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Home My WebLink AboutBill Watkins on Hicks Buying WTAW Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD WTAW Interview Bill Watkins | Former WTAW Owner Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host Daniel Hayes | Transcriber Transcript 00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB) Here's the latest news from the Associated Press. Anytime now, the big - 00:00:03 Speaker 2 WTAW will join new businesses from across the Brazos Valley. 00:00:07 Speaker 3 Aggies win 74-72. Here's your ride. 00:00:12 Speaker 4 16.20 WTAW. 00:00:15 Tom Turbiville (TT) This is WTAW The First 100 Years. I'm Tom Turbiville. It was summer 1960, and Bill Cotton Watkins left a good-paying job in Abilene to take a chance with John H. Hicks of Port Arthur. Bill and John headed to Austin to check out KVET Radio, a station that was for sale. But before they even got there, well, it got sold. And that's when they were told about another station. 00:00:44 Bill Watkins (BW) They said, well, I've got this station in Bryan-College Station and blah, blah, blah. And we bought it sight unseen down there. Or John bought it. It was WTAW. Well, on the way back to Beaumont, we got back to come through here and uh it was about midnight when we come through and there's a daytimer then. We peeped through the windows and that's all we could see, what we had bought. So anyway, that's-that’s how John bought WTAW. 00:01:11 TT Well, John hired Bill as a salesman, but... 00:01:14 BW I didn't really do any selling. I was just there and uh getting my uh the feet on the ground so whenever the FCC gave the go-ahead that we’d be off and running. I just was learning everything y’know about him and what he was doing and why he was doing it and-and about this disc jockey and this and everything about the station I could. 00:01:34 TT And Bill Watkins eventually bought the station in 1979. That's when John Hicks got out of the radio business and in 1986 WTAW changed hands again to the ownership of Bill, Steve and Tom Hicks. with Bill Hicks as the president and the CEO as he remains today. This is WTAW, the first 100 years.