He was a college radio DJ on WCWP, Post College Long Island, and interned at WWRL. He became a Program and Music Director at 106.7 WTLC, Indianapolis. He was brought on at WLAC to replace Hep cat John R. (John Richbourg) at WLAC in 1973, which led to his hosting Soul Countdown 5 years later. The program ran until 1980. personally, I blame disco for it's untimely demise.Let me frame that a little. Between 1977 and 1980 WLAC was the only radio station in America owned by Billboard magazine. They bough it from orignal owners Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee. Life and Casualty Insurance had made a big mistake. In 1972 they brought in a consultant who tried to go Top-40. John R. was essentially forced out. Amongst this chaos spider rose up. Kent Burkhardt, the man who brought you AOR, (WKTU, WQXI etc) came in to consult on their poppier format. But WLAC held onto the evening soul programming. That was where Spider came in and killed. He's got an aircheck up on his website.
Wood Sudbrink bought the station in 1980 and went all talk. In the 1980s the soul and gospel that once was carried at night was trimmed back until there was just brokered religious talk. When Clear Channel bough the station at least that distateful practice ended. On the other hand now its' another cookie-cutter conservative talk outlet under the Fox News talk brand. More here.
Spider survived his departure from WLAC just fine. He became the west coast director for Sugar Hill records. In 2008 it was rumored he was in talks with XM about his own program. In the end I don't think that happened.
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You could frame the WLAC history more accurately. Burkhart's primary activity was working with WLAC-FM which became WKQB-FM/Rock 106 and competed for a couple of years with heritage WKDF-FM for #1 12+ in the market, winning one book. WLAC-FM was very successful as a Top-40 station and Spider had good numbers in the early evening, but most revenue was still 6A-7P. John R was effectively forced out and Hoss Allen was relegated to all Gospel pre-recorded shows after midnight. The format changes on both WLAC and WKQB had nothing to do with lack of success: Woody (not Wood) Sudbrink bought the stations with the intention of putting his favorite formats on, wanting nothing to do with Top-40 or AOR; he even announced the pending format changes at the same time the purchase of the stations was announced, which was unheard of in a time when the FCC required a buyer to keep his mitts off until the sale was approved.
ReplyDeleteSpider did do well on the West Coast. He now reads liner cards voice-tracking middays on 94.5 Hippie Radio, a signal-challenged FM move-in to Nashville.
I wasn't gauging Spiders show on KLAC on ratings.. by "killed' i mean that it was awesome. But I do appreciate the stats. I didn't have that data. I also didn't know he was on 94.5 WHPY!
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