The 1980s - The Station You Grew Up With
Part 1

The beginning of a new decade—though merely the rolling over of a digit in the "tens" column on the calendar—often brings far more in terms of changing attitudes and the collective mindset of the population. This was never more true than in 1980.

The American political landscape changed with the election of Ronald Reagan. Music changed forever with the death of John Lennon. And Roanoke radio entered the FM era when K92 burst onto the scene with their crew of energetic, youthful sounding DJs playing the hits in stereo.

Barry Michaels did middays on WROV from 1978 through 1981.

The debut of K92 would eventually lead to the end of WROV as listeners had come to know it but the change was gradual. Burt Levine , many have said, was a good station manager because he didn't react to changes in the market until he had to. He was one to ride out temporary storms of public opinion and make changes, rationally, when needed.

Burt didn't pull all the Beatles records after the 1966 John Lennon flap, he didn't buy the station's first professionally produced jingle package until three years after one was first heard on Pixie Radio. And he wasn't about to change the course of WROV in a knee-jerk reaction to Aylett Coleman putting a Top 40 FM station on the air.

Jim Carroll, shown here in 1980, covered over 1,300 high school sporting events between 1964 and 2004.

So, for most of 1980, it continued to be business as usual at 15th & Cleveland. The airstaff remained mostly intact with Rob O'Brady in the mornings, Barry Michaels midday, Bart in the afternoons, Dave Shropshire as Chris Stevens at night and Steve Finnegan on the all-night show. Larry Bly kept doing his Saturday morning/Sunday night shows. The only small change was the hiring of Pat Garrett for weekend overnights and fill-ins. Pat was hired to fill the opening created when Vince "The Prince" Miller left to do the late night show on the new K92.

Everything else—including the music format and the commitment to public service—remained intact. In January, Rob raised the money to pay the expenses for a former Hollins College student who was to be a torch bearer for the Lake Placid, NY, Olympics. Declaring January 21 to be "Suzy Mink Day," Rob raised almost $700 for the cause. Rob was still doing the school menus in his own unique style and telling "O'Brady's Ladies" what colors to wear and had just taken his 600th office staff to "Lunch With Rob."

Cards like these were used to keep track of which oldies were played when Barry was the music director. Recognize any familiar names or initials?

Barry continued as music director, spending much time talking to record stores, musicians, promoters and listeners and rolling this information into a playlist that truly reflected the tastes of Roanoke. Finnegan & Garrett alternated for the all-night show.

The station brought back its weekly countdown show, hosted by Chris, who continued his nightly show with his "cast of characters" and who, as a Star Wars fanatic, had listeners sign a petition in an attempt to get him a role in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back which was released later that year. Though he wasn't successful, he did collect 350 signatures and got the attention of LucasFilms VP Sid Ganis who wrote Chris a nice letter and said he'd given a tape of Chris doing an episode of "Battlestar Gashog" to George Lucas.

Rob O'Brady takes a break from waking up the Roanoke valley to sip his coffee.

And Bart, now in his twelfth year at the station, was still the funniest guy in town (well, except maybe for Larry) and with Fred Palmer (a.k.a. "Quiddly") at the creative services desk continued to come up with fun and ingenius contests and promotions. One came in May, 1980 following the volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

The station contacted a radio station in southwest Washington and had them send a coffee can full of genuine Mt. St. Helens volcanic ash, which was packaged in small transparent containers and given away in the "Blow Your Top" contest. Each hour listeners called in, "blew their tops" about something that was making them angry, and received packages of ash for doing so.

Genuine ash from the Mt. St. Helens volcano was given to folks who "blew their top."

Another was "The Robert Cheese Giveaway." You can imagine how much junk you'd find in a building that had housed a radio station for over twenty-five years. Old albums, frisbees, pen and pencil sets, lighters, Hazel Bishop compacts, etc.

Well, Fred and Bart gathered up all of this unrelated random stuff then created the boring, bland, and nerdly character Robert Cheese (played by Fred) and made him the focal point of giving it away. Promos featured "Robert" saying "You probably won't want this stuff, it's not very interesting, but here it is..." and each hour the phones lit up as each thing was given away. Talk about getting your house cleaned "Tom Sawyer" style!

Bart hosts a segment of the Jerry Lewis Teletion, Labor Day, 1980.

Heading into the spring ratings, WROV relied upon an old standard promotion, "Super Hi-Lo" where listeners called in, one per hour, to guess the amount of the current jackpot. Each was told, using high and low pitched bell sound effects, whether their guess was high or low and this continued until someone narrowed it down and correctly guessed the amount in the jackpot. The contest lasted the entire twelve-week ratings period and included twenty jackpots which averaged being about $85.

And the station again staged the Oddball Olympics in May, 1980 at the Roanoke Salem Plaza. The festivities began with the "Transistor Marching Oddballs" parade which was held near the old Lakeside site in Salem. Listeners were invited to show up with a transistor radio and march with it tuned to WROV, which played "marching music" (actually some disco records) while the parade was taking place.

The previous year, hundreds of people participated in the parade but this year was different. In what was the first real sign of the station's losing its younger listeners to K92, only about 75 people showed up for it. Attendance during the week of "Oddball Olympics" events wasn't much better, still, a good time was had by the staff and those who did attend. And another world record was set this year when Roanoker Bobby Kempf ate 21 whole raw lemons in one minute.

WROV Oddball Olympics DJ Cookie Eating Contest, May 1980, Roanoke Salem Plaza. Barry and Steve Finnegan eat as Rob MCs; Chris Stevens keeps up; Bart wins, Pat Garrett grabs his drink.

Another popular WROV promotion continued into the summer: WROV Rovers Softball. Led by manager Rob O'Brady, the Rovers consisted of members of the airstaff and a few other regulars who were good softball players (thank heavens) and played games against other area businesses and civic groups including WDBJ-TV and the Bank of Virginia.

Another was the WROV Energy Army. Those who were alive back then remember that 52 Americans were being held hostage in Iran by students who followed the Ayatollah Khomeni, leading to much anti-Arab sentiment. This became even worse when a Roanoke Marine named Davis Harvey was killed in a failed rescue attempt.

The "Energy Army" promotion was publicized with a song by Bart & Quiddly saying Iran "can keep their oil and keep their gas and pump it up Khomeni's nose" with military marching drums playing in the background. The actual promotion rewarded listeners with t-shirts for calling in with ideas on how to use less oil and gasoline.

The Oddball Olympics Parade banner was carried in the parade by Steve Finnegan and Pat Garrett in 1980. In this picture you'll also find Ellen Dowdy as Wonder Woman and Fred Palmer as Saline Debonay.

Then came the day we called "Black Monday." August 18, 1980. The day the ratings results arrived. Most of the staff, including Bart and Rob, were at Mill Mountain Zoo doing a remote to raise enough money for a toucan, two squirrel monkeys and two goats (apparently some of the existing animals were getting lonely, if you know what we mean). The station did an all-day remote which included putting Rob in the toucan cage and not letting him out until a donations milestone was met. People were allowed into the zoo for free but were encouraged to contribute to the cause.

Meanwhile, back at the station, it was learned that K92 had knocked WROV from its traditional spot at the top of the local rock radio ratings. The split in the rock audience put WSLC at the top, followed by K92, WPVR, WFIR and then WROV. Though all saw it coming, going from #1 to #5 in a year was still a bitter pill to swallow, and all knew that changes would be coming soon.

Super Hi-Lo ads appeared in The Roanoke Times & World News every weekday in April and May, 1980. The original photo of Rob (top left) was redone because everyone thought it made Rob look like a criminal on a "WANTED" poster.

Some of the first ones involved staff members who moved on. In August, Steve Finnegan left WROV for WRQK in Greensboro, NC. Steve is said to have gotten this job because he wanted fifty cents per hour less than that demanded by John Isley (who, upon missing this opportunity, went to Charlotte where he met Billy James and began what became the John Boy & Billy Show). Steve was replaced on the overnight show by John King . John came from WUEZ in Salem and had worked the Blacksburg area on WJJJ, WVVV and WUVT.

About a month later, Chris Stevens left for a job at WKTM in Charleston, SC. He left his "Chris Stevens" name at WROV and has since used his real name, Dave Shropshire. John King took over the night show and Pat Garrett held down the overnight shift until Matt Eakle came on board.

Matt came from doing mornings at WSLQ-99. And Ben Peyton, hired a few months earlier as WROV Operations Manager, left to start his own business. Though all would have been leaving anyway, the timing made it feel as though they were the first casualties of the ratings war.

Bart & Rob and the rest of the staff spent a day in August, 1980 raising money for the Mill Mountain Zoo. This ad later appeared in a Roanoker magazine.

As the year ended, Burt decided to cede the teenage listeners and their music to K92 and target an adult audience. The new catch phrase was "This is the radio station you grew up with, and we've grown up with you." The harder records were taken off the playlist. The staff was told to turn down the energy and address the 25-49 crowd. A new PD, Jim Lewis, was hired to "guide" the staff through the transition.

Jim had a big frizzy blonde hairdo that prompted Bart to call him "Rasta Man." WROV added Alan Archer's "Accurate" forecasts and Howard Cosell's sports commentary and in 1981 resumed Paul Harvey's daily broadcasts—not heard on WROV since the 1950s. Jim Carroll covered more local high school games and the hourly IDs said "full service radio - WROV Roanoke."

John King does the night shift, 1981

In 1981 Mike McVay, PD of WAKY in Louisville, KY, was hired as the station consultant. McVay showed up once a month, programmed the music and critiqued the announcers. Having a consultant didn't go over well with Bart (whose resume arguably sported far more accolades than his) nor with some of the others. It seemed that the more bland and boring the announcers were, the more he liked it.

Meanwhile, across town, the K92 folks were having the time of their lives and the listeners and local press were loving every minute of it. Especially The Roanoker magazine, who ran a cartoon of Burt and Aylett racing around a track with Aylett pulling into the lead and Burt about to step on what appeared to be a pile of something on the track.

Matt Eakle joined the staff in 1980 after working at Q99.

They also did a cover photo of the K92 crew in Star Trek uniforms and several feature articles. The feeling at WROV was that as personalities we were as good as they were but couldn't possibly compete on AM against an FM stereo station, especially with management pushing us in a more adult direction. It was only a matter of time before some of the WROV guys would want to move across town and join their party.

1981 brought a new "big" promotion to WROV, the "prize-winning, money-saving discount-getting, great-things-can-happen-to-you, genuine plastic SUPERCARD." Cards were distributed through the newspaper and sponsors and were good for discounts at various merchants. They had serial numbers that were used in contests.

Burt went all out this time, giving away $1000 worth of furniture, an organ, a Disney trip, a waterbed and even a 1981 Isuzu in what was billed as WROV's "biggest contest ever." Simultaneously, the station continued its drift toward being adult-oriented by increasing news, weather and sports, adding traffic reports.

The "Prize-Winning Money-Saving Discount-Getting Great-Things-Can-Happen-To-You" WROV Supercard gave listeners chances to win all sorts of good stuff.

One thing WROV had that K92 didn't was a long history in the market, they made use of this by reminding listeners they could "depend on" WROV and by having a "Hall Of Fame" Weekend in March, 1981. It featuring oldies and old jingles, including the WROV "chimes" from the 1960s.

The highlight of the weekend was to invite some of the station's past stars and personalities to return to do shows. But Jerry Joynes and Gary Cooper worked for the competition. Dan Alexander was busy. Nobody knew where to find Jivin' Jackson or Ron Sunshine.

But Fred Frelantz and Jack Fisher were still in town in advertising and enthusiastically agreed to do the Saturday afternoon show. Jack was to work "solo" from noon to two, then be joined by Fred for a reprise of their 1966 two-man show, the Fisher-Frelantz Fling. Neither had done a radio show for over ten years, expectations were high and some wondered if they would be able to pull it off.

Jack Fisher and Fred Frelantz returned to WROV in March, 1981, as funny as ever!

Well, all doubts were erased when Jack sat down, turned on the mike and was as entertaining and witty as ever. Listeners could tell that he was having a blast and loving every minute of it. And when Fred came in at 2:00, both showed that the magic and chemistry they'd had in the 1960s was still alive and well and they sounded better than ever. Though the show was only supposed to go until 5:00, Jack and Fred were having so much fun they stayed two extra hours, then agreed to return one Saturday every month.

Pat Garrett was the person chosen to work with Fred and Jack that day, keeping the transmitter logs, finding them records, etc. so that they could focus on answering the hundreds of phone calls and doing their show.

Pat recalls "the absolute highlight of my entire 18 years in broadcasting was being part of Jack and Fred returning to WROV. Both had been my idols while growing up and for me this was a BIG thing. And just as you'd expect Joe Montana to be able to walk out right now, in 2006, and throw a perfect fifty-yard pass to Jerry Rice and have him catch it, Fred and Jack showed that even after 15 years, they were still the best."

Rob in the toucan cage at the Mill Mountain Zoo, August 1980.

Ever hear the phrase "media jinx?" The term, usually associated with Sports Illustrated covers, implies that after someone is prominently featured in the media, bad things often happen. This appeared to be the case with WROV when, in late July 1981, Dan Smith of the Roanoke Times & World News did a feature story titled "PERSONALITIES - WROV DJs keep small station big." Two weeks later, Bart Prater left WROV after thirteen years for K92.

The newspaper reported that this was because Bart and Burt Levine "could not reconcile differences over the change in emphasis" at WROV. Burt and Bart had developed a "father - son" sort of relationship over the years which was not without a bit of friction at times. In a last gesture of autonomy, Bart played his last record, his favorite South City Midnight Lady by the Doobie Brothers, and over the introduction told the listeners "Goodbye, 'til we meet again.......IN STEREO."

On Bart's last day Bruce Jacobson presented him with a section of the building's wall.

But the truth was that Burt knew Bart wasn't happy and let him go. According to Burt, "(Bart's) a kid at heart, and when K92 came along and we moved away from the teen focus, he wanted to go along, but he had trouble. The departure was painful. In the end we waived the non-competition part of his contract."

And if this wasn't demoralizing enough to those who remained, a mere nine days later Barry Michaels announced he was also leaving for a job at WKTM-FM in Charleston, SC. Barry said his departure was a step toward his goal of becoming a major-market morning personality and that it had nothing to do with the change in programming at WROV, though he did add that WKTM was a personality-oriented rock and roll station.

Of the WROV "big three" two were now gone, leaving only Rob O'Brady. Rob, incidentally, had some bad luck of his own in August, breaking his arm during a WROV Rovers softball game. Yet he continued doing his morning show as Matt Eakle moved to middays and Seth Williamson took over the afternoon show. And, though only part time, the staff still included Larry.

A tough act to follow! Seth Williamson and K.C. Jones did afternoons in the months following the departure of BP.

Poor Seth had the unenviable task of being the first person to do the WROV afternoon show since Bart took it over in 1970, a job that would have been like trying to replace John Lennon in The Beatles. Seth soon moved on to a job in public radio and was replaced by High Point, NC native K.C. Jones. John stayed on 7 - midnight and Pat was back on the all-night show. When Pat returned to his studies at Virginia Western Community College that fall, local DJ and musician Cliff Beach was hired to be the new "night owl."

In December 1981, WROV added its third-ever female personality, June Poteat. June was from Burlington and had worked at WBBB when Dave Shropshire (Chris Stevens) was the program director. June came to WROV and did the midnight - 6 show. When K.C. Jones left for a job in Wilmington, NC, John King moved to afternoons and June took over the 7 - midnight shift.

Uncle Larr in the Production Room, 1981.

June remembers "WROV was one of the best jobs ever. We had a tight staff and the audience was into the station. It was an incredible time in my career. I remember my first trip to Roanoke. I was struck by the Catholic Church and its majestic place in the skyline. The minute I met Burt, I knew he was different from anyone I had ever known. He and Muriel knew how to create and nurture talent.

"I will never forget having a talk, like father and daughter, about wanting to be the best but not become conceited—like some jerks I had worked with before. Burt said there is a difference in confidence and conceit and he wanted me to feel confident. Anyway, I was hired right around Christmas and will never forget the party. He had wonderful food brought in and two or three cases of champagne.

June Poteat with her dog Eurie in 1983.

John King ended up with the fire extinguisher and we were sliding up and down the hallways on the foam. Even serious newsman Rick Mosher got in on it! I thought 'this is my kind of place!' It seems that night I was on the air and Burt's daughter came by. We were talking and I somehow managed to play the same song twice. In her true brilliant Levine way she said 'say we like that song so much we played it twice.' It must of been a good trick because the phones lit up like crazy!"