Well, where to begin?
Cindy and I continue to work a little bit each day as it’s now almost exactly a year ’til we each say “I do”. We continue to half-jokingly suggest we elope in Vegas. I really missed her yesterday. She and a co-worker went down to Mobile for an all-day scrapbooking convention.
Also, a stunner. A married couple I know is going through a divorce. I won’t name names — just to say I’m stunned and leave it at that.
On the radio side, another blast from the past. A poster to a message board on radio broadcasting named SL-100 from the mid-’90s as one of the all-time worst radio station formats in Mississippi. The poster’s reasoning basically matches what I’ve noted here at Doug’s Place and squarely puts the blame on the then program director, Rick James.
Basically, the writer opines how could SL classify itself as a hit music station when there were doses of AC (to wit, we carried Casey Kasem’s and Leeza Gibbons’ adult contemporary countdown shows on Sundays) and classic rock (BackTrax, which I had the pleasure of hosting for three and a half years).
About the only rebuttal I have is this. For about a year, SL was known as “Mississippi’s red hot station” — a bit generic and a slogan I preferred to use on the air — especially while I was on BackTrax. I can remember we passed out little pens in the shape of a match with the words “Red Hot, SL-100”. Plus, for most of the time period the writer references, there was no classic rock station in the area. So, BackTrax and its spinoff programs and segments picked up the slack.
By ’95, we had two classic rock stations and they essentially took a lot of wind out of SL’s sails. Thus, I still maintain the view SL should’ve either gone all classic rock when we had the chance — and when the chance was squandered in ’95, the classic rock programming should’ve been dumped altogether.
I’m pretty sure I know who this writer is. I won’t call him out by name. All I’ll say is I’d love to see him working at one of the urban stations in town. WJMG’s really been going downhill and I know he can start turning around their fortunes.
Finally, sad news in the game show world. Gene Wood died. You know him best as the announcer on Family Feud in its original version and its first remake which started in the late ’80s.