My name is Rob Nichols, and I am a radio man. Welcome to Part 1.
I remember being five years old and listening to WVJS in my room, wanting to be like the guys spinning the hits. When I went to the kitchen, sometimes I would hear a different set of announcers on WOMI. Whoever it was, their voices mystified me; took me into another world. I would imagine a fellow in a small room who wasn’t allowed a restroom break for several hours, playing the top songs of the day. Zoom up a few years later and I put together a few pieces of stereo equipment and had my own fake radio station. Tapes still exist of me going from cassette to record back to cassette, announcing the selections. One Christmas, when I was in middle school, my parents got me a Sonic home DJ kit at Service Merchandise. The company has gone out of business and thus long stopped making them, but I had a blast with it. It had a dual cassette player, with one side that could record, and a mic that you could turn up and down and talk over the music. In no time, I had hooked up the Realistic turntable Uncle Donnie had given me and I had a pretty functional make-believe station.
1986. I was about to go from F.T. Burns Middle School to Apollo High. There was a blurb in the newspaper about a radio station needing volunteer staff. I called a fellow named Mark Cabaniss, who said his office was at Massie Hall on the campus of Kentucky Wesleyan College. He invited me in for a meeting, and soon I headed over to a station I had not listened to before, WKWC 90.3 FM. I knew the existed, but had never tuned in. Mark wanted to see me on a Saturday. He was overseeing the Saturday morning taped programs. They had a block of talk shows like Consider the Alternatives, Firing Line, and a kids’ show called Pickleberry Pie. The studio at that time was tiny, and all taped programs had to be played from Studio B across and down the hall. Mark explained that they needed volunteer “staffers” to run various shows like the “Afternoon Concert.” I took Friday afternoon as my first shift. We did a primitive form of voice tracking, where Mark Cabaniss would voice the show on a tape cartridge, which the operator (me) was to play in between records. Mark would say all the fancy names and which symphony or movement it was. It was my job to make sure I played the right record, and of course be there to flip it over if I necded to. But, in the middle of the shift, Mark would say, “we’ll be back to the Afternoon Concert, after news from United Press International.” The cart would stop, I would open the mic, and “be a star” for a 3 minute or so newscast. The early ones were shaky. But I eventually got better, and within a year was promoted to The Road Show, and afternoon jazz program where the announcers got to introduce every song. No more voice tracks. We picked out the songs and played them, and did news, sports and weather ourselves.
We had a General Manager, Professor (later, Doctor) Gary Drum. He had founded the station in 1983. He was directly in charge of Sonshine, the weekend Contemporary Christian Music shows. Sonshine was on Friday nights 10pm to 2am, Saturday from 9pm to 1am, and Sunday night 10 to midnight. There was a great staff, including Gary, Kevin Hill, Mark Main, and others. Gary came to me and said there was an opening coming up on Saturday night, and asked if I wanted to try it. I gladly accepted. I was soon the host of the early part of Saturday night Sonshine. Kevin Hill, who worked at a local restaurant, came in after me smelling of food. I stayed with Sonshine for several years, even after my entry into commercial radio, which we’ll read about in Part 2. I even went on later to host Late Night Express, an 80’s show, starting in 1991. I am appreciative to WKWC 90.3 (now known as Panther Radio) for giving me my start.
Rob Nichols is the host of the Big O Morning Show on 94.7 WBIO and the Blue Star Restoration Midday Show on 92.9 WVJS.
