Radio Memories Vol. 16

WCOS, like many Top 40 stations in small and medium-sized markets did not have a dedicated news department. Each DJ read the news at 5 minutes until the hour and a half past the hour that the Associated Press wire service provided via a teletype machine (TTY). At about 15 minutes before and after each hour, the DJ on duty would tear the latest news from the TTY and lay it on the top of the audio console in Master Control. The detailed news stories came across the wire just before we cleared it at 15 minutes until the hour. Headline news came across the wire just before we cleared it 15 minutes later. Most of the time the DJ would not have time to go over the wire copy before reading it live, a practice we called “Rip and Read”.  Let’s just say that “Rip and Read” led to some interesting times on the air. 

Being the immature lot that rock DJs were; anyone reading the news was fair game for practical jokes, unless when they were reading about someone dying.   The most common practical joke was for someone to come into the control room and light fire to the bottom of the news copy as it was being read live on the air. Teletype paper was moderately flammable so we could burn it and not worry too much about creating a dangerous fire. It also did not create a lot of ash, so cleanup was relatively easy. 

The coolest DJ reading the news that I have ever known was Mackie Quave at WQXL. I would often visit him in their studios in the old Columbia Hotel, a few blocks from the WCOS studios. Mackie and I had done a few of “The Investigators” radio dramas together. He had been on WIS TV in the early 60s as a News Anchor and as “Cactus Quave” on their afternoon children’s show. He was pretty unflappable. One time he challenged me to try to break him up while reading the news, and I obliged.  I grabbed a cigarette lighter and saw fire to the bottom of his copy and he, without batting an eye, patted the flames out with his bare hand. When I failed at that, I grabbed the news copy and turned it upside down. He didn’t miss a beat, he continued to read the news UPSIDE DOWN while giving me the eye that said, “That’s all you got?” He was the master. 

WCOS’s news guy was Mike Rast. Mike started as a DJ in the 50s at WCOS doing the “Doc Jive” show. In 1958 WCOS went top 40 with the stunt of playing  Sammy Kaye's "I Wish I Was In Dixie" over a period of 24 hours promoting the "Top 60 in Dixie" playlist. Mike switched over to being the voice of the automated FM station and doing the news on AM in the late afternoon and evenings. Mike would read the news using the old RCA 44 microphone in the FM studio. Mike was also a cool cumber while reading the news. We tried the setting fire trick, the turning copy upside down trick, throwing Beatle wigs at him, shaving cream, rubber bands, the whole lot with no or very little results. Mike was an easy target because normally he could not retaliate since he was never there when the DJs read their news. 

Well, there was this one incident during the Beatlemania Years. Mike told me this story, so I’m telling you secondhand. One of the DJs, I think it was Jeff Flanders brought a Beatle wig to the station, I say it was Jeff because of this picture below of Mike and Jeff wearing Beatle wigs. Most of the time there was a wig on top of the Gates 101 Spotmaster machine which was on top of the three Collins cart machines next to Turntable #1. During Woody’s afternoon countdown show, the DJs harassed Mike more than usual, to no effect. After the newscast, Mike sauntered into master control and leaned his elbow on top of the Spotmaster, and accidentally knocked the Beatle wig down onto Turntable #1, which was playing the record on the air at the time.  The tone arm of the turntable was knocked from the record onto the turning felt turntable cover beneath it. The resulting sound on the air was worse than fingernails on a blackboard. Woody, who is more than 6 feet tall, was stretched out in the air chair with his hands behind his head.  Mike told me that he had never seen Woody move that fast when he scrambled to pick the Beetle wig up and restart the record. I asked Mike if he had pushed the wig off the Spotmaster on purpose to get even for all the harassment. He responded with an enigmatic smile; “Who me? Never!”

Of course, the worst break-up of all is when you do it to yourself. 

It was five minutes before 2 AM on a cold February night, Tuesday, February 7, 1967. There was sleet in the Midlands from a large low-pressure center in the southeast.  I was doing the overnight show on WCOS, “The All Night Satellite” and was alone in the station on the second floor of the Cornell Arms Apartment Building.  It was just me, the records, and the audience. So far it was an unremarkable show. I had ripped the news copy off the AP News Wire Teletype as the solid gold record was playing after the weather and laid the copy on the top of the Western Electric 25-B audio board. As the record was running out on Turntable #1 I loaded the news sounder cart into the top Collins cart machine. This cart contained 3 cuts or tracks; the news opening, the weather opening, and the weather closing and the weather closing and top of the hour station ID. I also loaded the commercial cart for the Taylor Street Pharmacy that I would play after reading the news and before the weather intro. During the time this commercial was to be played I would cue up the first record to be played after the news. It was all tightly choreographed. I grabbed the unread news copy from the top of the console started the News Intro and prepared to “rip and read” the news from AP. 

There were a handful of paragraphs contained in the news copy, each one beginning with a dateline city followed by a hyphen and then the story. We were supposed to press the button to enhance the reverb when we announced the dateline I.E. New York, and then release it and read the story. I don’t remember what the first story was about. I’ll never forget the second story as long as I live. It read EXACTLY as follows;

“DALLAS – An unusual winter storm had dumped four and a half feet of heavy SNOT on the Texas panhandle.” 

The good thing was that my news announcer mind correctly edited the AP typo changing “snot” to “snow” and I got that out clean. But my immature joke-seeking DJ mind screamed at me internally; “Oh No They Didn’t!” Now, that may not seem all that funny to you, but if you are a DJ live on the air all alone with no one around to help, it becomes overwhelmingly hilarious. I mumbled out the next couple of words in the story and then disintegrated into an uncontrollable blob of giggles. I turned off the microphone and tried to regain my composure, pounding my fists on the console desk to no avail. When I thought I had regained my composure enough to continue, I opened up the microphone channel and promptly lost it all over again. By this time the “dead air” was becoming increasingly noticeable, so I gave up and played the 30-second Taylor Street Pharmacy commercial. I thought I had regained control by the time it ended so I played the weather intro, opened up the microphone channel again to read the weather, and promptly “lost it” all over again. All I could do was to close the microphone channel and play the Top of the Hour Station ID and then start the first record. 

When the record ended, I finally got it together to talk again. Feeling that I owed the audience an explanation I told them that the word in the news copy wasn’t “snow” and that I would leave it to them to figure out what it was. A couple of minutes later I received a call from the manager at the Taylor Street Pharmacy who told me that he had never enjoyed a newscast as much as that one and that everyone in the store was still laughing. He said that was the best money they had ever paid for a commercial. 

So much for professionalism.