[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 18, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E507-E508]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO MR. JIM DICK AND WIVK

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 18, 2003

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Jim Dick and 
WIVK, the radio station he created in Knoxville, Tennessee. On 
Wednesday, March 19, WIVK celebrates its 50th anniversary.
  Five decades ago, Jim Dick applied for and received a license from 
the Federal Communications Commission to build and operate a 1,000-watt 
AM radio station. At that moment, Dick Broadcasting Company was 
created.
  Jim Dick is certainly a visionary. He was one of the first people in 
the radio business to understand the importance of broadcasting on the 
FM dial. He is also one of the most admired and respected businessmen 
in East Tennessee.
  WIVK-AM debuted playing a wide range of music including gospel, 
country, jazz and others. The station only operated during the daytime 
hours in the early years. WIVK has grown immensely since then and is 
now a part of the Las Vegas based Citadel Communications Corporation.
  Jim Dick and everyone at WIVK have always supported the community and 
have given so much to the citizens of their listening area. Almost 
everyone in East Tennessee relies on WIVK for great country music, 
timely news and information, as well as radio broadcasts of University 
of Tennessee football games.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to again congratulate Jim Dick, all of the 
staff at WIVK, Citadel Communications Corporation and all of those 
people who have given so much of themselves to make this great radio 
station the best in the Country. I have also included an article from 
the Knoxville News-Sentinel that celebrates the 50-year anniversary of 
WIVK that I would like to call to the attention of my fellow Members 
and other readers of the Record.

           [From the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Mar. 16, 2003]

    The Frog Hits 50: WIVK Celebrates Half a Century of Broadcasting

                           (By Wayne Bledsoe)

       Radio station WIVK is as much a part of East Tennessee as 
     UT football and the rush for bread and milk at the first hint 
     of snow.
       Through five decades of changing musical tastes, the 
     station has unapologetically played country music and 
     retained an unprecedented share of the listening audience. 
     The station has helped launch the careers of country stars 
     and even influenced the general direction of country music.
       ``It's hard to come up with another station to compare them 
     to because WIVK is such a standout in the radio community,'' 
     said Angela King, associate country editor of Radio & 
     Records. ``People in the industry say, `This is a model of 
     how a radio station should be.' ''
       On Wednesday, March 19, WIVK will celebrate its 50th 
     anniversary with a gala that will include testimonials from 
     stars like Dolly Parton, Kenny Chesney, Kenny Rogers, Travis 
     Tritt, Charlie Daniels and Ray Price. There'll also be 
     stories and reminisces from the station's longtime 
     personalities.
       Few would've given the station much hope in 1953 when young 
     radioman Jim Dick put WIVK-AM on the air with $3,000 of his 
     savings. At the time WIVK was just a 1,000-watt station that 
     operated from sunrise to sunset only.
       Dick initially rented space on the second floor of Greene's 
     Hardware on North Gay Street and broadcast at 850 on the AM 
     dial. Dick didn't think the location of the station mattered 
     much.
       ``Absolutely the most important thing I did was to 
     determine who were good people and hired them,'' said Dick, 
     who is now 84.
       Dick's ``good people'' became regional icons: ``Big Jim'' 
     Hess, Claude ``The Cat'' Tomlinson, and later, Bobby Denton, 
     Ed Brantley, Mike Hammond, Mickey Dearstone, Dave Young and 
     other personalities became part of Knoxville's cultural 
     landscape.
       In its infancy the station aired programs hosted by gospel 
     music impresario the Rev. J. Bazzel Mull and millionaire 
     grocer Cas Walker, who began broadcasting musical shows in 
     1929 to promote his grocery stores.
       The station also hired A. C. Wilson, one of the city's 
     first black disc jockeys in 1954. Wilson hosted ``The Acey 
     Boy Show,'' which featured jazz and hot rhythm and blues.
       ``He was a super guy,'' recalled Dick. ``If he hadn't have 
     died, he could've really gone places.''
       Hess and Tomlinson were the first two disc jockeys to 
     establish themselves at the station with the team ``Big Jim'' 
     and ``Little Alf.'' The duo's mischief on the air was but a 
     pale shadow of the trickery they pulled off it.
       They particularly delighted in playing jokes on Rev. Mull, 
     whose eyesight was so poor he was classed as legally blind. 
     Once Hess and Tomlinson put Mull's car up on blocks just 
     barely off the ground while the preacher and his wife were on 
     the air. When the Mulls attempted to leave the station with 
     Mrs. Mull at the wheel, the car's tires simply spun in the 
     air. Thinking the vehicle was somehow stuck, Mull got out and 
     pushed it, knocking it off the blocks and sending it and Mrs. 
     Mull sailing.
       On another occasion the pranksters rigged the studio so 
     that when Mull's program went on the air, what the preacher 
     heard in the studio was Elvis Presley singing ``All Shook 
     Up,'' while the radio audience listened to the gospel number 
     that was actually on the turntable.
       One of the pair's jokes riled Mull so badly that he 
     promised to go to Dick and get them fired. But Tomlinson, who 
     was a master mimic and could imitate Dick perfectly, slipped 
     into the boss' office before Mull got there. The preacher's 
     eyesight was so poor, he didn't detect the impersonation, and 
     Tomlinson promised Mull that severe punishment would be dealt 
     to Hess and himself.
       ``The Rev. J. Bazzel Mull was very important to WIVK's 
     early success,'' said Dick, who could be both amused and 
     frustrated by his employees' antics.
       It wasn't the jokes, though, that finally drove Mull from 
     WIVK; it was a referendum to legalize liquor in Knoxville in 
     the early 1960s.
       Both Mull and Cas Walker were vehemently against the 
     measure and campaigned vigorously against it on shows. But 
     Dick read an editorial on the air supporting legal liquor, 
     and his comments were reprinted in the News Sentinel.
       The measure passed, and ``the next morning Mull was packing 
     up his records and he left the station,'' Dick remembered.
       Rock `n' roll did serious damage to country music's 
     popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Stations across 
     the country abandoned the format for Top 40. Local country 
     favorite WNOX had already abandoned country music when WIVK 
     followed suit in 1961.
       That was about the time a young announcer named Bobby 
     Denton was trying to break into radio.
       ``I started in radio by announcing drag races from 
     Maryville Drag Strip after school on WSKT,'' said Denton, who 
     is now officially retired but still serves as a consultant to 
     current WIVK owner Citadel Communications.
       Denton became acquainted with Tomlinson, who then persuaded 
     Dick to give Denton a job at WIVK. But Dick was not impressed 
     with his new hire's broadcasting skills.
       ``He said, `This guy is so bad we have to get him off the 
     air!' '' Denton recalled.
       During the station's three years of playing Top 40, they 
     found the field crowded. WNOX and WKGN dominated the Top 40 
     format, and in 1964, WIVK moved to all-country programming.
       In 1965 two pivotal events took place. WIVK was granted 
     permission to increase its AM signal from 1,000 to 50,000 
     watts and an FM sister station was established. FM's 
     replacement, because of its clearer signal, of the AM radio 
     format was still years away, but Dick had the foresight to 
     promote FM heavily from the outset.
       ``We would sign off at sunset and say, `If you just have 
     half a radio, we'll have to say goodnight until tomorrow 
     morning. But if you have a whole radio, you can tune us in at 
     107.7 FM.' '' Dick recalled. ``Car dealerships would tell us 
     that people came in wanting to buy a car with a `whole 
     radio.' '' By the mid-1970s, however, FM was the dominant 
     frequency.
       With its new, more powerful signal, WIVK-AM shifted into 
     high gear. Longtime morning disc jockey Tomlinson created the 
     characters ``Ol' Man Schultz'' and simple soul ``Lester 
     Longmire.'' The characters would remain regional favorites 
     for the next 25 years.
       The station also began hosting a series of country concerts 
     and championing country performers. In its early days the 
     station had had young singer Dolly Parton performing in its 
     small downstairs auditorium on Cas Walker's program. She had 
     also recorded early demos after hours in the station's 
     studios.
       By the mid-1960s the station was beginning to wield enough 
     influence to have a big impact in the country music field. 
     For example, Denton has long been credited with persuading 
     Jerry Lee Lewis to give country music a shot when his rock 
     'n' roll career was at an ebb.
       ``We became good friends, and he would come to my house,'' 
     Denton recalled. ``I think I just said `Jerry Lee, I think if 
     you would record country, people would buy it.' ''
       Lewis replied that he was country and was a far sight 
     better country singer than some of the current country stars. 
     Shortly thereafter, in 1968, Lewis began a string of country 
     Top 10 hits.
       Other stars have credited the station with helping 
     establish their careers. Alabama's Randy Owen has long 
     recounted how he and his wife stopped at the station with the 
     first single recorded by the group, which was then calling 
     itself Wild Country. Owen went inside and asked then-program 
     director Denton if he would take time to listen to the 
     record.
       ``We listened to it,'' Denton recalled, ``and I said 
     `That's pretty good!' ''
       Owen and his wife then drove down Kingston Pike and were on 
     their way to the

[[Page E508]]

     band's Myrtle Beach base when Denton put the single on the 
     air.
       ``Randy said he just pulled the car over and started 
     hugging his wife and crying because that was the first time 
     he had ever heard his song on the radio,'' Denton recalled.
       Kenny Rogers' first appearance as a country performer was 
     at one of the station's concerts in 1975.
       ``He was scared to death,'' remembered Denton. ``He didn't 
     know how the crowd would respond to him.''
       East Tennessee natives Con Hunley and current superstar 
     Kenny Chesney were also championed early on the station.
       Ed Brantley, now WIVK's vice-president and general manager, 
     started at the station in 1973 as a part-time announcer and 
     hosted the station's first call-in talk show, ``Sound Off.''
       ``That was when country definitely wasn't the cool 
     format,'' said Brantley, ``but the people who did like it 
     were a solid base.''
       The ``solid base'' became even more solid as the decade 
     went on with the station drawing an almost unheard of 20-plus 
     market share. Much of that had to do with the station 
     establishing a solid news department and broadcasting regular 
     weather reports and school closings. In 1978 the station 
     began broadcasting UT football games, which further 
     solidified its audience base.
       Some of the WIVK's success was due to its programmers 
     knowing the tastes of the audience. Brantley said the station 
     took chances with several artists who dipped their toes into 
     country. When the Pointer Sisters released the song 
     ``Fairytale,'' WIVK was one of the first to add it to the 
     regular rotation. The station was also an early supporter of 
     Olivia Newton-John's music.
       ``We played a lot of crossover,'' said Brantley, ``and then 
     with `Urban Cowboy' it just broke loose.''
       At that time the station was receiving ratings for its AM 
     and FM stations as one number, sometimes giving it better 
     than a 30-point market share. Typical successful stations in 
     other similar-sized markets were happy when they hit a 10 
     share.
       Through the years a few local stations have challenged WIVK 
     by going with a country format, but none have succeeded.
       ``Our research showed that it would take a direct 
     competitor five years and $5 million dollars in advertising 
     and promotions to even compete with us,'' Denton said.
       The only time that WIVK-FM seemed vulnerable was when 
     Claude Tomlinson became ill in 1990. During his illness, the 
     station would let Tomlinson broadcast from his home and 
     sometimes his hospital bed.
       Tomlinson died in 1991 and was replaced by the team Darren 
     Wilhite and Tim Wall. The duo remained with the station for 
     six years until they were replaced by Andy (Jerry Chistopher 
     Ritchie) and Alison (West) in 1997.
       Ritchie said that his and West's goal in coming to such a 
     hugely successful station was to ``just not screw it up.'' 
     They were surprised by the career longevity they encountered.
       ``It's pleasantly unusual to find anybody who's been at the 
     same station for five years, much less 35,'' said Ritchie. 
     ``It's exciting to find some stability.''
       In fact, the station's personalities have nearly all been 
     with WIVK for more than five years and have become part of 
     the culture as their predecessors did. Andy and Alison, 
     Gunner, Colleen Addair, Hoss and Jack Ryan are all part of 
     the fabric of East Tennessee.
       After the FM station became the dominant vehicle for WIVK, 
     the AM station in 1987 moved to 990-AM, the former frequency 
     of WNOX. In 1992 it shifted to all-talk and news format and 
     became the region's most popular station in that format.
       Jim Dick is no longer involved with either station. Dick 
     Broadcasting sold WIVK and 11 other stations to Las Vegas-
     based Citadel Communications for $300 million in 2000. 
     However, Dick does visit the station and has warm feelings 
     for the people still involved with the project he began 50 
     years ago.
       ``I'm very proud of them,'' says Dick. ``Very proud.''

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