WTRB Ripley Tennessee

[anotherguy]

Didn't they have an FM sister station at one time?  (WTRB-FM?)  Whatever happened to it, did it become a Memphis "move-in"?

WTRB-FM was on 94.9. EMF bought it in 2001 and it became WKVZ, the first K-LOVE station in West TN outside of Memphis. In the last few years after EMF buying 90.7 in Dyersburg and technical changes to improve 94.9 in Memphis it was moved to Hayti, MO. The call letters were changed to WGCQ and the frequency was eventually moved to 98.7, where it became God's Country (Christian Country), and eventually Air 1 (Christian CHR). They're temporarily off the air and looking for a new tower, hopefully closer to Dyersburg.

[BTA-50F]

I just learned that an EMF engineer owns WTRB-AM.  Whats up with that?

[Tynosaur]

I hear the morning show guy will be Clint Spidle, who used to be Mike Day n WMPS back in Dees days. Thks, RB.

[Danoinark]

I hear the morning show guy will be Clint Spidle, who used to be Mike Day n WMPS back in Dees days. Thks, RB.

Wow, my old boss.......

[waxonwaxoff]

I remember listening to that station from time to time whenever I was driving through that area (I like all kinds of music). For a small town station it was actually entertaining for a while. They had a really good program director named Don Paris and some good local talent. If I recall correctly most of their deejays were just people who lived in the area and it had a real charm to it. Then, and this is strictly from memory passing through towns, I believe their format changed and they started playing just modern country. To me, that isn't what little town radio should be. Your audience has a lot of older people listening. I am talking about people who grew up in Ripley, many older who sit at home and would much rather hear a local person they go to church with than some big market professional deejay. They want a local swap shop and a station that actually plays requests. They also wanted to probably hear a lot of the older country artists thrown in as well.

When WTRB got away from that format it lost a lot of charm. Small town radio doesn't have the signal power or listenership to reinvent the wheel because you are never going to draw a big auidence. Those are the types of stations that instead of letting a computer decide the songs and having a satellite fed deejay, you need to have local people who have some input on song selections. Even small town radio got away from that and I always thought that was a mistake.

[firepoint525]

Unfortunately, small-town radio apparently could no longer make enough money to remain profitable by programming that way, and that is why many of these stations no longer exist. 

Two problems with such stations: (both of these coming from personal experience)

1) They treat their announcers like crap, so you always have high turnover, and 19-year-old announcers who actually still think that they have a future in broadcasting.   

2) They couldn't take requests because they owed money  to ASCAP, thus couldn't play anything published, or even co-published, by ASCAP.

Not saying that either of these were true of WTRB; I wouldn't know, since I never worked there. 

The switch to "modern country" may have been out of necessity.  The "classic country" was probably all on reel-to-reel tapes, LPs, or 45s, and would have needed someone to "dump it all" into the computer in order to continue playing it.  And with an aging audience, that might not have been feasible.