RON CHAPMAN

[theshadow]

After an hour or so of swapping stories, laughing, reminiscing, and topping each others' lines...his phone rang. He took the call, got up, and disappeared. After about 10 minutes, we realized - he'd gone. Just left. We all looked at each other and died laughing.

Interesting that all of you sat there laughing. Guess you know Ron
better than all of us. Personally, I would have been offended at such a
rude and frankly, arrogant, jesture. How difficult would it have been for
him to just say "Guys this was great, but I have an important call and
need to go. Let's do it again sometime"?

 

[Steve Eberhart]

...and thus the reason not EVERYONE got Chapman...

 

[GRAYWOLF]

Well, I don't have a personal RC story, but my mother was in sales for Tanglewood (up on Texoma) many moons ago and had a meeting with him. Something she relayed to me from that meeting has always puzzled me and I am hoping someone here can clear up what Ron was telling her. I am sure my mother misunderstood what he was saying....

Ron told her (as she comprehended it) that the time announced on air was dictated by the size of the audience. Meaning, if the ratings were up the time would be ahead and if ratings were down the time would be slow.

Anyone know what he was actually talking about?

 

[nuzguy]

I recall a story RC once related about the "rubber clock" as it related quarter-hour maintenance. Could she have misconstrued something about THAT as being what Chapman meant?

 

[GRAYWOLF]

I recall a story RC once related about the "rubber clock" as it related quarter-hour maintenance. Could she have misconstrued something about THAT as being what Chapman meant?

Knowing her...who knows...What is the "rubber clock"?

 

[romer979fm]

the "rubber clock"...
adjusting the actual time to make the quarter hours add up:
say you're teasing a bit around 6:10...hit the spots...and come back at 6:14...
in order to get any diarykeepers to put down they were listening in TWO quarter hours...
the time magically becomes 6:16 'sted of 6:14. just drag 'em into another quarter hour...

 

[GRAYWOLF]

That is probably exactly what it was...


Thanks, I had been intending to ask about that for quite a while, I just always thought about it when I wasn't around here!

 

[C414B]

OK, here's my Ron Chapman Story-

About 12 years ago, I started thinking about a girl I had a crush on at UNT in the mid-60s. All of a sudden I couldn't get her off of my mind, so I decided I'd track her down to see how life had turned out for her. After all, 30 years had passed since I had last seen or heard from her. Maybe that was why she was on my mind. But I had no idea what her married name would be now...I knew it wasn't MY last name.

I was fortunate to locate her because I remembered where her dad had worked. While he had since retired and passed away, the lady who answered the phone there remembered him and knew where his daughter was. She was a counselor at a Richardson junior high school.

So I called her, and she sounded the same as she did many years before. Youthful and enthusiastic. Found out she was divorced, too.

Well, back in college I had the Denton florist make a tree about 4 feet tall filled with red rose buds and heart-shaped lolly pops (OK, make out like you don't remember...there was a Jack Jones song, "Lollypops and Roses" that was popular then.) I had it delivered to her on Valentine's Day.

She told me as we were talking on the phone 30 years later that it was the coolest present she had ever gotten. (She didn't have to tell me that. I knew it was!)

So we started talking every now and then by and writing notes to each other, and I came to Dallas on business, so we had dinner. Then Valentine's Day was coming and I was thinking I may be falling in love again.

So here's where Ron Chapman comes in. He was the most popular DJ at KLIF back in the '60s. I tracked him down and asked him if he would do a piece on the radio where he told the story of the lollypop tree, that we had found each other again, and here was our song. Then he would end by playing "Lollypops and Roses."

I guess he either thought it was so lame of an idea that it was worth doing, or maybe he actually liked it. I never knew. But he did it, and as my old girlfriend was driving home from school, she heard it, and she was so shocked and caught up in the piece that she went passed by the house she had lived in for years.

So after Pastor Ron's radio blessing, getting Patty to marry me was a piece of cake. We listen to the tape of that bit about four times a year, and, of course, always on our wedding anniversary.

By the way, I sent Ron a hundred bucks and told him to either buy Mrs. Chapman some flowers or put it in the offering plate at church.

Cool story! And glad you got your girl.

Do you have the bit as an MP3 perchance?

 

[Steve Eberhart]

actually..............rubber clocking at KVIL was more like this:
if the ACTUAL time was 6:14, one might say "...coming up on 6:15..." or "...almost quarter after 6..." another trick was to say "...in two minutes it'll be 8:30..." or "about 10 o'clock.."

doing what one could to mentally stretch the time so anyone logging in an arbitron diary might HEAR 6:15 and write THAT down vs 6:14. Anything to stretch the time listening. As I recall if you had five minutes of listening time in any quarter hour, you got credit for both quarter hours...In other words, if one listened (and wrote it down that way) from 6:00 to 6:15...that would count ONE quarter hour. If one listened from 6:10 to 6:20, that would count TWO quarter hours. Obviously the more quarter hours, the better the ratings. Most stations, KVIL at the time included, did everything possible not to play spots or do anything to run away a listener over those quarter hour "humps" :00; :15; :30; :45 ...without fail song sweeps happened at those times to keep 'em listening.

All of this was assuming the listener was listening intently for timechecks and writing it down just that way...which has been all but proven to be a bit of a stretch itself! One visit to Beltsville back when I was MD at KVIL with Chuck Rhodes to "review the diaries" was enough to prove to me it was allBS!

I can recall looking at one of the books where someone logged listening every hour of every day for the whole 7 days. In the comments she wrote "I leave it on for my dogs to listen to"...Clearly she wasn't listening that entire time but it counted just that way. Another favorite was the one that showed a South Dallas address and a name of "LaShonda" something or other...she wrote down "10.3". At the time 100.3 was JAMZ, an urban formatted station. Since she only put the number "1" "0" and "3", KVIL got credit for her listening, since we had "1-0-3" listed as one of our monikers. There is no doubt in my mind that she meant "100.3" but it didn't count that way. Certainly we did not complain!