Back in the days when radio was real, Big WAYS was the number 1 radio station in Charlotte for years. Owners Stan and Sis Kaplan wouldn't settle for anything less. It's sister FM, WROQ, didn't do too badly, either.
I graduated from Myers Park HS in 1981. During the fall of 1980 I interned at WAYS/WROQ. It was an incredible experience. I was already a big fan of both stations, listening to Murphy in the Morning and 95Q every day. Sara Torrence was my contact and "teacher". She made arrangements for me to sit in with several jocks on both stations. At the time, 95Q was an album rock format, Big WAYS was top 40. Seeing this video brings back so many memories! What a treat! I'll never forget the Standard Poodles having free run of the station. Great dogs! Thanks for posting this.
That was a GREAT walk down memory lane. Thanks for posting it! I worked at WROQ back in '79/80 when WAYS and WROQ were awesome, owned the Charlotte airwaves and the carpet was... well, mostly clean. What was Stan thinking putting white carpet down in a place of such traffic, coffee, ink, and magnetic tape?! LOL I was an Assistant DJ to J.B. (Jim Ballard), and Shane "Jack Daniels" - who also served as program manager when JB and Stan would let him. LOL Those guys were such characters and unquestionably GREAT FM DJs! Minerva worked the front desk and Stan let his (really his wife Sis' I believe) giant poodles run rampantly and uncontrolled throughout the entire building... well buildings. It always baffled me how WROQ was knowingly the better of the two stations overall, FM, Stereo, and 20 times as powerful as WAYS but WAYS got their 5000 watt AM studio right up front in the new wedge building that was tacked onto the old rickety shack that was WROQ and the production rooms. LMAO. I know; Bob Murphy and Larry Sprinkle had the big "Murphy in the Morning show" (which was fantastic and WAY better and more edgy than "John Boy & Billy" have ever been; ever) but it was only for a few hours (on both WAYS and WROQ) in the morning and the Q ("The Album Station") was on the rest of the day/night spinning solid music. Stan used to say it's because they didn't want to pay to move the production equipment but we all knew that was BS - it was to show prospects and clients whose ads ran on Murph's show that it was a swanky, modern place so they'd buy more time. But still... come on! :-D Oh and by "spinning," I do mean SPINNING. That tower of carts in the WROQ studio shown in your video didn't exist when I was there. We did have a wall of carts - which were ALL commercials but the music came from a pair of turntables fed by crates of vinyl. What a glorious time for music and radio! I wasn't there long - only a year as a high school job but it was great and I loved my time there. I can still hear Minerva answering the phone "WAYSWROQuuuuuuuue..." Warm memories indeed. Again - thank you for posting this
magical time... I remember as a kid at Papa's pizza in Newton after the Bandys, Newton and Maiden football games go up there, I was too young to do much but the cool cars that Jeff Barnette had 1977 Smokey Bandit Trans Am and the Camaros... I can hear now as "Don't Stop Believing" would begin to play everyone stopped and sang it... to this day people still do that... what a bad ass radio station WROQ was! The best memories ever! There was a station @ Mrytle Beach too that followed the same format so on the drive you had about an hour between Wroq and that one of silence! Then back to rocking!!!! Great Memories!!!
Anyone know/remember when this building was demolished? I remember a sad occasion - long after building was abandoned - of driving out to see it and all the weeds growing out of the building from the inside. Did anyone imagine at the time of the video that this building would be history within 15-20 years. So sad...
I went by 400 Radio Rd. and recorded some video of the abandoned station in 2005 or so. I believe it was demolished about three years later. In the mid -70s my uncle lived in the neighborhood and we walked to the station on a Sunday afternoon and were able to walk in and see the announcer in the booth. But, at that time the station had not been renovated to it's more modern and spacious form in the 80s. Shuffletown Dragway was another one that time forgot. Yes, sad. .
I went by shortly before it was demolished. CBS did it since it was too far gone to repair after years of neglect. I was working for WKQC which was also owned by CBS at the time so I got the word from our engineers who showed me the new building out there. They wouldn't let me go into the old building by that time saying, "You don't want to, it's not safe there are mushrooms and fungus growing up through the carpet. Whenever we go in there to check the transmitter we do it quickly and get out." I took their word for it the outside looked awful the entryway was all rusty. A sad end.
Actually that is from November 1984. Major changes to studio location in early 1985. Was best control room I’ve ever designed. Wish it was on the video. The 8 track production studio wasn’t shown either. It was generally locked for obvious reasons. Glad to see my office was locked on that Sunday morning as well. The other stations would have paid a fortune for the shot of that equipment rack. Their engineers were all over Don as to what we were using as they couldn’t touch us in the audio game. They were convinced we were using a beta system not on the market. Actually it was the front end of a CRL system into an Optimod 8100 which I also used prior to Charlotte when I switched WAVA to Top 40 from Rock. Then did the same in Charlotte.
Yes, I couldn’t remember when exactly the newsroom across from the AM was converted to the WROQ control room. Its design was outstanding. I do have a video of it which I’ve been unable to find. I also thought the station had the best audio in Charlotte, and I figured that Optimod had something to do with it. I got to see Don several times. I always liked him. It was fantastic to work at these legendary stations in such an excellent facility.
I shot the video with a borrowed camera. Video cameras weren't very common in the mid 1980's. I just up and decided to create a video for posterity (mainly for myself) never dreaming there would come a day when it could be posted for viewing by the entire world.
Good morning vetnom happy I went thare before bill retired and went there on a fild trip being a millennial and tech and trade in warm springs ga in 2009 had to leave nothing much to do
6:30a on a Sunday morning. This is where most stations buried the required "public affairs" programming. Stations were not allowed to air them during the overnight hours.
When WROQ gave up its call letters, the station in Greenville wanted to snatch them up because they knew that WROQ was a legend. So they applied to the FCC to get those call letters and their request was approved.
