Transcript
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This podcast is brought to you in part by Coke, Buffalo Wild Wings, Southern Immediate Care, Guaranteed Labels, Central State Bank, Sunrise docks, bankers Bounty, Dr. Thomas Dudney and the Green Monster Fishing Light. Now back to Bubba on the LA.
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Bubba on the Lake speaks through the air Voices rippling waters the world stops to stare News and the scores text spins on his wheel national renown the truth he reveals from the mellow yellow studio he sends the sound echoes through the nation where legends are found the lake holds the power ripples don't Bubba on the airwaves riding waves that won't.
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Die well hello again everybody and welcome to Bubba on the Lake. It is our podcast production of yours truly, Bill Bubba Bussy, your semi retired, mostly washed up host, formerly of the Rick and Bubba show and now glad to be with you here on Bubba on the Lake and the Tailgate Tailgate Show. Let's not forget that we're broadcasting from the Melayella Studio and Our website is bubbaonthelake.com Our message line is 308 Big Lake. 308 Big Lake. You can leave a message. It may or may not make it to air. Well, we have a very special show today as we're going to dive into memory lane. Now this will be somewhat of a specialized show and it may not be for everybody, but hopefully it will be entertaining and interesting enough that you can stay with it. We're going to reflect on how I got started in this business and not as much about me, but the place. The college radio station at Jacksonville State University, W L J s better known as 92J, where I got to start. And I'm going to tell you about that. I've told the story before, but I'm going to tell it again and I'm also going to talk to some people who were very important in getting that going and why the timing is now. This coming Monday, September 29th, 2025 will be the 50 year anniversary of that station going on the air and it literally has helped hundreds of students who went into media in various forms or fashion. I know several that went to cnn. I knew many that went into the radio business. I knew several that were in the morning show business in Birmingham. At one time you could not flip around on a Birmingham radio station in the morning and not hear a 92J graduate. So we want to dive into that a little bit today and I want to tell you about that. It started with me when a friend of mine, Greg Warren, who has since passed away, we were CB radio friends in about 10th grade. He told me, and he was a few years ahead of me, that he was working at the. At the new college radio station. It had just gone on the air not too long ago and he invited me to come up and see the place. Well, I came up and man, when I saw all those meters flashing and those lights flashing and all those records on the wall and I don't know, it just. Something hit me and I never got it out of my system. And Greg let me stay and watch him do his shift. And then I got. So when he was doing a shift, I would go up. I was still in high school, couldn't get on the air there because I wasn't in college yet. And I would help him pull his albums or put his albums up, you know, kind of be that right hand man, you know, while he was doing his shift. And I got to know some of the people there. And then because of where our high school was, we were actually on the campus of Jacksonville State. We were able to take college classes while we were still in high school. Now don't. I about drove my counselor crazy because I did trade school and I also did college classes and. And I remember her telling me, we've never had anybody do that before. And I said, well, I've never been through here. It's probably not the best thing to say, but, you know, when you're young like that, you're full of energy and other things. Now, I won't quote that saying today, but when I started taking college classes there, then I qualified to get on the air. So to do that though, you had to prove that you could do it. So you had to do what was called an air check. You had to go in the production room, you had to SEG records, you had to talk. And an air check was basically the parts of you talking with the beginning and the ends of the songs, but not the songs in between. So if you had an air check, you usually did it on a cassette recorder or reel to reel. You would hand it in, they would listen to it and they'd say, okay, well you're clear to be on the air when we can schedule you. Well, at the time there were 20, 25 kids there. And I mean, it was a long list and a waiting list to even get on, get online, get on air. I mean. So I remember during a Christmas break when everybody went home, I got a call from the station manager, it was Alan, Alan Rhodes at the time, and he said, do you want to do a shift? We have one open from 2 till 6am on Saturday night, I said, absolutely, I'll be there. I mean, I didn't think twice about it. So my first shift on 92J was from 2am till 6am on Sunday morning. And I did that for a while. And then at times the Sunday morning host would not show up and I would have to stay on and do a double shift. It was a little bit different because it had Christian music, contemporary music on Sunday morning, which I didn't know anything about. Okay, just didn't know anything about it. So that part was very difficult. But the two to six part was fun because we played top 40 music. We, you know, we. We treated that radio station like it was a commercial station. We had a format, we had rotation of different song groups. We followed the charts. We had a clock with dots on it, and we basically had to pick songs out of that colored dots. Some of them were hot. They were like the top 10 songs. Some of them were recurrent, which was the next group. Some of them were gold. They were, you know, considered classic. Some of them were new and upcoming. So we had to follow all that and do all that. And, you know, it just, it hit me. I loved it. I ended up getting to do some better shifts, some nighttime shifts, like 6 to 10. Got a job at WPID in Piedmont. And I remember during my senior year in high school, I was going to WPID in Piedmont. I would work from noon till sign off, which was about five or six o' clock because they had to sign off at night. And then my shift started at 92J. So I would get back, I would slide into the campus, into Bibb Graves Hall. I would run in there, I would get there around 6, 6:30, and I would be on till 10 or midnight, just depending on how the shifts were stacked in at that time. And I thought it was the greatest thing on earth. I really did. And at one point, the program director, who was Troy Hayes at the time, pulled me off the air and said that I sounded too Southern, that I needed to lose the accent. And it hurt my feelings terribly at the time. But it was a great blessing because it taught me to. I wanted to stay around the radio station. I wanted to be in that environment, that culture, that community, which I enjoyed. And man, there was a cast of characters there now, I mean to tell you, there was some characters, but it forced me to learn programming, it forced me to learn promotions, it forced me to learn engineering, which I had a little bit of a talent for the electrical side of it. Anyway. I was a ham radio Operator. And Major Turner that was in charge of it was also an engineer. And he kind of took me under his wing. And there'd only been one or two other ones that ever had any interest in the engineering part of it. But me and Major Turner got very close and he brought me along and I became an assistant engineer for him and was on the work study program and ended up being there when we moved the station to south hall. And I worked with the contractors there that were building the TV studio. So I was there for a while, on and off during my entire college career, which we used to joke on the show that it was 10 years, a decade of learning. It actually was 12, but no one would believe that. So we just rounded it to 10 and made a joke out of it. But on and off. And I did. I quit several times because I had jobs. I took jobs in radio and TV. I worked at Channel 40 when it was in Anniston WHMA. I did engineering jobs. Ended up going back. I mean, I got into ownership management. I ended up selling TV for a while and landed back in Gadsden as the engineer for big wax and Q104. And that's how I actually ended up on the air with Rick. And the Rick and Bubba show was born. And then we know how that went. That was 31 years in the making. So it all goes back to the college radio station. If the people had not had that in place and I'd not had that burning desire to do that once I saw that operation, and I don't know how to explain it, you just, you see something and you know it's right for you. Kind of like love at first sight, I guess. But we had a wonderful time there. It wasn't all, you know, good news. And like I said, there was some disappointing days. But it overall was a great experience and it led to over 40 years in the broadcasting business for me and without that station, I never would have got that chance. I never would have got that chance to get on the air and then to get some other paying jobs from that. And it has been a wonderful career for me. Sadly, that industry has changed a lot. I don't know that it's necessarily for the best, but. But there's still opportunities out there for people who want to get out there and make some noise. Even in podcasting we have now, people ask me all the time, how do I get started in radio? And I said, well, you need to find somebody will let you on the air. Maybe a non commercial, maybe a college station, maybe AM somewhere. Just get on the air, start doing your thing and developing your. Your on air personality. And like I say, I never had the voice for it. There were so many guys that had these great voices, but I was not one of them. So I just had to kind of rely on personality and talking about things I knew about. And that seemed to work out for me. So it was a great experience, though. 92J turning 50 years old September 29th. We're going to try to be on site that day. Got several things going on. Had a big reunion this past weekend with the home football game. I was not able to attend that I understand we had over 100 people there who had come through that radio station and so many of them went on to so many jobs. And I am so thankful for Major Turner. We actually named a road after him at one point, giving me that opportunity and taking me under his wing and just letting me be a part of this wonderful, wonderful thing we call 92J. We'll be right back. I'm going to talk to some other people involved and the guy who started it all. We'll be right back. You're listening to Bubba on the Lake.