Before my television days, I was a disc jockey, first in Mt. Jackson, VA, at a country and western 1k daytimer and later at WENZ in Highland Springs, VA. I have a lot of stories about this adventure so continue to tune back in for updates. An interesting note about the Mt. Jackson station is that it shared a frequency, 790, with WTAR in Norfolk which is why we had to sign off at sundown.
My work at WENZ was partly to help finance college and partly to keep my hand, and voice, in the business while in college. WENZ was one of the Greater Richmond stations hoping to take down the Top 40 powerhouse, WLEE. How we would do that with 250 watts, against Lee’s 5k is beyond me. But I did alright on the night shift, at least for part of the month, since I was on the air after sunset and WLEE had to cut power to 250 watts at night. (WLEE workers on a Facebook Group tell me the station didn’t cut power but only went directional at night. I did not know WLEE’s nighttime power at the time and got the info from Wikipedia while researching this post. Again I don’t necessarily write facts, just how I remember them, so accuracy could be called into question.)
My on-air name was Dave Shannon, the GM for some reason, didn’t like Mims. (I later met a guy whose real name was Dave Shannon, but that’s another story.) I played Top 40 for a while. I say “for a while” because WENZ had this cycle. Its sister station was WEAM in Greater Washington, read that as Arlington. The owner of both stations lived in Northern Virginia. In those days 45 rpm records were sent to the stations and it was up to each music director to listen and decide which ones got air time. In our case, all the records were shipped to WEAM, and the owner periodically would bring the new ones to WENZ. So the cycle was this: Owner comes to town, drops off 45s and we are a Top40 station. Owner stays in NVA and we become an oldies station. Owner still stays in NVA and we become a Golden Oldies station. Onwer comes to town with new records and we are a Top40 station again.
One of the requirements of working there was to say the station’s slogan in one breath. It was identical to the slogan the DC jocks had to say except for the call letters, location, and word made from the call letters. “On the air, 24 hours a day, it’s Greater Richmond Great independent. The new W E N Z, Your Music Station, it’s Wenz.” That was 60 years ago and I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night blurting it out. Man, I’ve got to find another line of work.
Most of the commercials were trades the owner had made with motels around the country. Toward the end of my tour at WENZ the money got tighter. At first, I didn’t notice it in my paycheck, but one evening in the middle of my shift, Virginia Power shut us off, probably for failure to pay the bill. Since the transmitter and tower were located nearby, at the end of Nine Mile Road, I could see the tower lights from our front door. Actually, I could see that the tower lights were off. Now, a radio station without electricity doesn’t have much of an audience…read that as none. But a tower with no lights is a hazard to airplanes. Especially if your 100-foot tower is used as the outer marker for one of the runways at Byrd Airport. When I finally got through to the proper person at VEPCO, I could almost hear the groan through the line. Needless to say, the power was back on in 15 minutes. And since the tower, transmitter, and studio were somehow connected to the same circuit, I was back in on the air.
As they say in lawyer TV shows, “There became a time” when my paycheck did bounce. In those days all my jingles, promos, stingers, etc. were on Fidelpack cartridges. I walked out with about 30 and took them to a friend in the engineering department at WRVA AM who helped me transfer them to reel-to-reel for safekeeping. As expected, I got a call from the GM who offered to trade a cashier’s check of my final wages for the Fidelpacks. I readily agreed. I made the trade on the day just before he and the Program Director walked out themselves.