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WRGC marks 50th anniversary of station’s founding
By Justin Goble
Jackson County’s local radio station, WRGC 680 AM, celebrates its 50th anniversary today (Thursday).
The only commercial radio station in Jackson County, WRGC had its first broadcast on Nov. 8, 1957. It was started by “Uncle Jimmy” Childress of Sylva and Harold Thoms of Asheville as WMSJ.
Childress said the two started the station after he worked at WHCC in Waynesville and saw there was no radio station in Jackson County.
“Thoms had a station in Marshall, and I had worked in radio all over the state,” Childress said. “He wanted to see how he could do in smaller markets, since a lot of his stations were in cities like Washington, D.C. So I talked him into starting a station here. It went really well, and eventually I bought his interest in 1962.”
WRGC afternoon disc-jockey Frank Byrd gets ready to play some music during one of the station’s recent broadcasts. The radio station is celebrating its 50th anniversary today (Thursday). Started as WMSJ by “Uncle Jimmy” Childress of Sylva and Harold Thoms of Asheville in 1957, it has been the only commercial radio station in Jackson County. It is now owned by the Georgia-Carolina Radiocasting Company. – Herald photo by Justin Goble.
Childress said he got his start in radio by singing. At first, he was given a half-hour Sunday afternoon show on a station in North Wilkesboro. At the time, he was working in a drug store and doing radio merely as a hobby.
“I’ve often said the only reason I ever had my own radio station was because no one would let me sing enough on theirs,” Childress said. “But in North Wilkesboro, I had a show singing my songs and some by other people. That was all I did for the radio. Well, the sales manager came in the drug store one day and saw me working. He asked me to eat lunch with him and said I should work for the radio station selling advertising since he thought I was a good salesman.
“He asked me for a couple months, and I kept telling him ‘no,’ ” Childress said. “Finally he came in and said if I would sell ads, they would give me a half-hour show on Saturday nights, too. I guess he knew that’s what my weakness would be, so I took him up on it.”
After taking that job, Childress said he began working at stations throughout the state. He gained experience working as a station manager and helping start several other stations before settling in Jackson County.
When starting out, the station was located near where Allison’s Chevrolet currently stands. Its programming was a far cry from what audiences today hear, including a mix of the day’s popular, gospel and country music, along with local news. The station did have “The Trading Post,” where people could call in and put things up for sale or trade free of charge. That 10-minute segment became a lasting part of the station’s programming, serving as the basis for the 15-minute “Tradio” segment that currently runs each weekday from 12:45 to 1 p.m.
At the time, Childress said radio stations didn’t have a single format but played a variety of shows throughout the day. One constant was Childress opening the station’s broadcast day with music and “editorializing” from 6 to 8 a.m. each day on his “Gettin’ Up Time” segments.
According to the Jackson County History Book, those broadcasts gave the station a reputation for being “heavy on community service, editorializing for clean air, for better schools and for new community and library buildings.”
“I used to open with my bunch of malarkey,” Childress said. “I never really had anything written out, so I would just talk about what was on my mind. We’d have a birthday calendar, and I would announce people’s birthdays and things like that. I would play old 78 vinyl records on there too. Some mornings I would pick up something I didn’t like and you could hear me break the record over the microphone.”
The station also played special shows during the weekend. One of the most popular programs was Ronnie’s Record Shack, in which Childress’ teenage son Ronnie would go on the air and play popular records from the day.
According to lifelong Sylva resident (and Herald pressman) Harold Norman, that show was a big deal to local teenagers at the time.
“The kids back then thought that was as big as American Bandstand,” Norman said. “We all really liked the fact that someone our age was playing records on the radio.”
WMSJ spent six years at it’s initial Sylva location before moving to a site on Asheville Highway (where WestCare’s EMS base is today) in 1963. The final move came in 1970, when the station relocated to its current site on Skyland Drive.
“We moved again so we could get a better signal,” Jimmy Childress said. “Down there, I could put two towers.”
According to “The History of Jackson County,” Ronnie Childress designed the current facilities. With the stronger signal and a new building, WMSJ began operating both day and night. Prior to that time, the station had broadcast only during daytime hours.
Other changes came during the 1970s as well. The elder Childress said it was during that decade that the station switched from a variety of programming to a single format.
“That’s when FM started coming around,” Jimmy Childress said. “Before then, no one listened to FM radio. It had slowly became popular, and that’s when everyone started switching over to one format.”
The station also got its current call letters during that decade, but that change came as the result of a tragic accident.
While working at the station on May 13, 1975, Ronnie Childress was electrocuted. Later that year, its call letters were changed to WRGC in his memory.
Despite the accident, Jimmy Childress continued to serve as station manager for nearly 20 years. Though he “retired” from day-to-day operations in the mid-1990s, Jimmy Childress said he would still get on the air from time to time. It was in 2001, after 44 years of owning the station, that Childress sold it to Art Sutton.
WRGC is now run by Georgia-Carolina Radiocasting Company, with Georgia native David Skinner serving as vice-president and general manager. Along with broadcasting local news and sports, the station plays “adult contemporary” music, a format its Web site describes as “music that’s not too hard, but not too soft.”
For his part, Childress said he really enjoyed his four decades on air in Jackson County and is glad to see the radio station is still going strong.
“The people of Jackson County are family,” Childress said. “We moved here and seemed to lock in. I got to know a lot of people over here when I was working in Waynesville, and when my family moved it fit really well. I’m happy that the station is able to continue serving the community.”
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