STATION PICKS WCKZ GASTONIA/CHARLOTTE

He was on Pro FM in Providence, RI for a long while and I heard that they loved him. Mike always creeped everyone out.

Hello!
Although I only worked weekends at KISS 102, and was not even there long enough to find the vending machines, some great people did pass throught the building. Boo Baron, JJ McKay, Dennis Reese, Helen Little, Ray Mariner, The Unknown DJ, Rex, and Mean Jammin' Gene, who was, and i guess still is, one of the nicest folks. He was a community involved jock who always knew what was going on in town. Great guy.

Mark S. hired me thanks to Erik suggestiong that! Lisa T. fired me. She said I sounded too A/C. As i listen back to my airchecks, she could have just told the truth, and that is i stunk!

The Unknown DJ let me come back after Lisa was gone and I worked on the last day or death day for the station.

They sure caught a lot of atention when they signed on, but died a slow and somewhat painful death. Even so, I am glad i got to work there.

Question: Didn't Jerry Clifton consult Kiss 102 at one point?

Also, does anyone remember in the fall of 89 when Kiss had spiked into the playlist a handful of Rock-oriented tracks? I remember both Skid Row's "18 And Life" and Bon Jovi's "Living In Sin" were both played on Kiss and this wasn't on "Casey's Top 40" either. FWIW-Kiss 102 was the Charlotte affiliate for CT40.

Robyn

Hey Robyn I remember that very well... It was right when BCY switched to AC... At the same time Kiss started adding some rock tracks to the list the very same time WROQ started adding rhythmic tracks to their play list such as Janet Jackson "Miss You Much" and Technotronic "Pump Up The Jam"... Of course we all knew what would happen as Gorilla radio was born which was true CHR and thus Kiss quickly took out of rotation Skid Row, Billy Joel, etc etc... As for kiss dying a slow death you knew it was running on life support when they started doing old school weekends and such... Something else to note at the same time Kiss was killing its self 95QQ was also in the winds of change and you knew it was not gonna be long before it was gone as well... I remember first actually hearing about what Power 98's owners were planning to do with Kiss on January 9th one week before 95.1 The Edge was born... What also was ironic about Kisses last day was that it was the same day it was born just five years later... Things that make you go hmmmmmm CC1

Of all the longtime jocks mentioned regarding Kiss 102, lest we forget....Droopy.....

A fellow Western Carolina graduate....Droopy has managed to do something that many of us in the old RTV program have (probably) failed at doing.....

Keeping a job on a consistent basis.....

He's now, I believe, at WSOC-FM 103.....please correct me if I'm wrong.

Muffin

Another jock that wasn't mentioned yet was Hollywood (did nights in late 1990 to early 1991). I've had a aircheck of him on Kiss the night of the beginning of Gulf War 1 when he was doing an interview with a Playboy model while running updates from ABC News. It was sent to Thatwasradio.com and should be on the site someday.

After Kiss, Hollywood went to KHYI/Dallas, where he became JoJo Wright. Here is an aircheck of him there, courtesy of mp3airchecks.com:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=E4942FAD648838B3

Robyn

Holy Cow I forgot all about Hollywood... Another jock was Apollo who came over from Power 98 then he would go on to Double Q. I also remember their traffic girl who would become a jock on Kiss... I can't remember her name, but towards the end it was just like anybody would get put on the air... CC1

newsguync said:

Of all the longtime jocks mentioned regarding Kiss 102, lest we forget....Droopy.....

A fellow Western Carolina graduate....Droopy has managed to do something that many of us in the old RTV program have (probably) failed at doing.....

Keeping a job on a consistent basis.....

He's now, I believe, at WSOC-FM 103.....please correct me if I'm wrong.

Muffin

Click to expand...

Hey..your right..I missed Drew. I went to WCU too,but failed as you mentioned.

I'm going to do something I rarely do....correct myself.

I think "failed" was a poor choice of wording. A lot of WCU graduates that I know personally do not have jobs in the majors they have obtained.

The "failure" is not ours....we just haven't found the perfect radio station....or in my case, newspaper.

I still work part-time for HRN's Lincolnton stations, WLON and WCSL. I'm blessed to have that.



Muffin

Wow it's cool to remember KISS 102! I was really blessed to PD there from '89 to '91, then they handed it over to EZ Communications and moved us over to the MIX building. That killed the station and I got out fast! The talent at KISS was incredible! Most of those people have already been mentioned above, but don't forget Paige Nienaber who did the promotions, he was really great! The GM, David Chandler also played a big part in making it a great station from the startup til EZ Communications took it over. Radio stations come and go, but I'll never forget the great radio talent that once made it a magical place, for real!

Mark In The Dark Shands

If anybody hasn't mentioned it, during Mark's reign as PD, Kiss hit the #1 spot in the Birch ratings.

Some of the Beasley VP's who worked the Charlotte market during the startup and takeoff of Kiss are reforming their own radio group (in fact, they're buying my current employer). It should be interesting to see what they do.

All hail Mark Shands.

I'm jumping into this thread late, but I've had so much fun reading the posts. Thanks to you all for bringing back some great memories from one of the most fun times in my career.

I was Chief Engineer of WCKZ from day 1 until the end, even through the LMA period. It was an honor to work with some of the best talent I've encountered before or since then. We did some technically innovative things too. Like the vertical console furniture because of the small studios and the processing chain which in those days was far from a one box solution. We won a technical achievement award from one of the trades in 1989. My biggest dissapointment of course, was the loss of the station by Mr. Beasley to the bank. I moved Kiss three times in 6 years. Once from Gastonia to the new facility on Morehead Street in Charlotte, then to Kings Drive with Mix 104.7, then back to Morehead Street where we ran it under the direction of the bank. This was a difficult period. I did meet some great people at Mix though. Gary Morgan was/is a great radio engineer and we got along very well. Reta Thorn was the GM at Mix and became my boss at SFX/Capstar/Clear Channel. She was the best boss I have ever had and it's a tragedy she's out of radio. CC handled her firing very unprofessionally. But I digress so easily!

Back to Kiss. I remember the day of the takeover by Broadcast Partners, I was asked, "So, what are you going to do now?" This is when I exited for Jefferson-Pilot.

Oddly enough now, I'm with CBS in Charlotte taking care of 101.9 again (and the other 6 stations). I regularly make that same trip up Crowders Mountain to the transmitter site where I was when Hugo hit in 1989 and it was Kiss 102.

Thanks again for the great memories and yes, Mark Shands is a genious! He's one I miss working with!

Alan Lane
Former CE Kiss102/WCKZ
Now CBS/Charlotte

You were on Crowder's Mt. when Hugo hit? What was that like? Did Kiss stay on the air (with you as 24/7 dj)?

I never got to listen to Kiss when Hugo blew through... My family was with out power for three and a half weeks... I got to listen to Kiss when I went back to College that Sunday and it was business as usual on Kiss... CC1

Hurricane Hugo was an experience. I remember having lunch with GM David Chandler that Thursday and insisting we rent a generator for the studio because we didn't have one! As the trees began to blow more and more around 3 the power went out at Crowders Mountain and for whatever reason, the generator didn't start. So off I went to the mountain. I remember the transformers exploding in the dark distance as I made my way. On the mountain road, I was clearing small trees all the way up. Got to the top, started the generator, and thought that old building was going to come apart. I made sure everything was stable and came back down, clearing trees again. It's about 5 a.m. at this point. We didn't lose power at the studio until after I got back to Charlotte so I started the portable we rented and wired into the service panel.

We stayed on except for one time the studio generator ran out of gas in the middle of the night. The transmitter site was without power for 7 days and we had to get a propane truck up the mountain twice that week to fill the tank. The microwave link stayed up the whole time. I remember being VERY tired most of that week and I was young then!

Sometime Friday or Saturday I drove around taking pictures of the fallen towers in the area. WFNZ (not sure what it was then), WBT, and WSOC all had tower damage. There were probably others. I still have those pictures somewhere...

Alan

Alan what kind of processing did Kiss use back in the day? I am almost blind so the ears work a lot better than the eyes do LOL, but it seemed like the processing was dayparted like the music was... I also remember you guys having a hint of reverb, but it was not to much it just made the music pop... Kiss sounded a lot better than when V first launched... They were always having problems with their satellite feed of The Touch and the EOM cues never seem to work for them... It was radio and a business, but I always loved it when they had problems because it was like saying here is what ya get for messing with my favorite station LOL... Glad you are keeping the CBS cluster running... CC1

CC,

For processing, Kiss had quite a chain. We actually took two busses out of the console, mic and music, and processed them separately. The music ran through an Aphex Compellor, Howe Audio Phasechaser, MSI Stereomaxx, Texar Prisms, then the Optimod 8100. The mic chain was processed with an Orban parametric eq, Urei LA-3 limiter, Yamaha reverb unit (you are correct), then into the "5th" input of the Texars where it was all summed together. This gave us the advantage of being able to control the mic to music ratio regardless of how the board was being run.

We played carts of course and thus the Howe Phasechaser. It was really essential when using carts and the Stereomaxx together. A misaligned or mis-recorded cart would drive the Stereomaxx nuts. The Phasechaser was there to keep the stereo cart channels in phase at all times and it worked quite well.

I do not remember any dayparting of the processing because it would have been nearly impossible with all the analog gear in line...unless of course, the night people were breaking in to my office and adjusting it!

Again, this was a lot of fun. Creating a processing chain for a really new exciting format was something I won't forget.

Alan

Alan,

The studios looked great at the Morehead location. I worked just down the road from Wheatstone after they moved to New Bern and asked if they happen to have a slick of the ad featuring the Kiss studios. They had one left, which is now in my possession.

One thing I've wondered, what were those buttons or lights on the rack over the board? They looked about the same size as firing buttons on a circa 80's video game, they were red, green I think blue, and maybe a yellow one? Were those the equivalent of the phone/EBS/song end alert system that JP had in the FM studio?