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WBAY 70: Turning a profit

Haydn Evans guided St. Norbert’s two radio stations to profitability. Wisconsin Broadcasters Hall of Fame photo

By Kris Leonhardt

Editor-in-chief

Part II in our series

St. Norbert College (SNC) brought the station and the call letters “WTAQ” to Green Bay from Eau Claire.

“It means ‘Where tires are quality,’” explained Ted Miller rian.

“They never made a profit with the radio stations and the Norbertines were like, ‘you know we love having this radio station (but) we’d like to make a profit.’

“So, they hired this guy Haydn Evans; he worked in New York radio. He created the ‘Pot O’ Gold’ game show. This is the first radio game show, and you’ll recognize – it’s such a cliché now – a person answers the phone like, ‘Hey, who is this?’

“’It’s Jim.’

“’You win $1,000.’

“That was the game show. And that was the first game show, and they invented it.

They would pick a random phonebook; then they would pick a random page; then they would pick a random person. Whoever answered that phone won $1,000. That was it. That was the game.

“And Haydn Evans was the creator of that. He was an ad guy; he was a sales guy.”

So, SNC brought Evans in to run the two stations.

“My introduction to WTAQ was on a murky afternoon in early October 1939. Our offices were on the ninth floor of the Bellin Building. And our two studios were on the floor above, in the so-called ‘penthouse,’” Evans recalled in a memoir.

“I had come up from Chicago to apply for the job of general manager. I wanted a straight percentage of the profits.”

“And he’s like, ‘I’ll do it for 20% of the profits.’ And they laughed like, ‘We don’t make any profits. That’s why you’re here.’ So, he’s like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it for 20% of profits and you pay me like $50-60 a week stipend,’” Miller added.

“He used that money to go out and schmooze. He took the salespeople out. He took business owners out, and he would schmooze them and get them to buy into the radio station and say ‘What do you like on radio? What do you enjoy?’

“And he started getting a feel for what people want. He shook up the staff; he shook up the radio. They started doing local plays on radio; they started doing local murder mysteries; bringing in local entertainers, local talent.”

The station operated the two radio stations out of the same control room, with a small announcer’s booth for each station.

“We usually only had one announcer on duty,” explained Evans. “He would give a station-break announcement for WTAQ, then hop across the room to the other booth and announce, ‘This is WHBY, Green Bay.’”

Under Evans’ watch, the stations were profitable within a year.

Next week: Becoming WBAY

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