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HomeMy WebLinkAboutGoing to 24 Hours Transcription, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD WTAW Interview Mary Mike Hatcher | Former WTAW Employee Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host Daniel Hayes | Transcriber Transcript 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. 00:00:27 Speaker 5 The date was July the 17th, 1978, and WTAW AM first stayed up all night. Yep, that was the day the station joined the FM station as a 24-hour radio station. Mary Mike Hatcher had been working in sales and on the morning show for less than a year. 00:00:44 Mary Hatcher (MH) When WTAW went from a sunrise-sunset station to a 24-hour station. Every morning when we did the show, we had to go back. When I first started, flip on the transmitter, take the transmitter reading, Every evening, whoever was the last DJ on WTAW would turn the station off, take the meter readings. Yeah-I think we had to take readings every hour. But that was pretty huge. 00:01:08 TT It made headlines far and wide. The news director then was a fellow named Steve Stites, and Stites told the media that the programming would stay the same. The AM station would continue to play country and western music. The FM station would continue to play rock music, but there'd be some change in the sports programming. The Houston Oilers, Southwest Conference Sports, and A&M Consolidated football games would all switch from 92 FM to 11.50 AM. Today, A&M consolidated football is still on WTAW. The station's daytime operated at 1,000 watts and extended to Waco in the outer edges of Austin and Houston. Nighttime, 500 watts. That's all part of WTAW's first 100 years.