• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Old Studios

G

G Thompson

Guest
Just reading about some of the old studios like KTOW and such. Good posts. Who amongst us ever worked up on the hill in West Tulsa at KCFO at any time?

How about the old KXOJ building in Sapulpa?

Any others?

Any stories?
 
I got to hang out at the old KVOO studios on Brookside before they moved to the Big Black Brick, started on the air in the barn on the hill in Claremore (91.3), was in the house in Sapulpa (100.9), did my time in the cinder block building next to the Sand Springs waste water management plant (102.3), walked up the hill when my car couldn't make it on the ice in west Tulsa (970), and got to tour the A-frame reserved for on-air staff while the sales staff worked in-town (106.1).

So, I've had the chance to see some pretty neat Tulsa radio history!

...Oh, and apparently I can't hold onto a job. ;)
 
I got to hang out at the Trade Winds West motel when KAKC AM/FM were there. And though the jocks on AM would say how nice it was poolside, we were actually not near the pool.
 
Are those the studios Mel and Wavy did the 14K and 92K deal out of?
 
G Thompson said:
Are those the studios Mel and Wavy did the 14K and 92K deal out of?
Click to expand...

Nope. 14K/92K was out of studios that became the Oklahoma Highway Patrol Headquarters on the north side of Skelly Drive, just east of Memorial.
 
Right on,Radiogre; the Rotorama was from KELI's glory days in the 60s & 70s. (I know far too much about that building for never having been inside it.) ;D

The building originally was used in the International Petroleum Exposition (like the IPE building) in the... late 50s? I think, by a company called Global Oil. Remember the globe out on Bell's Amusement Park's miniature golf course that eventually had KMOD's logo on it? Mr. Bell bought that globe (along with a number of light poles) from Global Oil after they were through with it... it had been in the middle of the donut.

As I understand it, Global Oil had a walk-through "history of oil exploration" in the rotorama, with the globe rotating in the center that you could see through the floor-to-ceiling glass on the inside of the ring. When Global Oil got tired of the display, KELI bought the building and moved it a short distance (Why? Utilities?) and put a kelly-green canvas dome with "KELI 1430" on it in white. When that dome wore out, a rainbow canvas dome was put on (would have been more appropriate for The Rainbow Station, KMOD, but whatever) and that's what you're seeing in the B&W picture.

When signal media bought 1430 & 92.1 they put up the studios on Skelly. Apparently everyone who worked on the fairgrounds HATED the rotorama, although I thought as a kid that it was the coolest building I had ever seen. It was incredibly expensive to heat and cool because of all the glass and being up in the air, and getting to work during the fair apparently was nightmare. Add to that, no privacy anywhere in the station, and while I would have given my right arm to work in the building, everybody who actually did it apparently wanted OUT.

I went to the fairgrounds in the early 80s for a concert (81? 82?) and the building was gone and a flowerbed was in its place... flowers marking the grave of a legendary studio... now the flowerbed is gone and you can't even tell where the building was.

Ah, progress...

(Those studios on Skelly were SWEET, tho...)
 
Nighaire mentioned the old barn studios of 91.3, KNGX in Claremore. I got my start there as well. It was 1989 and the carpeted walls were from 1962. The place smelled like the Marlboro man died there.

Anyone remember the names Larry Filkins, Lou Lovette, The Red Barron, Status Quo, Sonny Night, and David Nixon? All spent countless hours in that rat trap.

I remember the ONLY restroom in the two-story building was upstairs and down the hall in the very back of the building. The studio's were downstairs and at the FRONT of the building. So if you were pulling a shift, you had to find a "poop" song and run like heck. On the weekends we played Rock on KNGX (Now KRSC). You could always tell by listening to the station when a jock was using the bathroom. Freebird or a live album would be playing.

We spun vinyl in those days. I remember one jock finding an extra long cart and putting three songs on it back to back with station sweepers in between. We all thought he was a god for thinking of it. The station was a hodge podge of formats. The format that jock worked was big band. So the trick only worked if you were spinning a show between 7am and 6pm Monday through Friday.
 
Larry Filkins, Lou Lovette, The Red Barron, Status Quo, Sonny Night, and David Nixon
Click to expand...

Geez, yes, all of those names bring back memories! There was also Mistress... Lisa? Somebody. All I remember is somebody sampling one of her breaks and creating a techno track for EOI (Edge Of Insantity) that looped her saying:

You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music

I couldn't decide if I loved it and had to hear it again, or if I should go into the front yard and open a vein before they played it again.

(It must have been a pop record, huh?) ;D

The guy I remember was an old guy who did country in the evenings, a buffer between the big band and the rock, and he MUMBLED into the microphone the entire shift. Not only that, but he was french-kissing the mic the whole time, and he chewed... you can imagine what the mic smelled like after that. If you followed him on the air, you learned to project from across the room!

One evening I was going to help him by catching up a meter reading for him. He yelled and cussed and cursed at me and told me to put the clipboard down, to never touch it until he left, and generally gave me a good reaming.

I never tried to help him again.

That was the same station where I was talking on the air about how disappointed I was in U2's latest stuff (remember when they were a cool alternative band?) and I was MOONED by one of the female students / jocks through the studio window.

...I never did figure it out: was that an insult or a compliment? 8)
 
NightAire said:
When signal media bought 1430 & 92.1 they put up the studios on Skelly. Apparently everyone who worked on the fairgrounds HATED the rotorama, although I thought as a kid that it was the coolest building I had ever seen. It was incredibly expensive to heat and cool because of all the glass and being up in the air, and getting to work during the fair apparently was nightmare. Add to that, no privacy anywhere in the station, and while I would have given my right arm to work in the building, everybody who actually did it apparently wanted OUT.

(Those studios on Skelly were SWEET, tho...)
Click to expand...

I remember visiting KELi at the Tulsa State Fair several times in the mid 70's, and I remember having a nice chat with Johnathan Apple before he went on the air. I thought it was a cool building but by the late 70's it was very run down, faded paint and water leak spots on the cealing.

I think the last time I visited it was in 1981 but by then KELi was devolving into a dull AC-oldies format before it surrendered to news-talk. The jock was using mostly carts for the hits, records for oldies.

I remember the control, news and production room were very small, basically closets. The control room had a (RCA?) console with "ROCK ON" taped on the meter.

And I visited 14-K-92-K on Skelly once right after they flipped to CHR. Nice studios, probably built for the news format.
 
NightAire said:
Larry Filkins, Lou Lovette, The Red Barron, Status Quo, Sonny Night, and David Nixon
Click to expand...

Geez, yes, all of those names bring back memories! There was also Mistress... Lisa? Somebody. All I remember is somebody sampling one of her breaks and creating a techno track for EOI (Edge Of Insantity) that looped her saying:


and I was MOONED by one of the female students / jocks through the studio window.

...I never did figure it out: was that an insult or a compliment? 8)
Click to expand...



The guy that ate your face was TOM VAN HOOSE, I think.

Remember "The Outlaw?"

One of the EOI PD's (David Nixon) kept a coffin in his office. A REAL one! I think he took the "Lord Of Darkness" thing too seriously. Too much Depeche Mode.

Mistress Lisa looked NOTHING like she sounded.

If I had been mooned by a female as a college guy, at the time I probably would have considered it an invitational preview of a dinner date in our near future. Quick, get her number.

Did I say that?
 
Speaking of old studios, the most "unique" studio I ever got to visit was KTFX, when it was located out on east Admiral. Later on, they moved to The Falls shopping center, but those studios never had quite the 'character' of the old Admiral studios. Some of you may remember them, and not so fondly.
 
Stan, when I said how nice it was "at poolside at the Tradewinds," that was no shuck. Remember when KAKC played 24/7 the 7-min LP cut of "Light My Fire?" Many's the time on a Saturday afternoon I'd hit that, get to the pool with time to hoover a
Coors, splash around awhile, and be back upstairs with still enough time to dry off and get back into "real" clothes before it was time for another "more music...KAKC" jingle and the next song.
I got to Tulsa in time to get at least one tour of KVOO's Philtower studios, before they moved to that Brookside palace. As far as truly cool radio digs, KRMG had a set-up you couldn't believe, in the back end of the Akdar Shrine Building at 4th and Denver... Front side was the Cimarron Ballroom. And KTUL (later, KELi) ID'd as "Boulder on the park, in Tulsa" -- never saw those studios, but just the way they said it, sounded like a radio-studio geek's wet-dream come true.
Scoot.
 
How about the old KMOD studio in University Club Tower? When the station went back on the air in '73 all the music was pre-recorded in San Antonio and played back from a pair of Ampex machines. There was one turntable, as I recall, but the RF from the KMOD and KRAV transmitters (which were in the next room) was so bad that only loud cuts could be played. Since the space was designed for apartments, the station was one of the few in town with a bathtub and shower. One of the jocks (who shall remain nameless) used the tub to do his laundry.
 
Tom VanHoose... oh, my, GOD yes that was him! Wasn't it something like "the ole outlaw?," which he sounded nothing like?

If I got too close to the mic after his shift I always felt like I'd French-kissed a spit cup.

EOI sounded crazy, and I alternately wish I had been a part of that, and am relieved I missed it. When I was at "Commercial-Free 91.3," I was working with another student named Dave... what-the-heck-was-his-last-name? to create some continuity across our... um... DIVERSE... formats. We were basically doing top-40 and attracting between half a dozen and a dozen listeners. ::)

I just had another flashback to a guy whose name (really!) was Sam Quinton. Not surprisingly, his show was something like The Sam Quinton Prison, and one of the things he used to do that I LOVED was pit artists against each other. He'd play an hour of alternating between Frank Sinatra and The Ramones, or David Bowie and Sammy Davis Jr, or the like. Now THAT was fun radio! I almost got whiplash a couple of times, but it's not radio if somebody doesn't get hurt.

Another fascinating character was a guy who worked Sunday evenings. He used to play Laurie Anderson's United States Live from start to finish, and THAT always made for an interesting drive.

...what the HECK was Dave's last name... he had a couple of aliases, no idea what his real name was...

Memories...
 
Ah, the old studios.

The studios on Admiral which served KKUL (later KTFX) poorly were converted from what we thought was an old farmhouse. There was an entrance foyer, an office, a production studio (with consumer-level equipment), a control room, and the transmitter.

The sales department and receptionist were located a few feet to the north . . . in a trailer.

To get to the station from Admiral involved a dirt road and a one-lane plank bridge over a creek.

The studios were filthy. But no one stumbled across the studios by accident (the inverse of the situation which prevailed for KELi at the Fairgrounds).

At the other end of the spectrum: the palatial KRAV studios at the Mansion House. I've still never seen anything like it.
 
I don't think anyone has seen an owner like Kravis either. He's a was one of a kind, and so was his station.

.. "KRAV stands for Kravis... and I know that."

:eek:
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom