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West Yellowstone station

C

Captain Boogie

Guest
I remember visiting West Yellowstone years ago and going by the little daytime AM station. I think it was KWYS. I always thought it could be a neat little station to own/operate. Does anyone know what happened to it? Is is still on the air? I remember the manager lived in the same building and his family ran the station.
 
I worked for a small AM station similar to this one down in South MS, WIGG. The owners lived in the back of the station and the owner's wife would go into the studio every morning and give the weather in her robe. It was quite humorous...
 
Ah, I remember the BIG WIG in Wiggins. I'm originally from up the road in Hattiesburg.
 
KWYS is still on the air - it's owned by Chapperal Broadcasting, which owns a number of stations in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Last time I heard it, it was running a satellite format (I believe Westwood One) - wasn't a lot of local information. There was an FM license there as well with KWYS but I recall it being on the air - may be now - my last visit was a year ago.
 
I worked for the company that owned KWYS in the early 70's. At that time it was owned by Empire Broadcasting that was based in Bozeman and run by Gary Peterson. At that time Empire owned, KXXL in Bozeman, KFLN in Baker, WPWD-FM in Plentywood, KBRV in Soda Springs Idaho, and KWYS. At the time I worked at KXXL as a humble part-timer while going to MSU. KWYS was in part, a satellite of KXXL. The News was done in Bozeman and fed down a dial-up phone line to West Yellowstone. Since they were a daytimer, the evening programing was often nothing more than KXXL fed down the old dial up line. Larry Binfet was the manager of KWYS and did indeed live in part of the station building. They carried the MSU Bobcat football and basketball games as fed from KXXL, who at that time had rights to all MSU sports. Famed Montana broadcaster Dean Alexander was then the news director of KXXL and was on all the Bobcat games with Gary Peterson. Also then at KXXL was Benny Bee, long before he started his little radio empire in Kalispell & Whitefish. I owe Dean & Benny a lot. They really took the time to teach a few things to a dumb kid. I was sent down to KWYS a couple of times to help out when they needed a body. It was a cozy place. Over time, I know that Peterson sold off his interests in the stations, and later I heard, fell on rather hard times, and came back to KWYS to run it for another owner. I don't know anything about it now, but back in the day, it really was a "live & local" and a great place to hang your hat.
 
KWYS was built in the '60's by Dick Smiley of Bozeman. He bought KXLQ in Bozeman and then changed the name to KXXL and then ran KWYS as a satellite of KXXL. Jon and Nan Hansen were the first residents of the house in which the studio also was located. They sold local advertising which ran on both the Bozeman and West Yellowstone stations. Smiley sold to Gary Peterson in the mid-'70's.
 
rksdee....The timing here's a little wrong. I was with KXXL & Empire in 1973 & 74, so Peterson & Empire had purchased the stations [including KXXL & KWYS] in the early 70's not the mid 70's. When I first started, KXXL was still in Smiley's old building over on the east side of Bozeman. They moved to the new Kagy Boulevard facility in the early, early spring of 1974. I remember having to help haul all sorts of equipment. From what I hear now, the Kagy Boulevard building is now empty..and I guess it's been empty for some time now. Too bad, it was a nice place.
 
Empire Broadcasting was an interesting company for which to work, although I only got in on the last year or so. I went to work at KFLN-AM in Baker in 1982 and Russ Newell purchased the station from Gary Petersen in 1983.

Gary started Empire Broadcasting when he purchased KFLN in the 60's, shortly after it had been put on the air. About that time he bought KPWD-FM (the first FM on the air in Montana) which was located near where he grew up in Sheridan County. The Bozeman, Soda Springs & West Yellowstone stations were added then. At least I think that's the chronology.

from what I understand, the hard times began when one of Gary's sales people in Bozeman tried to get co-op ad money for a client's remote by submitting paper work that showed the client had bought a package of ads rather than the remote. I believe it was an appliance retailer and the appliance company would reimburse co-op dollars for ads but not remotes. They got caught and the FCC was notified and took a dim view (this was back in the day when the FCC monitored more than just the 7 dirty words). Empire was forced to sell off the Bozeman station as a result.

One thing about Empire Broadcasting, they prided themselves on NOT sounding like they were in a small market. And that's something that Russ Newell at KFLN & now KJJM-FM in Baker still strives for. For anyone associated with Empire Broadcasting, you were aware that you were in "show business" and you worked hard to make sure it sounded like you were in a market much larger than you were in.

Dave
 
Hi Dave.....
That little problem that you brought up is right on target. It was the station manager of KXXL who was doing what amounted to double-billing, which by the way is something the FCC still takes a real dim view of. The trouble happened late 74 or 75. I can't remember which. What happened in the long run was that ALL the Empire stations were put on a short-term renewal and hearings followed and in the end, coming to the result you mentioned. Gary was quite a personality in his own right. Gary had a good dose of riverboat gambler's blood in his veins. He was well known for being a HUGE sports bettor, major league drinker and quite a party man. You're also quite right about the push at Empire to be in "show business", and I will tell you, that working at KXXL was one big party. It may have been the happiest time in my life. Gary was a big promoter and for a little 1Kw day & 250watt night station, the place sounded like it belonged in the big leagues. But it was staffed with some incredible talent including Ben Bee Sr, Dean Alexander, Jerry Mann, Larry Sem, Dave Shannon and others. These guys were good!! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I understand that Gary fell on some pretty hard times in the recent past. I hope things have gotten better for him. Nice to hear from an old Empire Alum.
 
Hey Mack,

It's a small world...you mentioned Larry Sem. I took piano lessons from his mom in Plentywood when I was a kid back in the 70's. I believe Larry is selling advertising for Montana Magazine. I've met him a time or two, but can't say I'm a close personal friend.

I heard a number of stories about Benny Bee Sr. over the years. Of course he spent some time at KFLN in Baker when Empire owned the station and I also worked at KVCK in Wolf Point which is where he grew up (real name Butzlaff). The only time I met him was in Wolf Point, I believe during the Wolf Point Stampede weekend. I was the only person in the station at the time and when I walked out of the control room, there was a guy making himself at home to the telephone. He said he was Benny Bee. Recognizing the name, I figured it wouldn't be worth it to argue with the guy. LOL

Dave

PS: Do you remember the engineer's name? I want to say Tom something and I believe his last name was short, maybe 4 letters. I met him a few times when he came out to Baker in the early 80's and KFLN used him to do the monthly frequency measurements even after Russ Newell bought the station.
 
Dave...
Larry is indeed selling for Montana Magazine. I traded a couple of emails with him around a year ago. Larry used to produce a very cool music montage having to do with the MSU Bobcat game of the week. Do you remember the Dickie Goodman records of the 70's? Where he played a news reporter, and asked questions that were answered with record hooks? larry did the same thing, and it was called Stanley & The Coach. It was great. Tom's last name was Weir. Tom was a very odd guy and tended to come in only at night. I found out later on one of the reasons he was so odd, was that he had been a guest at one of Herr Hitler's WW-2 death camps, and had survived! He still had the prison number tattooed on him. Benny was something else. He was a real mentor to me, and taught me a lot. One of the things I liked so much about Benny was that he had a red 1972 Corvette convertible 454, and at the time, I had a 4 Door Buick. At different times, we traded cars, so he could take his family places. At that time both he and Coco only had 2 seat cars. Just what a young college wannabe radio rock star needed was a red vette convertible for weekend fun! I'm surprised I'm still alive. One thing about KXXL was that it swapped formats every 12 hours. From 6a-6p they were country and from 6p-6a we were Top-40 rock! So at 6pm you went into the news with Waylon Jennings and came out with the Rolling Stones! Of course that messed with the KWYS format too, because when they were on after 6pm, for the most part they just took the KXXL signal down the cranky old phone line. Drop me a line at
[email protected] I'd love to swap stories with you!
 
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