KGB

[michael hagerty]

I remember hearing Paul Compton years later on I think KFI. Unbelievably smooth, I always thought he should be on a Jazz station.

I think he would have fit well there, too---I'm guessing neither KNOB or KBCA could pay him what he was accustomed to. So it was KHJ, KMPC, KFI, KGIL, and KRLA instead.

 

[michael hagerty]

I'm sorry but I don't understand how what you said pertains to what I said. Call letters were the primary positioners. They were sometimes pronounceable but always used to promote the stations. There might also be a frequency tie-in to the calls but under no circumstances would WABC refer to itself as, "The Flounder"!

My comment came after the one you responded to, Semoochie---but the point is that, until at least the 50s for most stations, call letters were identification and not image or marketing---essentially the difference between a license plate the DMV issues you sequentially ( 123 ABC) and a personalized plate ( LITIG8R) that tells the world (at least the world behind you in traffic) that you're a lawyer.

Early attempts at image and marketing were clumsy and doomed to fail---KGB in 1929, just before breakthroughs in tuberculosis research, marketed itself as "Music for the Sick"----targeting shut-ins.

It didn't last. "Boss Radio", 35 years later, would do better for them.

 

[michael hagerty]

But in the 60's, Drake emphasized calls at stations ranging from KGB to CKLW to KFRC and KHJ.

I believe I read that Drake was told he couldn't change the calls as part of his deal. RKO didn't want to blow up years of brand equity (even if there weren't blockbuster ratings attached to that) if Drake bombed.

So he was dealt a bunch of calls that you couldn't really make much out of, anyway---KHJ, KFRC, WHBQ, CKLW, WOR-FM. RKO changed WNAC AM/FM/TV to WRKO just before handing Drake the keys to WRKO.

The first time Drake had a clean sheet was in the makeover of KHJ-FM. He originally intended a "hit album rock" format, and chose KRTH (K-Earth) because of the then-popular "Whole Earth Catalog".

KLOS essentially beat Drake to the punch with a killer book for their "Rock 'n Stereo" format six months before the planned KHJ-FM switch, so he pivoted to Oldies, but kept the KRTH calls and the K-Earth station name.

 

[davideduardo]

I'm sorry but I don't understand how what you said pertains to what I said. Call letters were the primary positioners. They were sometimes pronounceable but always used to promote the stations. There might also be a frequency tie-in to the calls but under no circumstances would WABC refer to itself as, "The Flounder"!

But, really, there are only a couple of nations in the world where call letters were predominantly used, going back to the 1920's; the US, Canada and Mexico are the greatest users. A secondary group consisted of the southern cone of South America. All those nations had in common a very early adoption of radio.

Most countries used station names, not call letters. In particular, nations where the government controlled all radio, station names like "BBC" were used, not calls.

In most of the Caribbean and the rest of Latin America, names were used for commercial stations while some very early ones used the call letters.

We can generalize in saying that the earliest stations were either named after a national (government) service or used call letters. As radio progressed, stations started using easy to remember names. The USA was very late in making this transition.

In my experience, when I interned in Mexico City at the leading radio group, none of the 5 stations used call letters except as a legal requirement. The old, traditional stations like XEW, XEB, XEQ and XEX used calls because they always had. Yet the market I had left, Cleveland, OH, had only stations using call letters and no station used a name. And the next year, in Ecuador, I found that no station (with one exception) was even allowed to use its call letters on the air; they were just for "administrative purposes" and we had to have a name for each station.

 

[ercjncpr]

I'm sorry but I don't understand how what you said pertains to what I said. Call letters were the primary positioners. They were sometimes pronounceable but always used to promote the stations. There might also be a frequency tie-in to the calls but under no circumstances would WABC refer to itself as, "The Flounder"!

I think your statement to that effect was too general and does not apply to every station in the country

 

[Yabadabado1]

How many stations in the 60s ID'd as "Color Radio"? Or as "Channel 14" or whatever their frequency was? WHK in Cleveland was one and I know there were several more around the nation. WHLO in Akron, OH. known as "Hello radio"....still uses it today when they get away from their talk format during holidays [Labor Day, Memorial day, etc.] and flip back to flashback music. Stations today still ID as "The Frog", "The Bear", "Buzzard radio" [WMMS anyone?" "Hippie Radio", etc. Less important today with PPM but stations still do it.
AQnd how many stations broadcast the fad "Quadrophonic stereo" system before shortly dumping it? Guess people didn't want two shell out more dollars for two additional speakers. WMMS did it but I don't think it lasted long.

 

[michael hagerty]

How many stations in the 60s ID'd as "Color Radio"? Or as "Channel 14" or whatever their frequency was? WHK in Cleveland was one and I know there were several more around the nation.

Contemporary radio has always been a copycat business. There were as many "Fake Blores" as there were "Fake Drakes". And after that, "Q Format" ripoffs and xeroxes of KIIS-FM.

Stations today still ID as "The Frog", "The Bear", "Buzzard radio" [WMMS anyone?" "Hippie Radio", etc. Less important today with PPM but stations still do it.

Actually, it's not less important. PPM measures what you're listening to, but you, the listener have to remember what it is you like and where to find it. Mnemonic devices like station names have been shown to have better retention when it comes to imaging than a set of four letters beginning in "K" or "W".

AQnd how many stations broadcast the fad "Quadrophonic stereo" system before shortly dumping it? Guess people didn't want two shell out more dollars for two additional speakers. WMMS did it but I don't think it lasted long.

There were several dozen stations that broadcast in Quad, at least part of the time. The BBC is credited with the first Quad broadcast in the summer of 1974. Among commercial stations in the U.S., most of the activity happened in 1975 and 1976. Classical and album rock stations were more likely to broadcast in Quad, though more mainstream pop stations like KIOI in San Francisco and KKDJ in Los Angeles, did as well.

Hearing Quad required more than two additional speakers---it required a quad decoder. That alone was $250-$400. That's the equivalent of $1466 to $2346 in today's money. And then the cost of two more speakers. And that's assuming you had a fancy enough stereo with a free input and output for the decoder and two more speaker outputs. A lot of record buyers and radio listeners didn't.

More people might have done it, including me, if there had been one standard for Quad, but there were three, QS, SQ and Quadradisc. I was waiting for standardization so I could buy one decoder...but the market evaporated before that happened.

 

[davideduardo]

How many stations in the 60s ID'd as "Color Radio"? Or as "Channel 14" or whatever their frequency was? WHK in Cleveland was one and I know there were several more around the nation.

That was registered, but you could buy the jingle package and use it all.

Less important today with PPM but stations still do it.

Not correct. Building identity in the PPM world is even more important than ever. We now know that people listen in 10 to 20 minutes much of the time due to interruptions ranging from phone calls to bathroom breaks, so we want them to come back each time and remember who we are for tomorrow and the next day.

 

[TomásEstefan]

Contemporary radio has always been a copycat business. There were as many "Fake Blores" as there were "Fake Drakes". And after that, "Q Format" ripoffs and xeroxes of KIIS-FM.



Actually, it's not less important. PPM measures what you're listening to, but you, the listener have to remember what it is you like and where to find it. Mnemonic devices like station names have been shown to have better retention when it comes to imaging than a set of four letters beginning in "K" or "W".



There were several dozen stations that broadcast in Quad, at least part of the time. The BBC is credited with the first Quad broadcast in the summer of 1974. Among commercial stations in the U.S., most of the activity happened in 1975 and 1976. Classical and album rock stations were more likely to broadcast in Quad, though more mainstream pop stations like KIOI in San Francisco and KKDJ in Los Angeles, did as well.

Hearing Quad required more than two additional speakers---it required a quad decoder. That alone was $250-$400. That's the equivalent of $1466 to $2346 in today's money. And then the cost of two more speakers. And that's assuming you had a fancy enough stereo with a free input and output for the decoder and two more speaker outputs. A lot of record buyers and radio listeners didn't.

More people might have done it, including me, if there had been one standard for Quad, but there were three, QS, SQ and Quadradisc. I was waiting for standardization so I could buy one decoder...but the market evaporated before that happened.

I still have dozens of Quad albums. The RCA/JVC Quadradisc system known as CD-4 was the only system that would require a radio station to decode the record and re-encode it into another system for broadcast in 4-channel. Any station broadcasting in stereo and playing an SQ or QS encoded disc would automatically be "Quad" and simply have to tell the listener which system it is so the listener could switch his Quad receiver or amplifier to the right mode. But even this was far too complicated. Imagine if the only way to get a reasonably normal looking color picture on your TV was to have available three different color processors with none of them giving you truly accurate color rendition.

 

[Yabadabado1]

I had a stereo that you could switch to be a Quad receiver but to me it didn't sound all that much better so didn't really matter to me when it disappeared. The only "new" technology that impressed me years ago was AM Stereo. I had a Pioneer AM Stereo and , to me at least, I thought the AM sounded far superior to FM stereo. I believe WHK had an oldies format at the time of AM Stereo and I thought it sounded fantastic....except when T-storms were roaming about.

 

[Yabadabado1]

Not correct. Building identity in the PPM world is even more important than ever. We now know that people listen in 10 to 20 minutes much of the time due to interruptions ranging from phone calls to bathroom breaks, so we want them to come back each time and remember who we are for tomorrow and the next day.

Not to me. I was always the one that remembered the call letters better than the mascot names, except for The Buzzard because they beat you to death with it. I wasn't a huge fan of them. But throw a set of call letters at me from the area and I could tell you format, dial position, and most of the on-air staff. I'd probably only remember a station if they had an unusual tag line, like WXXX, the Flatulent Five, or something equally stupid.

 

[davideduardo]

Not to me. I was always the one that remembered the call letters better than the mascot names, except for The Buzzard because they beat you to death with it. I wasn't a huge fan of them. But throw a set of call letters at me from the area and I could tell you format, dial position, and most of the on-air staff. I'd probably only remember a station if they had an unusual tag line, like WXXX, the Flatulent Five, or something equally stupid.

You are a sample size of one person. Quite some years ago, a study was done comparing radio recognition in Mexico City, where nearly all the highly rated stations used names, with several US cities where at the time most stations used calls or "pronounced calls" like Wibbage or Wixy or Cable. It was found that the Mexico City listeners could remember an average of 8 different stations correctly, while in the markets based on call letters the average was four.

Call letters are like Social Security and Driver License numbers. Useful, but not warm and not memorable.

 

[Mediafrog+]

There were several dozen stations that broadcast in Quad, at least part of the time. The BBC is credited with the first Quad broadcast in the summer of 1974. Among commercial stations in the U.S., most of the activity happened in 1975 and 1976. Classical and album rock stations were more likely to broadcast in Quad, though more mainstream pop stations like KIOI in San Francisco and KKDJ in Los Angeles, did as well.

KZEW in DFW broadcast in quad in the mid-70s. I recall they would occasionally air a sort of pulsing “reference tone” that (somehow) could be used to adjust quad receivers. Anyone remember anything about that and how that reference tone worked?

 

[Yabadabado1]

You are a sample size of one person. Quite some years ago, a study was done comparing radio recognition in Mexico City, where nearly all the highly rated stations used names, with several US cities where at the time most stations used calls or "pronounced calls" like Wibbage or Wixy or Cable. It was found that the Mexico City listeners could remember an average of 8 different stations correctly, while in the markets based on call letters the average was four.

Call letters are like Social Security and Driver License numbers. Useful, but not warm and not memorable.

Yes, I realize I am unusual in that respect......but that's just me. But you have stations all over the country using the same name: i.e., "The Frog, The Bear, The Turd "We play the bottom 50 of the Top 100 Billboard charts!" or whatever and someone says "Oh, I listen to "The Frog" everyday!" and I can say "OK, did you mean "The Frog" out of San Antonio, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Portland, Maine or Oregon; Phoenix, Arizona; or one of the dozen other stations across the nation using that ID?" For me they may be able to just say the call letters and/or just the frequency and I'd be able to tell them what city or the call letters, say WGCL" and I could say "Do you mean the old G98 in Cleveland or the WGCL currently located in Bloomington, IN.?" or "I listened to WDBN" and I could say "Oh, The Quiet Island" from Medina, OH. or the WDBN located in Wrightsville, Georgia?" But, again, as I said, that's just me.
Oh and people my age or younger [rapidly heading towards 70] will come up and say I listened to The Buzzard and I could ask them the call letters and they have no idea because they always knew it as the Buzzard.

 

[CTListener]

What you're missing is that the overwhelming majority of radio users don't listen to any Frogs or Bears or Kisses or Lites other than the ones in their hometown (or thereabouts) with the powerhouse local signals. Why should someone who's listening to Froggy in Montpelier, VT, care that there are other Froggys in Pittsburgh or Albany? Those stations aren't even on their radios, and because they play the same music that the Montpelier Froggy does, they have no reason to seek out their streams. They not only don't care about those distant Froggys, they don't even know they exist unless they run into one on a road trip.

 

[CTListener]

Why am I composing a parody song called "Croak From a Distant Frog" in my warped mind right now?

 

[radiofan2023]

Why am I composing a parody song called "Croak From a Distant Frog" in my warped mind right now?

That’s a ribbiting idea

 

[Yabadabado1]

What you're missing is that the overwhelming majority of radio users don't listen to any Frogs or Bears or Kisses or Lites other than the ones in their hometown (or thereabouts) with the powerhouse local signals. Why should someone who's listening to Froggy in Montpelier, VT, care that there are other Froggys in Pittsburgh or Albany? Those stations aren't even on their radios, and because they play the same music that the Montpelier Froggy does, they have no reason to seek out their streams. They not only don't care about those distant Froggys, they don't even know they exist unless they run into one on a road trip.

Because nowadays they can stream stations from anywhere they want.

 

[davideduardo]

Because nowadays they can stream stations from anywhere they want.

But to the average local station, the only truly salable listeners are local. Their corporate owners can monetize the stream by selling a whole package of them with localized ads. But the identity is really irrelevant.

 

[michael hagerty]

Because nowadays they can stream stations from anywhere they want.

Your argument is that one Froggy is pretty much like the other. Let's agree to that. Now, why would you listen to one on the other side of the country instead of the one in your town?

Answer: You wouldn't and (as David said) most people don't.