At one point in the Summer/Fall of 1992 I got a call from the manager of WPAY in Portsmouth, Ohio. He had heard me on the air and invited me to come down and talk about a job possibility. I found the time and made an appointment to go down the road and talk.
WPAY had been around like forever. The station is on the very edge of the Huntington, West Virginia market and punched a strong FM signal literally from Huntington in the east to Columbus to the north from a tower across the Ohio River in Kentucky. The AM station was one of the first in the region and was still pulling a smaller, yet loyal audience. One personality on the AM side, Zeke Mullins, was as well known in Portsmouth as Portsmouth's famous native son, Roy Rogers.
I had visited WPAY in the mid '7os to visit with a friend who was working there at the time so the station was easily found. After the talk, some name-dropping and the like, came the nickle tour. Apart from the studios and the offices was a rather large storage room off to the side which was being used for a variety of older, obsolete equipment which no one had a heart to throw out yet. My host told me that at one time the room was used as a recording studio. Just about anyone could come in, pay whatever the fee, cut a record, then try to sell it by having it aired by the station which recorded it.
The situation at WPAY wasn't unique, either. At least that's the way I understand it. Putting a recording studio at a radio station became a win-win for both the radio station and the the artist using the studio. The station took in the money from people wanting their own shot at stardom and had material to fill in when they ran short of material. The (insert name of major recording artist here) wanna be would find ego fulfillment and could possibly make a few bucks on the side if his or her record started to sell.
As "Top 40" radio came into dominance and recording techniques became more sophisticated, the recording studio became just another room for the dwindling number of locally produced programs (mostly a parade of Pentacostal preachers damning everyone to hell and begging for money). Other studios became office space, or storage rooms. Take yer pick.
In the meantime, there were still a boatload of people who saw themselves as the next big thing and wanted to get their foot in the door. Some of them were really talented, too. Like Craig Fuller of Waverly, Ohio. Craig got together with some friends and did some recording under the name of Pure Prairie League and were moderately successful. Sure, there were lots of clunkers and the merely mediocre, but there were some standouts who deserved a shot at the big time. Without the radio stations making records, selling records, even locally, became a real challenge.
All of a sudden, the local announcers became important to the "little guys" who wanted their shot at fame and fortune.
At one point I was at a family gathering of a girl I was seeing when a second cousin twice removed (or something of that sort) got wind of the fact that I worked at one of the local stations. He disappeared for about 5 minutes then appeared with a fist full of records he had made and would I pleeeeeeeaaaaasssee play them on the air? Wasn't too bad. Could have been worse. Didn't have the heart to tell him that his "Country" record wouldn't go over too well with the "Formula" sound being played at the station I was working for.
Then there was this kid named Jerry Salley. Jerry managed to attract the attention of Mary Morris, the octogenarian who ran WBEX in the early to mid '70s. Jerry would come in on occasion to be on the air and talk about his singing and song writing. Not a bad fellow, actually. Eventually he grew up and moved to Nashville - even had a hand in some fairly decent songs done by fairly decent singers. Maybe I've understated just a bit. Jerry is a highly successful songwriter and singer and a mere paragraph wouldn't do him justice.
