The Matchcover Storyteller

At best, this will be an anecdotal approach to information on WBBB Radio; a clean online history is elusive.  No, wait  —  there IS another current WBBB radio, an FM “adult hits” station  at  FM 96.1 in Raleigh, North Carolina.  It’s also brief-on-line story only begins in 1949 and winds up at WBBM though at least 6 name changes.   But it’s not quite the one related to the matchbook in front of me.  

The matchbook  —  it’s an orange, black and white Lion Giant Feature with 22 sticks  (mine has one missing, as you can maybe see).  

The Radio Station:  In a remote source I find an article granting license to WBBB in April 1941, one of the first 3 stations licensed in North Carolina.   Licensees were Alamance  Broadcasting and B.V. May, a hosiery manufacturer.  No, wait ….who?

If you do Google searches like I do, now you’re off into the B.V. May story  —  what’s a hosiery guy doing starting a radio station?  .  I’ll let you dig deeper if you wish, but for now, the May Hosiery Mill in Burlington was built in 1928 by B.V. May and his brother William and is today on the National Register of Historic Places.   (It should not be confused with the May Hosiery Mills in Nashville  —  different altogether!)

In the fall of 1941, WBBB joined the Mutual Broadcasting System, now one of 182 in that network.  And it joined the UPI News service at the same time.

The station manager, E.Z. “Easy” Jones is listed as an attendee at the 1941 convention of the National Association of Broadcasters; I wanted to think that partially dates this matchbook, but Jones is also noted as a WBBB announcer in a 1948 interview with a Navy veteran.  And in 1950, a newspaper article notes the state governor appointing Jones as director of Civil Defense; he’d been WBBB manager up till then.  So there’s that.  (And he was back by at least 1962  —  a nice long career!)

Bouncing around, in 1945, WBBB was one of at least 30 radio stations applying to cover the upcoming United nations Conference in San Francisco  —   Major E.Z. Jones, applicant..

Then I come across a 1949 reference to WBBB distributing packages of golf balls as a promotion item.   The boxes were printed with such slogans as: “FM Is the Hole in One of Radio “; “WBBBFM Gives You a Slice of Better Listening!”; “You Keep Out of the Static Trepe by Tuning to WBBB -FM “; “You Really Drive Your Message Home on WBBB -FM.”

WBBM-FM signed on in 1946.  The call letters moved to the aforementioned Raleigh NC FMer in 1998 and the AM station became WPCM.

My principle source here was Broadcasting Magazine.  All its back issues are online; for stations like WBBB, you can learn about who served in the army; who had children; who came and went, station promotions and more, literally hundreds of references..I know some of you love deep history dives; if you’re radio station collectors (as I am), their histories await.

Not in time for this, my look at WBBB showed a slew of radio call letters.  I have no idea – yet – which had matches, what I have and what I need.  But I have this WBBB Giant Feature and it’s a keeper!