SIS KAPLAN: The Chicagoan helped shape Charlotte's radio industry for more than two decades.

• Author: Infanzon, Vanessa

When Harriet "Sis" Kaplan and her late husband, Stanley Kaplan, bought a Charlotte AM radio station in 1965 for $550,000, they knew the market was ripe for change. More than 50 years later, fans of Big WAYS 610 still reminisce about the radio stations iconic promotions and memorable songs and skits they heard during in the '60s and '70s.

Sis grew up in Chicago, where her father, Leslie Atlass, had started the Windy City's leading news radio station, WBBM, in the 1920s. After graduating from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, in 1955, she worked in public affairs programming for CBS in Chicago, then produced a baseball-oriented television talk show.

Sis met Stan at a broadcast convention in Chicago in the early 1960s. They married in 1964 and lived in Boston for a year before moving to Charlotte.

During a visit to see if Charlotte was a viable market, Kaplan noticed that the city's leading AM station, WBT, was airing a religious program rather than reporting election results. This gave her the idea to add a news operation at WAYS. But the Kaplans' decision to shift the station's format to Top 40 music was key to its success as rock 'n' roll music gained popularity.

Charlotte broadcast executive Jim Babb, who was general sales manager at WBT at the time, studied the Kaplans before they arrived. "We knew three months in advance, they were coming," Babb says. "I came to the conclusion that it was going to be a different market with Stan, who had a very robust personality. And Sis' family had been well-known in broadcasting. I knew they'd come well-prepared for a competitive situation."

A famous Big WAYS promotion was a treasure hunt that offered $10,000 in $1,000 increments, buried around the region. Babb tried to convince WBT to counter the contest with something similar. But the stations conservative management wouldn't budge. "It's still one of the greatest ideas I've heard in 60plus years and one of the most successful," Babb says. "It bothered me that it worked."

The Kaplans recruited radio personalities from around the nation, including the late Jay Thomas, who became a famous TV sitcom and movie actor. Big WAYS alums Robert Murphy and Scott Slade became radio stars in Chicago and Atlanta, respectively.

"The radio talent was a different style," Babb says. "They took it more to the edge than what had ever been presented in the Charlotte market. It appealed more to the young people, but that was what many advertisers were seeking."

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