Pensacola’s WCOA – recalled the station’s 98 years on the air.
In late 1925, Pensacola Mayor James Bayliss. City Commissioner Frank Sanders, City Clerk John Frenkel, Sr. and George Hendricks got the city to buy radio equipment from WOAI in San Antonio for $3,500. They assembled the equipment, procured a license in the city’s name and set up a studio on the second floor of Pensacola City Hall, which is now the Pensacola History Museum.
The studio contained a baby grand piano, phonograph and several stand-up microphones. A published schedule showed WCOA broadcast at 7 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with weather reports daily at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Church services aired 11 a.m. and 7:25 p.m. Sundays.
The city-owned station had no national affiliations, so all the music was local, helped promote bands’ performances, and ushered in the Big Band era. The bands included The Fairchild Orchestra, The Florida Footstompers and The Clutter Conservatory Band. Read more.
Taking Care of Enlisted – focused on how the station helped make Pensacola more hospitable to the enlisted stationed at NAS Pensacola.
However, city residents didn’t always appreciate enlisted service members, according to the archives of Pensacola’s first and oldest radio station, WCOA. Sailors and soldiers stationed at NAS Pensacola complained that the town of fewer than 38,000 people in the 1940s had little to offer those on leave.
In January 1941, Frank Gatchrell, who worked in the Aircraft Radio Lab, wrote WCOA, “I am from California and have traveled over 42 of the U.S. states, not to mention other parts of the world, and never in all my life was I ever treated as I have been here … I can truthfully say that I have not enjoyed my stay here as far as recreation goes. The only thing there is to do in this city is to go to jook joints and get sloped up, and then chances are you get into trouble.”
Read more.
Pensacola’s Funnyman Passes – remember long-time radio host, Don Parker
The News Journal profiled him several times. For “A funny thing happened on the way to the sheriff’s office,” published in April 1984, staff writer Lynn Howard described how Parker set up a satirical poem he had written for Hodding Carter III, who served in the Jimmy Carter administration and was addressing the Tiger Bay Club.
“With exaggerated dignity, (Parker) produced a flower vase from under the podium; then a rose which he put into the flower vase,” Howard wrote. “He then placed a brass candlestick on the podium, produced a candle, set it in the candlestick and lit the candle.”
The audience was falling out of its seats with laughter before Parker, dressed in a tuxedo, cleared his throat and read his poem that roasted Carter.
Read more.
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I also creation this compilation about some on my conversations about the station: