Summer had turned to Fall when Mike, the manager from WHEZ, had began connecting the parts of the 901 system. (I would be told years later that Mike's help had a dual purpose. The owners were considering switching WHEZ to country and Mike was their "observer" to see how well we would do. And indeed WHEZ did become WTCR and made history itself.) Harvit had wanted the automation so that the "on air content" would sound pro. Bob Kingsley would be the voice on the automation music tapes. He also wanted to "push" the fact we were in stereo, thus the ID said "Stereo 96.5......". Harvit then wanted to "program the system and let it run until the music tapes ran out" (about eight hours) as a test. But we couldn't do that test. You see two of the four reel to reel machines had auto rewinders on them and could rewind forever !  Instead, I hooked it into the house audio and let it run all day. When properly programmed, it couldn't sound better.

 

    When the big day came the 901 was a huge let down for me. It would continue to be a problem for the entire time they had it.

 

    The big day and all was ready. The 901 was set to play my introduction of Bob Harvit who would then tell the winner of the "first song contest" (It was an easy guess....Sixteen Tons-Earnie Ford) and then play the song. Everyone was stuffed into the reception area around the machine. And when the button was pushed....It spit out my introduction and played Bob's welcome cold! Crushed, I went downstairs to Kings.

 

    When I came back, Francis tried to cheer me up. She had a relative on the phone that wanted to talke to me. He told me he was listening to us in Miami. I wasn't that impressed for I knew Miami was just East of Charleston. Then Harvit called me down to his office where I was presented with a gold watch and a bonus check. Not a lot of money, but he had trusted me to get the FM on the air.

 

    The 901 continued to be a problem. To be fair, it wasn't all the machine's fault. To program it you had to type instructions on a keyboard with a Nixi display. Then review them for corrections. The memory would play exactly what you told it to and then erase the instruction. So if you didn't save a printout of what you put in, there was no record. The "jocks" caught on to this quickly. After a few weeks I could tell who had programed the 901 and even who was at the station by what played on the air. Some of the  "jocks"  hated to program the machine and wanted to be live. I was certain that two of them would "mess up" the program on purpose. From playing their girlfriend's song two or three times an hour to making the National Anthem play at 1:05 every day, this assult on the machine continued through my remaining days there. Harvit had moved to Florida and new manager Janet Evans could not believe the employees would do such a thing. So much so a new machine was purchased in the mid 80's. And, with no supprise to me, it had many of the same problems. Go figure. Eventually, after a lawsuit with the manufacturer, WXCC went live. After all, I built it for live operation.

 

In the first year Bob had paid off all the debt of the new station. Janet earned many sales awards for the station. When I left in 1980 the FM was billing over $50,000 a month. Quite a success for a station in a small town.

 

 

copyright © 2007 HLC

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

WXCC's success began to fall as the coal production moved on in the early 90's. Bob decided it was time to sell and in 2000, East Kentucky Broadcasting made the purchase. They consolidated operations in Pikeville and not long ago moved the transmitter into KY and increased the power to 100,000 watts. May they have as much success as the origional and legendary  Coal Coountry Radio.