| Starr Stevens tries out the air chair of 96.3 WROV. |
Tom Joyner (not the same one who did the syndicated morning show in Chicago) bought WROV from Burt Levine in 1988. Joyner had recently purchased Martinsville's WMVA FM 96.3 and bought WROV with plans of moving the FM tower to Cahas Mountain near Boones Mill, VA and the FM studios to Roanoke, operating the AM and FM as a combo and building upon the legacy of the WROV call letters.
To accomplish this he hired as GM Mike Slenski, who worked for Joyner in Raleigh, NC, and called himself a "turnaround specialist" (which basically means a corporate takeover and format-changeover expert). The tower and studios were moved in January, 1989 and Roanoke now had a new FM station, WROV 96.3, which carried on the rock tradition of it's older "sister."
| Starr Stevens tries out the air chair of 96.3 WROV. |
Burt agreed to stay on for two more years in the role of consultant, and felt that the ownership changes would eventually make the WROV call letters Number One in the market again, as well as give his existing employees new opportunities. So, Burt's thirty-three years of owning WROV finally came to an end in November, 1988. He would spend his last years working as a volunteer consultant in marketing and development for public radio station WVTF-FM.
Burt left WROV with no bad feelings, no animosity, only a feeling of having accomplished what he set out to do and a sigh of relief. "When you've been coming through a dark tunnel for many years, just coming out into the light is extremely exciting" said Burt. "It's time to push me out of the nest. Everybody's grown up, and it's time."
WROV-FM set up shop in the rear of the 15th & Cleveland studios in what had once been the AM production room. Needing more space, a fourth addition to the original quonset hut was added in the 1990s, built on the grassy area outside of Burt's former office and connected to there by a hallway.
The new part resembled a "pre-fab home" and this prompted Sam Giles and Mark Nelson to call it the "rock and roll double-wide." Unfortunately, the surrounding neighborhood continued to deteriorate. Things really became serious when someone fired a high-powered rifle through the FM studio window one night. The perpetrator was never caught.
| Steve Cannon shows the WGMN studio to Pat Garrett. |
Bart Prater left K92 in 1987 and later formed the Prater/Palmer advertising agency with Fred "Quiddly" Palmer. When this didn't work out, he returned to WROV where he worked part-time on the FM and held down a full-time shift on the AM. By 1989 he'd stopped doing weekends on the FM saying that it "wasn't his thing." He was let go in 1991 when the station "plugged in" the Oldies Satellite Network and ended up doing engineering at WVTF.
Burt passed away on April 4, 1995, at age 70, six months after Muriel succombed to her health problems that began in 1983. Always one to help his community, Burt, in his last act, asked that memorial contributions be made to Roanoke's Community School and Beth Israel Synagogue. Much can be said about Burt's contributions to the Roanoke Valley.
He was active in many religious, civic and professional organizations which sought to bring people together and promote tolerance, understanding and compassion for others including the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Community Task Force on Race Relations. Burt loved Roanoke, and Roanoke became a much better place because of his being there.
Joyner sold WROV AM & FM to Capstar Broadcasting of Austin, Texas in 1995. WROV-AM quit broadcasting live and began simulcasting the programming of WROV-FM in 1998, this to save money while Capstar decided what to do with the station.
The last live announcer on 1240 WROV was Larry Bly , who ended its final show by playing Don McLean's hit "American Pie" (with lyrics "the day the music died"). When it was over, Larry flipped a switch which put the FM programming on the AM, signed off the logs, and went home where he spent the rest of the day, depressed, pondering the significance of the moment.
| Tearing down the station on November 9, 2004. Sad! |
A few months later on September 1, 1998, the call letters of the AM were changed to WGMN, and the station began broadcasting an all-sports format and calling itself "The Game" after its sister station, WVGM in Lynchburg.
Both stations began simulcasting the same programming--most of it syndicated--twenty-four hours a day and included Don "Imus in the Morning" from WFAN, New York; the Fabulous Sports Babe; Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post then ESPN Radio at night. WROV's Brian Davis continued doing his call-in show and Jim Carroll stayed on as the valley's most well-known sportscaster.
WROV-FM moved to new studios on Brandon Avenue in June, 1999, and six weeks later, WGMN followed them, leaving the original studios at 15th and Cleveland Avenue sitting silent for the first time since Burt moved there from the Mountain Trust Bank building in 1955. The new studios were home to all four Capstar stations in the market and contained four studios and four production rooms, all digital. Capstar Communications was purchased by Clear Channel Communications in 2000.
| One last look at the studio where so many memories were made. |
In November, 2004, the building was torn down. Long neglected, the building leaked, was full of trash and junk that wasn't taken along on the move to Brandon Avenue, and had become a haven for homeless people, bums and all sorts of verminous critters.
At the last minute, though, the Gates Diplomat board--through which Roanoke's main source of rock & roll had flowed for years--was saved, along with a few other artifacts that are now being restored by former employees and will end up in a museum one day. Three days after the building's demolition began, all that remained was the original Quonset Hut, and it was destroyed by a suspicious fire that broke out in the middle of the night.
| The original quonset hut. Sadly, it took tearing down the rest of the building for us to see it again. |
One month later, Jim Carroll, the last survivor of WROV's "Burt Levine" years, hung up his headphones and retired from doing area high school sports broadcasts--something he had done on both WROV and later WGMN for 43 years.
But there's a happy ending! Most of the surviving former WROV personalities began corresponding through e-mail in 2003 and having yearly reunion parties in 2004. From this, came the ideas that became the WROV History website. We hope you've enjoyed it.
We, the "old guard" have passed the baton to our brothers and sisters at 96.3 WROV - The Rock of Virginia. Please listen to them when you're in Southwest Virginia and visit their website. They are carrying on a tradition of Roanoke broadcasting excellence begun years ago by Roanoke Radio, Incorporated and fully realized by innovative radio genius Burt Levine.
| 15th & Cleveland. The address you heard mentioned thousands of times is now a vacant lot. |
Bart Prater said it best: "If any one person deserves credit for the success of WROV and the vast majority of other good things that occurred over the years in Roanoke radio, it is Burt Levine. He raised the bar in local broadcasting to the point that record producers, national publications and top radio executives were all quite aware of the market. Through his charitable and social work, Levine underlined the fact that radio stations were licensed 'to serve the public interest.' He improved not only the quality of radio, but the quality of life in the Roanoke Valley. He is missed."