Radio Memories Vol. 1

For the past 10 years or so, friends have been telling me that I should write a book about my life and times in broadcasting. So this year, I began jotting down snippets of my memories over the years. I was surprised at just how many of these tales were clunking around in my brain. I’ll be the first to tell you that my memory is not perfect. That was ingrained on me when I undertook a podcast series for the SC Broadcasters Association and a group of retired broadcasters called the SLOBs, Slightly Legendary Old Broadcasters. It was not uncommon for two presenters in a podcast to have slightly divergent memories of the details of an event up to 60 years ago. So, stipulating that the same caveat applies to me, here goes, hope you enjoy…

How it all began

I can remember it like it was yesterday!  It was Friday; November 8, 1963, a cool sunshine-filled afternoon. I was sitting in a small booth on the then second floor of the Russell House University Union at the University of South Carolina. Butterflies were fluttering in my stomach as I gazed down at the multi-colored knobs on the Altec audio console in the production studio at WUSC-AM a “carrier current” station one of many that the FCC encouraged colleges and universities to create after WW II. At 15 seconds before the 1 PM hour, I turned to my left and simultaneously pushed the play and record buttons on the Ampex 350 tape recorder that sent the big 10-inch reels spinning. Turning back towards the console I put the fingers of my left hand down on the edge of the album on one of the two turntables to my left held the record in place and turned the turntable on. My eyes were on the big Western Electric clock above the window that looked into the main studio in the corner as the second hand relentlessly ticked closer to the number 12. When the clock struck the top of the hour, I could hear the solenoids in the clock that corrected the second hand exactly to the time on a pulse from the Western Union wire. That was my signal to go!  

I lifted my fingers off the edge of the record and turned the knob that regulated the volume of the record up, then immediately lowered it about halfway, turned the switch for the RCA 77-DX microphone on, and said in a voice that was probably an octave higher than it was normally “This is WUSC, Columbia, and this is Rick Wrigley on the “Night Owl Show!” I quickly turned the microphone off and raised the knob on the volume control for the record up until the VU Meter in the middle of the console peaked near the red/black marking that indicated 0 Db. 

“OMG! I did it!” In those few moments of near-sheer panic, my obsession with radio was completed. I was hooked. 

I “queued up” my first commercial for Coca-Cola on the Ampex 440 reel–to–reel machine to the left of the console and the next record on the other turntable. All I had to do was to “segue” the records back and forth between the two turntables until 1:30 when I would then announce the required Station Identification on the half-hour and play the Coke commercial that I had set up on the tape recorder. I repeated the same sequence twice more, at 2 and 2:30. At 3 PM I signed off my show and played the sign-off tape, and with a big sigh of relief, pushed the stop button on the recorder. After spot-checking the tape as it rewound, I took my prize into the master control room and hung it on the peg on the side of the rack.

Later that evening the live DJ doing the 9 – 11 PM show placed my tape on the specially equipped Ampex 350 in Master Control and started it at 11. Once started, the live DJ flipped a switch that would turn the transmitter off when the tape ran out. He or she would then have to leave the Russell House before it closed at 11:15. That tape machine was the closest to an automation system at the station. That evening, I listened closely on a friend’s transistor radio as for the first time I heard my own voice on the radio. 

I began quickly assimilating the language of radio. Commercials were “spots”, Promotional Announcements were “promos”, and Public Service Announcements were PSAs!” On the hardware side; volume control knobs were called “Pots” or “Potentiometers” for the electronic components to which they were attached. The aforementioned “VU Meter” stood for Volume Unit Meter and 0 Db was set to +8 DbM the normal 100 percent level at that time. The main studio that was normally on the air was called “Master Control. Most important was the slip-queue, the process described above that allowed a DJ to start the sound of a record at precisely the right time! There was a lot to learn. 

It has been said that the sense of smell is the sense that evokes memories more than any other. Anytime I smell a vinyl record or an acetate tape I’m transported back to the big music library between master control and the production studio. A second, much less desirable odor does the same thing; cigarette smoke! Fortunately, but for the grace of God, I never succumbed to “devil tobacco!”

Certain sounds take me there too; Static in a speaker or more precisely in a pair of headphones take me back to the on-air signal at a station as required by the FCC back then. Others were the crack of solenoids slamming home, energizing the plate circuit of an AM transmitter, setting the second hand of a Western Union clock, or engaging a pinch roller on a reel-to-reel or cartridge player. Most memorable is “cue-burn”; the scratchy sound at the beginning of a record that has been slip-queued too many times. 

The Night Owl show was the “training show” for the new DJs, typically called “Baby DJs” today. In all honesty, I dislike the “baby DJ” moniker. It focused on the “Media Arts” part of radio, which is running a console, commonly called a board, queuing up and playing records and only four times during the show making announcements “live to tape!” Normally, only after a semester of doing the “Night Owl” would we be allowed to move into Master Control and do live shows. I say “normally” because the national tragedy that occurred on November 22, 1963, would change all that. 

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Photo Credits: 
WUSC Production Studio - Picture taken from the Garnet and Black Yearbook