Beilue: KWTS, after 50 years, has been a springboard for hundreds
As the relatively new director of the radio/television program and the two-year-old campus radio station at then-West Texas State University, Paul Matney settled into his office early one morning in March 1973.
He may have had time to sit down before his phone rang. It was Jack Walker, the speech department chairman and Matney’s boss. Be in my office in 30 seconds, Matney was told.
“Whatever this was, I knew it wasn’t going to go well,” Matney said.
It didn’t.
“Did you listen to the radio station last night?” Walker said.
Since KWTS was powered — if you can call it that — at six watts, no, Matney said, he hadn’t. KWTS couldn’t be heard off campus.
Walker proceeded to tell him what he missed. One of the nighttime disc jockeys — “a likeable smart aleck,” Matney recalled — had issued a challenge. This was the height of the streaking fad in which bold, and often cold, people ran around nude publicly. It was a tempting delight on college campuses.
The DJ had challenged a men’s dorm and a women’s dorm to meet that night near the library for a streaking contest. Participation was high. No one knew how a horse got involved, but one did. At some point, a woman did a Lady Godiva impersonation, got on the horse and rode throughout parts of campus.
Word traveled faster than the horse and naked rider. It wasn’t long before news of the streakathon reached Paige Carruth, vice president of student affairs. As they say, it floats downhill, and that’s why Matney was in Walker’s office by early the next morning.
There are several silver linings to the story. One, listenership proved to be pretty high on campus. Secondly, that didn’t end Matney’s academic career, as he would eventually become the president of Amarillo College. And finally, the incident didn’t shut down the fledgling radio station.
Streaking soon ended, and certainly the contest challenge did. But as for KWTS, well, it’s still going, and much stronger than in its fly-by-night infancy. The 50th anniversary of the campus radio station was celebrated on Homecoming weekend with more than 200 alumni in attendance.
Several thousand have come through KWTS
“Working at the station was definitely the time where I grew the most and kinda found myself,” said Jen Smith, who graduated in 2006. “I was always kind of the oddball in high school. It helped me find out things about myself, that I can be goofy and funny and still make a job out of it.”
Through the decades, KWTS has had at least 3,000 students come through its door as on-air talent, show producers, program or news directors — in essence, to learn the radio craft. Throughout, long-lasting bonds were forged between students from different hometowns with a like interest who were thrown into the mix of odd hours and creativity and having a place to call home.
“It was like a replacement family,” said Scott Stockdale, who arrived at WT from Charlotte, North Carolina, in the early 1980s. “We did everything together. It might be time to go eat, and there might be one or two of us, or there might be six or eight of us. We came to depend on each other if for nothing else for emotional support.”
KWTS launched at 3 p.m. April 12, 1972. Maintenance staff mounted the antennae. The transmitter was in a closet in the first of three locations in the old Fine Arts building. Six watts came bursting forth on various transistor radios and car radios — as long as the car didn’t leave campus.
When Matney took over as faculty adviser for the radio station in addition to his duties as an instructor of speech and communication, it wasn’t like he was combing through a wealth of radio experience to run KWTS.
Listen to the radio? Yes, he did. Work in radio? Not so much.
Then Jamey Neill showed up. He would become a longtime fixture in Amarillo radio with the on-air name of Jamey Karr. As a student from a small town outside of El Paso, he introduced himself to Matney, who was looking for a station manager.
“I asked him if he had any experience, and he said yes,” Matney said. “I asked, ‘What kind?’ Jamey said, ‘Well, I’ve been working at a radio station back home since I was 14.’ I said, ‘You’re hired.’”
Randy Ray came to WT from Pampa in 1980. Two years later, the station was blasting at 100 watts mainly because the Federal Communications Commission required it. That meant a new board and new equipment, and KWTS now reached the outskirts of Canyon. Those were heady times.
Ray, like most of his like-minded friends, held a variety of positions at the station. Now, on the WT faculty since 2002, he is the adviser for KWTS and its chief engineer in addition to being an associate lecturer of media communications.
“The format of the radio station has changed through the years,” Ray said, “but when KWTS first went on the air, it was randomly what the DJ wanted to play. When I got there, it was Top 40 and Top 40 for a good while. Then in the mid-1990s, it became independent rock.”
In 1996, KWTS was surging with 6,000 watts, which is what it is today on its 91.1 FM frequency, and in 2006, moved to the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex. On Oct. 1, the station switched to an all-1990s format with continued special shows for country, Latino music and other formats. As has been for a long time, there’s a station general manager and program director with students underneath them.
What was once under the speech department grew into radio/television, then radio/television/film and on to mass communications and finally media communications.
Station has spawned job offers – and marriages
Many job offers have been credited to the radio station — longtime KAMR co-anchor Jackie Kingston is one of the more notable — but so too have at least two marriages. Stockdale and Debbie Lewis were part of KWTS in the early 1980s. Lewis was news director, and Stockdale hosted a special show, “Dimensions of Rock.”
“One night I put on a live version of ‘Freebird,’ which is about 15 minutes long,” Stockdale said, “and I locked the studio, went to my dorm, got more records, and made it back in time.”
Lewis thought Stockdale looked like the Dutch Boy painter, with the blond hair and the white overalls.
“He was a diamond in the rough,” she said. “I saw potential. He was and is a sweet person.”
A friend who worked at KWTS was in a serious car accident over the Christmas holidays in 1983. Stockdale and Lewis were about the only ones remaining in Amarillo among radio station workers during the break. They went to the hospital daily, and from that, their own relationship began.
That began dating in 1984, and were married in 1986. Attendants in their wedding were all television/radio employees. Both worked in local media — Stockdale for three radio stations, including KGNC, and Lewis as a newsroom assistant for KVII, then in public relations for St. Anthony’s hospital.
They left the area and got out of the business in 1988. Stockdale is the Tennessee representative for admissions for University of Northwestern Ohio, while his wife teaches mass communications and public speaking at Motlow State Community College in Smyrna, Tenn.
They have two adult sons and a 16-month-old granddaughter. They couldn’t wait to make the reunion trip from their home in Paris, Tenn.
“Some of these people I had not seen since I left WT,” Stockdale said. “I hugged a lot of necks.”
A little more than 20 years later, Jen Laxson and Anthony Smith made KWTS their working home. Laxson scrapped the idea of teaching for broadcasting after seeing a video at Buff Branding her freshman year in 1999.
She held a number of positions, from promotions to hosting an experimental rock show. After leaving to be general manager of the radio station in her hometown of Spearman, she returned to WT and did the same for KWTS.
“You can hear all sorts of stuff in a classroom,” Jen said, “but until you get to press a button and mess up or have a great shift, that’s the experience that’s invaluable.”
In 2001, freshman Anthony Smith showed up from Hugoton, Kan., and volunteered to do anything. When on air, Jen was “Mojo,” while Anthony was “Mad Dog.” It wasn’t long before the two became, in Jen’s term for that time, “besties.” They didn’t date until 2006, and married in 2008 with one son, Jude, 11.
They both dabbled in television and radio, but both switched careers. Anthony is field service trainer and sales consultant for Sysco Foods. Jen works with special needs students at Reeves-Hinger Elementary School in Canyon. Jude was diagnosed with autism at age 3.
“Out of my entire life – other than the birth of my son, and getting married – the life lessons from the station, those are the days I will cherish my whole life,” Anthony said. “I can’t think of too many times that weren’t fond memories.”
Editor's note: This column originally appeared on the WT website.
Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu .
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Beilue: KWTS, after 50 years, has been a springboard for hundreds
