Hot Mic with Houston and Hogan
Hot Mic with Houston and Hogan
The Hog and Hominy State: Unraveling Tennessee's Radio Roots and the Buncombe Turnpike Adventure
Ever wondered why Tennessee was once called the Hog and Hominy State? Explore this quirky chapter of history with us as we journey down the Buncombe Turnpike and uncover the tales of drovers and livestock. In this captivating episode of Hot Mic with Houston and Hogan, our esteemed guest, Ken Maness, shares colorful anecdotes from his early days in radio, starting with a humble setup in his basement. Plus, we'll shine a spotlight on the trailblazers of commercial radio, like KDKA in Pittsburgh, and the roots of broadcasting that shaped today's airwaves.
Switching gears, we dive into the world of radio station management with insights from Ken, who transitioned from his disc jockey beginnings to influential roles in upper management. This episode is not just a nostalgic trip down memory lane but also an enlightening look at the complexities of managing radio stations. Stay tuned as we set the stage for future discussions about the intricacies of the broadcasting industry. Don't miss out on this engaging conversation and make sure to subscribe for more behind-the-scenes stories from Hot Mic with Houston and Hogan.
Welcome everyone to another exciting episode of Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan. I'm the Houston part of this deal.
Speaker 2:And a big howdy from Hogan Holler. This is Dave Hogan and we're going to talk about commercial radio. You know, on our podcast previously we've really talked about a lot of music history, mainly country music history, but also we've talked about some of the other genres like early rock and roll and gospel music. Today we're going to concentrate on commercial radio and it's generally thought that KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first commercial radio station actually owned by Westinghouse and we have a friend, a longtime friend of mine and a former boss man of mine, who can't do a thing to me today but cuss me out if he wants to but he can't fire me what about that 20?
Speaker 3:bucks you owe him.
Speaker 2:that makes me think of a Tom T Hall song. The guy owed me 40 bucks, ken Maness, speaking to us from the Hog and Hominy States of Tennessee. Did you know, ken? First of all, hello, hello hello. How are you Ken?
Speaker 3:I could hardly be better. It's a beautiful day here in northeast Tennessee.
Speaker 2:Did you know, ken, that the nickname for the state of Tennessee, of course, is known as the Volunteer State and has been known as that for years, but in the early 1800s, up to the mid-1800s, the nickname of Tennessee was the Hog and Harmony State. Harmony State, the Hog and Harmony State. Did you know that?
Speaker 3:I did not know that you sprung a new one on me. I didn't either.
Speaker 2:Well, you're a student of history.
Speaker 3:That might help me on Jeopardy sometime. Well, you're a student of history.
Speaker 2:That might help me on Jeopardy sometime. The reason it was called the Hog and Harmony State is because of the fact that, well, it was called the Buncombe Turnpike. It started over around Greenville, Tennessee, and it ran across the mountains. Of course, North Carolina at that time extended into what is now East Tennessee.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:The Buncombe Turnpike ran from around Greenville over through Asheville, across the Saluda Mountain into South Carolina and it was the. Have you ever heard of the drovers?
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they drove livestock on the Buncombe Turnpike. This is pre-railroad days, pre-train days. They drove mainly hogs but also some other livestock like sheep and turkeys for instance. That was very common. They drove them all the way from the Greenville Tennessee area into South Carolina furnishing meat and so forth to the plantation owners and then some export out of the Charleston port in Charleston, south Carolina. But it's an interesting read. I went to the library and went to the Pack Memorial Library in downtown Asheville, went down to the special collections department I have to have an appointment to do that and I told the librarian to pull me everything that she could about the drovers and the Buncombe Turnpike.
Speaker 3:Oh, must be fascinating.
Speaker 2:It is fascinating, and the reason that Tennessee became known as the hog and hominy state is because in the 1800s the early 1800s up to the mid-1800s Tennessee was the number one producer of hogs in the United States and also in the mountains. We used our corn for a liquid product. Yes, and it took a tremendous amount of corn to supply the drovers as they drove the livestock across the mountains into South Carolina. So they say, in the fall of the year, when it became harvest time, wagons out of Tennessee were just absolutely loaded with corn to supply these what they called stock stands, where the drovers would stop, spend the night with their livestock. You can imagine how much corn that took, and so Tennessee supplied most of the corn to feed these hogs and other livestock. Next time you're in Asheville, go to downtown Asheville, to Pack Square. There are monuments to the drovers. There's a full-sized hog with a piglet, a sow and a piglet, and also turkeys monuments to turkeys.
Speaker 2:It is just fascinating, and it's called the Crossroads Monument. And the reason it's called the Crossroads is because Indian trails intersected in what is now downtown Asheville, one trail going east-west, one going north-south. That's where the old Indian trails intersected, and so it's called the Crossroads Monument. Now let's get back to radio, shall we?
Speaker 3:Yes, sir. Well, that was a great history lesson. I will look more into that.
Speaker 2:You know, as you know, I often wander in my thoughts when I'm on the radio, and so forgive me please Well, that part about herding turkeys, that sort of describes my years in management of radio.
Speaker 1:I felt like that's what I did.
Speaker 2:Herding turkeys, wild turkeys. Well, ken, when did you start in the radio business?
Speaker 3:Well, I actually started in very early high school but it wasn't well. It almost could be considered commercial radio, but it wasn't. Officially I built my dad actually was a minister and he did summer seminary programs at Carson Newman College down in Dandridge. They had a carrier current radio station on campus and the transmitter went out. My dad was a big tinkerer with electronics that's where I got it from and he drug that thing back one summer from Carson Newman and piddled with it, kind of got it going halfway, continued to fool with it, learned how to get it to where it would broadcast into a long wire antenna and went on the air from my basement in Churchill, tennessee.
Speaker 3:Wow, and my good friend Dave, you know him Sheryl Skelton. Sheryl was a member of the Capitol Record Club where you got a new album every week, capitol Record Club, where you got a new album every week. Yes, and Cheryl provided the music and I provided the transmitter and we went on the air. And the reason I call it commercial there's a really beautiful two girls in our town whose dad owned a supermarket Harper and Ladd Supermarket supermarket and uh. So I pulled their ad uh out of the paper and we would read it on the air, hoping that, uh, connie and vicky would hear it and think we were cool guys.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure they heard it very much, but thales wallace, who owned the local radio station, certainly did hear about it and came to my, to my house, and knocked on the door and asked my mom where I was. She said well, he's down there piddling in his shop in the basement like he always is. He said well, I need to go talk to him. So when he rolled in down there in his suit and tie and highly polished shoes, he told me what would happen to a guy like me the federal penitentiary, the federal communications commission and all that. My broadcast career kind of ended right there, and so then I reactivated in college. Similar, similar. You'd think I'd learned my lesson, but a similar thing happened. We put a little carrier current station that I'd built on the air at ETSU in a friend of mine's dorm room.
Speaker 2:East Tennessee State University.
Speaker 3:At East Tennessee State University and it worked well for a while, until word got out and I had to go see the dean of men.
Speaker 1:Again.
Speaker 3:And for the second time the thrust was a little different. It's like you know, get involved in the campus radio station or we'll just send you back home to Churchill, tennessee. And needless to say, I found I should get involved in the campus radio station, wetf-am, which was carrier current on campus. So that's really where I started. Then I decided I liked it pretty well and spent the rest of my time at college kind of working part-time in radio and going to school, and that's kind of where it all began. The first truly real deal radio job I landed was at WKIN in Kingsport and I started out as a weekender and did one of the most exciting things I did Very early on. I was able to be the board man for running the University of Tennessee football games and I used to sit there doing weather and commercials in between breaks and thinking, oh my gosh, somebody's actually paying me to do this and I'm getting to listen to the ball game. So that's kind of where it started, back in 66.
Speaker 2:Well, we all have similar stories that we could tell. Randy started probably in a similar matter, as did I. I had a big old coffee can that I talked into when I was about 13, 14 years old, tried to imitate the people that I heard on the radio Back in the hills of North Carolina I lived so deep in the holler that even the Methodists were snake handlers. But radio was my connection to the world. It was my connection from Hogan Holler, deep in the Smoky Mountains, to the outside world, listening to. I mentioned KDKA. Bob Prince was the announcer of of Pittsburgh Pirate baseball games. I could pick up KDKA, which is considered, as I said earlier, the first commercial broadcast station, and like a lot of other things, it wound up being something that wasn't intended to be.
Speaker 2:Now, westinghouse had several locations. They had one in Springfield, massachusetts, can't remember where the others were, but they were headquartered in Pittsburgh and the original purpose of this radio station was to communicate between their plants, their operations in several locations, and it expanded from there to commercial radio, what we know as commercial radio. But back in the days when I started and you started, most radio stations were owned locally, or perhaps in my case, jimmy Childress. He owned several small town radio stations in western North Carolina and then radio started to change a little later on and some of the early radio stations were owned by well. The first radio station in Asheville, wwnc, was put on the the air by the Chamber of Commerce and then wound up being owned shortly thereafter by the Asheville Citizen newspaper, which became the Asheville Citizen Times, as they consolidated the morning newspaper with the Afternoon newspaper, and they owned that radio station for years and we worked for, or I worked for, james C Wilson.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:Whose dad put the first radio station on the air in the Tri-Cities of Tennessee, in Bristol WOPI, is that right?
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's kind of the beginnings of radio, TV stations and radio stations often were a combo WJCW owned when I went to work over there by the son of the founder of the first radio station, WOPI in Bristol. Wjcw previously was WJHL radio owned by the TV station Channel 11 there. Yeah, when did it became necessary for TV and newspapers to spin off, get rid of their radio stations?
Speaker 3:Do you remember the beginning of that? I can only I don't specifically remember the dynamic that caused that to occur, but my guess is that the, as radio became more and more entertainment oriented, along with its presence in news and sports, that was really kind of a divergence of the core skills of the people who owned it and I'm guessing they saw it as an opportunistic way to perhaps feed a little more money into their newspaper enterprise by liquidating the, uh, by liquidating the radio asset. That's all. That's only a guess. But most of the radio stations I've been involved with, like the one up in bloomingtonton, wbnq, was affiliated with Bloomington Pantograph, the newspaper, the newspaper. Yes, that family did split off the radio, but they actually spun it off into separate ownership within the family. One group took the radio assets and one group kept the newspaper assets.
Speaker 2:As I recall, the Federal Communications Commission was trying to break up monopolies. So that you know, you remember the Fairness Doctrine.
Speaker 2:I do the FCC was very was a lot more active in controlling radio stations in those days and as I recall they were active the FCC in breaking up monopolies. They felt it was unfair for a town to have the radio station and the newspaper or the TV station or all three in some cases became a monopoly that they weren't in favor of and required them to spin off their radio stations, split up the newspaper and TV stations and radio stations.
Speaker 3:Anyway, it happened, it did happen.
Speaker 2:And so at that point I'm doing this from memory. It seems to me, like Jimmy Childress, one of the guys on the stations I worked for early on there was a limit of seven radio stations that any one individual could own, Am I?
Speaker 3:right, that's, that's correct, that's correct. Seven markets, seven they could. They were limited to seven markets and they were limited to two stations in each market an AM and an FM.
Speaker 2:And a little later on that changed and deregulation uh took place I guess in the late, late 80s, early 90s, Early 90s, Okay. What happened, then Ken.
Speaker 3:They began to relax the ownership restrictions of seven markets. They capitulated, they being the Federal Communications Commission and Congress. They capitulated, they being the Federal Communications Commission and Congress capitulated on that and allowed organizations to own more than 7 AMs and 7 FMs. So that started the consolidation. The further consolidation was fueled by change where the limitation of having only an AM and an FM in each market was lifted. And Dave, you were there, you will remember we were among the first to take advantage of that lifting of a restriction when we bought my old station, wkin, and added it into the mix out at WJCW and WQUT. So that fueled even further and faster consolidation. And it was primarily done, obviously, out of financial, out of attempt to achieve a financial advantage that would come from controlling more of the programming in the market to offer, in your own house, better variety to the listeners and ultimately to the advertisers and the owners. And the owners Well, the owners hopefully benefited from that, but the true intent was to control more of the broadcast revenue in the market so that profits could improve.
Speaker 2:When I first moved to Tennessee, as I mentioned earlier, I worked for Jim Wilson, james C Wilson, jim Wilson, james C Wilson, and one day we walked in and were told that Jim was selling the radio station to a company out of Bloomington, illinois, and a fellow named Ken Minus walked into the radio station one day and said I'm the new general manager and the company had been bought. The station had been bought by Bloomington Broadcasting and when we come back on our next podcast we want to talk more about Ken Maness and the upper level of management that we referred to. And, randy, you know you started I started and Ken started as disc jockeys. Now I didn't have the mental acuity or knowledge to get into management, but you guys did, so it's going to be interesting to talk about management radio from the standpoint of running a station or stations when we come back on our next podcast.
Speaker 1:I'll look forward to that, dave. It's very exciting to talk to another fellow broadcaster, one who went through this transition of broadcasting, like we all did, and Ken was heavily involved in that transition. We're going to look forward to chatting with him further next time when we meet again on Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan. See you again on Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan. Be sure to click the subscribe button for another episode of Hot Mike with Randy Houston and Dave Hogan.