HomeMy WebLinkAboutWatkins on KORA, Sales, and Red Rover News Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD
WTAW Interview
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Bill Cotton Watkins | Former WTAW manager
Daniel Hayes | Transcriber
00:00:01 Dick Bolin (DB)
College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947.
00:00:04 Speaker 2
Now let's go to the bonfire signed where WTAW's Tom Turbi-?
00:00:07 Speaker 3
-WTAW election night coverage. All 8 voting centers in Brazos County have been counted-
[Unintelligible sports broadcaster and 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
16.20 WTAW.
00:00:22 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, the first 100 years. I'm Tom Turbiville. In this celebration of a century of
WTAW, you'll hear plenty from and about Bill Cotton Watkins. Bill Watkins was hired by Papa
John Hicks to manage WTAW in 1961. And sure, the idea was to entertain, but the priority was
to make money through advertising. Of course, that was a challenge.
00:00:47 Bill Watkins (BW)
Programming was probably as bad a programming as you could think of.
00:00:51 TT
WTAW at the time came on at daylight, shut down at dark, and the competition, mainly KORA
had some fun with that.
00:00:59 BW
Uh, 6 A.m. to sunset. The competition said we run down at sundown.
00:01:03 TT
One big challenge for sales was the notion that people just didn't listen to radio. So, how's this
for a sales pitch?
00:01:10 BW
Okay, we're going to give you 300 spots and it's free, but there's one stipulation and you're going
to sign this disclaimer and then we're going to tell them what kind of awful cheat you are and
what kind of screwed up business you run. And, oh, we can't do that. And I said, why not?
Nobody listens. I guess we hit about 70% sales on that little idea.
00:01:32 TT
Now the music didn't stop, but WTAW hit the streets.
00:01:36 BW
We bought this uh, red car and called it Red Rover and painted it up. And we had police radios in
there. Most of the time we'd beat the police to the scene because we would - [Laughs] Red Rover
News.
00:01:49 TT
Yeah, people started listening to radio. Red Rover News Radio on WTAW. The first 100 years.