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KUTY. What format did it have.
- Thread starter 34james
- Start date
No, you’re ChannelFlipper!
I see what you did there!
Just for info KUTY now diplexes off of 1380 in Lancaster with 3.5 kW daytime and 170 W at night. Previously their Xmitter was a few miles East of Lancaster with 5 kW DA day and night . For many years prior to that they were daytime only with their xmitter next to Lake Palmdale running 5 kw non-directional with a near local signal all the way down to Santa Clarita.
KUTY was Top 40 until----my memory says the early 80s. First gig for a lot of jocks in the 60s and 70s, some who went on to the bigs---Billy Pearl, Imus...
Yeah, I think Don Imus went to Sacramento after KUTY.
I think it was KJOY, Stockton, then KXOA in Sac, then WGAR, Cleveland and then New York. He worked for Jack Thayer in Sacramento, and Thayer took Imus with him to 'GAR and WNBC.
The legend, repeated by Imus himself, was that KJOY fired him for the Eldridge Cleaver look-alike contest. But the Imus bio by Kathleen Tracy, based on interviews with co-workers, says Imus (narrowly) survived that but stepped in it again shortly after when he saw signs referring to Halloween as "Spook day" and just ran with it. And that was that.
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The Antelope Valley "market"
Didn't know about the Eldridge Cleaver thing...
See my edit above---
Here's how the book describes the Eldridge Cleaver look-alike contest:
Cleaver at the time was a fugitive member of the feared militant Black Panther organization and was listed by J. Edgar Hoover as one of the FBI's Most Wanted Men in America. The first prize was a $5,000 fine and ten years in jail. Many years later Don would reflect back on his mind set in suggesting the contest. "My position, my thesis was that J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon simply wanted to arrest any black and would accept any black person as Cleaver. Their mentality, in my mind, was 'Well, they all look alike, so let's just get one.' So it was a quick way for someone to get some money."
If you combine written history about Imus' on-air stuff with airchecks (especially his two-man shows with Robert W. Morgan at KHJ and WNBC and the Dan O'Day aircheck of him on WHK, Cleveland, after being fired from WNBC in '77), there's a really clear pattern of racist "jokes". The Rutgers thing was pretty near inevitable.
My G-d !
I used to listen to Imus quite a lot while I was still living in New York, and he really came right up to the line a bunch of times. But while sober he seemed to know how far was too far. Problem was he often wasn't sober. He could be on coke, or nursing a hangover from the previous night's partying, or oversleep and even miss a show. So even if he didn't cross that line, the totality of his offenses eventually got him fired.
In terms of format, talking about KUTY, in the very early 70s for sure, and possibly late 60s when KUTY was Top 40, they did something I had never heard any station do before: during weekday mornings they suspended Top 40 music at 10 am and for an hour they played MOR music. They called this segment "Coffee Break". At which time they tried to sound like KMPC, and the rest of the broadcast day KHJ ! (not even close on both attempts !)
In the moment that he would pull a stunt, he probably didn't stop for a few seconds to think of the possible repercussions because he thought he just has to be funny. In the infamous bit where he was describing young female basketball players, he didn't stop, even just for a second, to realize that he's talking about someone's daughter. Presumably he wouldn't want some describing his kid that way!
On a more positive note, he at times could really be funny. His bit pretending to sell "Praying Hands" TV antennas from the "First Church of the Gooey Death" was priceless!
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I was listening to the West Coast tape delay of the show the day of the Rutgers incident---it was all Bernie, and I was expecting to see his name in the paper the next day---until Imus decided to top it all.
Having heard the stuff with Morgan, the WHK show (all of which included some pretty awful material involving Mexicans and Jewish people) and knowing about the Eldridge Cleaver contest, this being the internet age, I figured all that would factor in and he'd be done forever. I was stunned that it didn't work out that way and that Imus would get back on the air for another decade.
Some folks are truly teflon, and things just don't stick! (Like certain high ranking government officials)
It just occurred to me that maybe he was given some "credit" for his children's charity ranch that he and his wife ran in I think New Mexico.
But you have to look at who hired him back. He was fired by CBS, and hired by Cumulus. Cumulus is the company that sank a thousand ships, so is it all that surprising they'd give Imus one more chance? By contrast, he was radioactive at CBS (and Clear Channel, Emmis, etc.), and NBC and ABC were gone from radio. Salem was never going to touch the guy. Who's left in NYC? Multicultural? Pacifica? The public stations? If not for Cumulus, Imus was toast and would've been doing public access cable. (IMHO)
For the record, KUTY was on 1470 AM (and I guess it still is). It was Top 40, as others have said. We used to have it on in our house all the time when I was a kid. Here is a little more history on it. KUTY AM 1470
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