In 1974 Swanson owned three FM's - one in Tulsa Formerly KRMG-FM, had just purchased KXLS in OKlahoma City out of bankruptcy, and WBYU in New Orleans. Ed Montrey was the vice President of the FM division and GM of their Tulsa FM station. They were running the Schulkey BM format in Tulsa, then when they added the OKC FM they flipped it to BM and filed for new calls for both stations...Thus KWEN in Tulsa and KKNG in OKC. BYU was also Shulkey BM. All three were giant money machines in that the format was cheap to operate and the ratings went to high dollar upper age men and women 35 plus. Swanson spent a ton of money buying KFJZ and the Texas State network in Fort Worth and ultimately placed KWEN up for sale. KWEN was battling KRAV in the BM format (KRAV was running Bonneville's version of automated BM). The day Swanson signed the agreement to sell the station, KRAV announced they were changing thier format. It was too late for Swanson to back out of the deal. KWEN's sale went to the FCC for final approval, which was granted. Utlimately Swanson sold KLEO in wichita, KQEO Albequerque, KBAT San Antonio, KFJZ and TSN Fort Worth, KKNG Tulsa and KRMG Tulsa. Ed Montrey left Swanson in December 1975 to buy KTMC McAlester, and I joined him in the spring of 1976 in sales, he and I doing a hour long morning newscast, and me doing all the play-by-play sports. Ed had joined up with Ken Greenwood when Greenwood ran Swanson Broadcasting and purchased the O'Day company which included KLEO and KQEO. Ed was the PD at KLEO then moved to GM and among other things hired the DJ who became Charlie Tuna. Anyway-thats the KKNG-KWEN story and the BM format in OKC and Tulsa.
