You’ve probably seen or heard claims about the inevitable demise of terrestrial radio and print media, the former due to satellite radio, internet radio, and podcasts, and the latter due to the internet.
Yet, the steady decline toward oblivion of those two mediums has done nothing to dissuade former legislator and TV magnate Louis “Woody” Jenkins from launching local print publications and a new radio station.
After selling off all his television stations, including WBTR in Baton Rouge and WSTY in Hammond, Jenkins is now the owner and editor of two community newspapers.
Jenkins and a former partner launched the Central City News in 2005. Two years later, they bought the venerable South Baton Rouge Journal. The next year, the Journal suspended publication. But, hallelujah, in 2012, Jenkins resurrected it from the dead and resumed publishing the previously respected social publication under a new and highly creative moniker, the Capital City News.
And now, Jenkins and his fellow conservatives at the Chamber of Commerce of East Baton Rouge Parish (not to be confused with those commies at the Baton Rouge Area Chamber) are in the middle of launching a brand-new, nonprofit, low-power FM radio station, “The Mighty WSGX 95.1 FM.”
For group of conservatives, that’s a mighty liberal interpretation of the word “mighty.”
Of course, with a maximum effective radiated power of 0.061 kilowatts, Jenkins and his crew are throwing around the term “mighty” mighty loosely. At 61 watts, WSGX is fairly “mighty” compared to something like a USB port. However, it would take 10 WSGXs to equal the power of one of those crappy little complimentary hair dryers you sometimes find in a sketchy hotel room.
With a maximum effective radiated power of 0.061 kilowatts, Jenkins and his crew are throwing around the term “mighty” mighty loosely.
As founder and president of the chamber organization that owns the station, Jenkins said back in March that the station would sign on the air in June. As of this writing, however, the station is conducting what it calls “test broadcasts,” which essentially sound like an eclectic iPod on shuffle. Midnight Star’s “Freakazoid” followed by Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” followed by Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded”? Sure, why the hell not? It’s just a test broadcast.
The delay seems to be the result of the planned transmitter location being moved a few times.
WSGX’s original coverage area, with the transmitter nearly in a graveyard.
The original FCC construction permit, granted in January 2014, shows WSGX’s transmitter was first slated to be located off Sherwood Forest Boulevard behind Parkview Baptist School. What better place for a tool of a dying medium to be than just a few steps away from Resthaven Cemetery?
Well, apparently, Jenkins didn’t see it that way. In May of this year, he filed an application with the FCC to modify the construction permit. It seems he wanted to move the transmitter closer to the I-10/I-12 split, specifically to the backyard of Jefferson Baptist Church.
WSGXs coverage area had the FCC not vetoed Jenkins’ proposed transmitter location on Jefferson Hwy.
Unfortunately for Jenkins, the transmitter for KAWZ — which is broadcasting on 95.3 FM, just one click on the dial away from 95.1 — in Port Allen is 2.5 kilometers too close to Jefferson Baptist Church for the engineers at the FCC to allow WSGX to broadcast from that location. Jenkins’ application to modify the construction permit was denied a week after it was accepted.
I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that Jenkins at least thought about fighting the FCC’s denial of his permit; but then again, lots of us remember the last time he tried challenging the powers that be in Washington, D.C. Things worked out so well for Jenkins and his challenge of the 1996 U.S. Senate election results that it only took another 18 years for Mary Landrieu to finally be defeated.
What better place for a tool of a dying medium to be than just a few steps away from Resthaven Cemetery?
Fear not, though, oh lovers of static-laden dated music and conservative opinion masquerading as news! This is Woody “Never Say Die” Jenkins we’re talking about here!
WSGX’s current transmitter location and the Albertson’s on Jones Creek share the same coordinates.
Just two weeks after having his backup transmitter location 86’d by the FCC, Jenkins managed to find yet another location for his glorified CB antenna, and it turns out the third location was the charm. The FCC promptly approved the new location, which — according to the precise coordinates provided by fccdata.org — is smack dab on the roof of the Albertson’s on the corner of Jones Creek and George O’Neal roads. Seriously.
With the first two planned transmitter locations, WSGX’s coverage area would have encompassed a few miles of both I-10 and I-12, prompting Jenkins in March to boast, “Each day, more than 250,000 people drive on I-10, I-12, and Airline Highway, which will be in the station’s coverage area.”
However, where the transmitter currently sits, the official broadcast area barely scrapes I-10 while covering 4 miles of I-12, from Sherwood Forest Boulevard to the Livingston Parish line. And if the test broadcasts are any indication of what the regular signal will be like, you’ll be lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) to pick it up on Airline Highway.
This coverage area was established in May, when the FCC approved the current transmitter location atop Albertson’s. However, I can only assume Jenkins was unaware of this projected coverage area a couple weeks later when, on June 5, his Capital City News quoted him saying, “The station will be very strong on all major roads and highways in Baton Rouge and St. George, including I-10, I-12, Airline Highway, Florida Boulevard, Siegen, Bluebonnet, Jefferson, and Sherwood. More than 220,000 cars a day will be able to receive the station.”
Take a look at the coverage map. Not a single inch of Bluebonnet is covered, and the closest that red circle comes to Florida Boulevard is Old Hammond Highway.
I’m not sure how a station with a broadcast radius of about 3.5 miles could cover a city whose proposed limits stretched nearly 20 miles from the Mississippi River to the Amite River.
Jenkins also said WSGX would cover the then-proposed city of St. George. I guess he didn’t recognize Gardere (I blame all the illegal aliens there) as part of St. George, because there’s no way in hell the folks there would have ever caught the station, even if the FCC had approved one of the first two transmitter locations.
More blatantly wishful: Thinking WSGX would cover St. George, or thinking St. George would actually become a city?
In fact, I’m not sure how a station with a broadcast radius of about 3.5 miles could cover a city whose proposed limits stretched nearly 20 miles from the Mississippi River to the Amite River. Even if St. George’s 85 square miles made a perfect circle and you put WSGX’s transmitter right in the center, its signal still wouldn’t reach half of the proposed city.
In any event, WSGX will reach most of two ZIP codes and all of Shenandoah. Jenkins said the station will broadcast 24 hours a day, and the on-air talent will mostly be volunteers, because of course they’ll be volunteers. Pushing the same amount of power consumed by a household incandescent light bulb (soft white?), WSGX’s format will feature news, weather, conservative talk, and music from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.
Music from those three decades was featured at a good, old-fashioned “sock hop” fundraiser at Dearman’s Soda Fountain on April 24. Tickets were $100 per couple. Additional sponsorships were available from $500 to $5,000, with sponsors receiving titles like “Honorary Newsman,” “Honorary Program Director,” “Honorary News Director,” and “Honorary General Manager.”
In a release from his chamber organization, Jenkins said, “The Sock Hop will be fun, especially for those of us who grew up in Baton Rouge in the Golden Era of radio in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s.” The release also said attendees were “encouraged to wear casual attire and, if possible, to dress as they would have in the 1950’s or 1960’s.”
“Whatever happened to Hopper’s?”
Veteran broadcaster Bob Furlow, the man who hired Jenkins at WLCS-AM 910 in 1964, emceed the event. Hell, they even got old DJs from back in the day to introduce the music and read news bulletins.
I think the sock hop fundraiser was a brilliant strategy. What better way to get older, conservative, white people to shell out some dough for a noncommercial radio station than to create a time warp back to their childhood, when radio was king and blacks “knew their place”?
The signature show on Jenkins’ WBTR may have been called Baton Rouge Today, but knowing him, a more apt title would have been Baton Rouge Yesterday.
Sure, Woody is trying to be to radio and print what Jesus was to Lazarus, but I kind of get where he’s coming from. The man is one of those “back in the good old days” kind of guys.
I know this firsthand. Believe it or not, I worked as a volunteer on his 1996 U.S. Senate campaign. I stuffed and sealed so many damn envelopes, my hands hurt just thinking about it. (That’s right: He tried to keep the Postal Service alive, too.) I even drove the man around South Louisiana to three different campaign appearances on a hot summer Saturday. The signature show on Jenkins’ WBTR may have been called Baton Rouge Today, but knowing him, a more apt title would have been Baton Rouge Yesterday.
So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that Jenkins seems to be pining for and trying to bring back the days of his industrious youth, when he was a senior at Istrouma High School and working as a DJ at WLCS. Or back when, at the age of 19 and while still in journalism school at LSU, he started (along with his future wife Diane) a fairly successful weekly community paper called the North Baton Rouge Journal.
So go ahead and make your pronouncements about the impending deaths of radio and print. Jenkins will just keep marching forward with his radio station and newspapers. They are the inevitable product of his longing for the glory days of old Baton Rouge and his unwavering championing of lost causes. Whether he’s fighting for the future of the proposed city of St. George, trying to defeat Mary Landrieu for U.S. Senate, or attempting to stay relevant in the local political scene, Woody Jenkins is the St. Jude of Baton Rouge conservatives.