How was We Built This City considered "bad?"

[ted chittenden]

Another good example was Miami, where Bartell's WMYQ beat both WFUN and WQAM almost instantly in 1972. And then Buzz Bennett came in with Y-100 (and was soon replaced by Bill Tanner) and the market went predominantly FM for music for anyone under about 45.

On the other hand, KFRC managed to stay a top-40 outlet in San Francisco as long as it did because even though there were plenty ofFM signals in the area, many had trouble penetrating some of the neighborhoods of that hilly city. I got to experience this firsthand when we visited my brother who was living in the Richmond district in 1995. The only clear FM signals on my Walkman there were at 91.7, 97.3, 98.1, 103.7, and 106.9. Pretty much everything else, though much of it was licensed to San Francisco, sounded very fuzzy.

 

[vchimpanzee]

By whom? The FCC never declared the individual words as prohibited; they just found the broadcast of the Carlin comedy routine to be so.

By all those who decided what words are appropriate for TV, radio, newspapers ...

 

[CTListener]

By all those who decided what words are appropriate for TV, radio, newspapers ...

There is no agency that decides what language is appropriate for newspapers, as newspapers aren't licensed. Decisions on language are up to editors, with publishers, of course, having the final say if they wish. Papers like the Village Voice routinely printed all of Carlin's words, and worse.

 

[vchimpanzee]

There is no agency that decides what language is appropriate for newspapers, as newspapers aren't licensed. Decisions on language are up to editors, with publishers, of course, having the final say if they wish. Papers like the Village Voice routinely printed all of Carlin's words, and worse.

I'm talking about newspaper owners and editors.

 

[Mark Roberts]

The sale was announced the same month the talk replacing the music at night started. They’d likely been talking with Combined for some time to put together the station swap.

In that scenario, it wouldn’t be unusual for Pulitzer to say “Nighttime music audience numbers are evaporating. We see other stations are trying talk at night. Do you have any objections if we were to go ahead while the FCC approves the sale?”

I can see Combined, which, again, owned KTAR in Phoenix and KSDO in San Diego, as saying “No. We’d be doing that anyway.”

Settle down with a drink, or possibly some ibuprofen, because here we go.

Finally I was able to review a variety of sources, including back copies of the St. Louis Journalism Review (volume 1, number 1 of the SJR was in 1970) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via newspapers.com, which I subscribe to). There are some caveats but I'll defer those, except to say that anything before 1972 in St. Louis is relatively unknown territory to me, for that was the year my family moved from Iowa to the St. Louis area. Even, then KSD wasn't a station that I listened to until much later. It was not the kind of station that had high-school appeal. I say this to acknowledge my limitations here.

(By the way, there's an old thread on the subject of KSD in the 1970s: https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/ksd-550-format-history-1971-to-1980.575509/)

The swap with Combined closed in April 1979. This is consistent with the FCC history cards for what's now KTRS. The SJR claimed the sale closed September 1978, but I think that was a misunderstanding. KSD began talk in the evening that month by hiring Doug Carrick from WRVA, Richmond, Virginia. KSD's GM of the time told the Post that Carrick was hired after a year-long search. That would indicate that KSD was considering making changes as early as 1977. KSD never moved fast. Carrick brought a brand of political talk that was new to St. Louis, resulting in some attention and controversy. He lasted at KSD until the switch to all-news in 1980.

But there was another factor: popular morning host Grant Horton. Horton wanted to get into station ownership, and became a partner in a new FM station, KSCF, based in Florissant, aimed at the northern and northwest suburbs, programming a personality-focused MOR format. When KSD found out about this, Horton either resigned or was fired in January 1978. The Post once described it as being "forced to resign". Ron Morgan returned to the station to take his place, but this may have been a factor in subsequent decisions. For one thing, Carrick wasn't the type of personality that KSD had favored in the past. Things were changing.

Interestingly, the SJR in 1978 described KSD this way:

KSD ... is number two in St. Louis, behind powerful KMOX. An all-news KSD would provide stiff competition for KMOX, which prides itself on its news operation, and would almost certainly improve the overall quality of St. Louis radio news, which except for KMOX is woefully inadequate.

KSD is a profitable station, but the lure of even greater profits with an AM/FM combination {in Phoenix} is said to be the lure for Joseph Pulitzer's decision to sever family and corporate ties with the station his father founded in 1922. {...}

Other reasons reported to have influenced Pulitzer were the prospect of owning broadcast properties in the fast-growing Sun Belt with its attractive climate for business (and where Pulitzer already owns the Arizona Daily Star) and the reported offer of $5 million dollars {cash, in addition to the trade} from Combined, money which may be pumped into the financially burdened Post-Dispatch.

In hindsight, one can see problems for KSD as early as 1972. I may be stretching things a bit, again with the benefit of hindsight, but a little gem I found in an issue of Billboard was a recitation of Pulse ratings from someone at country station WIL. The overall results looked great for KSD (for some reason, these were given as whole numbers): KMOX 29, KSD 14, KXOK 12, WIL 11. WIL held fairly steady during different dayparts; KXOK trended upward as the day went on "largely on teens"; by PM drive, KSD was in 4th place with 8; in the 7 pm-12 midnight period, KMOX and KXOK tied at 18, WIL and KSHE tied at 13 (the only daypart where KSHE was cited), KWK at 10, KATZ at 8, KSD 4. Thus the listening habits of the upcoming generation began to show themselves. Yet another caveat is that the black-oriented stations, KWK and KATZ, only were cited for the evening time period. Moreover, KWK would go silent the next year. The WIL correspondent was also quoted: "Lots of FM numbers in the market and there'll be more when Bartell gets its FM rock operation going". That was a reference to KSLQ, which actually had already started by the time this was published. To be fair, KSLQ was a much bigger problem for KXOK than it was for KSD.

Fast forward to 1979. In April, Larry King was added to KSD. In May, Fred Caesar, who was a Pulitzer mainstay, was replaced as news director by Hal Brown of KSDO San Diego. Around June, a full Mutual network affiliation was added to the existing NBC affiliation. At some point, probably in the summer, a morning news block was added. At the start of August, a PM drive news block was added, reducing music on weekdays to 6½ hours. That was eliminated at the beginning of September in favor of interview shows, and weekend music was eliminated the following week. Also in August, the GM, Ed Newsom, who had stayed over from Pulitzer ownership, was replaced by Stan Greenberg.

There were numerous personnel changes and format tweaks and the station generally performed poorly. Hal Brown returned to KSDO in January 1980, saying he didn't want to be in management any more, and it appears the station went without a news director for six months, until Mike Anthony from Denver's KHOW came on board. A month and a half after Anthony arrived, the station canceled all its talk shows (except for King) and went to all-news. About that time, KSD learned that it would lose its NBC affiliation to KXOK. In August 1980, Greenberg was moved out, replaced by Wally Clark, who had earlier been GM of WIL.

(Kind of lost in the spinning revolving doors: by this time, Combined had merged into Gannett.)

All-news KSD didn't last long: in January 1981, the station announced it would switch to country. The Post article quoted Joe Dorton, president of Gannett's radio division (which indicates that this was a decision taken at a pretty high level in the company):

Because of all the different approaches, we probably didn't give ourselves the kind of chance we would have had if we had had all our ducks in a row and had done everything right in the beginning. We could be severely criticized for what we did. It went on so endlessly that one of the things we were faced with was how do you go back and convince them (the previously disappointed listeners) that you're really credible?

The country format was successful, mainly by taking audience away from WIL(AM); KSD's superior coverage made the difference.

So the initial steps toward news/talk were taken by Pulitzer, but the complete transition came on Combined's and Gannett's watch. Again, in hindsight, it was a mismanaged transition, with a revolving door of personnel and numerous changes...in a market that is a bit parochial and dominated by a competitor ready to pounce on mistakes. I haven't even gotten into KMOX's attempts to hire people away from KSD, but that no doubt hurt, too.

KSD was successful under Pulitzer ownership, true, and Combined/Gannett botched both news/talk and the all-news format, but we'll never know if KSD would have done better if it had stayed under Pulitzer. I suspect not; in any event, Pulitzer exited broadcast ownership; in the market altogether with a swap of Channel 5 to Multimedia. Regardless of this series of events, the full-service A/C approach was doomed in many other places; it's hard to believe St. Louis would have been different.

A bunch of caveats: the SJR didn't really start covering radio until 1979; until then, it was mostly focused on print (there were two newspaper strikes in the 1970s, after all) and TV. The Post-Dispatch's TV/radio reporter for much of the 1970s was John Archibald; he did cover some radio but mostly was focused on TV. He was replaced in March 1979 by Eric Mink, who was much more energetic when it came to radio compared to Archibald. The best coverage of radio and TV in St. Louis was from Pete Rahn of the Globe-Democrat, but copies from that time period aren't available from newspapers.com. Hopefully that changes someday - after all, the Globe was in a joint operating agreement with the Post. From time to time, the SJR would accuse one or the other newspaper of suppressing news regarding their broadcast properties. It certainly did seem as if the coverage of KSD was sharper once Pulitzer didn't own it any more.

 

[michael hagerty]

In hindsight, one can see problems for KSD as early as 1972. I may be stretching things a bit, again with the benefit of hindsight, but a little gem I found in an issue of Billboard was a recitation of Pulse ratings from someone at country station WIL. The overall results looked great for KSD (for some reason, these were given as whole numbers): KMOX 29, KSD 14, KXOK 12, WIL 11. WIL held fairly steady during different dayparts; KXOK trended upward as the day went on "largely on teens"; by PM drive, KSD was in 4th place with 8; in the 7 pm-12 midnight period, KMOX and KXOK tied at 18, WIL and KSHE tied at 13 (the only daypart where KSHE was cited), KWK at 10, KATZ at 8, KSD 4. Thus the listening habits of the upcoming generation began to show themselves.

Great detective work! Thanks!

As for nighttime ratings, you'll find similar trouble for any adult-leaning music station in that era. Their audience tended to be watching prime-time TV. Gary Owens would usually be Top 5 in L.A. afternoons at KMPC. Roger Carroll, who followed him in 6-10 p.m., would fall to 20th or worse. And you can trace that all the way back to 1968.

What I learned from KFMB was to daypart an A/C to sound even closer to Top 40 in those hours and peel off some of that audience. It worked for me at KOLO in Reno, where I brought evening numbers up significantly. Bobby Rich was doing the same thing at KFMB. But that would only work so long for any AM.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Great detective work! Thanks!

As for nighttime ratings, you'll find similar trouble for any adult-leaning music station in that era. Their audience tended to be watching prime-time TV. Gary Owens would usually be Top 5 in L.A. afternoons at KMPC. Roger Carroll, who followed him in 6-10 p.m., would fall to 20th or worse. And you can trace that all the way back to 1968.

The other part of the equation was that people of our generation would be in class during the day and should have been doing homework in the evening. Some of us listened to radio in the evenings while doing homework. (I hated the high school environment and was motivated to get out of there as soon as I could, so I was quite attentive to homework.) I'm sure that homework listening was where some of those KSHE numbers were coming from, for example.

What I learned from KFMB was to daypart an A/C to sound even closer to Top 40 in those hours and peel off some of that audience. It worked for me at KOLO in Reno, where I brought evening numbers up significantly. Bobby Rich was doing the same thing at KFMB. But that would only work so long for any AM.

You'd hear this in small Midwestern markets a lot, too. Daytime comprised service elements and, usually, adult contemporary music. In those days, country music still had kind of a "hillbilly" reputation and wasn't nearly as pervasive in these small markets as it is now. Maybe country music would be heard early in the morning when, the theory went, farmers would be up working already. Evenings would be turned over either to Top 40 or to album-oriented rock until the 10 or 11 pm sign-off. The station in the Iowa town where I lived for a few years until 1972 had Top 40 in the evenings with one of the high-school students as the DJ, who even did his own music surveys.

 

[michael hagerty]

You'd hear this in small Midwestern markets a lot, too. Daytime comprised service elements and, usually, adult contemporary music. In those days, country music still had kind of a "hillbilly" reputation and wasn't nearly as pervasive in these small markets as it is now. Maybe country music would be heard early in the morning when, the theory went, farmers would be up working already. Evenings would be turned over either to Top 40 or to album-oriented rock until the 10 or 11 pm sign-off. The station in the Iowa town where I lived for a few years until 1972 had Top 40 in the evenings with one of the high-school students as the DJ, who even did his own music surveys.

You just described my first station, KIBS in Bishop, when I started in 1971:

6:00-9:00 a.m. Country music, with a half-hour news block from 7:00-7:30 including Paul Harvey).

9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. "Coffee with Virginia". Recipes, household hints and light pop MOR (Al Hirt, Vikki Carr, Tijuana Brass, Andy Williams).

10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. Radio Bingo. Fresh cards every week at the local Ben Franklin store and some poor schmuck (occasionally me) saying "B-9" into a microphone for an hour.

11:00 a.m.-12:00 noon. Light pop MOR.

12:00 noon-12:30 p.m. Half-hour news block including Paul Harvey.

12:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Light pop MOR.

5:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Half-hour news block including Paul Harvey.

5:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Light pop MOR.

6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. "Dinner Music" (Very loosely defined. Could be Classical, could be Percy Faith or Mantovani. Only rule: No vocals, minimal percussion.)

7:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. Top 40 with a high school disc jockey.

10:00 p.m. Signoff. (7:00 p.m. on Sundays)

The Top 40 high school DJ thing began in 1963 with the son of one of the station owners. By 1965, he'd recruited a classmate, in '67 another one, and after that, it was pretty much one a year. There'd sometimes be two or three still in school, so they'd each do a night or two during the week.

I was the seventh and second to the last of the KIBS high school jocks. In 1972, we hired an outsider---a guy straight out of the Columbia School of Broadcasting, who lasted a few months.

Most of the other guys had graduated, but the few still in school with me quit. I was music director, so I stayed on and when the Columbia guy bailed for KRED in Eureka, I got all the shifts. I then took Friday and Saturday nights AOR and we stayed on until midnight.

When I left for KSLY in San Luis Obispo in early 1974, I trained a high school senior and KIBS' first female jock (not counting Virginia of "Coffee With...") to replace me. She lasted a few months, until she went off to college, and that was the end. An 11-year run. Not bad.

 

[secondchoice]

When I started radio at WDBL is was country until 6 pm. Then MOR till sign off at midnigh till they later hired a very talented black announcer: JT. (1970 or 71?) * I never knew his real name but he had a record store and sold me records at cost. He played top 40 with a healthy mix of Motown and Philly Soul. The station had several businesses that catered to teenagers: a local department store that sold blue jeans to girls, concerts in Nashville and some of the high school sports packages had extra commercials that aired between 6 and 10 pm. They actually made money at night on FM in the early 1970's with JT and high school sports.

* I can't remember exact dates a half century ago

 

[KeithE4]

"We quilt this city..." A new commercial for Northern toilet paper. A new low for this song.

 

[tbolt909]

"We quilt this city..." A new commercial for Northern toilet paper. A new low for this song.

Circling The Drain. Appropriate for a song that deserved flushing long ago...

 

[davideduardo]

Circling The Drain. Appropriate for a song that deserved flushing long ago...

On the other hand, brilliant move by Northern. "Everyone" knows that song because of its considerable exposure even to people who don't listen to the formats that might play or have ever played it. Very strong and memorable hook, and the transference of "built" to "quilt" will be nearly automatic.

Oh, and please don't squeeze the...

 

[Dondd]

Don’t forget Richard Carpenter wouldn’t have been able to change the song lyrics without the permission of the song writers (or owners of the rights to the song)

I don't think that's true.
Mac Davis, who wrote I Believe In Music, which was a big early 1970s hit for the Detroit group Gallery, was upset the group slightly altered one of the lyrics. They hadn't requested the songwriter's permission

Finally, the only time I can remember where licenses may have been scrutinized for content (and I'm not sure they ever were even then) was when then-President Nixon in the early 1970s complained about drug references in song lyrics and I believe he requested the FCC to go after radio stations at license renewal time. While I don't think that anybody followed through on these threats at the government end (and I'm sure that there are others on this forum who know more than I do on the subject), it appears that making the threats alone was enough, especially on top-40 formatted stations.

Nixon, eh?
Sound eerily familiar when we have a president today who wants network licenses "removed" because he doesn't care for the news coverage he receives...

Trump calls for "fake news" networks to have licenses revoked by FCC

 

[davideduardo]

I'm talking about newspaper owners and editors.

And each newspaper had its own standards and policies. Each made its own decisions, and instilled them in the writers, section editors and the editor and publisher were the final "voice" in the event of differing opinions.

In general, editors of mainstream metro area papers were conservative as they had to appeal to a wide range of readers. I once discussed this with my stepbrother, the editor and publisher of a larger daily paper. Our context was the ill-defined FCC prohibition of "dirty words" which had no list. I asked if there was any kind of consensus or list among newspaper publishers, and was told that the abandonment of the NAB Code due to it being considered collusion had further kept newspaper publishers from even thinking of such a thing.