I enjoyed the story and the graphics on your website. Listeners who were in their 30's in 1978 might really like the masked, cape-wearing zalzero, with the Z on his front, because he might remind them of Walt Disney's "Zorro". The Zorro TV series was tremendously popular in 1957-58 and beyond. ( Hopefully, Puerto Rico had an ABC -TV affiliate so that Zorro was a familiar character). The colorful graphic ad art is really well done, well-planned, and most effective. Congrats on launching a very successful station.
Puerto Rico did not have any ABC affiliate in the late 50's. There was an English language UHF with US delayed network programming in the late 60's, but it died rapidly. Satellite broadcasts of US networks was way too expensive and only used for major events like the World Series.
TV did not begin until WKAQ-TV went on in 1954, and it was all in Spanish.
The person who developed the concept for the masked character was me. I had watched Zorro as a kid. In 1978 I saw lots of mainland Top 40 stations using Z's and Q's as identifiers and I realized that those letters, alone, had a certain unique quality and as "words" had a zing to them. So I wanted to be Z-93, and the Z brought back my memories of the Zorro TV show.
I got an old piece of plywood, went to the hardware store and got a cheap 6" brush and some red paint. I made the letter that, with a bit of cleaning, my agency used as the logo. And, out of 120 ad agencies locally, I selected Badillo / Compton, the local branch of that huge Compton organization and where I had many friends. They took the concept and my description of the "masked bandit" and came up with the "zalzero enmascarado". I even hired the messenger of another local agency to be that character on the street, as he was a big, heavy and tall guy just like my character.
We did several dozen different T-shirt versions, with some being "limited editions" sold only at stores. We made enough money off the "exclusives" to be able to give away over 50,000 free shirts in promotions. In our first 6 months, we also gave out 1.2 million window stickers in a contest with Burger King which was self-liquidating through the sponsorship.
In our highest book, in the 30 station San Juan market, we got a 42 share.
