Bill Bailey (WAKY, WKLO, WLS) Died This Morning

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Bill Bailey (WAKY, WKLO, WLS) Died This Morning

Postby jon » Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:23 pm

Although hardly someone most of us in Western Canada would ever have heard of. I only have thanks to his short tenure at WLS Chicago, and listening to Kentucky airchecks.

Bill Bailey was "The Duke of Louisville", an institution in Morning Radio there. He died this morning. Bill was 81 and had been in a nursing home for several years, following a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.

I had the good fortune to hear him on WLS in the best reception I ever got of that station. And I have this short aircheck to prove it:
http://www.radiowest.ca/sound/wlsbb.mp3
What you hear is not as good as I heard it live because of the white noise caused by RF interference from the tape recorder, the quality loss associated with 3 3/4 ips quarter track recording and, very likely, this is the second generation of the tape, as I normally recorded things on a Left Channel of a 4 track recorder, and then compiled them on another tape by playing back on a 2 track recorder and recording on the original 4 track recorder. I cannot remember if I adjusted this to compensate for my Lafayette HA-230's (pictured in my avatar) 6dB boost at 250Hz to improve DX-quality audio. I suspect not.

CJVI-900 Victoria was the main problem I had with WLS-890 reception. As you'll note, this is a Monday morning aircheck, made at 4:16 a.m. Vancouver time. CJVI would be off the air for transmitter maintenance for almost two hours after this. And WLS themselves had been off the air, too, but probably signed on more than a hour earlier because of their large Farm audience beginning at 5:00 a.m.

As for Bill, at age 38 in 1969, he was lured to WLS with a 5-year $300,000 contract with bonuses on top of that if he delivered big ratings numbers. He hated Chicago and left after about 6 months.
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Re: Bill Bailey (WAKY, WKLO, WLS) Died This Morning

Postby Howaboutthat » Sat Jan 14, 2012 6:24 pm

I guess he's finally 'going home'
Houston, We're dealing with morons!.
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