The studio at WFIV-FM has a classic look. The walls are covered with posters and photos of music artists overlapping each other. WFIV program director Joe Stutler sits at the console, microphones and computers around him while a track by the Tedschi Trucks Band is being sent out over the air, followed by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. WFIV general manager Tony Cox comes in a few minutes later.
With a studio located on Watt Road in West Knoxville, the 6,000-watt WFIV is one of a dwindling number of independent commercial radio stations in the country. The United States government’s Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed rescinded rules on how many stations a company could own and sparked a wave of communications conglomerates buying up locally owned stations. Previous restrictions had also been lifted regarding a station’s obligations to the community it served. All this resulted in turning what were once stations dedicated to their community and independent in their programming into clones of stations in larger cities. The chances of a local artist convincing a local radio station to play his or her music fell to zero.
“A lot of them are programmed by one guy in Atlanta or Chicago or wherever he might be,” says Stutler of the small conglomerate-owned stations. “They’re vanilla. There’s no local added in to it. If you look at Knoxville, Tenn., and you look at Chicago, Ill., and they’re two totally different types of markets. How can you program for a Knoxville and a Chicago and expect it’s going to fit for both? There’s a sound that each has that complements each community.”
The station’s playlist is a healthy dose of classic rock, recent rock favorites as well as local and regionally emerging artists, from Lake Street Dive to Maryville’s Jay Clark.
Locally owned, Horne Radio operates WMTY-AM/FM, WDEH-AM (both located in Sweetwater) and WFIV-FM, which is licensed in Loudon and has a tower in Lenoir City (“just behind the Taco Bell,” says Cox).
Cox had come from a career in print journalism and joined WFIV in 2008. Stutler, who had worked for Knoxville’s Dick Broadcasting after working in radio in the Chicago area, signed on as WFIV’s afternoon disc jockey in 2009 and later became program director.
“Like a lot of other stations we went through a lot of changes in 2008 and ‘9,” says Cox.
The economy had prompted businesses, and especially media, to downsize, shrinking staff to the bare essentials. WFIV was no different. The station currently operates with four full-time and two to three part-time employees. As is the situation at many radio stations, radio personalities record their between-song announcements in advance. However, there is still some real time interaction with listeners. If a listener calls the station wanting to know the name of a song played, their call goes Cox’s voice mail on his personal cell phone and he finds out the information and calls the listener back as soon as possible.
Cox says WFIV focuses on the area around where the station’s signal is strongest, so most of the station’s attention is on Farragut and West Knox County, Lenoir City and Loudon.
“Other stations play local music,” says Cox. “WDVX does a great job and Benny (Smith) at The Rock (WUTK) does a fine job, but they’re like us. They focus on where their signal is the strongest and we just happen to be filling a niche out here.”
Cox sees part of that niche as exposing the station’s audience to Knoxville area artists. In addition tracks simply in the regular playlist, the station offers the all-local Wednesday night “Homegrown” show and presents the Thursday night “Behind the Barn” show, hosted by local musicians Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle, and broadcast live from Barley’s in Maryville. The station’s dedication to the community and local music has resulted in charitable projects that featured local artists, including the “Homegrown for the Holidays” CD series, which benefited Knox Area Rescue Ministries and Ronald McDonald House, as well as fund-raising concerts.
“That’s the sort of thing radio is supposed to do – help the community and local charities,” says Stutler. “I think all the radio stations here do that.”
WFIV is a reporting station for both AAA and Americana charts, which gives the station some national weight. Knowing that WFIV is programmed independently and reports plays for chart tabulation, touring artists regularly stop in to promote shows and new music. Sometimes the artists perform on the air or do interviews. Sometimes, they just stop by because they’re in the neighborhood.
Cox and Stutler say many times they would come to the station and find Nashville-based artist Will Hoge in the parking lot in his RV, ready to deliver new music to the station or sit in to promote a show.
“It seemed like for about an 18-month period he’d be here every month,” says Stutler.
Sometimes station employees would pick up artists from the Bijou or another venue, shuttle them to the station and then back to the venue or even a competing station for another interview.
Stutler relishes being able to broadcast music by those and other artists as he pleases.
“To have the freedom to hear a song and say ‘That’s a great song’ and be able to play it is something. You may be one of only four or five stations in the country playing it, but it’s a great song so you do. It helps that artist get exposure and they’re very appreciative.”
“It’s nice to have the independence inside these four walls so that we can play (Knoxville band) Handsome and the Humbles’ CD from start to finish on a Tuesday night,” says Cox.
The station has played a full album every Tuesday since 2011 — Sometimes it’s by a nationally-known act and other times it is a local artist.
Cox is quick to give credit to other locally-owned and/or independent commercial stations that do their own programming, in addition to the non-for-profit stations WDVX and WUTK. He points to Clinton-based WYSH and WMYL (known as Merle) and WJRV (known as The River, 106.1) as being in a similar situation to WFIV, but with different formats.
“They all have the same struggles that we have and face the same giants,” says Cox. “And when those giants go to battle they take their toll and take their toll on us.”
Of course all of the stations are competing for some of the same advertising dollars in areas where their signals overlap. Small stations, such as WFIV, have to find ways to make themselves stand out.
Again, bucking the trend, Cox and Stutler hope to get an edge by giving listeners exactly what the bigger stations don’t. WFIV broadcasts Farragut High School football games on Friday nights and presents a program focused on local public interest events on Saturday mornings. Recent programs have been as light as celebrating a local dance troupe winning national championship to as heavy as a Chamber of Commerce event on what to do in active shooter situations.
“We’re part of being able to move information out to a wide audience,” says Cox. “If we’re able to get that community feel for the station, we’re doing it.”
