• 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

Salina's KSKG "99KG" Top 40 years

J

jericho

Guest
This is my first post to the board, so hello everyone. I'm grew up in Salina, Kansas and listened to 99KG religiously from the mid 80's to the early 90's. This is the station that started my passion for working in radio which I now have for over 20 years. I used to have some aircheck tapes of the station, but a lot of them have been lost over the years. What remains in my collection is mostly old recordings of American Top 40 broadcast on 99KG. Anyone have any good memories of 99KG's Top 40 years or know of any good airchecks online to share?
 
I don't have any airchecks left from there, but 99KG was probably one of my favorite stations I EVER worked at. (I was there in 83/84)
 
Fond recollections...

I remember when Dave Biondi left KEYN in Wichita to take over that little crappy religious FM in Salina. First time I walked into the old place (in an old run down three or four story office building) and saw what a crappy fire trap the place was I was astonished at how well it sounded on the air. Definitive proof that it's not the "tool" but the "hand on the tool" that makes a great product.

At the time they had an old mono Gates Yard console, the Turn-Table remotes were wall switches that switched the 110 to turn them on and off. The microphone was suspended with a piece of screen door spring from the ceiling etc... But man it sounded like a BIG TIME MONSTER on the air!

Later they moved to Kraft Manor (remember all the shag carpet on the walls?) and the place really took off. The on-air processing at the Kraft Manor studios was Gates Solid Statesmen AGC and Limiters with the time constant jacked to nuclear... It had so much compression it would suck the lint out of your navel. Loved the old place as it was a prime example of a small market station that COOKED... Ninety-Nine K-S-K-G Salina!!!
 
Can you tell me more about the people that ran it and how the programming was so well done? I was just growing up in Salina during the 80's and knew it was a cool station for Salina, but I'm just now finding out how it was one of the best in the country and a Billboard nominee for station of the year at one point.

Specific things I remember are the annual Shamrock scavenger hunt for St. Patrick's where they gave clues on the air to find the hidden Shamrock. Confession, I cut class in high school one day looking for that thing. Personalities I remember well are "The Jammer" Jay Jeffries, (he gave me my only tour ever to the upstairs studio part of the building) Rusty Keys? (always laughed at his name), and Jeff Travis (such a unique voice). I listened to Rick Dees show every Saturday night religiously. I called his hotline so much that Rick actually called me back once and recorded me "requesting" a song on his show. In the late 80's early 90's I won tons of cassette tapes from call in contests (caller number 9).

Interesting you mention the move to Kraft Manor. I moved out of state for college in 1994 and I don't remember the station moving out of the "crappy fire trap" until sometime after that. In fact I was thinking it was after they switched to country, but I could be off a few years. I do remember noticing when I came back for summer breaks in the mid 90's that the station went to satellite programming after 7pm. Jeff Travis may have been the last DJ left that I remember.
 
I listened to 99KG on the times when its signal would get into Wichita. It always sounded like a hot station in the mid to late 80's. Seemed to be Rock/AC leaning at times. I remmeber hearing "Angie" by the Rolling Stones in about 1989 on KG. In the 90's the station seemed to go downhill. They lost their identity in '93 or '94 when they tried to become an AC station.
 
jimford1973 said:
I listened to 99KG on the times when its signal would get into Wichita. It always sounded like a hot station in the mid to late 80's. Seemed to be Rock/AC leaning at times. I remmeber hearing "Angie" by the Rolling Stones in about 1989 on KG. In the 90's the station seemed to go downhill. They lost their identity in '93 or '94 when they tried to become an AC station.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I remember when 99KG turned Hot AC and switched to satellite feed in the evenings. I think this was after the sale to Eagle so it was probably the new owners putting their mark on it. It's not really Eagle Communications fault though since CHR was struggling with its identity nationwide at this time. I just wish 99KG could have weathered the storm like some other heritage CHR stations (Z100, KDWB KIIS etc.)
 
jericho said:
Can you tell me more about the people that ran it and how the programming was so well done? I was just growing up in Salina during the 80's and knew it was a cool station for Salina, but I'm just now finding out how it was one of the best in the country and a Billboard nominee for station of the year at one point.
Click to expand...

jericho (loved the tv series btw)

I never worked there as I was at KBEQ in KC or KEYN in Wichita at the time. I did however work with a lot of KG alumni around the country. Glen Martin [Wichita/Dallas], Denny Collier [Wichita], David Stone [Wichita/Dallas], Mark Winston [Wichita/Tulsa], Leigh Ann Adam [Dallas], and others. The program director who got it rolling was Dave Biondi of "KEYN The Rock of Wichita" fame. I believe it was owned by one of Mack Sanders palls, Lee somebody (?), too many years ago and I've slept since then LOL...
 
I listened to KSKG now and then when I lived in Wichita in 1986-8. I remember them having a very big city sounding station with a HOT super loud signal too, but had no idea how they were getting it. I might have an uscoped cassette of it somewhere I can digitize.
 
billyg said:
I listened to KSKG now and then when I lived in Wichita in 1986-8. I remember them having a very big city sounding station with a HOT super loud signal too, but had no idea how they were getting it. I might have an uscoped cassette of it somewhere I can digitize.
Click to expand...

That would be awesome billyg. Let me know if you get it digitized OR I can digitize it for you (i.e record it into an mp3 file) if you aren't able to. I have the equipment to do this.
 
http://www.divshare.com/download/23936906-c36

PS: click the green DOWNLOAD button under the streaming window to save it (not the other buttons.. they're spam :mad:)

From the Spring of 88 with Stephen Edwards DJ with a mix of hair bands and pop. You'll hear a couple of "pause edits"..either I didn't like the song or the signal faded out. I recorded this on one side of a Maxell UR-120 when I lived in Wichita.

And if anyone was a better sounding (192 kbps or up) encoded Mp3 let me know. Divshare is limiting filesize at 50 KB now and the only way to get it under that was to cut a Micheal Bolton song off (no big loss) and encode it at 128 kbps.

But it still shows you how loud and dense KG99's processing was, they were really cranking it hotter than KKRD and KEYN!
 
Thanks for the aircheck. Wow, I think its been 25 years since I've heard the 99KG weather jingle, but when it came on its like it never went away. I vaguely remember Steven Edwards, but it sounds like he was the overnight guy and this was recorded very early in the morning before the morning show started. You can tell he's a little sleep deprived and ready to go home. Also, I don't remember that many back to back songs without any imaging transition. Maybe it was an overnight thing. If you have any other airchecks from a daytime slot with more commercials and activity I would love to hear them, especially the morning show. I'm especially looking for airchecks with commercials from JJ Chevrolet, Big Cheese Pizza, and SM Hanson Music (I wish I could play guitar).
 
Thanks, I might have another tape of a KSKG evening jock buried deep somewhere in my cassette collection, but I dont recall taping any of their morning shows. I'm just glad this 25 year old tape survived all my moving around and that my parents didn't toss it!
 
billyg said:
Thanks, I might have another tape of a KSKG evening jock buried deep somewhere in my cassette collection, but I dont recall taping any of their morning shows. I'm just glad this 25 year old tape survived all my moving around and that my parents didn't toss it!
Click to expand...

In my case it was ex-wives tossing the tapes ;D
 
99KG went to soft in the 90's, they lost the rhythmic/Hip Hop crowd to Power 94.5, and the rock crowd to 95-5 The Rock.
 
99KG in Great Bend

I recall receiving the station via a rooftop TV antenna pointed toward Hutchinson (for ch. 12) hooked to my FM in Great Bend, where I was in high school 1978-80.
I recall being very impressed with the station.
Its quality seemed as good as KEYN-FM, which barely came in to GB, and came in better on my car radio, but loved hearing that station, too.

Too bad there aren't many stations today that sound as good as KEYN, KOFM, KBEQ, KSKG, KLEO, KEWI, KELI, KIMN, etc., thanks to corporate one-size-fits-all and the removal of most on-air people, including decimating morning show staffs.
In fact, I don't (or rarely) listen to commercial FM.
Haven't in probably a decade.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom