HINEY WINE Questions

What do you all know about HINEY WINE? It was a big hit in the 80's and was on the Rick Dees Show for 11 years and also on the Terry Dorsey Show on KSCS in Dallas for 13 years.

I've run it at two different stations. Most people think it's funny, but it also brings the prudes out of the woodwork.

Larry F.

They are bartering the feature now.

I did morning drive at a "Hiney" station. In my opinion, for what it's worth, it's a one-joke routine that burns out pretty quickly...

Bill Heywood, on the old KOY-AM in Phoenix, was doing Hiney Winery "commercials" back in the mid-70's. It was a long-running joke on his AM-drive show. As I remember, he did a lot of ad-libbing and was quite funny.

I remember KF-99 in northwest Tennessee doing "Hiney Wine" bits back in the late '80s. Made me wonder why they didn't just go ahead and call themselves "KF Hiney Wine"! ;D ;D

Charlie & Ty, the old KUBE (Seattle) morning duo did the Hiney Winery commercials while they had worked there in the 80's, too. Hiney Winery thought they had been based in the small town of Yelm, near where Olympia is. But I don't think it was a real winery.

Ron Olson and Terrence McKeever used to run the ads on WMC FM 100 in Memphis in the early 80's (After Rick Dees had left Memphis for LA). They also had ads for the Rank Cheese Company. Their slogan was "When America cuts the cheese its's Rank!" Was this something that went along with the Hiney ads, or something they did themselves?

jimwalsh2001 said:

I did morning drive at a "Hiney" station. In my opinion, for what it's worth, it's a one-joke routine that burns out pretty quickly...

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Actually HINEY WINE ran for 13 years in Dallas, 11 years on The Rick Dees Show at KIIS-FM in LA and 11 years on Y100 in Miami. A lot has to do with ad libbing, having fun with it and running a few promotions along the way. The promotions will tell you about the high level of interest with the audience by seeing the response and turnout at events. It has also been a big money maker for a lot of stations. The latest twist is to put the winery behind a car dealership and sell the car dealer a large contract. The dealer gets a ton of foot traffic because you put a metal storage building behind the dealers showroom with a HINEY WINERY sign on it. A second sign says, "HINEY WINERY Gift Show has been moved to the showroom at (Car Dealers Name)" The dealer gets tons of traffic and the station makes a lot of money and gets a great comedy feature...all on barter.

Okay...time for the "Old Man" to set things straight, again.

Hiney Wine is the brainchild of Terry Dorsey, morning guy on KSCS in Dallas.

He came up with bit in the 1970's while doing afternoons on WONE-AM in Dayton, Ohio. I know this because I watched him writing and reading the original scripts from a hand-written spiral-bound notebook which he kept with him at all times. He took the bit with him to WING-AM in Dayton later in the 70's and 80's. He later syndicated the feature and every other Hinery Winery since then has had the scripts.

A few Hiney hosts may have taken the liberty of some adlibs here and there, but the original creator is Dorsey.

Check out this great Y-100 Sonny Fox morning show aircheck from 1984. A really funny Hiney Wine bit in it...

http://airchexx.com/markets/miami/sonny-fox-whyi-y100-miami-july-6-1984

Just happen to run across this thread it brings back memories of WCOS in Columbia, SC in the 80's. They just did a lot of one liners most of the time but they did it so well that the town they used for the Hiney location Swanie, SC (a small town not far from Columbia complained about the people comming to town looking the Hiney Wine's location), I bet they wish they had that traffic today. That was some good memories.

Another great bit was Dorsey doing a fictional eatery/tavern called "Babs Knieven's Bar and Grill of New Carlisle, Ohio" with sidekick John King on WING (and later on FM sister WGTZ "Z-93)in the 80s.

...my wife and I thought it was a hoot LOL!

jimwalsh2001 said:

I did morning drive at a "Hiney" station. In my opinion, for what it's worth, it's a one-joke routine that burns out pretty quickly...

Click to expand...

Not so sure that 11 years on the Rick Dees Show in LA and 13 years on The Terry Dorsey Show in Dallas plus lots of focus group interviews and research by Clear Channel and others over many years would back up your comment that it burns out pretty quickly. If done right, it can last a long, long time....over a decade........ as proven by Dees and Dorsey.