Radio Memories Vol. 3

In January 1964 I returned to campus now as a fully trained DJ at WUSC and was assigned a show that ran from 4:30 to 6:00 PM on Wednesday afternoons. That meant that now I would be signing the station on with the Sign on Tape, which included the National Anthem and an announcement about “who and what” WUSC was. That tape played from one of our two AMPEX 440 tape machines located near our Gates audio console in our Master Control room at the very core of our complex on the second floor of the Russell House University Union. There was more equipment to play with than there was in the Production Control Room: a Gatesway Audio Console, two Ampex 440 tape recorders, three Gates turntables the aforementioned Ampex 350 recorder that was used to play the prerecorded “Night Owl Show.” That latter recorder was often used by the WUSC DJs to record their live shows as they were done. These recordings called “Air Checks” or “Air Chex” were the means by which the DJs could audition for paying jobs on the commercial stations in the state. More to come about these recordings and the connections to commercial broadcasting, later. 

Standing between the door in the back of the studio and the Ampex 350 on the left side of the studio, was a 6-foot tall 18-inch wide equipment rack. This rack contained a telephone-style patch panel, the audio processing equipment, and the remote control to our new transmitter which was located in an apartment in the married student’s complex down the hill from the Russell House. Today’s DJs are surprised to learn that the space that was our transmitter room was replaced by the pay booth in the Bull Street Parking Garage. I was reading the the1964 Garnet and Black on page 119 it says; 

“The 1963-64 school year marked the most successful year of operation in WUSC’s history. Since its establishment in 1946, the station has used a transmitter designed for the horseshoe area. Expanded dormitory facilities made the old transmitter inadequate, and in the summer of 1963 the engineering staff of WUSC completed a new transmitter which brings its signal to all of the dormitories on campus.”

It goes on to say; 

“This year the station also completed its new master control facility which is one of the finest audio installations in the Free World.” 

It sounds like hyperbole but that control room was really nice, and everything worked! 

The yearbook article cleared up some hazy facts for me. I knew the station originally broadcast on 640 kHz to the horseshoe from a transmitter from the old Slave Quarters Building near Rutledge Chapel, but I didn’t know when the frequency and transmitter location were changed. My fellow alumni tell me the studios in the Russell House were in use but still being completed in the early 60s. By the fall of 1963, the configuration was two studios, a record library, a news booth, and a large shared office in which the teletypes were set up against the wall between the main entrance and the news booth.  It’s also interesting to me that WUSC was initially assigned to 640 kilohertz, one of the two CONELRAD emergency frequencies. CONELRAD was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) in 1963 and that was in turn replaced by the current Emergency Alert System in 1997.

In 1967 the West wing of the Russell House was built and WUSC made a move from the second to the third floor by moving down the hall. “Wait! What?” you are thinking, how could that be? It was at that time that a basement was added to RHUU and the floor numbering was changed from Ground, 1 and 2 to Basement, 1, 2 and 3. The ramp from Green Street to the RHUU connected to the first floor in my day, it now connects to the second. Oh! By the Way! That tall tree that the ramp winds around today was a sapling when I was first there. Confused? I sure was when I went up to the station for the first time in 30 years in 1997 to do an alumni show on homecoming weekend. 

By March, the weather was getting warmer and WUSC turned its attention to… Remotes! A broadcast remote is a radio or television broadcast that emanates from a location other than its local studio. Football and baseball games are good modern examples of broadcast remotes, live news reports from the scene are also technically remotes although most broadcasters call them “Live Shots” these days. Many radio stations did remotes from restaurants back in the day, similar to the one that I would be doing later in my career from Doug Broome’s Drive-In location on Two Notch Road at WCOS. 

WUSC during the spring and fall months, when it was comfortable outside did “Patio Parties.” The RH Patio was not nearly as large as it is today. It was a little over a third of its present size and included a concrete pond near its far wall. Like today, it sported outdoor furniture where students could gather and socialize. A crude connection was made by taping a four-conductor telephone wire from the patch panel in the back of the Master control to the floor and then across the hall and out the window over the patio to the ground below. (RHUU had windows that could be cranked open at that time.) 

Two of the four conductors carried the signal from the patio to the control room and the other two carried a feed from our on-air monitor down to the patio and a pair of speakers. Besides the speakers, WUSC had a folding table on which an audio board and two turntables were attached. We had a vintage Electro-voice EV 644 Sound Spot Microphone (shown in the picture of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy speaking at the USC School of Law in 1963, recorded by WUSC) that looked like a handgun that we also used for news coverage and a desk stand and, of course, the usual Tripp headphones. RHUU would provide some folding chairs and we were in business. 

The male DJs competed strongly for the Patio Party shows because it was “a cool way to meet co-eds.” Alas for the male egos, most of the young ladies that hung around close to the remote table were either members of the station staff or girlfriends of the DJs that were doing the shows. As far as I know, none of us unattached fellows ever connected with a DJ there. But something I wanted was still missing: Rock and Roll! 

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Photo Credits: 
"Patio Party" - Photo taken from Garnet & Black Magazine 
Robert. F. Kennedy at USC - Photo taken from Columbia SC 63