"The 98Q Story"
As Told By Original
98Q Program Director, Ken Kurtis
98Q (WTCQ, Vidalia, at 97.7 FM, formerly WVOP-FM)
was put on the air in 1975 by myself (PD) and John Shomby (MD). It all
started with our AM counterpart, WVOP, a daytime-only station, which had a
top-40 format (with me as PD and John as MD). WVOP-FM had an automated
beautiful music format (very common use of FM back in those days). The AM
side was sold out commercially almost every day AND we had to go off the air
at sundown (signing back on at 6AM the next day). On the FM side, we
couldn't give the spots away.
So we came up with a pitch to station ownership about flipping the very
popular top-40 format over to the FM, allowing for a better spread of the
commercial mix, more time to sell, and the ability to go live 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week. We proposed to dump the beautiful music format,
and convert the AM station (WVOP) into a country station. And that's what we
did.
It's also important to understand the nature of local radio at the time.
Vidalia is a typical small Southern town of about 10,000 people, located
about halfway between Macon and Savannah in SE Georgia. A lot of these small
towns all had their own hometown radio stations. The formats were a
mishmash, interspersed with hog reports, obituaries, tobacco prices, "local"
news (usually revivals, library meetings, and such), and what-have-you.
Our goal with 98Q was to bring a major-market sound to Vidalia and the
surrounding areas. And I think we did that with a vengeance.
We started by simply taking the FM format off the air and replacing it with
a tape loop that said: "(Left channel) 98Q is coming, (right channel) 98Q is
coming, (both) 98Q is coming!!!" That tape ran endlessly for two days.
people would call and ask what it was and we wouldn't tell them. People
called to say they spent hours listening because they couldn't believe
that's ALL we were airing. But we sure burned the name of the station into
their mind. And it set the tone for 98Q, which became known for innovative
and ear-catching promotions.
On August 28, 1975, we signed the station on the air and went live. This was
the first time outside of larger cities (as far as I know) that any
small-town Georgia station was on the air for 24-hours-a-day, let alone with
a live jock all the time.
Of course, starting up something like this is not without it's problems.
Ours occurred when our music survey arrived (all 5000 copies) and we saw
that the station logo was printed upside-down . . . on BOTH sides!!!! Our
GM, Ed Bouchelle, loved to say, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
So we came up with the idea that anyone who got one of our surveys and could
tell us what was wrong with it, would win an album. Needless to say, this
helped burn the image of our logo into everyone's minds.
Our first indication that we were on to something special came three days
into our new life. We'd decided to hold a Labor Day concert out on the
station lawn (which housed the tower). We got a flatbed, invited a number of
local bands to play, and were delighted when 1000 people showed up. Not a
bad way to kick off the station.
From the time we'd spent on WVOP, we'd already gained a reputation as a
tertiary station that had a good ear for breaking new music (Southern radio
was very hot back then) and for doing promotions. We continued that with
98Q. We became among the first of the R&R P3 reporting stations and also
reported to Kal Rudman, Bobby Poe, Ron Brandon, and other of the music tip
sheets of the day.
We also continued to do weekly promotions. Among our favorites were "98Q
Calling All Cows Cow Calling Contest" (keyed to an Elvin Bishop record and
where the winner got a Kaw-asaki motorcycle), "National Ding-a-Ling day" (a
take-off on the Bicentennial Minute of 1975-76), "The Equal Speed Rule" (an
April Fool's joke), and many more.
About six months after we went on the air, there was a ratings book (Mediastat)
done for our coverage area (about 85,000 listeners all told) that showed 98Q
the resounding #1 choice is every daypart with AQH shares ranging from an 18
in the morning to a whopping 37 in the evening. (It was also nice to see
that our AM station with its country format was generally #4 - but a distant
#4 with about an overall 7 share.)
The station, and John and I, continued to receive a lot of national
attention, much more so than our market size would indicate and probably on
a level impossible to achieve today, given the changing nature of radio. In
the spring of 1976, at the Bobby Poe Pop Music Convention in Washington, DC,
I was named Program Director of the Year and John was named Music Director
of the Year. Poe told us we should have also been Station of the Year but
that he didn't
feel it was fair for us to sweep all three categories. (We won Station of
the Year the following year.)
The culmination of events for me at 98Q was when we held our second concert,
this time over the July 4th weekend of 1976. We had the same idea as we did
for the first concert - out on our lawn, got a flatbed truck, invited local
bands. Only this time (by police estimates), we attracted 10,000 people (and
remember the population of the entire town was around 10,000). OH MY
GOD!!!!!! Shomby and I were stunned. Apparently, they still talk about that
day in Vidalia. Like our own little Woodstock. Cars were parked along the
main Highway 280 (where the station was and is located) for two or three
miles in each direction. I vividly remember turning towards John as we
surveyed the scene from the back of the crowd and said, "I can't top this.
I've got to get out of here." And a month later, I was the new PD at KAKC in
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
John was promoted to PD and stayed about another year and kept the station
on top of the ratings. After he left (to go to Birmingham, I think), Scott
Kerr took over and stayed about another year. The station went through a
number
of PDs after that, may have enough gone through some formatting realignment
(but kept the call letters and the 98Q moniker), and now runs mainly
satellite-supplied stuff but goes live in the morning for a few hours.
Over the years, John has run a myriad of stations in such markets
Birmingham, Portland, New Orleans, Dallas, Flint, Augusta, and now runs a
cluster of stations for Hampton Roads Radio Group in Norfolk/Newport News,
Virginia. Scott Kerr is now a Senior Account Manager for Citadel
Communications in Charleston, South Carolina. As for me, I went from 98Q to
KAKC in Tulsa, then (briefly) to 99X in New York City, and then down to WLEE
in Richmond, Virginia (all as PD). In Richmond, I segued into television
and, after I get fired from WLEE, continued to work for the local PBS
station there and left Richmond in 1981 to come to LA, where I continued my
TV career (20 years as host for KCET, the local PBS station, did the weather
for KABC, small stints on both "General Hospital" and "Days of Our Lives",
plus doing various commercials and infomercials, the most successful of
which were "QRB" and "The Fat Free Express") plus I'm the co-owner of a
successful Beverly Hills scuba diving shop (Reef
Seekers Dive Co.).
Over the years, John and I have talked about going back to Vidalia. Finally,
earlier this year, I said, let's just do it. So we decided to go back for
what would have been the station's 29th anniversary. (Well, we were always
known to do things in an unusual way, so why wait for the 30th???) We talked
to the current GM, Zack Fowler (who actually knew who we were), about coming
back down and doing an airshift. Zack endorsed the idea. As word got out,
the thing snowballed. We kept hearing from old jocks who said they wanted to
come back and what began as Ken-and-John's-journey-down-memory-lane evolved
into the official 98Q Radio Reunion.
When John and I arrived in Vidalia, we realized that this could turn into
something very special. Checking into the our hotel, the clerk said, "Oh, I
remember you guys. I used to listen to you when I was in high school.
Welcome back." The local paper did a full-page spread on the upcoming
reunion. The station was getting calls. And people around town were talking
about it.
We converged on the station on Friday, August 27, and basically took over
from 7AM-1PM. John and Scott Kerr had compiled a playlist consisting of
music from 1975 and 1976 that we played on 98Q (including our first gold
record - "Shannon" by Henry Gross). We even were able to resurrect the
original jingles that we used when we went on the air. We also had some old airchecks, tapes of old bits, and best of all, lots of the old staff. All in
all, we had about a dozen of the former jocks there and we all took turns
sitting the studio and reminiscing about the good old days. John and I led
most of the discussions throughout the day and we were also able to do
phoners with one of our old
part-timers, the original GM Ed Bouchelle, listeners who called in to chat,
and even one of our old receptionists.
Perhaps most touching in what was an emotional day for all of us was meeting
Nick Peterson. Nick is the 23-year-old son of our ex-morning guy, Martin
Peterson. Martin was tragically killed back in the early 80s. But Martin's
sister wanted to bring Nick out to meet some of the guys who knew his dad
and get a feel for why 98Q was so special to Martin, who at times had led a
troubled life. They brought station memorabilia with them and, most touching
(and I'm crying now as I write about this) wrote a letter to John and myself
thanking us for being so kind to Martin and telling us that the time he
spent at 98Q were some of the best times of his life.
As things wound down, we posed for the requisite group picture on the steps
on the station and all vowed to stay in touch and do it again. John and I
(and a couple of the other guys) made an afternoon appearance at a tailgate
party preceding the local high school football game and one listener came up
to us and summed it up perfectly. Remembering that I was originally from
Delaware and that John was from Philadelphia, he said, "I know you guys
aren't originally from here but . . . welcome home."
Couldn't have said it better myself and it really summed up everything for
us. See all the photos, hear the audio and watch the video from 98Q's 29th Anniversary Radio Reunion here!
This is a 98Q tribute page... To access the
official 98Q website, click
here! |
