93 KHJ Radio Aircheck

[seatownmedia]

Sure. This stuff can be analyzed much better today. But believe me there was a lot of hanky panky going on 30-40 years ago. It was wrong but still existed on a widespread level.

 

[michael hagerty]

Sure. This stuff can be analyzed much better today. But believe me there was a lot of hanky panky going on 30-40 years ago. It was wrong but still existed on a widespread level.

Those links I posted are R&R stories from that time.

By 1985, the record labels realized they were spending money on promotion that wasn't getting the records proper exposure, R&R realized the legitimacy of chart data was in question and broadcasters realized they had enormous legal liability---to the point that Y-100 Miami's license renewal was challenged by someone alleging the station engaged in the practice of paper adds (later disproven by an investigation, which, again, all you needed was a playlist and to tape the station for a week).

Wanna see a GM fire a PD quick? Tell him the PD is exposing the station to federal wire fraud charges.

Ultimately, seeing in the trades or in a trade ad that (name a set of call letters) is playing a record with no information on how that record is performing in that market would only influence a very bad (or very green), not very smart PD. When I was 17, if I saw KHJ or KFRC were on a record, I was impressed. By the time I was 18, I knew how many of their records made it to #26 and no further. So I learned to look for performance data, not mere presence on a playlist.

 

[Weiserguy]

A version of this existed in record retailers as well. I spent a few of my high school and college freshman years working at one of the Sam Goody stores on Long Island, back when Sam Goody (Godewitz) actually ran the company. Occasionally I worked the 45's department. While albums and tapes were purchased by and delivered to a central warehouse, and then redistributed by company truck to the various stores, 45's were different in that they were ordered by each individual store and directly delivered by the record companies. The guy who managed our 45's warned me that some companies offered goodies (pun intended) to report inflated numbers when we got calls from WMCA, WOR-FM and especially WABC. I was told never to do that, and occasionally someone in one of their other stores got nailed and fired for (what was, effectively) taking a bribe to juice a particular record. Like with radio play, you couldn't get away with that today, though I have little doubt someone's figured out other ways to corrupt the process.

 

[michael hagerty]

A version of this existed in record retailers as well. I spent a few of my high school and college freshman years working at one of the Sam Goody stores on Long Island, back when Sam Goody (Godewitz) actually ran the company. Occasionally I worked the 45's department. While albums and tapes were purchased by and delivered to a central warehouse, and then redistributed by company truck to the various stores, 45's were different in that they were ordered by each individual store and directly delivered by the record companies. The guy who managed our 45's warned me that some companies offered goodies (pun intended) to report inflated numbers when we got calls from WMCA, WOR-FM and especially WABC. I was told never to do that, and occasionally someone in one of their other stores got nailed and fired for (what was, effectively) taking a bribe to juice a particular record. Like with radio play, you couldn't get away with that today, though I have little doubt someone's figured out other ways to corrupt the process.

Probably worth a quick note here that if WMCA was involved, this was pre-1970.

 

[seatownmedia]

I think the bottom line here is the 80’s and 90’s were the wild west of radio. There was little enforcement of regulations. Yes, a few followed the rules. Maybe more than a few, I’m not sure. But this was an era where everything goes. We likely won’t see this again and unfortunately it is because of failing radio stations. Radio continues a deep dive. Yes, some exceptions but the the future is not bright. The target audience today has little interest in the medium.
They are in love with their phones. Radio is simply passé. I wish I could do another clever radio prank but frankly nobody cares today. Time, indeed, marches on.

 

[michael hagerty]

I think the bottom line here is the 80’s and 90’s were the wild west of radio. There was little enforcement of regulations. Yes, a few followed the rules. Maybe more than a few, I’m not sure. But this was an era where everything goes.

From everything you've said about this topic and your experience with it, I get the impression that you worked for the wrong people. That's the only way I can imagine someone could read the material I posted here from that era and come away with "Wild West", "little enforcement of regulations" and "everything goes".

 

[seatownmedia]

No. That is somewhat nieve. Rules in my career were regularly broken. I guess we lived in non parallel universe’s. Radio, like any industry had some bad guys. If you were lucky enough to avoid them, good for you. But they existed for sure. This from a 40 year jock and Pd.

 

[michael hagerty]

No. That is somewhat nieve. Rules in my career were regularly broken. I guess we lived in non parallel universe’s. Radio, like any industry had some bad guys. If you were lucky enough to avoid them, good for you. But they existed for sure. This from a 40 year jock and Pd.

I don’t disagree with the existence of bad guys in both the radio and record business. It’s your specifics and your timeline I have trouble with.

What you’re describing is perfectly believable in the 70’s and early 80s.

 

[seatownmedia]

Well that time period is when I started, I can’t honestly say it got much better through the decades. I worked for some great gm’s but also worked for other managers that were clueless. Such is life in the radio biz. It is like playing the lotto. Sometimes you get a winner sometimes you don’t. You play the odds.

 

[Signal Geek]

That's actually more like 375 miles. You didn't mention---was this day or night?

Daytime! And yep, it's probably 375 miles.

In my experience, the only other California AM *daytime* signals that were comparable over a largely-land path:
KFI: In San Francisco, if I listened very, very carefully, and was near the Bay, in the 80s I could pick them up. That's about 400 miles from L.A., in the middle of the day.
KCBC (770): Could hear them very faintly in Woodland Hills when we lived there 1993-1995. I think their transmitter is east of Modesto, so that's probably 350-ish miles.
KGO (810): Also could hear them faintly in Woodland Hills... 400 miles away.
KFBK (1530): Can hear them sometimes in San Diego, but it has to be 1-2 hours before sunset. I'm guessing Sacramento is 550 miles from S.D.

 

[davideduardo]

Sure. This stuff can be analyzed much better today. But believe me there was a lot of hanky panky going on 30-40 years ago. It was wrong but still existed on a widespread level.

No, it was not. I was involved in either programming, managing or monitoring of Top 40 and AC stations at different points in the 70's and 80's, and paper ads were rather uncommon. What did happen, but got found out or suspected quickly, were paid ads of songs that were really stiffs.

That was the era of Joe Isgro (there is a book, in fact) and Coke-a-Grams and a number of PDs in smaller markets like Fresno and El Paso were indicted.

You had low paying positions in small markets that could be influenced, and some payola occurred. Payola, to some extent, was self regulating: add stiffs, ratings go down, you lose your job.

Related books:
Stiffed - A True Story of MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafia

HIT MEN - Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business By Fredric Dannen

MUSIC MAN - Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records, and the Triumph of Rock 'n' Roll - By Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie

Payola by Gerry Cagle (a major market PD) Bobby Holliday, the anti-hero of this harrowing and true-to-life novel, thinks he has it made. Not yet 30, married to a beautiful, affectionate wife, he's been promoted as vice-president of programming by a powerful radio network based in Los Angeles. The dark side is his arrogant self-confidence, exploitative behavior and inability to resist the blandishments of sex, drugs and under-the-table money thrown at him by mob-backed record promoters.

Video: "The Hit Man" Documentary is about the life and times of Legendary music industry magnate Joe Isgro who picked Hit songs and controlled radio airplay for super star pop artists. The film focuses on Isgro's rise to power culminating in the infamous payola scandals of the 1980's involving all the major music labels, the U.S. Government, and organized crime.

'HITMAKER' Joe Isgro Documentary in Production

/PRNewswire/ -- Legendary music industry magnate Joe Isgro's documentary feature is in production. The man credited with revolutionizing independent music...

www.prnewswire.com

 

[seatownmedia]

Hell, KGO was as clear as a bell in north Seattle in the mid 70’s. But not today. Also actually d’x’d WLS Chicago from Seattle around this same era. Magical.

 

[davideduardo]

I don’t disagree with the existence of bad guys in both the radio and record business. It’s your specifics and your timeline I have trouble with.

What you’re describing is perfectly believable in the 70’s and early 80s.

But a lot had to do with the cocaine "boom" in the mid-70's into the mid-80's.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

KFWB and KRLA maxed out at 18 minutes per hour, including commercials within newscasts. That was pretty much the industry standard, and the one followed by more established stations like KFI, KNX and KMPC.

Beginning in 1965, KHJ under Bill Drake had a firm commercial policy: No more than 14 minutes per hour, no commercial break lasting longer than 70 seconds and no commercial break with more than three commercials in it. So, you could have a 60-second and a ten-second spot, or two 30s and a 10, but not a 60 and a 30, and not a 30 and four 10s.

If you take 60 minutes and subtract those 14 minutes of commercials, you're at 46 minutes. If your songs are three minutes long, on average, and you allow for a little wiggle room for jingles, weather and the like, that's 15 records in an hour.

Mornings were a different animal on KHJ, with eight-minute newscasts at :40 and Robert W. or Charlie Tuna's phone bits. They were probably playing ten records an hour. Lohman and Barkley at KFI, Dick Whittinghill at KMPC and Dick Whittington at KGIL were probably playing six.

In an hour that had the limit---14 minutes of spots at no more than 70 seconds per break (and not all hours were always sold out), that required 12 commercial breaks.

In 1971, Ted Atkins, KHJ's Program Director, with Drake's approval, went to two-minute commercial breaks. Again, no more than three commercials in the break, so you could do two 60s, a 60 and two 30s, but not four 30s. The hourly maximum remained 14 minutes, so the number of commercial breaks in an hour dropped to seven from 12.

That worked for a while, but ultimately the lower spotloads of stations like KLOS and KMET forced top 40s (including KHJ and KKDJ) into a phase where they touted "Up to 52 minutes of music an hour")---meaning they'd cut the spot load to eight minutes, in four two-minute clusters.

Thank you for the excellent, very comprehensive reply. As a self-proclaimed "radio geek", I have wondered about that for years; and I really appreciate this information. -- Daryl

 

[davideduardo]

Occasionally I worked the 45's department. While albums and tapes were purchased by and delivered to a central warehouse, and then redistributed by company truck to the various stores, 45's were different in that they were ordered by each individual store and directly delivered by the record companies. The guy who managed our 45's warned me that some companies offered goodies (pun intended) to report inflated numbers when we got calls from WMCA, WOR-FM and especially WABC.

I first ran into this when we'd call the record stores in Puerto Rico for Moony's WUNO. One of the employees we'd call told us about how there were "rewards" for reporting to Mike Joseph consulted WKAQ . Since that did not yet affect us as we were dead last at the time, we decided to prevent the practice once we beat WKAQ (which we did) by having our own interns go to record stores on payday and the following Saturday when 80% of record sales occurred and watch sales as well as asking which songs on albums they liked. We gave each of several independent record stores in different parts of the market some free spots in exchange.

 

[davideduardo]

No. That is somewhat nieve. Rules in my career were regularly broken. I guess we lived in non parallel universe’s. Radio, like any industry had some bad guys. If you were lucky enough to avoid them, good for you. But they existed for sure. This from a 40 year jock and Pd.

We all knew who was taking stuff from the record companies because we saw stiffs reported to Gavin or Rudman or Hamilton or R&R. We also saw that the PDs at those stations seemed to turn over fast.

 

[radio128]

Hell, KGO was as clear as a bell in north Seattle in the mid 70’s. But not today. Also actually d’x’d WLS Chicago from Seattle around this same era. Magical.

KFWB and KRLA maxed out at 18 minutes per hour, including commercials within newscasts. That was pretty much the industry standard, and the one followed by more established stations like KFI, KNX and KMPC.

Beginning in 1965, KHJ under Bill Drake had a firm commercial policy: No more than 14 minutes per hour, no commercial break lasting longer than 70 seconds and no commercial break with more than three commercials in it. So, you could have a 60-second and a ten-second spot, or two 30s and a 10, but not a 60 and a 30, and not a 30 and four 10s.

If you take 60 minutes and subtract those 14 minutes of commercials, you're at 46 minutes. If your songs are three minutes long, on average, and you allow for a little wiggle room for jingles, weather and the like, that's 15 records in an hour.

Mornings were a different animal on KHJ, with eight-minute newscasts at :40 and Robert W. or Charlie Tuna's phone bits. They were probably playing ten records an hour. Lohman and Barkley at KFI, Dick Whittinghill at KMPC and Dick Whittington at KGIL were probably playing six.

In an hour that had the limit---14 minutes of spots at no more than 70 seconds per break (and not all hours were always sold out), that required 12 commercial breaks.

In 1971, Ted Atkins, KHJ's Program Director, with Drake's approval, went to two-minute commercial breaks. Again, no more than three commercials in the break, so you could do two 60s, a 60 and two 30s, but not four 30s. The hourly maximum remained 14 minutes, so the number of commercial breaks in an hour dropped to seven from 12.

That worked for a while, but ultimately the lower spotloads of stations like KLOS and KMET forced top 40s (including KHJ and KKDJ) into a phase where they touted "Up to 52 minutes of music an hour")---meaning they'd cut the spot load to eight minutes, in four two-

I was just looking at an old Spot Radio Rates and Data from Oct. 1974 on David's website. I found the maximum hourly commercial minutes for these stations:
KHJ 12 min. max per hour
KGFJ 14 min.
KRLA 10 min.
KMET 8 units per hour
KRTH 4 commercial breaks per hour
KIQQ, KKDJ, and KEZY did not provide this information.

 

[Weiserguy]

... The guy who managed our 45's warned me that some companies offered goodies (pun intended) to report inflated numbers when we got calls from WMCA, WOR-FM and especially WABC...

Probably worth a quick note here that if WMCA was involved, this was pre-1970.

Yes, Michael, you're correct. The music died at WMCA in 1970, though I don't recall the exact month. That summer I finished my freshman year, worked mornings at WLIR and afternoons at Goody. (And I got fired at both places within a week of each other in July.) I'll be a gentleman and not mention the name of that PD (anyone who has been a Talk jock or PD would recognize it), but losing the retail gig after nearly three years was truly a blessing. Except for the employee discount, that I missed.

 

[michael hagerty]

I was just looking at an old Spot Radio Rates and Data from Oct. 1974 on David's website. I found the maximum hourly commercial minutes for these stations:
KHJ 12 min. max per hour
KGFJ 14 min.
KRLA 10 min.
KMET 8 units per hour
KRTH 4 commercial breaks per hour
KIQQ, KKDJ, and KEZY did not provide this information.

Thanks for this. This is after Bill Drake left RKO in May of 1973 and shows KHJ responding to competitive pressure, dropping from 14 minutes per hour to 12. KGFJ was just beginning its (mostly losing) battle against KDAY.

At this point, KRLA was pretty much a non-entity (they had a 1.3 in the fall '74 Pulse) and would have been lucky to sell out even ten minutes an hour.

KMET's eight units is important because it means the maximum would be eight minutes. Every 30 second unit they sold would reduce the minutes per hour by that amount. If an hour had nothing but 30-second spots, the limit that hour would be four minutes.

From memory and airchecks, KRTH's breaks were two minutes, so that works out to an eight-minute commercial hour as well.

KIQQ seemed to have a very light spot load in '74, largely made up of local or regional accounts you didn't hear on KHJ or KKDJ. They were very slow out of the gate in terms of ratings, tied with KRLA with a 1.3 (24th place).

KKDJ in 1974 had liners like "KKDJ with more than nine thousand minutes of music a week!"---which roughs out to 52 minutes an hour, or eight minutes of commercials.

 

[michael hagerty]

Daytime! And yep, it's probably 375 miles.


KFBK (1530): Can hear them sometimes in San Diego, but it has to be 1-2 hours before sunset. I'm guessing Sacramento is 550 miles from S.D.

Pretty close---the towers are 25 miles north of Sac, so it's probably about 525 in a straight line.

I used to listen to them in the wintertime driving home from iHeart's Phoenix studios, not knowing that in a few years, I'd be co-anchoring that afternoon newscast with Kitty O'Neal. I've also picked them up---noisy, but listenable, in Moab, Utah and Yellowstone National Park.