WROV

The original WROV signed on in 1946 at 1490 kc., but in 1948 moved to 1240 kc. (formerly occupied by WSLS, who had moved to 610 kc.) to improve its signal range. The station carried live and network programming through the end of the 1950s. Jerry Joynes was a popular personality on WROV in the 1950s.

In 1950, a sister FM station, WROV-FM, signed on and simulcasted the AM's programming. In 1952, WROV-TV, UHF Channel 27, signed on but later signed off in 1953. Later, Channel 27 was home to WRFT, an ABC affiliate from around 1961 to 1974, and independent WVFT from 1981 to 1993, and Fox Affiliate WFXR in 1993.

In 1955 the stations were sold to Burt Levine, who moved the station into a Rock & Roll Music direction starting with a popular R&B & Jazz show hosted by "Jivin" Jackson. By the end of the 1950s, WROV was a Top 40 station 24 hours a day. Also, shortly after the purchase, Levine sold WROV-FM, at the time on 103.7, citing the unprofitability of FM. Later, after the sale, the station was relocated by the FCC to 92.3 and became WLRG, a beautiful music station.

The 1960s were considered the "Golden Age Of Top 40" for WROV-AM and many other stations like it around the country. After some musical "doldrums" in the early sixties, Top 40 began attracting new listeners with a variety of new musical trends such as the "British Invasion" led by the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the unique R&B records being produced by such labels as Motown, Stax, and Atlantic, the American "Garage Band" sound with such American groups as Paul Revere & The Raiders, Question Mark & The Mysterians, and The Young Rascals, and the "San Francisco" sound dominated by groups like Jefferson Airplane. One of WROV-AM's most popular 1960s personalities was Fred Frelantz.

WROV entered the 1960s with a staff that included Jerry Joynes, Barbara Felton, Ken Tanner, Wynn Alby and Gary Cooper. During 1960, Gary left for WRIS and was replaced on the all-night show by Leigh Jones. Ken Tanner departed the morning show and was replaced by Fred Covington, who simply went by "Freddy" on the air. Barbara left for a job in Richmond and her Woman's World hour was filled by the return of Jim Gearhart to the midday show. Wynn Alby also departed and his evening shift was filled by George Prescott, whose show was called Prescott Presents.

1961: Dave Novak, Jerry Joynes, Ron Sunshine Fred Frelantz, Jack Morgan and kneeling in front, Bob Scott. Jack was in sales, the rest were on the air.

The turnover of the staff continued into early 1961. By February, George Prescott had moved on and was replaced by Tim Lockhart. Jim Gearhart left for a brief stint at WHYE before heading to KQV in Pittsburgh, and was replaced on the midday show by Adam Hill. Leigh Jones departed from the overnight shift and was replaced by Don Hudson.

The WROV of the late fifties through the mid-sixties was easily identifiable by its "chimes" format, which featured "Big Ben" chimes on the quarter hour along with voiceovers announcing the time. The chimes were taken from an electrical transcription record. Anyone near a radio in Roanoke back then can recall chimes and other drops which included the "WROV Housewife of the Hour." Women who listened during the day were encouraged to send in their names. Every hour, one was announced and she had fifteen minutes to phone the station to win a prize.

1962: Jim Carroll, Jerry Joynes, Ron Sunshine, Don Hudson, Fred Frelantz, and George Calomaris.

Public service announcements were read after a sounder announced a "WROV Call to Aid." New records, which members of the staff believed would become hits, were played following a drop announcing another "WROV Wax to Watch." Oldies were played after we were told we were going to the "Cobweb Corner." And daily horoscopes were read following an introduction of "the WROV Staroscope." Jerry Joynes remembers that the "chimes" gave the station consistency. "The personalities were still totally different. When you signed off and the next person came on, the show was different. We didn't really have a station sound until they got the bells."

1961 saw the arrival of the man who would work at WROV longer than anyone else in the station's history, Jim Carroll. Jim, an Iowa native, worked for Armed Forces Radio while in the Army in Korea. He later did the all-night show for KOOL in Phoenix, then worked in Rome, NY. Jim came to WROV to do sales and occasional work as an air personality. A couple of years later he became the sports director.

Ron Sunshine and Fred Frelantz during an appearance at Crossroads Mall, 1962

Also in 1961, Freddy Covington left and Burt saw this as a chance to make the station sound "big" by bringing in someone from a big city, a great entertainer with lots of show business connections. So he hired a guy named Ron Sunshine from New York City.

Ron had done record hops and knew many show business people including Freddy Cannon and Del Shannon. He studied broadcasting at the University of Oklahoma and worked part-time at KOMA in Oklahoma City until leaving school because of illness. After recovery he decided to pursue a job as a disc jockey and applied to many radio stations including WROV, where Burt was impressed by his skills and his "big name" friends.

The April 1962 Rock & Roll Songs magazine made Fred & Ron famous across the US & Canada.

So Ron came to WROV and became immensely popular. He was the first local radio personality since Jivin' Jackson to do record hops and worked out a deal with the local Coca-Cola bottler to sponsor them.

Most were held at Crossroads Mall because it was the only indoor space they could find that was big enough for crowds which exceeded 8,000 people. Adam was another WROV personality with big show biz connections. Originally from Culpepper, VA, Adam migrated to Hollywood after a few years studying drama at Duke University and ended up doing publicity for KTLA-TV while doing some acting on the side. After a stint in the Navy, he worked as a model in New York before his stint at WROV.

During the summer of 1961, Tim Lockart left for a job in Louisville and WROV needed to find someone talented and witty enough to replace him on the morning show. When Burt asked Ron if he knew of anyone who fit the bill, he immediately suggested his former college roommate from Oklahoma, Frederick David Wilson Mugler III. Ron and Fred had attended the University of Oklahoma together where they ran the school radio station.

Fred was born and raised in Lake Charles, LA and worked as a disc jockey while in high school. During college, he worked at KOCY in Oklahoma City then KIRL, Wichita, where he came up with the name Fred Frelantz (a comment on the wandering nature of rock and roll disc jockeys) but management wouldn't let him use it. So he went by the name "Derf O'Day" (O'Day was the last name of another well-known local personality and Derf was "Fred" spelled backwards).

Upon arriving at WROV, Fred was an instant hit. In addition to being a great disc jockey, Fred was a comic genius, spontaneity was one of his great virtues. He never prepared anything before he went on the air, he just talked about whatever came to him and could ad-lib better than anyone who has ever lived. Fred and Ron roomed together in an apartment Grandin Road, then one on 1st Street at Elm with a third guy who was the manager of Sears.

On WROV, Fred originally called himself "Dr. Fred Frelantz" and said he was broadcasting from the "Feltbetter Clinic." He had a high-pitched female character (Fred, using a high falsetto voice) called "Gertie". Other times, Fred would put piano bar music in the background and say he was broadcasting live from the C. Moore Broads Auditorium.

Fred announced a "Disease of the Day", a made-up illness for listeners to use when calling in "sick" to work (one was "detnitisflopdoodus" which was "cross-eyed knee caps"). He was a genius of self-promotion and often had himself paged in restaurants to increase his name recognition. He was also a prankster and did such things as drive around town talking into a light blue Princess-phone receiver attached to a cord, pretending to be talking to someone just to get people's attention.

Ron and Jerry were also participants in a series of weekly all-night poker games with Policeman Alvin Hudson and show promoter Pete Apostolou. Jerry recalls "Al Hudson...he became a captain, then he became a councilman. He was a motorcycle policeman. And I hung out at the record store, which DJs at that time tended to do, the Globe Record Shop downtown. And Al was downtown a lot. He walked a beat downtown then he got a motorcycle later. Then he became a lieutenant. But we had started the games when he was a policeman.

"Al also worked at Toots Drive In on Williamson Road. Cruising Williamson Road was a big thing at that time and Toots was a big thing too. And you could drink on the curb and stuff. Anyway, Alvin was the officer, he was there, he did it on his private time. Anyway I got to know him that way. And Pete Apostolou. I also did ring announcing for wrestling. And he did that."

By the end of 1961 the WROV staff consisted of Jerry, Ron, Fred, Dave Novak, Bob Scott who called himself "The Wild Child" and Jack Morgan. Ron recalls "Morgan went to school with Fred and me. After I got Fred the job, Burt asked if I knew anyone with sales experience. So I told him about Jack. Jack interviewed with Burt and got the job."

Another well-known person of the era was part time disc jockey and engineer, Richard "Mopey" Williams. A graduate of Jefferson High, "Mopey" was studying law at Houston University but worked at WROV while home on breaks from school. He is perhaps best remembered for spending nine days living inside of a 12-foot-long cylindrical fallout shelter that had been set up for display at the newly opened Towers Shopping Center, at the height of the Cold War "bomb shelter" craze.

WROV's ratings during the early 1960s were incredible. The station routinely attracted well over fifty percent of the audience. Jerry Joynes, who did both the morning and afternoon shows, remembers "Oh yeah, yeah, I did two shows on there. 9-12am and 3-6pm. The funny part about it was, I knew nighttime was going to decline because TV was really getting strong in the early 1960s. But what I didn't realize was what a solid audience you had at 9 o'clock in the morning because work people listened at work, and home people listened at home, and they didn't cut it off.

Another WROV personality of the early 1960s was Don Pugh. Don was from Bedford and had worked at WBLT with Jack Shields. Don worked the all-night show on weekends.

In the spring of 1962, WROV was given permission by the FCC to raise its daytime power from 250 to 1000 watts. This change was approved for all 1240 stations in the United States and allowed WROV to cover a larger area with a better signal during the daytime hours and this added to their dominance of the local radio market. About that same time, Jimmy Witter left and was replaced on the night show by Don "Hudson" Hutcherson, who called his program "The Hudson Hassle."

Jack Fisher having lunch with a cow to honor National Dairy Month, June, 1969.

1963 saw WROV continue its ratings dominence though they lost the man who, more than anyone prior, had helped establish their image as the Star City's youthful rock and roll station.

Feeling he'd done all he could do at WROV, Ron Sunshine left that summer for Dallas, then went back to New York where he became an agent specializing in rock & roll. Along with his colleagues, Ron represented many of the British Invasion bands including Herman's Hermits, The Who, and The Animals. In the mid-1970s, Ron became a show promoter.

Meanwhile, back at WROV, new arrivals that year included Jack Shields, Jim Reese, Glenn C. Lewis "The Voice of The Turtle" and a new Gates Diplomat control board. RCA cart machines were also added, making it easier to run commercials, the chimes, and to drop "The Girl" in between songs, over song intros, anywhere she would fit.

FISHER & FRELANTZ

AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS
April, 1968

[ Part 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]

Why was WROV so popular? There were many reasons. For one thing, geography played a role. There was no competition from out of town.

The nearest "big" city is Greensboro which is about 100 miles away, and because of the nature of the Roanoke Valley—Piedmont Airlines pilots used to say landing in Roanoke was like trying to land an airplane in a big cereal bowl—most distant radio signals weren't able to penetrate the market. Another reason was weak, non-focused local competition.

Biff Burger Commercial 1965. [ LISTEN ] (00:55)

Do you want a big delicious cheeseburger for only 15 cents?

That, combined with the evolution of rock and roll music, the baby boomer phenomenon, the engineering expertise of Al Beckley, and WROV's line-up of top-notch radio personalities made it sound better than any other station on the dial and the ratings proved that the listeners could tell. And it was about to get better. The following year, America would meet a British band called "The Beatles" and Roanoke would meet a personality named Jack Fisher.

It has been said that "The Cheater", a national 1965 Top 40 Hit by Bob Kuban & The In-Men, became a national hit after a teenager from Boston, where the record had been locally popular, on a visit to Roanoke, let the DJs at WROV hear the record. WROV then added the song to their playlist, and it became a national hit afterwards, and remains a staple in the East Coast Beach & Shag Music community.

AIRCHECKS: Fisher & Frelantz Show, March 25, 1966 [ LISTEN ] (26:32). "The Sound Of Today" Promos c.1967 [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], and [ 4 ].

The WROV building, once located at 15th Street & Cleveland Avenue in Roanoke, was built in three stages: the "Quonset Hut" (shown in gray), the "Concrete Flat" (blue), and the "Jim Walters Home" section (tan).

A fourth edition known as the "Doublewide" was added after Burt sold the station and is not included in the diagram but can be seen in the overhead view below, to the right of the "Jim Walters Home" section. The diagram shows it as it was in the 1970s-1980s.

The entrance, as seen from the parking lot.

The "False Front" built around the "Hut."

Top side of building showing renovated "Flat" and "Jim Walters" section in back.

The station had continued success in the 1970s. One the most popular personalities on WROV-AM in the 1970s was Bart Prater. In 1975, the station had a hand in convincing Warner Brothers Records to release "Black Water" by The Doobie Brothers, which had originally been issued on the "B" side of a modest 1974 hit "Another Park, Another Sunday", as an "A" sided single. "Black Water" later became a number one hit for the Doobie Brothers in 1975, and remains a staple of Classic Rock and Adult Contemporary radio stations.

In 1980 the AM station got a new FM competitor when WLRG-FM (Ironically, WROV's former sister station in the 1950s) flipped from its long-time beautiful music format to Top 40 as WXLK/"K92". By August 1980 K92 had pushed WROV from first place to 5th in the ratings. At that point, the station modified it format from Top 40 to adult contemporary. Though WROV-AM continued to be competitive, the ratings slipped throughout the eighties. In 1988, after a deal to buy crosstown WJLM-FM fell through, Levine finally sold WROV to North Carolina broadcaster Tom Joyner for 500,000 dollars. After Joyner purchased the station, he moved WMVA-FM, a Martinsville, Va licensed radio station he had just previously purchased, in with WROV-AM, and changed the FM station's calls to WROV-FM, and implemented a separately programmed Album Rock Format. In 1991, WROV-AM went to a partially sattlite delivered Oldies format. In 1992 Joyner sold WROV-AM/FM to Weil Enterprises, a family-owned company out of North Carolina.

In 1996, Weil sold WROV-AM/FM to Benchmark Broadcasting, who sold them to Capstar Broadcasting. In 1998 Capstar decided that the AM's long-time music format was no longer competitive, and another format had to be selected. While that decision was being researched, to save money, Capstar decided to simulcast WROV-FM's programming on WROV. The last live DJ on WROV was long-time personality Larry Bly in 1998. The AM station changed its call letters to WGMN and switched to an all-sports format.

"The Rock of Roanoke"