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Topless Radio tapes

J

jacobsmith

Hi, I'm a professor in the Radio-TV-Film Dept. at Northwestern University, and I'm working on a project about the "topless radio" phenomenon of the early 1970s. I am desperately searching for audio tapes of full broadcasts of Bill Ballance's "Feminine Forum" from KGBS in LA, or "Femme Forum" from WGLD in Oak Park, IL, or some other talk show using that format from that time (early 1970s).

Does anyone know where I might look, or who I might contact to try and find recordings of those shows?

I have found two LPs of Balance’s shows, but they are brief excerpts of the shows, not the full broadcasts.

Thanks for your time and help,

Jake Smith
 
Bill Ballance sadly passed away a few years ago, but his son Lance is still in the business and he's got a fairly regular presence on twitter as well as a blog site. He can certainly help you...
 
Bob1370 said:
Bill Ballance sadly passed away a few years ago, but his son Lance is still in the business and he's got a fairly regular presence on twitter as well as a blog site. He can certainly help you...
Click to expand...

From a post Lance made a while back:

I also really enjoy it when people ask if I'm Bill Ballance's kid. Yes, that is my
real last name, and no I'm not."

Lance was born in Florida and raised in Sacramento. As I mentioned in another thread, I believe the only survivor of the KGBS airstaff from those days is Dave Hull, now retired (but most likely reachable) in Palm Springs. If you can't find an e-mail contact for Dave online, Don Barrett at LARadio.com would certainly have it.
 
jacobsmith said:
Hi, I'm a professor in the Radio-TV-Film Dept. at Northwestern University, and I'm working on a project about the "topless radio" phenomenon of the early 1970s. I am desperately searching for audio tapes of full broadcasts of Bill Ballance's "Feminine Forum" from KGBS in LA, or "Femme Forum" from WGLD in Oak Park, IL, or some other talk show using that format from that time (early 1970s).

Does anyone know where I might look, or who I might contact to try and find recordings of those shows?

I have found two LPs of Balance’s shows, but they are brief excerpts of the shows, not the full broadcasts.

Thanks for your time and help,

Jake Smith
Click to expand...

FYI: The San Francisco Bay Area version in the early and mid 70s was California Girls, hosted by Don Chamberlain, who sounded a lot like Bill Ballance - in terms of his voice. The show ran on KNEW 910 AM. Despite the rather sexist title of the program (the Beach Boys song was the show's theme), Chamberlain was a good listener, and his show was more serious, and much less smarmy than Ballance's program.

Chamberlain did a similar show on KGO-FM in the early 80s, explicity titled "Sex Talk." . The content of the later show was also quite explicit - I used to wonder why it didn't run afoul of the FCC. I heard that Chamberlain later became a licensed praciticing psychologist.

Having said all that, I have no idea if any recordings of his show still exist.
 
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