HomeMy WebLinkAboutBill Watkins Origins Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD
WTAW Interview
Bill Cotton Watkins | WTAW General Radio Manager and Owner
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Laura Quezada | Transcriber
00:00:01 Dick Bolin (DB)
[Music] College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947…
00:00:04 Speaker 2
Now, let's go to the bonfire site where WTAW's Tom Turpin…
00:00:07 Speaker 3
WTAW election night coverage. All eight voting centers in Brazos County have been counted…
[Unintelligible sports broadcaster with crowd of screaming fans]
00:00:14 Speaker 4
Today on WTAW, we're joining with businesses from across the Brazos Valley to support our …
00:00:20 Speaker 5
…1620 WTAW.
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00:00:22 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, The First 100 Years, I'm Tom Turbiville. Meet Bill Cotton Watkins. No history of
WTAW would be complete without meeting this New Mexico native who was a Texas Tech grad.
00:00:37 Bill Cotton Watkins (BCW)
And I found out, you know, after I was in the broadcast business for a long time that I was a
dyslexic. When I started Tech, I was going to be an ag engineer, and mathematics got me and I
just thought I was dumber than everybody. And then I changed it to ag economics, and
mathematics got me again. I had this one degree I could get that I had enough math for, and that
was marketing.
00:00:59 (TT)
Fast forward, and Bill Watkins is a top salesman at an Abilene radio station. And that brought a
call from John Papa Hicks at KOLE in Port Arthur. He was looking for a top salesman. Now, this
was 1959, and mind you, Bill was doing okay in Abilene.
00:01:16 (BCW)
And I was making about $1,200 a month using radio, and that was when nobody listened to
radio.
00:01:22 (TT)
But John Papa Hicks made him the offer.
00:01:24 (BCW)
If you come down here and do a good job, we might be able to buy another radio station, and we
might let you manage it. He says, “And I'll guarantee you $400 a month against the
commission”. And I'm thinking, well, I don't know whether that's a very good deal or not.
00:01:42 (TT)
That was not Bill Watkins' first business gamble, and it wasn't his last.
00:01:46 (BCW)
The more I thought about it, I said, well, I'm going to take him up. And so, I took him up.
00:01:50 (TT)
In this series, you will hear a lot from and about Bill Cotton Watkins and his long history with
WTAW: The First 100 Years.