Signing Off

Realizing the Magic was not going to cure all ills of this poor sick little radio station we decided to explore, what is called in the radio business "The Greater Fool Theory" That is find somebody with a bigger ego than ours to come in and buy the Station.

We talked to several radio station brokers, but there seemed little encouragement. We had a eureka moment and realized the best salesman in the World, Bob Coker could sell anything, could spread a little Magic and sell this puppy.

 I put in a telephone call to the Century 21 Office and asked the receptionist to speak with him, she in a disturbed tone ask me to hold, which I did, and seemed to be an extended period of time. Then another female voice picks up and says "you want to speak with Mr. Coker?" I say "yes, just for a moment, I have a listing for him" she says in a very sedate voice" Mr. Coker passed away six months ago, instantly, with a massive heart attack." He was 39.

We had decided to change the format of the Station from News/Talk to Oldies and Beach Music in that no other Station was doing that exclusively, still nobody listened.

Then we changer the format to Nostalgia/Big Band known as "Music of Your Life" at the time, but also called by anyone under 40 as "Music of your Death" The programming was exclusively targeted at folks 55 and older back then, which meant it was music from the 30s, 40s, and very early 50's. We were also able to receive all of the programming from satellite, which saved us considerably on payroll. We also changed the call letters from the Heritage WMYB to WCSE "Classy 1450"

The first Arbitron Rating Book had come in after the change and for the first time in more years than anyone could remember the Station had received ratings, about 2 points. which isn't much, and all of the listeners had come from WJYR, the beautiful music station, yet they were still number one. So what we had effectively done was peel off the older, less attractive audience to advertisers, from them.

Though this was some satisfaction that someone was listening, it was not near enough traction to build any momentum and we had tired of "chasing bad money"

We retained an auction Company to come in and auction off the property, the Company advertised it well Nationally in all of the Trade publications and the Wall Street Journal. No bidders showed.

We received an offer to buy the Station from some guy based in the Mountains of Colorado. He had some sort of cultish religion that he broadcast over satellite to his flock and felt the Station and Myrtle Beach would be a good base. He offered us one million shares in his broadcasting corporation for our assets.

The two of us discussed the offer and decided one million of anything was more valuable than what we had and would stop our financial bleeding. We took his stock which never appreciated, though he took control of the station, I do not think he ever broadcast from it. The Station went dark which means he just turned it off.

Our experience with the Station had involved a total of five deaths, including the double murder of the previous operators, Coker, a suicide, the tragic death of Bill Allman's college age son in a car accident, I paid the funeral costs for his funeral. Three divorces, and thousands of lost dollars in investment. It was well past time to fold.

Numerous lessons learned, there are bad radio stations, in real estate it is location, location, location. In radio it is signal, signal, signal. regardless of format or management. To paraphrase the Gatlin Brothers song, "all the gold n Myrtle Beach is in Bank in somebody else's name" most of it at that time was a Company known as Myrtle Beach Farms, now called Burroughs and Chapin, the last name of the two original land owners of the area. They were the radio stations landlord at the tower-transmitter site, and required the tower be moved so they could build their Broadway at the Beach which now occupies the huge lot where the tower sat.

It was many years before either one of us went back to Myrtle Beach, even for a visit. That has now passed and my youngest son, who was not yet born at the time of this misadventure, has lived there for three years, ironically working in management for an oceanfront hotel.