WBMI 1055 Back on the Air

[Colonel Flagg]

WGMM (103.1 FM) in Gladwin back then was in MONO than STEREO back in early 1983 till around 1987!! (Mid-Michigan's True Rock!)

I remember it, but I'd still enjoy hearing an aircheck or two.

[BayCityJohn2337]

The best way to play small town radio is wal marts philosophy stack it high and sell it cheap. 3.00 dollars a Hollar for a 30 second ad.

[DJ-MichaelAngelo]

Their format certainly wasn't perfect - they played too much Madonna (her current stuff at the time), boy and girl band stuff, Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, Kid Rock, etc, but it was never enough to make me change the station.

re: 98.5 WUPS -- sorry! I may have had something to do with that I worked there in Mt Pleasant for a couple years around that time, and while I wasn't the MD or PD I did have somewhat of a (minor) say in some of the individual songs we played. Example: Cher "Believe" was everywhere around this time (the original album version produced by Metro UK) and I remember I had something to do with the station selecting the Xenomania 7" Mix for airplay instead, when all the other channels were playing the LP Version. I was a big big Madonna fan back then (still am!) this would've been around the time of her singles Don't Tell Me, American Pie, Music, Beautiful Stranger (I think?). I remember editing out that awful spoken intro from the "Music" single for our airplay (that weird vocoder type robo-voice that starts out the song with "hey Mr. DJ, put a record on, I wanna dance with my baby"). So that way we could start right in with the (instrumental) portion of the track and get a :30 sec or so of talk time. Lots of boy-band and girl-band type pop fluff as well, yes, and I loved it all, along with some of the more rock-tinged currents we played, which I loved too. Honestly I have great nostalgia for that time period in music - every genre!

At the time I just took it for granted that WUPS aired a bunch of commercial/current Top 40 songs, of all types, but back then I didn't really understand terms like Hot AC or Adult CHR or whatever. I just loaded the songs into the system that were marked for me on the "new release" compilation CD's we got every month from the DJ-service companies. Can't remember who....TM Century? Ultimix? Promo Only? If I remember right, the main guy at the station at the time was CJ Russell, who did the morning show with Chris-something, the "C&C Morning Machine" he was the boss guy in charge, and the only other person's name who I remember working with was Corrine Williamson in sales, who was a great gal - down to earth and so much fun. I started out at WUPS as a college intern in '99 or maybe '00, and my last day was June 22, 2001 when I left the station to move back to Grand Rapids.



That was me about 20 yrs and 40 lbs ago, while they never let me actually drive the famous WUPS "hummer" truck around town (which always seemed to be in the shop for some repair or another) I did do a couple remote gigs for them, plus on-air talent shifts as "Mike Richards" and I was usually the CMU Sports board operator for the basketball games. Near the end my official title was "Production Director" I think (write, produce, record most of the ad spots) a task for which I was probably underqualified....but then again they only paid $15K/year salary + no benefits, so I had to really stretch to make ends meet. I think at one point I even applied to get (and qualified for!) food stamps....radio was not known as a high-paying industry back then (unless your name was Casey Kasem or Howard Stern) -- I dunno maybe things have changed since then?