Radio Waves Podcast #300

 Radio: May 28, 2021

Perhaps known across the country as the longtime host of television’s Tic-Tac-Dough, we know him best as one of radio’s best DJs. I’m speaking, of course, of Wink Martindale.

Born Winston Conrad Martindale in Jackson, Tennessee, Wink Martindale saw his dream career become a reality in 1951 when, at the age of 17, he landed a job at a radio station WPLI right in his hometown. The station was managed by his Sunday School teacher, and the gig paid $25 per week to handle announcing the evening shift … and pretty much any other job that needed to be done around the station.

A short two months later, Martindale was hired away by local competitor WTJS where his responsibilities expanded to include play-by-play announcing of the local high school football and basketball games in addition to his regular DJ shift. Soon he found himself at the remaining local station, WDXI. Each move brought him more responsibility and a experience.

In 1953, he made the move to WHBQ/Memphis, which is where he really made a name for himself. Hosting mornings while attending Memphis State College — he graduated with a BS in 1957 — he eventually met, and became close friends with, Elvis Presley.

Not that this was planned. Even though he worked mornings, he happened to be in the studios one night in  July, 1954 when station DJ Dewey Philips played an acetate — not even a finished record — of a song called “That’s All Right Mama” recorded by Presley and brought in to the station by Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records. Sam wanted Dewey to play the song on the air to gauge listener reaction.

Listeners went crazy; the station played the song seven times in a row. Martindale called the Presley home to get him into the station for an interview, but Elvis wasn’t home. So he headed out to find him at a local theater where he was watching a Western double feature, and convinced him to go to the studios. That’s the night he met the King, “and we remained friends until the day he died,” Martindale said.

Interestingly, his wife, Sandy, was also friends with Elvis. In fact, she dated him! Wink won that popularity contest, it seems, as Sandy and Wink got married in 1974. But I digress.

1959 brought Martindale to KHJ (930 AM) where he also worked mornings, though only for a short time. One year later he was at the original KRLA (now KRDC, 1110 AM) and then in 1962 at KFWB (980 AM). When KFWB turned to news in 1968, he made his way over to KGIL (now KMZT, 1260 AM).

KMPC (now KSPN) is where most people probably remember him on the radio, though, where he was one of the Great Entertainers from 1971 to 1979, and again from 1983 to 1987. His smooth delivery, sharp wit, high intelligence, amazing memory and supremely positive attitude served him well on the Station of the Stars, where he not only played records, he was your friend.

Remember that smile he had on Tic-Tac-Dough and his many other game shows? That is the real Wink Martindale. And you can hear his smile on the radio as well.

One of his ongoing projects is a YouTube channel called Wink’s Vault, were he gives a tour of “his house:” a weekly trip through radio, TV and music history. You can find it at https://www.youtube.com/c/WinkMartindaleGames/featured.

Martindale has been honored by the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters (now known as the Hollywood Media Professionals) for his life-long achievements in radio and television, and members not long ago got up close and personal with the star when he presented a special afternoon talk. You can see part of it yourself by heading over to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFwOkmSmabo. Included in the interview: a special recording of some of his very early announcing work when he first started in radio.

Wink is one of the nicest guys ever to work in radio and television, and with great humility and humbleness as well … I’d like to congratulate him on 70 years in the business! 

Memories

“This story is probably too late for your tales of KHJ request and it's not quite pure radio trivia but I thought I'd share it before it is lost to the shifting sands of time.

“KHJ's Big Kahuna promo was a BIG DEAL to us kids. And fortune smiled upon us - the Big Kahuna actually visited my grade school in a personal appearance - much to his regret! KHJ sent him to Ladera Elementary School in Manhattan Beach. The year was likely 1966, I would have been in 6th grade. I was amongst horde of excited young beach rowdies eagerly awaiting Kahuna in our "cafetorium" (at least I think that's what it was called).

“After a patience-trying wait - enter the Big Kahuna, gloriously bedecked in his massively opulent shimmering feather robe and, if memory serves, the robe had a bunch of dollar bills pinned to it, presumably to be distributed to us kids in an orderly fashion that never materialized. Any notion of an organized, orchestrated event was shattered an instant after his arrival. The sight of Big Kahuna and the wearable fortune in 1966 allowance money was just too much. 

“Without warning, Big Kahuna was swarmed by a spontaneous volcano-like eruption of greedy little preteen hands and fingers, denuding his feather robe of the coveted greenbacks within seconds in a frenzied chaos of shrieking kids, helplessly flailing adults and flying feathers, tearing his magnificent feather robe to shreds.

“Big Kahuna, the remnants of his tattered garment, and his handlers fled Ladera in shock as fast as they could to escape we diminutive looters, never to grace its hallowed halls again. I managed to secure a single feather from the mangled cape as a souvenir of the day. 

“Sadly, my memento has since been lost to the tides of time.” — Joe Lanning

Radio Waves Podcast #299

Radio: May 21, 2021

Ever wonder why certain things are the way they are in radio? Ever want to use little-known radio trivia in casual conversation to impress your friends or at parties to meet the person of your dreams? You’ve come to the right place.

I got the idea for this subject matter by talking with friends and realizing … a lot of what people think they know about radio isn’t necessarily right. As but one example:

• You may have heard — I’ve even written it here — that the iconic jingles used in the Boss Radio era were sans music because of the musicians strike of 1965.  This is even mentioned in Boss programmer Ron Jacob’s book, Inside Boss Radio, in which he quotes Johnny Mann — whose famous singers voiced the jingles. 

“The musicians union is on strike,” he remembers telling Don Otis, who Jacobs replaced at the launch of the format. After a short discussion, Mann asked Otis, “Why don’t you do ‘em a cappella?” The rest, as they say, is history.

But it’s wrong. Oh, sure, the musicians may have been on strike, but it doesn’t appear to have been a major factor. “KHJ consultant Bill Drake used a cappella jingles at a few of his stations prior to his arrival at KHJ,” Ken Levine (aka Beaver Cleaver on KTNQ and himself as a movie, television and play writer) told me. And he’s right: even KGB in San Diego used a cappella jingles, and they were on the air a year before KHJ’s switch.

Want proof? Head to http://rockradioscrapbook.ca/ckc-dec6.html; there you’ll hear KGB from December, 1964 … only the long-form jingles include music; KHJ had no long-form jingles. And there is a produced jingle from KHJ’s early Boss days that did have music (and only music). So the musician’s strike theory appears to be false.

But there are a lot of other tidbits floating around that can make for an interesting conversation about radio. Such as:

• There’s much talk of what would have happened had KHJ’s top-40 format been on FM. Well, it was … the only problem being that few had FM radios at the time. For most of KHJ-FM’s life until 1967 when the FCC said they couldn’t do it any more, the FM simulcast the dominant AM signal’s programming. “You’re listening to the much more music station, AM and FM” says Bill Drake before the jingle “KHJ, Los Angeles.” That was heard through 1967. No one cared about FM back then. No one.

• The forces that made top-40 a dominant format for so long are what led to the rise of some of the FM formats, once they adopted the same principles. Explains former Sound (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM) programmer Dave Beasing, “If you’re playing a song that isn’t familiar, the chances are strong that people will hit the button for another station,” he told me recently. So even if people say they want new music and variety, a station that sways too far from the familiar will have generally lower ratings than the station that plays more mainstream. And this affects all formats from top-40 to rock to country … even classical. 

And it’s why stations that may start out playing something different generally evolve into a more mainstream format.

• You may think that KFI stood for “Farm Information,” that KHJ was for “Kindness, Happiness and Joy,” but almost all three-letter call-letter combinations were mere coincidence - random assignment from the precursor to the FCC. It wasn’t until the four-letter calls were launched that stations could easily request a certain combination.

• KROQ (106.7 FM) is a legendary alternative-rock station. But it actually got its start on AM. Ever listen to San Diego’s KGB-FM (101.5)? It also started as an AM, originally playing progressive rock on 1360 when they dropped top-40 in 1972. KIIS-FM? It was KIIS (AM) long before but was “married” to the FM, forming KIIS AM/FM in late 1975. KIIS-FM’s prior calls? KKDJ, programmed at one time by the same guy who truly put KROQ on the map, Rick Carroll.

• KIIS wasn’t “kiss” originally. It was “k-double i-s,” with the letters chosen because the IIS most closely resembled the numbers 115, the AM station’s frequency (1150 AM). And that great KIIS-FM jingle that the station doesn’t play enough? It’s actually the jingle from Chicago’s WLS of the 1960s and ‘70s.

• It may stand for Kindness, Joy, Love, and Happiness now, but KJLH (102.3 FM) was actually named for it’s one-time owner John Lamar Hill. Hill bought the station in 1965 and sold it to Stevie Wonder in 1979.

• There is no direct connection to the original, but KDAY (93.5 FM) was once an AM station that — like a handful of stations across the country — had to sign off at sunset to protect the signals of stations elsewhere. From sign on in 1949 using the ironic calls KOWL, the station could only broadcast during the day, so in 1956 it picked up the K-DAY call letters … get it? It finally got permission to operate at night — with a very narrow coverage pattern — in 1968, though it kept the KDAY calls until 1991.

• Orange County once had the great top-40 station KEZY (now KGBN, 1190 AM) to call its own. The station was synonymous with top-40 programming throughout the 1970s, and on former sister station KEZY-FM (now KFSH, 95.9) during the 1980s and ‘90s. But the call-letters actually were chosen to represent its original easy-listening format it had at launch in 1959 as K-Easy. The cool thing about KEZY aside from it’s great sound when it was top-40? The station address was the same as its frequency … 1190 East Ball Road.

Have some trivia of your own or want me to expand on these or related stories? Drop me a line - I would love to talk radio with you.

Radio Waves Podcast #298

Radio: May 14, 2021

For obvious reasons, the very early broadcasting stations get all the love when it comes to radio trivia. KNX (1070 AM), KFI (640 AM) and KHJ (930 AM), for example, are all either celebrating, or are about to celebrate, a full century of broadcasting.

Lost among the crowd, however, are other stations with unique histories. One such station is KTNQ (1020 AM) which actually has its genesis as a station broadcasting out of the port community of San Pedro.

That’s right – San Pedro once had its very own radio station. According to radio historian Jim Hilliker — who provided much of this material via a long-ago telephone conversation as well as material available at www.radioheritage.net/Story28.asp — KTNQ is the 9th-oldest continuously operating radio station in the Los Angeles area, and over its 96-year existence has had only four sets of call letters.

Hilliker says that it was the McWhinnie Electric Company, then located at 1825 S. Pacific Avenue in San Pedro, that decided to put a radio station on the air. As reported in the March 30, 1925 local newspaper The Daily Pilot (one of the outlets that eventually became part of this newspaper chain), McWhinnie brothers William (Bill) and Charles (Charlie) received permission from the Department of Commerce to build a radio station. The call letters were to be KVFD, and the assigned frequency was to be 1460 AM. It cost $31,000 (about $470,000 today) to get the station on the air, using a 100-watt transmitter and studios located at the company’s retail store. The first on-air test was June 12th, and the signal reached many parts of Southern California including Catalina Island.

The station featured a reception area, a large studio at 16×26 feet with a large glass window and soundproof walls, and a control and transmitter room all in the same building. Stories featured in The Pilot told of about 2000 people visiting the station on that Friday, as the studios were open to the public from 1-10 p.m. Hilliker wrote in the story featured by radioheritage.net that the head inspector for the Department of Commerce Radio Division said that “KVFD was one of the finest equipped stations in the country.”

The first official broadcast came the following night, Saturday, June 13th, from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. The inaugural broadcast consisted of speeches, congratulatory messages and music and entertainment from both local and regional talent. It may seem odd, given what we know of radio today, but the fact that the station would then broadcast only three nights per week (Monday, Wednesday and Saturday) from 8 to 11 p.m. was not unusual in the early days of broadcasting. Indeed, many stations had to share the same frequency, so they couldn’t broadcast all day.

In addition to the evening broadcasts, the station also carried Sunday morning and Sunday evening services of the First Presbyterian Church, which due to the cost of the phone line needed to do the broadcast, was a major expense of the station. Funds to pay for the broadcasts came from individual donations, businesses, and the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored monthly programs to help publicize San Pedro on the radio.

Over time, the programming expanded. News and current events were a major part of the broadcasts, and the station made an agreement with the Daily Pilot, allowing it to use the paper’s wire services for its news and sports reports. The Pilot in turn helped promote the station by listing the daily programs in an early version of a radio program log. Local musical talent rounded out the programming along with special features such as a one-act play presented and performed by students from San Pedro High School.

Then, abruptly, it was gone. On August 9th, 1926, it was announced that the station would move its studios to the Venice Ballroom in Venice’s then oceanfront amusement park. No reason was given, but the move was quick: the station went off the air for almost a month beginning the day of the announcement. Newspaper reports alluded to giving the station a chance to expand its audience, but some believe that the transmitter’s location was causing interference to Navy ships in the area.

More moves came along the way, but on March 29, 1941, KVFD moved to its final radio home of 1020 AM, where it has been ever since. In August, 1955, the station became KPOP, one of the early top-40 stations and the new home of someone who would become legendary among radio fans, Art Laboe, who would broadcast live from Scrivner’s drive-in restaurant, first in Hollywood and later at a new location at Western and Imperial.

In June 1960, the station got new call letters: KGBS. It actually had some big talent and earned some decent ratings in spite of having to sign off every night at sunset. (I have an old aircheck of one such broadcast and it’s quite odd.) Hudson and Landry, Bill Balance, and more helped the station compete.

Finally, in late 1976, the station won authorization to broadcast 24-hours a day and became KTNQ, Ten-Q, a high-energy top-40 format that brought in talent such as Charlie Tuna, Rich Brother Robbin, Ken “Beaver Cleaver” Levine, The Real Don Steele and “Machine Gun” Kelly, among others. To AM top-40 fans, it was amazing.

In 1979, the station was sold and it adopted a Spanish-language format. Today, it carries a Spanish-language talk format and is the Spanish radio home of The Dodgers.

Few people know of the San Pedro (or even Venice) connection to radio, and in many ways, it is a shame that these communities don’t have that anymore. But the fact that they once did is a fun part of local radio history, and as legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey always said, now you know … the rest of the story.

Radio Waves Podcast #297

Guest:  Dave Beasing

 Radio: May 7, 2021

Months in the making, K-Mozart re-launched itself on May 1st.

Did I say months? Actually it was over a year … owner Saul Levine has been planning this since before the start of the Covid pandemic, but put it off due to the problems that came about over the past year.

Over time the plan has changed. At one time, it was to be exclusively on the app and on the HD signal that is available with a special tuner on 105.1 HD4. Since that time, the decision was made to put the format on 1260 AM in an attempt to help spread the word.

The music itself has been available for a long time. The app, online on HD4 signal have been running classical for a few years; 1260 AM has carried it for the past few months. The re-launch is referring to the addition of hosts and special programs, bringing back the knowledge and passion that was once a regular part of the format as it was heard when it originally launched by Levine as KBCA (now KKGO, 105.1 FM) in 1959.

To clarify - the analog signal and the 1st HD digital signal on 105.1 plays country music. To hear the classical music on the radio you need a special HD Radio tuned to the 105.1 HD4 channel, or an AM radio tuned to 1260, which also runs HD radio and sounds fabulous if you are near Glendale. The station can also be heard on-line at Mozart.com, or using smart phone apps and smart speakers.

Joining the on-air staff of the station is veteran Nick Tyler, Russ Maloney, David Benoit, Chuck Southcott, and LA Opera diva Suzanna Guzman. The iconic Evening Concert — a program with a local history dating back 75 years — is back on the air Monday through Friday nights at 7 p.m. with Tyler as host. Guzman presents At the Opera Sundays at 12 Noon. Benoit, well known composer and piano artist, hosts Ovations on Sunday afternoons. The smooth-voiced Southcott hosts  Curtain Call — highlighting familiar Broadway Show Stoppers — on Saturday mornings. And Maloney, formerly with Public Radio in the Midwest, hosts K-Mozart Morning Classics at 7 a.m. Mondays through Fridays.

Why classical? Why now? Mainly because Levine loves the music and wants to present an alternative to KUSC (91.5 FM). I respect his devotion.

We want Mo(re) Kelly

KFI (640 AM) weekend host Mo’Kelly (Morris O’Kelly) — heard Saturdays and Sundays 6-8 p.m. along with other shifts as one of the station’s official fill-in hosts — was the guest of honor on last week’s radio-oriented podcast Radio Waves, hosted by Michael Stark and Yours Truly.

In the roughly 30-minute discussion, Mo hit on many topics including how his show isn’t necessarily political, though it is definitely topical whether it is referencing politics,  — “I hope you’re not  just talking about politics all day,” he explained,  “that would be a horrible existence!” His plan - talk about life. “As the day goes on, I’m thinking about my Dodgers … my Lakers … or what may be on TV  because that’s how life works.”

Indeed. And on his show you can hear almost anything about life, with recent shows running the gamut from James Bond, the Oscars, the FBI, and theaters. It harkens back to what talk radio once was: an opportunity to get together with friends and just shoot the breeze. No preconceived notions.

His life is as varied as his show. A graduate of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Mo has been involved in music (classical to hip-hop), entertainment,  records, print journalism, and of course radio. On radio, he’s worked with Jim Rome, Ryan Seacrest, Tavis Smiley, and of course the many people at KFI itself. And that helped him develop  a show that isn’t predictable, and often just plain fun.

“I’m like beer … I’m an acquired taste,” he quips. I like beer … I can go with that.

It’s a fun discussion that like his show covers many topics. Hear it at LARadioWaves.Com.

Still Recovering

Speaking of the Radio Waves podcast: The special guest the first week of every month is former program director of The Sound (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM)  Dave Beasing, on a segment we like to call “Ask a Recovering Program Director.”

In past discussions, Beasing has answered questions regarding how ratings are determined, why stations run commercials at the same time, how The Sound evolved and why it was never supposed to exist, and more. The idea is to answer questions sent in by you, so if you want to ask Dave anything, let me know.