WBTY Present Day

What is that old saying? Be careful what you wish for? Well, at 24,  I wished to be a Program Director and I got to be one. The one thing I do know, 40 plus years later, is that if I hadn’t gone to Homerville in South Georgia, you wouldn’t be reading this chapter. God has a plan, and it is not always evident at the time.

Mike, Gary, and I travelled up the highway to Homerville, the home of WBTY-FM 105. When we pulled up to the brand new building, Sid, one of the owners, came riding up on his pre-historic sized Farm All tractor to greet us. He was wearing mandatory overalls for the landscape. As I got out of the car, I noticed that the large lot that the station was situated on, was completely barren and looked like the moon with a broadcast tower on it. Union Camp paper company owned almost all of the land in the area. It was a massive pine tree farm split into ten-acre tracts. I feared that we would be broadcasting to more trees than people.

Sid greeted us and we entered the station to meet Berrien Sutton, a local attorney, who was the other owner. Roger, the Sales Manager, was present as well. Steve, the DJ on the air was a young, blonde-haired guy who we could see through the glass window to the main studio. On the monitor in the lobby area, I could hear him segue into the top of the hour Georgia Network Newscast screaming “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah…THE NEWS”. No legal ID of WBTY-FM, Homerville. At that moment, I knew we would be starting from scratch in turning this place into a real radio station. It would be like a radio kindergarten.

We chatted with the owners concerning what they expected which was to essentially make us a good sounding station and bring in some money. They were pretty beaten up by the previous management they had in place. Those guys were crooks and had embezzled a fair amount of money from them with other nefarious acts. Sid and Berrien shared that they announced that they were going to do an audit of the books on a certain day. The night before, mysteriously, the station building burned to the ground. ‘BTY had been housed in a doublewide mobile home so that explained why they rebuilt the studios in a fireproof combination of concrete and block. Until they could get the new studio built, WBTY broadcasted from the back of a tractor trailer in the hot South Georgia heat. All the station documents, what were left of them, were brittle and singed around the edges.  This prior crew was trading commercial airtime for things like canoes and fishing equipment. I saw an above ground swimming pool in records too. Obviously, they were things that a successful radio station needs to operate. Not really, but I would have opted for a big fifteen-inch Studer reel to reel machine for what these guys spent.

Roger piped in with a big smile and said “you gonna like it here so much, you ain’t never gonna want to leave.” That sounded like Hotel California...you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. My eyeballs rotated from side to side.

Even though it was going to be a big chore to restore order to this place, I felt that it could be done. The owners further enticed us with free accommodations in the single wide trailer next door. Mike got them to throw in a full tank of heating oil for the winter and we said yes. Gary was excited because he wanted chickens. I wasn’t sure if he wanted eggs or to eat the chickens. Our musketeer was not only a great guitar player, but he was the cook in the group. So, in November of 1980, we set up shop at We Belong To You.