJ") that opened the door. 

Jim Jordan moved me to afternoons about a year later. Then, after a hiatus due to a serious auto accident, I came back as midday jock. I was simply much too young to appreciate the never-to-be-duplicated learning and nurturing environment WVLK offered me. The lessons I learned from Jim Jordan, Paul Hughes, Bill Stakelin, Ralph Hacker, Doug McElvein, and even engineering legend Paul Dunbar would serve me in all areas of my life. To all these people (an others I've left out), I am eternally grateful for engraining within the value of "localism" and "community involvement" -- two words this industry seemed to forget in the age of consolidation, but which have served me well in many capacities.   

I left WVLK in late 1977 and even got to help train my replacement, Bill Cody. Ralph came in one afternoon and told me about this "young kid with the voice of God almighty!" 

Lindsey Wilson College hired me to run their unique commercial venture, WAIN, for about four years, and in 1981 I started filing applications for my own radio station. During and after that period I went back to school and finished that biology/chemistry degree (in freshwater biology) and redeemed myself in my parent's eyes.  I attended Western Kentucky University and Tennessee Technological University, completing a Masters degree in fresh water ecology. I taught biology at Lindsey Wilson while simultaneously filing FCC license apps, then building and selling during the FCC's "80-90" window. 

During this same period, I spent some great summers sampling streams all over Tennessee and Kentucky and was involved in scientific research. I've presented a number of papers and a publication or two, mostly on freshwater mussels and aquatic organisms. I later went into public education -- mostly for more money -- and served as principal at a number of Kentucky schools (the last in Jefferson County).

An interesting sidebar is that I never really cut my ties with radio. I continued to assist in a few studio and transmitter installs and in production. In a nut, I finally gave in to the fact that I was never able to shake the image of the "radio man" around here, so the inevitable occurred. After twenty years in the high stress world of the public school administration, I "retired" and went into the no-stress world of duopoly radio ownership! What a way to hang up the proverbial guns. 

To make a long story short, I bought back my old station on Lake Cumberland -- "92.7 The Wave" (WHVE-FM) -- and in 2006 we acquired WVLC in Campbellsville. (That station is known as "99.9 The Big Dawg.")  

I occasionally run into a few "Big 59'ers"; namely, Hal Rogers, Stan Cook, Duke Myer (aka Brian Thomas), and others. 

WVLK affected my life in so many ways. I was literally the "Boy Next Door" in those years...a young pup who didn't quite understand the degree to which I was being influenced in such a positive way by the likes of Bill Stakelin, Jim Jordan (great guy), Doug McElvein (awesome talent), Carl Douglas (Belcher) and the incredible news department headed by Steve York.  

I can't leave out the name of John Randolph, who offered me a full time job at WAKY, and I was dumb enough to turn it down. I referred him to Bill Purdom, who was smart enough to accept his offer! Johnny was always my radio hero and recently I've been able to personally convey that message to him. Interestingly, I had been exchanging e-mails with Lee Gray (WAKY and WKLO), who, in my opinion, was the best midday guy that ever lived. Lee (Darling) was living in Texas, and one day a friend told me to read the Courier Journal article about his death. That was why he hadn't responded.  I'm just sorry we never got to meet in person to discuss the different kinds of airplanes both of us had owned, loved, and loathed. 

My thanks go out to John Quincy for this labor of love. He is responsible for helping save these most wonderful moments of people and events that could have easily been lost in the dust of tape oxides. Thanks for helping preserve the excellent product we all worked tirelessly to put out to our public.

Paul J. Hughes Remembers WVLK

I was first hired in 1976 to fill a slot on weekends. When nights became available, I moved there followed shortly by middays. I stayed there full-time for a couple of years and started an ad agency with two other UK students while I was still at 'VLK. Richmond Radio Shack was our first account followed by Halls on the River, The Civic Center Shops and Dawahares to name a few. I remained at 'VLK for five or six more years doing only weekends because I was one of a few people who could run the UK network. Back in those days, the entire network was fed from the Phoenix Hotel studios.

The agency became such a huge endeavor that I left radio and was producing all the spots from my own studio. It is interesting to note that Randy Bell, my jingle salesman from JAM became a friend in 1976 after I met him at VLK. I later would buy dozens of jingles from him for agency clients. One of those was the "You've Got It" 60 second hard song for Geno's Formal Wear. I then arranged for the You've Got It soft song to be sold to my friend David Hume at WCBR in Richmond. The beauty of those two cuts was they contained several shorter cuts to make a whole. So by buying the one 60, you actually got four or five cuts to use on the air along with the complete 60. WBLG bought some of the other package cuts and couldn't get the two main ones because I had already procured them in the market.

Another interesting side note: Randy Bell is one of the owners of the station where I am now in Nashville (WNSR-AM 560). I have a small piece of the station and produce all of the local spots, liners and promos. I am also a professional photographer and marketing consultant.

(More on Paul J. Hughes on the WBLG Page and here.)

 Mike Proctor Remembers WVLK and More

My name is Mike Proctor, I spent the fall, winter and spring of ‘67/'68 at WCYN in Cynthiana, Kentucky. I started up there with just the 6 to sign-off gig on Saturday nights. We signed off at 11 p.m. They rolled up the sidewalks in the town at 10. My first shift was the night after my Bryan Station football team had just played Harrison County. I blocked a punt in that game and almost pulled out an underdog victory! So, NO WAY was I going to use MY name on the air. Theodore Nathaniel Thompson (TNT) was born. Short life though. Ted's demise came with my hiring at WVLK the next Summer. I remember inviting John Henderson, a Bryan Station school mate, to come up with me and read the news during my board shifts.

In June '68, John Duvall hired me for news at WVLK, joining Ferrell Wellman, Tom Hammond and Joe Ewalt. Part of the job was driving WVLK's mobile news unit around town. I can also testify that the "gumball" on top of the mobile unit is about one half inch too high to fit under the Parkette Drive-Inn canopy. I cruised into the old Georgetown Road Parkette and TWAAANG goes the metal canopy. The worst part was that I knew it was going to do the same darn thing when I backed out! (I should have let the air out of the tires....)

I remember a night when someone left a door to the WVLK studios unlocked and, rumor has it, that Garvice Kinkaid found the door unsecured; he grabbed a typewriter from one of the offices and threw it down the stairs and then billed the radio station for the typewriter!

After nearly a year of bliss, rubbing elbows with Artie Kay and Denny Mitchell, I got canned after being fined $10 for following county fire trucks too closely in the WVLK van as they headed out Richmond Road to a fire. I had one more news break-in before the UK game and I was really trying to get to the scene to make a report. A member of the county's thin brown line decided I needed to be hauled up on charges! Ray Holbrook gave me the heave-ho. UGH, canned from my dream job!

Fortunately, my high school Junior Achievement activities included producing the program and some ads for a JA program on WBLG Radio. Ed Van Hook hired me for the 6 to sign-off board shift at WBLG. I spent a year and a half at WBLG Radio, back when the studios (on Pleasantstone) backed up to the old jail house on Short Street! I always kept the doors locked. During that time we simulcasted the WBLG TV 11 o'clock news. I got to be good buddies with Bill Bratton, Woody Stiles, Glen Martin and Mike Daniels, the TV engineering staff. They were the "switchers" who inserted the station break items in the ABC network breaks.

After my radio shift ended at 12 midnight, I would hustle out to the TV station where there would always be a good volleyball game going on amongst the cameras in the studio or a Frisbee toss in the parking lot!

In the summer of '70 I took time off to go to a "quickie school" out in Kansas City; got my First Class Radio Telephone License, and cajoled Roy White into letting me work at the TV station. I worked as a switcher during the daytime until the end of the summer; Woody Stiles wanted his daytime job back, and I was toast! Time for Plan B.

I hit it off with Al Sheer, the chief engineer at WLEX and spent the fall of '70 at Channel 18 doing true engineering stuff. UGH! I was used to the button-pushing life at WBLG-TV. However, the engineers at WLEX were like 2nd class citizens in a caste system. I just couldn't stand the work environment and my immediate supervisor was a real jerk. By November of '70, I had had enough!

Back to Channel 62 I went, but only 18 hours or so per week, doing the sign-off shift on Saturday and Sunday.

On a trip out towards Lawrenceburg one day I saw a new radio tower going up. So I talked the folks at the fledgling WWLV (Love Radio) into giving me the 6 to midnight board shift. I did that 5 nights a week for $2.00 per hour; and continued to work at Channel 62 on the 4 p.m. to signoff shift on Saturdays and Sundays. Love Radio was cool. Our PD was John Conlee, a Versailles mortician worker, whose great voice would later wind up on Country Music Charts ("Common Man", "Rose Colored Glasses", etc.)

I was attending UK Electrical Engineering classes full time and just could not keep up class work and a 7 day work week. Love Radio and the weeknight gig had to go. In April '71 I got a chance to work sign-on to sign-off on the weekends at Channel 62. I was able to get 36-38 hours of work in two days, so my EE grades started to improve again.

In the fall of '71, my buddy, Gary Anderson, at WVLK, said that PD (Paul Dunbar) was looking for another transmitter rat. I signed on with PD and WVLK and had a marvelous job of minding the transmitter and studying my EE course work. What a great job for an engineering student. (Back in the summer of '70, Gary and I had carpooled out in my Opal GT to Kansas City to get our 1st Class FCC Licenses. His dad, Reed, owned WCYN. Gary and I would later work together at IBM. Unfortunately we have lost Gary to pancreatic cancer.)

At the WVLK transmitter site, I got a chance to sub for Tom Kendall, the "Night-hawk" on his midnight to 6 a.m. shift from time to time. I remember doing 60 second ad-lib ads for Columbia's Steak House from looking at a menu of the establishment. They got their money's worth. My average ad ran 90 seconds plus. It was only later that I actually patronized the restaurant and discovered how good that "Night-hawk" special really is. If I had known, they would have gotten 120 second spots!

I remember that we had a little black & white TV at the WVLK transmitter shack. On Sundays, CBS would televise the NHL game of the week. They would talk about the red line and the blue lines; heck, I couldn't tell one from the other. I had to get a Sunday off before I could see a hockey game on a color TV and figure out what "icing" calls were all about!

On Sunday, May 14, 1972 I had my last transmitter trek at WVLK. I started work at IBM's Lexington facility on Monday, May 15 as a graduate Electrical Engineer. But the broadcast calling could not be stifled. Later on that fall, I picked up the 4 p.m.-signoff shift at Channel 62 again and worked both jobs until 1976.

I fondly remember tracking Woody Stiles' career with WAKY. Woody took me up in an airplane and I blame him for the second hobby/career of mine involving the air. (We lost Woody in a plane crash; he was towing banners and his engine sputtered on climb-out; there's no way that that ends well.)

In 1976 I finally gave up the broadcast gigs and settled for the Sports Car Club of America and then the Lexington Flying Club. I guess I needed a way to do 90 miles an hour legally!

In the air, I became first a private pilot, then an instrument rated private pilot, then a commercial pilot, then an instructor, then an instructor who can teach instrument lessons, then a multi-engine commercial pilot and finally, an Airline Transport Pilot.

When IBM sold off its printer division and it became Lexmark, I did many of the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) recordings for our Tech Support Center. Now that I am retired from my 30 year EE career, my only microphone is on the computer and in our airplanes.

I still yearn for the broadcast business. One of these days I am going to have to introduce myself to Mr Wallingford down here in Richmond. I don't know how much longer I can stay away! I get to use a microphone most days in airplanes, but I crave a larger audience!

My WVLK compatriot, Ferrell Wellman, sits next to me at EKU basketball games; I live vicariously through him as he keeps me up to date on companies like Cumulus and Clear Channel. And I watch him religiously on his new KET Comment On Kentucky Friday night show!

WVLK Photos

WVLK Airchecks

This bicentennial year station composite, narrated by John Henderson, features clips from Dan Kelley, Brian Thomas, Alan Reed, Captain Tag, Mark Elton, Bill Purdom, Mark Anthony, Steve York, Stan Cook, Becky Mitchell, Tom McCarthy, Cawood Ledford and Ralph Hacker.

About this aircheck Alan Reed says: "The recorder was running in the production room and occasionally newsman Michael 'Killer' Kilbourne, without Hughes' knowledge, would make a comment on the tape. Especially funny was Kilbourne's comment when Hughes missed his backtime into ABC news."

Rob Calhoun says: "He is better known as Barry Fox. This is an aircheck of him doing nights."

Here's a portion of WVLK's "9 to 10 Show" that pays tribute to the just-deceased 15-year WVLK air traffic reporter.

Rob Calhoun says: "WVLK was suffering the same fate as other AM music stations regarding a night time audience. The Urban format happened by rebellion. In 1984 a newly hired overnight transmitter engineer decided to add his urban favorites alongside the normal adult fare of Anne Murray and Phil Collins.  J.R.J.R was caught breaking format but management told him to go Urban overnights. The program was called 'Afterhours'. WVLK along with WLAP were receiving threats against their license renewal by groups who criticized the stations for the lack of programming aimed to a black audience. This solved that issue and had potential to bring revenue to nights and overnight that hadn’t existed in a long time. Eventually, urban music was expanded to evenings and called 'The Night Beat'. Even with the new music the station elements revolving around news and sports were intact.  Afterhours’ host included J.R.J.R and later Toni Ryan, Keith 'Air' Jones and others. Night Beat’s host included Rick Ellis, Mike Murphy, Tom Casey, Mike Webb and myself. In 1988 WLAP changed format to oldies and dropped Talknet. WVLK immediately picked up the program and NightBeat was canceled but Afterhours continued but was eliminated weeknights and finally canceled by the end of the year."

Rob Calhoun says: "Ercel is a horse breeder and produces a daily race result show called Post Time. The daily program aired on WVLK through the eighties and early nineties. Today it airs on WLXG along with a Saturday talk show called 'Horsetales'." 

Rob Calhoun says: "He left WVLK shortly after this aircheck and eventually
worked for Clear Channel and sister company Critical Mass Media."

Jack Pattie with Guest Gary Burbank (November 18, 2009)
38:52 - 18,225 KB

WVLK Jingles and IDs

In 1963 WVLK did a promotion with Elm Hill Meats where a 45 rpm record was distributed with the Lexington-customized version of the PAMS "My Home Town" jingle (sung by Jean Oliver, instead of Terry Lea Jenkins who usually provided vocals for the "My Home Town" cuts) and a Elm Hill Meats "Elm Hill Bill" jingle sung by Grand Ole Opry member George Morgan. The non-banded "A" side started off with the "My Home Town" jingle followed by the Elm Hill Meats jingle with a few seconds of silence between them. The "B" side contained a big band instrumental version of "My Home Town". Listen to the record's contents below:

For more information on PAMS jingles, go to the PAMS Website.
For more information on Pepper-Tanner and TM jingles, go to the Jones TM Website.
For more information on JAM jingles, go to the JAM Website.

All audio is in downloadable MP3 format.