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The History of Jones
College Radio
Since 1964 Jones College Radio has broadcast
beautiful music in Jacksonville, FL. Jones College was founded in 1918. Jones
College took over the operations of WKTZ FM in 1964. The Format was changed to
Beautiful Music and Easy Listening. Jones College was the first licensee in
America to have licenses for more than one FM station in the same market. We
were approved to operate both 96.1 class C one hundred thousand watt FM as well
as 90.9 WFAM a five thousand watt FM noncommercial license.
WFAM became the number one station in the
market for Jazz.
The students
of Jones College operated it. After 96.1 FM WKTZ was sold the new
operators changed the format to something other than Beautiful Music. The new
owners of then WKTZ, Kravitz, offered a gift of their newly purchased AM station
as well as our old call letters 'WKTZ FM' if Jones College would take them for
use on the 90.9 WFAM station and broadcast our original format of Beautiful
Music.
We obtained a construction license from the
Federal Communications Commission to increase the power of the newly named WKTZ
to fifty thousand watts. We have been offering our number one rated Beautiful
Music format on this frequency ever since.
Some questions and answers:
Thursday, June 30, 2011
| A recent email from a
listener asked several questions about how we operated in the past.
Specifically did we use Reel to Reel Tapes. here is the answer I gave
him. |
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Yes we did use Reel to Reel Tapes. In the Seventies we converted
from LP Albums (Vinyl) to Tape. We used in those years a lot of
various format providers like; Schulke
(S.R.B.), Bonneville,
and others as well as our own tapes we created and used for
more than a decade. They or we provided the mix of music on reels,
and this was the mix we were looking for. We had a series of 8 Play
decks that had 5 instrumental reels and three vocal, one vocal was
male, one female, and another group vocal reel. Our automation
system back them was crude but affective, starting and stopping the
reels as needed from embedded tones placed into the recordings. The
automation would select the next appropriate play deck, liner, or
other announcement as necessary. We would play two to three to
one mix of Instrumental to vocal. rotating the male, female, and
group. Very much the way we do it now. The reels had to be changed
several times a day as they ran out. We also had an array of 8 Track
style tape decks that could play our liners and IDs, as well
as other announcement as needed. The computer is able to play
whatever we want when ever we want to play it.
FYI. We now have databases of music that are structured very similar
to the tape libraries we once had created ourselves. We took the
music from LP or CD strait to computer. This is the library we use
today. It is still growing. A listener came in several weeks ago and
donated his collection, it contained many of the LPs we
computerized. I am very much looking forward to getting them into
the computer to in many cases improving the sound quality of our
library. I calculated that the donation should replace between 5 and
10 percent of our original LP music. Because our then engineer
altered the tone and compression of the recording to computer those
many years ago the content suffered. Many of those recordings were
Digitally re-mastered from the original source. I am looking forward
to having enough time to do so. It is a very Big Job. It could take
months if dedicated to it. however I have a lot of other business
to do in the name of both the College and the Stations.
More information is available about or format and others that may
continue to play it.
http://www.easylisteninghq.com |
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| The listener also asked
about using the Music of your life format on ether WKTZ or WJAX. Here is
the answer I gave him. |
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You wanted to know about this history of WJAX Radio as well as WKTZ.
I have published some answers for your within our web sites and your
should refer to those first. If you have deeper questions I would be
happy to attempt to answer them. To see more about the history of
WKTZ FM go to:
<This Page>
or
For more information on WJAX 1220 AM go to:
You have asked about Music of Your Life (the format). Indeed a high
quality format. However, we are not ready to change our format on
WKTZ 90.9 FM. As one if not the only remaining Beautiful Music
stations in the country I think we will be staying with our current
format. At least for the foreseeable future. WJAX 1220 AM had
previously used the Music of Your Life format and their Satellite
feed. for WJAX 1220 AM It is a format very similar to our WKTZ FM
format however there are big differences like a lot more vocals and
talk between songs. This is possibly what you are looking for or
like... We felt that the format of Music of Your Life was too
similar to the FM format we are staying with. So the question
became are we splitting a very large audience or finding a new
market place between what we do on the FM and AM stations. We
selected our current AM format because it remained conservative
while achieving a slightly younger demographic. Our market share on
WJAX with its current format has improved over the Music of your
Life format. I still believe that the best format for the AM station
would be Talk and News however our corporation is a not-for-profit
and our Board feels strongly that doing so would jeopardize our
corporate goals of remaining conservative in nature but also very
non-political.
Kenneth L. Jones |
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