Tag Archives: John Dotson

WKPT Ad

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ad

This 5-column, 3/4-page ad ran on July 21, 1968, in the Kingsport Times-News.  I found it when I was going through an old scrapbook.  Look!  Not a syndicated show in sight; although, the stations did run some NBC and religious programming on the weekends.

I always liked the NBC logo.  The microphone is a stylized RCA 44-BX (bi-directional).  The WKPT-AM studios used these, since the installation of the equipment after the fire* was supervised by NBC.

*The WKPT studios burned on September 7, 1948, according to the Kingsport Times-News (I misread that date. It was 1946.  When I enlarged the page, I saw that it was a “6”, not an “8”, but it was a kind of skeevy 6, at that).  The new studio, with all new equipment, opened in ’48.

Midnight Sun

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midnightsun

A long time ago, I began the first permanent rock show on WKPT-AM.  John Dotson had “Sounds of Summer” the previous year, but it ended when he went back to school or left town or something.  It was a good show and broke the Easy Listening hold on that staid, NBC-affiliated station.  So, I swooped in the next year, ditched “Teenage Terrace”, (which I had been on when I was in high school, from 5:00 to 6:00 pm, as I recall, with Marty running the board and we students, when we showed up, sitting at the table in the news studio) and had the 6:00 pm to midnight slot all to myself as “The Midnight Sun”.
Since this was before 8-track tapes in cars became widely available, I was a success, as it were, with the kids cruising Broad Street.  Then, the tapes came and I eventually moved into the afternoon Drive Time slot.  The fact that, for the most part, I had to buy my own records for the show and management had the nerve to put out something like this cloth sticker: “Like it is”, my ass.  The phrase was a joke by this time.
The ellipse is 4″ on the horizontal axis and 2-1/2″ on the vertical.