Tuesday, November 13, 2007

WBRH: Major MARKETing unSAVVINESS in '78


The reason God created high school was so we'd be forced to chuckle at ourselves much later in life.

WHEN I WAS HOME on vacation in September, I did what you sometimes do when you live far away and then go back home -- rifle through old crap in boxes stuck in closets in your parents' house.

My haul, now safely back in Omaha, included the old Kodak Brownie camera responsible for all my baby pictures, some vintage flashbulbs for said Brownie camera, a few early-'70s shortwave QSL cards I got for sending reception reports, a couple of vintage Channel 9 hurricane-tracking charts, a 1959 transistor radio and this (pictured above).

This is the first bumper sticker printed up to promote Baton Rouge Magnet High's FM station, WBRH, then at 90.1 on your FM dial. It has to be either very late 1977 or early 1978 vintage.

CAN YOU TELL we were, back then, the only station in our decidedly uncosmopolitan city playing classical music?

But only on Turntable 1. On Turntable 2 during those classical-music shifts (and I know this, because I was one of the hosts doing it), you were likely to find Led Zeppelin. The Zep went over the control board's "audition" channel and out over the big studio monitor speakers.

Loudly . . . very, very loudly. And bleeding ever so slightly into the over-the-air classical feed.

Some old retired geezer used to call up to complain about this. We assured him he was . . . how shall we put it? Nuts. We thought ourselves very clever, pulling one over on some old square.

That is, until shortly before graduation, when the old guy called in yet again to bitch about Led Zep -- yet again -- and just happened to let slip the profession from which he retired.

Audio engineer.

Busted.

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