The 1240 WROV History Site
Welcome to our website!
A labor of love that a lot of your old friends have been working on for a long time. About thirty former WROV personalities have been in touch for the last few years and decided to tell our story. Because it's the story of rock & roll music in the Star City. And for many of you, that's the story of the soundtrack of your youth.
We still have much to add, so keep checking back. If YOU have any memories, photos or other momentos to contribute, please do (see bottom of page for contact info). There's a "want list" of things we are REALLY looking for on the site. Head up to the attic and start digging!
For now, the site covers the history of the station from sign-on in 1946 through the Levine's sale of it in 1986 fairly well. We eventually plan to cover the years from 1986 through 1998 when it became WGMN. This will require the help of folks who were there in the 1990s. We'll eventually get around to bugging them into helping us. For now we briefly cover those years in the "Epilogue" section.
Some technical stuff, known problems, etc. can be found below. Please read, especially if you think it's not working the way it should.
Thanks for visiting. Enjoy it. And, in the words of a very famous guy: "Never whittle toward yourself or spit into the wind. Good night, America."
From your WROV friends who have contributed to the website:
Dan Alexander,
John Andrews,
Phil Beckman,
Charlie Bell,
Larry Bly,
Ellen Butler,
Bob Cameron,
Steve Cannon,
Jack Casey,
Jim Clark,
Dave Cowan,
Jack Curtiss,
Jeff Dickerson,
Matt Eakle,
Steve Finnegan,
Jack Fisher,
Fred Frelantz,
Lee Garrett,
Patrick W. Garrett,
Chuck Holloway,
Bruce Jacobson,
Bill Jordan,
Jerry Joynes,
John King,
Fred King,
Burt Levine,
Rhona Levine,
Doug McCloud,
Barry Michaels,
Vince Miller,
Dave Moran,
Rob O'Brady,
Fred Palmer,
Bart Prater,
Ben Peyton,
June Poteat,
Gary Tate,
Tom Twine,
Rich Randall,
Sam Russell,
Wally Gator,
Marty Shayne,
Jack Shields,
Dave Shropshire,
Jay Slater,
Starr Stevens,
Bucky Stover,
Ron Sunshine,
Ken Tanner,
Jan Wilkins
Special thanks to a few of OUR friends who have also contributed:
Ralph Bratton,
Lois Caliri,
Joe Coco,
Curtis Downey,
Twig Gravely,
Tommy Holcomb,
Jeff Hunt,
Joe Kennedy,
Barry Mishkind,
Steve Nelson,
Steve Pugh,
Bill Purcell, Jr.,
Vince Screeney,
C. Park Seward,
Randy Vaughan,
The Roanoke Public Library,
The Roanoke Times & World News,
The Roanoker Magazine,
The Staff of WROV 96.3 FM
Note: this isn't a "clickable" link, type the address in the "To:" field.
Done intentionally this way to thwart those who seek to spam!
Technical Stuff
- The site must be viewed on a PC with screen resolution set to 800 x 600 or larger. Anything smaller and you will get scroll bars. It looks best at 1024 x 768.
- Hopefully you have a high speed internet connection. Otherwise, loading some of the pages may take a while and the audio files won't stream.
- Pictures: most of them have larger versions that you can see by clicking them. Hover the mouse cursor over a picture and if it turns from an arrow into a little pointy finger (depending on your settings) there's a larger version to be seen.
- JavaScript MUST be enabled in your browser!
- There's a jingle that plays when you visit/refresh the home page but we're finding that it isn't compatible with all web browsers. It seems to work with best with IE. One of these days we'll write a script to fix this.
- If YOU find any bad links, errors, typos, etc PLEASE let us know!
Details, details. Oh, by the way, this website does not download spyware, tracking cookies, etc. to your machine. We aren't collecting any sort of marketing information about you, and we promise that your visit here will not cause somebody to show up at your door tomorrow selling vacuum cleaners.