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I started working at WSJC when I was 15 years old. It was a dream come true for me. My parents and grandparents before me had listened to WSJC for everything from local news to farm reports to obituaries.
The best radio stations are the ones where the staff become like family. This was definitely the case at WSJC.
I worked with an amazing group of friends. Jimmy Lucky, Bob Kidd , Sandy Lee , Larry Cockrell, Randy Blakeney , James Lavell , Merle Herrington, Nancy Kennedy , Walter Hern and many others. These are a few of the people that kept the records turning and the tower lights on at 810 AM and 107.5 FM back in the day.
There are many memories and stories I could tell about my days at WSJC. Some I’ll save for another blog installment but today I’ll start with this one.
WSJC had what was called a “block” format. This means you would hear a different genre of music at different times of the day. WSJC -AM would start the day with Country music then Gospel around mid morning, switch back to Country at noon and begin Top 40 Pop/Rock at 3 pm.
As a deejay playing the tunes you had to start watching your time on the records at about 20 minutes before the hour so you could “backtime” into the news. We received our news down the line from United Press International at precisely the top of the hour.
Well one evening I was in the AM control room at about 6:45 pm getting ready to begin my shift after the news at 7 pm . I was talking to the person who was currently on the air as the records were playing.
At about 2 minutes until 7 o’clock he starts playing “Dancing Queen ” by ABBA which happened to be his favorite song at the time. Now I knew that “Dancing Queen ” was longer than 2 minutes. So at about 45 seconds before 7 pm I ask what are you doing about the news?
His answer was ” I’m not cutting the song! ” I said “What?? , we always fade the song if it’s too long!” He said ” It’s my favorite song and I’m not gonna fade it down . Don’t you know there’s no stopping a dancing queen ”
So at the very end of the song he gave a quick station identification, ” This is WSJC- Magee ” and opened up the channel for the news which was now about two minutes into their stories.
Luckily for him and the listeners within our coverage area, it was a slow news day without any major worldwide events. As they say, ” No news is good news.”
Don can be reached for comment at ddwalker88@comcast.net
Don I certainly enjoyed reading your blog. Thank you for reminding me of wonderful days and for being a part of those memories. Sandy