Jack Fisher

1965	2004

I came to WROV after being let go from WEAM, Washington, DC by manager Harry Averill, who seemed to make a hobby of firing DJs who were on his "bad side." The station had hired a new DJ named Doc Holiday who came from KTLA in Little Rock, Arkansas. I was given the assignment of producing a promo announcing his arrival. To have some fun with this I coughed all the way through it, going for the inside joke for anyone who was familiar with Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp from "Gunfight at the OK Corral". You see, in this movie Holiday was a drunk with a tubercular condition. Upon hearing this promo, Harry called me on the hotline and asked, "Jack, do you know how many people in the Washington, D.C. area have TB?" I of course replied, "No Harry, how many?" We will call this strike one.

Strike Two came a few months later when Harry announced at a staff meeting that starting next Monday I was to change my air name to Terry Knight. I spoke right up and said in front of everyone, "That’s great Harry, I can go on and say, 'Hi, I’m Terry Knight remember me last week when I was Jack Fisher?'" You get the picture. Strike three was inevitable and I was bounced out of WEAM. No problem, I had a wife, a small baby, an old beat up car, and little money. I had em right where I wanted em.

The process of finding another radio job is like any other job search, a sometimes tedious and frustrating exercise. I wanted to stay in a major market having made it there with my WEAM experience. A friend of mine had just been made News Director of a leading top 40 station in Detroit, WKNR. I contacted him about greasing the skids for me in the motor city. While I waited to hear back and as my money ran out, I received an offer to be interviewed for the 6 to midnight show on a station in Roanoke, Virginia. What I remember about the letter they sent me was the weird letterhead that featured a picture of a bull dog. More on that later.

After doing some home work, I found that this station was a dominant rocker in Virginia. With nothing to lose but the gas money, I set out for the mountains of southwest Virginia with my wife Sue for company. As we drove through the beautiful winding roads of Virginia (there was no Interstate Highway at that time) I remarked out loud in a mocking tone, "I think I am going to settle in these here mountains." Little did I know that this lame prophecy would come true in spades. I took the job.

WROV was more than dominant at this time. They were able to claim that they had twice as many listeners as all of the other stations in the market combined. This was a top 40 station big on personalities. During the over five years I spent on the air at WROV, some great radio personalities passed through there. Many of the guys went on to bigger and better things in cities like Chicago, Denver and even New York. Oh yeah, the bulldog. I found out it stood for ROVER, get it "ROV-ROVER"? Me neither.

Why was this station so successful? It was a combination of weak non-focused competition and as mentioned an array of really talented on-air personalities that played the hits which live on to this day as classic oldies, interspersed with some great stunts that station management would talk us into performing. Let’s talk about one of those.

Fred Frelantz who later became my on air two man show partner pulled off one of the really memorable events. Fred who had been on WROV since 1961 was a zany character both on and off the air. He was probably the most recognized local celebrity ever in this town. He had just returned from his six month active duty with the National Guard and wanted to re-establish himself with the WROV audience. To do this he decided in the fall of 1964 that he was going to break the record for continuous non stop broadcasting by doing a radio wake-a-thon.

The station rented a trailer and positioned it in a highly visible location at a big shopping center. There, Fred would broadcast 24 hours a day. He lasted over seven days and missed the record held by a California DJ by just a few hours. The Fred stories surrounding his stay in this trailer are legendary. Cigarettes and coffee, and more cigarettes and coffee, people dropping in at all hours including some questionable female companions. All the while we played the music at the station, doing our regular shifts, throwing the mike to Fred for comments, etc. It was during this time that Fred and I established a unique on air chemistry that you just don’t get with any two radio guys. We parlayed this into a wonderful friendship and on air program.

Two man radio shows on top 40 radio stations were few and far between when Fred and I launched The Fisher-Frelantz show in 1966. Doing a radio show with another person is like most things not as easy as it looks. It takes much more preparation and in our case where we did numerous bits a lot of production time as well. To get the biggest bang for his buck, station owner Burt Levine had us doing both morning and afternoon traffic periods. If you listened to the station on your way to work back then and then again on the way home all you ever heard was us. This is why even today that many people in Roanoke think we were the only DJ’S on the station. It was harder but it sure was fun.

I could write an entire novel on the things Fred and I did on and off the air. We invented fake helicopter traffic reports, which the locals and especially anyone traveling though town thought were bizarre but somehow believable. We reviewed plays at dinner theatres that we usually slept through. (Our hours were brutal) The Fisher-Frelantz Freeloaders invited clubs and organizations to have us for dinner. Their expectations were always higher than our delivery. Fred would usually tell one joke and then we would eat.

Fred Frelantz’s punctuality was always shaky at best. In fact he was famous for being late. When we did our morning show, Fred actually slept down the hall on a couch in the boss’s office so he could get to the mike at 6AM. I would usually arrive around 5:30, do some fake traffic reports and get ready to go on the air while Fred continued to snooze away. Although he is not here to defend himself it is safe to say that he still had a lot of trouble getting to work on time even though he was sleeping just a few feet away. One morning in a fit of pique, I decided not to try to wake him up which was always a challenge, but to let him sleep.

I proceeded to do a two man show with just one man. When the boss arrived at 9AM in his office, Fred was still asleep on his couch. He worked him over pretty good, and of course Fred wanted to know why I did not do something like throw ice water on him to wake him up. I told him that if I could get there on time by driving a few miles to the station he could make it by walking a few feet down the hall. Think this changed anything? Think again. We still struggled to get him down that hall every morning, but you know what? When he got there he was the best. I have met few radio personalities who were as good as Fred Frelantz, it just all came to him naturally.

I can truly say that although the hours were weird and the pay was low that I never enjoyed anything more than being on the radio and playing the hits and having fun. Radio DJ’S as a group have a tendency to be, believe it or not, very introverted. I would certainly qualify in that category. I was always a loner from my earliest memory and was actually shy, but like most actors and those in show business will confess, they changed when performing. I look back on those days and know that it was a job I could not wait to get to everyday!

Jack left WROV in 1970 and worked locally in advertising into the 1990s. He then worked for Advance Auto Parts and was the guy who created their "in-store" television network. He's now retired but occasionally shows up on XM Radio's "60s on 6" channel with former WROV legend Terry Young.

Hear Jack!

	Jack Calls NEMS to wish George a Happy BD 1965   (4.4M)
	The Bonsack New Year's Day Parade (with Fred) Summer, 1966   (2.6M)
	Interview with Mrs. Miller (with Fred) Summer, 1966   (3.2M)
	A WROV Instant Replay January, 1969   (1.0M)
	South of Roanoke Magazine, Part 1 (with Fred) April, 1981   (2.0M)
	South of Roanoke Magazine, Part 2 (with Fred) April, 1981   (2.0M)
	South of Roanoke Magazine, Part 3 (with Fred) April, 1981   (2.5M)
	Jack's Final WROV Sign Off October 26, 1991   (3.4M)