You got it! 710 KMPC and its sister station 560 KSFO up in the Bay were probably the finest examples of what "Full-Service" radio stations were supposed to be all about...the perfect blend of personality/music/news...it's no wonder that they were No. 1 for such a long period of time! Radio has always been a business, but then it was truly an Art!
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Is KRDC 1110 am los angeles shutting down on the 22nd?
- Thread starter Syfy
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It's easy to be an artist when you have no competition. Things change when the space becomes crowded.
Things have changed in both music and radio. Reality shows have made it possible for a waitress to become a huge star overnight, or someone to become a national online radio celebrity. The world is flat.
They didn't skimp on KVI or KEX either!
Yes I realized I should've mentioned them too. Folks in Seattle and Portland were fortunate to have them. It truly was Golden West Broadcasting!
The only city missing is San Diego but back in the day 710's signal was about as effective as KFI's in San Diego!
And KOOL, too!
In LA the FCC specified radio sunset time for both Nov and Dec is 4:45 PST.
Yes indeed I forgot Phoenix!
Gene Autry owned KOOL AM/FM/TV along with Tom Chauncey. Don't recall the stations being under the GWB umbrella.
Today KOOL AM 9~Sixty is KKNT (Salem). KOOL FM 94~Five is Audacy. And KOOL TV 10 is KSAZ (Fox O&O)
There is a 7~Ten in the Valley, KBMB (Entravision). When an Ancient Modulation station moves sites, they have to play by current rules regarding co and adjacent channel interference. Look at the engineering study for KSPN's move...quite a coverage change.
Excuse me while I clean my pocket protector...all this math befuddles what's under the fez!
It’s the other 23 1/2 hours a day that were killing ‘em. No doubt Healy was part of why they chose sportstalk in ‘92.
Doc’s right. KOOL was a side deal not involving Autry’s GWB partners.
We could all learn a lot about business from the singing cowboy.
But it had marvelous similarities in style and management. The only issue is that in Phoenix, KOOL (AM) had to contend with the (mostly) KOY morning show with Bill Heywood.
Towards the end, he was not as involved with the radio stations. The AAA intent on KSCA ("Southern California Alternative") was abortive, and the prior K-LIT (always with a hypen) was similarly not successful.
Unfortunately, the management that made those stations work for so long was not prepared for a new generation; when we "got the keys" for KSCA I was told "it won't work in any format... the signal could just not be fixed!" Of course, the next book was a 6.7.
Probably spent more time at the ball park.
And with his young(er) wife!
It is just too bad that he didn't live long enough to see his beloved Angels (I will call them what he called them, the "California Angels") win the World Series in 2003. I am sure he believed that would have made his life complete.
1. 5-10K people were listening at time of RD’s sign off? Would love to see some sources on that.
2. I’m guessing you are late teens/early 20s, so younger than me. My generation either somewhat remembers RD or not at all. From my experience, they hardly did any local promotion for it and the signals it was on near me were static factories. Not exactly a great experience to listen to early Jonas Brothers with electrical wires drowing them out.
3. By the end, hardly anyone cared. The network long lost its way and relevance. The bigwigs at corporate didn’t care. Those who did were a *very* small minority. That’s why it signed off the way it did, in the dead of night.
In that last month, it did not "make the book" IIRC.
If someone can give me the exact end date, I can check again.
They were almost all on AM stations, and generally second tier ones at that. Of course, this was begun about two decades after nearly all youth (teens and young adults) had moved to FM.
And, I believe, they did not make a big deal out of it as they hoped for no negative publicity that would tarnish the Mouse's image. Disney definitely does not believe in "any publicity is good publicity" and they are maniacally image conscious.
There was also a glaring difference in management. Tom Chauncey was one mean SOB, given to verbally abusing and humiliating his employees in front of each other.
By the way, the Chauncey-Autry partnership dates back to 1941, when they bought KPHO (910 AM) together. Eventually, they wound up with KOOL AM-FM-TV and KOLD-TV in Tucson, a partnership between the two of them and advertising exec Homer Lane. Autry sold out his interest in the late 60s or early 70s.
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KSFO had a remarkable run and was in fact #1 for a long time.
KMPC---well, I grew up thinking it had to be number one, but looking at the ratings, it rarely was after '65. I show it tied for number one in the November/December 1966 Pulse (with KHJ and KLAC), and in third place in '67 and '68. In '69, '70 and '71, it was seventh and in 1972, it fell out of the top ten to #11.
It managed to crawl back into the top ten, but not the top five, from '73 through '78, and then dropped back to a tie for 11th in the Fall '79 Arbitron. That no doubt prompted the big changes that happened in 1980---and which drove the station to 15th and 16th in '81 and '82. Going Standards got them back in the top ten for about seven years.
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