D
dickfry
Guest
Another string got me thinking about my own misspent days at KURB, back in the mid 70s. The place was always desperately broke. The GM when I was there was Tom Kelly (no, the OTHER Tom Kelly). He was filled with great ideas and no cash to set things into motion.
The place we were broadcasting from then is now a condo development, which you can see on the east side of the I-5 overpass as you head through Mountlake Terrace.
Back then, there were two stubby towers behind the station. I remember Kelly attempting to tweak the directional pattern of this 500 watt firestarter to get us a little more coverage in Seattle. I could almost hear KURB in my ratty downtown apartment at Cherry and Terry.
We were already doing voice tracking in 1975. I remember Dick Stokey coming in every so often to cut some carts. Then we would play them between records and pretend a real announcer was there doing the shows. At that time, it was a hit-oriented AC format.
I also remember that we operated a boiler-room sales operation. Spin some records for a couple hours, then get on the phone and make cold calls to anybody in the yellow pages. It was a tough sell. I burned up more gas going to appointments than I ever made back from the sponsors. Strangely, the sponsors weren't any better at paying their bills than KURB was.
But to make it all a real radio story, it went without saying that the older and wiser members of the crew would grab their paycheck at lunchtime and take it directly to the Old State Bank branch in Lynnwood that it was drawn on and cash it there. That's because if you put it into your own bank, the station account would be overdrawn by the time the check was presented for payment. And like a rubber ball, it came bouncing back to me.
I used to call the bank exercise 'Radio Roulette.' When you're that young, and that broke, it's really tough to lose at radio roulette. But at least I could be comforted in knowing that when my paycheck bounced, some other lucky bastard at the station was able to make their rent payment.
Ah, the good old days of radio.
-Nostalgic Dick
The place we were broadcasting from then is now a condo development, which you can see on the east side of the I-5 overpass as you head through Mountlake Terrace.
Back then, there were two stubby towers behind the station. I remember Kelly attempting to tweak the directional pattern of this 500 watt firestarter to get us a little more coverage in Seattle. I could almost hear KURB in my ratty downtown apartment at Cherry and Terry.
We were already doing voice tracking in 1975. I remember Dick Stokey coming in every so often to cut some carts. Then we would play them between records and pretend a real announcer was there doing the shows. At that time, it was a hit-oriented AC format.
I also remember that we operated a boiler-room sales operation. Spin some records for a couple hours, then get on the phone and make cold calls to anybody in the yellow pages. It was a tough sell. I burned up more gas going to appointments than I ever made back from the sponsors. Strangely, the sponsors weren't any better at paying their bills than KURB was.
But to make it all a real radio story, it went without saying that the older and wiser members of the crew would grab their paycheck at lunchtime and take it directly to the Old State Bank branch in Lynnwood that it was drawn on and cash it there. That's because if you put it into your own bank, the station account would be overdrawn by the time the check was presented for payment. And like a rubber ball, it came bouncing back to me.
I used to call the bank exercise 'Radio Roulette.' When you're that young, and that broke, it's really tough to lose at radio roulette. But at least I could be comforted in knowing that when my paycheck bounced, some other lucky bastard at the station was able to make their rent payment.
Ah, the good old days of radio.
-Nostalgic Dick
Maybe he is here reading this post 