WFPL "State of Affairs" 7/7/2006

[John Quincy]

Allen Bryan, Mason Lee Dixon, Mike Griffin and yours truly will be guesting on WFPL's "State of Affairs" call-in show Friday, July 7 between 11 a.m. and 12 noon.

In Louisville you can hear the show at 89.3 FM. WFPL offers several streaming methods at www.WFPL.org.

The show will re-air Friday night at 9.

Oddly enough, the date of the show is exactly 48 years from the day WAKY came on the air.

[Travis]

*siGh* Was hoping to listen to the broadcast via streaming audio and be a participant on the show, but the streaming audio was down. I called and reported the problem about 6 minutes before the show began. It was confirmed and corrected but went down again about 10 minutes later and never returned. I guess it was because I didn't call back. I'm not going to call Louisville every time the audio goes down.

That's the problem with stations that offer streaming audio, they don't monitor the output. They ASSUME it's working. A local station informed me that it's too confusing to monitor because there is a delay as a result of net speed & traffic. I would think that a window containing a virtual VU meter or a graph with an audio sine-wave would suffice. At a glance, one could see that the streaming audio was working without the confusion of trying to listen to the actual delayed audio. But I guess that's too simple. Remind me to never underwrite streaming audio on WFPL or any other station for that matter. What a waste.

Now. How was your morning?

[John Quincy]

I too was disappointed that the streaming was down, as I planned to record it -- and told several dozen people to listen to it online. (The stream sounded great yesterday.) Perhaps it will fixed by the rebroadcast tonight at 9...but you won't be able to call in then!

It was a fast-paced hour. Allen Bryan, Mason Dixon and Mike Griffin sounded great. The host did an excellent job too. WAKY and WKLO airchecks and jingles were played. Several phone calls were taken including ones from Gary Griffin and Johnny Randolph.

WFPL has promised to send to me a CD of the show, and when I receive it will be shared. :-) WFPL also offers archived versions of "State of Affairs" for downloading at their Website.

Thanks to WFPL for giving WAKY and WKLO a little 21st century exposure and for helping us promote the reunion and the tribute sites.

[John Quincy]

We received this e-mail from William Sedgwick regarding the WAKY-WKLO "State of Affairs" show:

Today's broadcast on WFPL included interviews and call-ins on the old days of the 60s and 70s at WAKY and WKLO. Very near the end of the show a caller spoke about the popular music shows that preceded those years in the 1950s. He or one of the interviewees made a mistake, identifying Beecher Frank as having been on WKLO and broadcasting from the Ranch House.

He was remembering Paul Cowley.

I was a teenager in the '50s and my father was a former radio announcer in the '30s and '40s and knew several of the radio people remaining from that time and introduced me to them. I even got some free 45 RPM records from them. Beecher Frank was a disk jockey on WGRC (which preceded WAKY at 790 on the AM dial), not WKLO. His show began just after we got home at 4:00 and Paul Cowley came on at 4:30; I believe that it was a half-hour show. I remember that Frank's show used Les Brown's tune "Leap Frog" as a theme and that Cowley promoted Coca-Cola constantly.

Teenagers in Louisville and Jefferson County were often loyal to one of the DJs and refused to listen to the other. I was a big fan of Frank's because his was the first show to play the "dangerous" black music of artists like Little Richard, Larry Williams, Huey Smith and the Clowns, Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner and others. Cowley's show was more "careful" in its selection, sticking to the Dick Clark version of popular music that came out of the northeast and not wanting to upset listeners who were faithful to WKLO because it mainly played Country & Western. What was really comical was to listen to the even more careful once-per-week Saturday popular music shows on WHAS.

I enjoyed the interviews and call-ins to today's program. I was in the army and then in college during the era they spoke of, and WAKY and WKLO were the only stations we listened to.

Thanks for the program.

John Quincy responded: "Thanks so much for the great letter William...and the correction. (It was probably me that made the error...although we have Beecher Frank listed as having worked at WKLO playing rock-and-roll music before going across the street to WGRC -- he was replaced at WKLO by Paul Cowley.) Folks like you are helping us accurately remember Louisville's rich radio history."

[John Quincy]

Here's a link to a low-fi MP3 of the show:

216.24.56.185:8080/WFPL%27s%20State%20of%20Affairs/20060707SOA.mp3

You'll need to copy and paste the WHOLE LINE into the address bar of your browser to download the MP3

[kevin502]

I will listen to the radion tonight at 9pm. I bet its a good show. I was a guest on that show once and I remember time flying by. As I am sure all who read this web board know, time in the studio is much faster than regular time. Seems that way.

[Travis]

A lo-fi MP3 of the show will do just fine and makes for a relatively small 9.1 meg file which I've downloaded, burned to a CD and will play at work later tonight.

Did you know that those retractable coffee-cup holders that are generally on the front of a computer actually play CDs? How do they do that?

It's incredible.

[GilHerbigJr]

Hi John...I just want to say... Great Show!!!! I downloaded the mp3 and listened to it this morning.

[kevin502]

Great show John.

[John Quincy]

Thanks for the kudos. It's easy to do a great show when you're surrounded by great people like Allen, Mike and Mason. Julie did a bang-up job as host, keeping the show moving.

BTW, I just uploaded a much better quality recording of "State of Affairs." You'll find it on the Airchecks page at 79WAKY.com. Thanks to Mike Griffin for the stellar recording job.

[bpflederer]

Great Show John! Allen & Mason, it was great to here you "On the Air" again. Mike, I had already left Big Lou before you arrived at the Big 79. It was good to hear you also. Johnny, I wish you were on longer.

Thanks for the memories guys! Yes, we engineers did mess with the sound ;D Bruce, Pete, & Jerry, in the early 60's - mid, had the newer transmitters than Wick, Bill, Doc & I had at WAKY. I have to say, the old Federal Rocked though. ;D

[Travis]

The show was better than I expected and even surprising. I first thought the show would be practically all WAKY since it appeared that Allen Bryan was the only one representing WKLO. But I had forgotten that Mason Lee Dixon had worked both stations and that Mike Griffin had favored WKLO long before becoming a jock at WAKY.

And then there was the phone call from Gary Griffin (WKLO's Jackson Smith) and even Johnny Randolph, who was at WKLO before going to WAKY. WFPL's State of Affairs' host Julie Kredens even seemed to be leaning heavy on the WKLO jingles during most of the first half of the show. If the rivalry truly continues, WKLO may have scored big on this broadcast.

Actually, it was a very good show and well balanced, in spite of what I may have written above.

Johnny Randolph calling in was surprising, but not as surprising as when John Quincy announced that the second WAKY-WKLO reunion had been held on April 5th. We had all missed it. Julie was quick to correct the date as August 5th, which is upcoming.

And the biggest surprise of all was when Mason Lee Dixon boldly announced that WKLO's Jackson Smith... is his DENTIST!

I guess Mason now has perfect teeth to go with his perfect nails and perfect hair (see WAKY Photos - Page 19) ;D

[1240WINN]

Enjoyed listening to the show! And what voices these gentlemen still possess. I think Allen Bryan could still deliver the news with authority on any station in town. And Mason and Mike still sound great!

It is a shame that the talents of these gentlemen are not heard on local radio.

[mikegriffin]

I was saddened when I didn't get to talk about the deamon of love and which WAKY jocks carded young ladies.

MLD does indeed now have perfect nails and hair to match his Dr. Gary Griffin -- perfect teeth.

[Max]

Kudos to all involved, as I downloaded the lo fi mp3, burned it to CD and then dubbed it to tape to listen to as we left out on vacation the following Saturday (my wife doesn't have a CD player in her car). I'll have to say she, being 7 years my junior and having not moved here until '81, got a real education on Louisville radio and finally got to see just why I still go ga-ga over these two stations! She kept marvelling how well everyone sounded, especially Mason Lee, as did I. He puts all current jocks to shame coast to coast (yes, them too!!).

Again, great job to all involved. I enjoyed it immensely.

[Travis]

Lookout! Ole Max is back in town!

If you download Mike Griffin's aircheck of the show, it not only has better sound quality, it also has balance between the mics since it fed through WFPL's audio processing during broadcast.

Sometimes a raw feed isn't always good; especially, when it involves several people on different mics.

[mikegriffin]

Let's use the dirty word, not 'audio processing' rather 'compression.'

Compression is what made AM great. So you put a bunch of AM guys on FM without the compression and it's just not the same.

[Travis]

It was J-Burd who introduced *gULp* *gaSp* cOmPrEsSiOn to WFPL & WFPK. J met with a lot of resistance; especially, those who were involved with the classical music on WFPK. They felt that the extreme dynamics of classical music should be heard as intended. J had to settle for peak limiting ONLY, to avoid exceeding 100%. Anything below 100 was permitted to fall as low as the source.

Man. They would have loved having Johnny Randolph running around tweaking the compresson as high as 30 db.

J also had to do battle to bring "stereo" to the stations. Again, there was much resistance. They felt that "stereo" was a pop music fad. They were especially annoyed by the way the stereo pilot generator would always keep the modulation at no less than 9% even during silence. You could not hear it, but it was noise none the less and they did not like it. J's battles eventually drove him to WHAS and it was none other than Pete Boyce who picked up the engineering duties at WFPL & WFPK. I asked Pete how it was going and he said that someone should dig a large hole, pull the stations into it and just cover it up. ;D

It's ironic, but today WFPL, WFPK & WUOL are among the most state-of-the-art of radio stations in their present location at the HSA Broadband Building. If only Jesse Burd could see them now.