The Birthday Truck

Lame is the term I have borrowed from a younger generation to describe some of the ineffective, cloying attempts I have made at entertaining my radio audiences. Today I recall one of the primary examples. 

In September of 1990 I was paired with a co-host against my will, mainly. I had worked solo almost exclusively up until that point. I felt it was a bad idea from the inception that I share my show with a newbie with a natural gift of gab named Angie Mabry.

Her easy acclimation to radio made the forced pairing much more tolerable. We seemed to mix well on the air and off. Our station owner/general manager introduced our duo on the daily half hour Swap Shop program with the intention of expanding her role as eventual morning show co-host.

We went to work in numerous procrastinating planning sessions trying to conceptualize what the new morning show would sound like. Our boss grew weary of our preliminaries and finally compelled us to begin the 6 am to 9:30 am program at the beginning of November. What we settled on was an emphasis on fluff talk and downplayed our music format which we perceived appeasing the “blue hairs”, our undesired elderly demographic. Most of our style was modeled after the secular morning zoo shows of the day but stopped short and we were limited by our aging southern audience and their obsolete traditions. As far as I have known no attempt had ever been made on a southern gospel station for such a show so our new enterprise was in uncharted waters amidst the brokered religious programs keeping us afloat.

One of the most memorable episodes of Mabry and O’Neal show was the Birthday Truck. My on-air partner feigned anxiety over her November 13th birthday as the event neared. Her day was hyped over a week or so around the office and on the air. By the 14th the semi bringing a mountain of gifts was a day late and Mabry was “worried.” The birthday bit climaxed with a visit from the red-neck truck driver (voiced by me) who had troubles finding the station and struck her parked Honda Prelude while pulling into our tiny parking lot. The skit was more lame than anything on Saturday Night Live, pretty bad.

We had some chemistry. We were both in our mid twenties sharing similar views. I skewed a little more conservative. Our ad libs were much more entertaining than the prepared text we thought was funny. Interactions with our sports & news director, Fred Brewer fared much better. He had a dry poignant humor that would have been a better match for a morning show. Our boss saw things differently favoring a male female duo. Had the show been played straight with unforced comedy lacking in phony laughter we might have had a hit. We simply tried too hard.

  The best conversations were the real ones involving our friendly UGA and Georgia Tech football rivalry. I was the long time Dawgs fan while she preferred the Yellow Jackets. To her credit Tech had the superior squad and was national champs that year. For some inexplicable reason sports coverage on a southern gospel station was considered taboo by listeners so the best element of our show seemed too secular. The outspoken Southern Baptist and Pentecostal based audience was resistant. We were viewed as sell outs. Our 2,500 watt AM signal disappeared into the haze that was too far on the fringe of the Atlanta environs to be competitive in the major market so our locals won in the end.

I don’t recall the show lasting much past the new year. The partnership ended on a sour note, I don’t remember the precise circumstances but our radio savvy sales manager “Just” Janet Barcus  played Mabry’s understudy and eventual replacement as the curtain fell on my third radio home in February of ‘91. Click on the Mp3 below for the Birthday Truck aircheck...

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The station now has a 50,000 watt construction permit that is wasted on the same old format with a playlist of obscure southern gospel tailored to those born sometime during the Civil War. Their signal reaches further now though. I don’t believe the current owners wish to program for the major market they now cover. What a shame.

Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Georgia Tech,UGA,Bulldogs,football,Angie Mabry,Jim O'Neal,WDCY,southern culture,radio history,radio culture,morning zoo,DJ,Janet Barcus,southern gospel,1990,1991,News talk,Fred Brewer

We’re Douglas Country!

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