Richard Eaton. What a piece of work! Many broadcasters got their start at Eaton properties-check out the stories Wolfman Jack tells about working for him in his autobiography.
Eaton owned, through his Mexican wife, both XERF (250,000 watts from Villa Acuña) and XESM in Mexico City. They were run about as badly as the rest of the stations. The manager of XERF in the 60's, Sergio Ballesteros, later went to manage WBNX in New York. He later became the CBS / Sony Music promoter for Puerto Rico where he became a good friend and he told me all kinds of stories, such as the former owners trying to take over XERF by riding horseback with guns into the front door of the station, shooting all the while.
I worked at WCUY in 1970, Richard was already an old man, like in his nineties or something. His son Pierre ran the company but Richard still insisted on signing all his employees' paychecks personally. In the year I worked, there were several times when our paychecks were late because Mr. Eaton ran out of steam and couldn't finish them! The checks were always good, though.
Eaton had a company that sold office supplies, and everything had to be ordered from corporate, even toilet paper. Often we'd be without that essential for a month or more. I became a friend and sort of ad hoc intern when I brought a big package of TP on a visit.
That got me a "why don't you hang around a bit and learn some things" from the PD of WJMO.
Eaton also had an insurance company that covered the workers. When the GM of the Miami station got cancer, Eaton fired him on some pretext so he would not have to pay for the treatment.
At Cedar and Lee, they would occasionally bring Eaton in a wheel chair, and four of the staffers would carry him up the stairs. We had an office pool that paid off based on which step one of the guys that carried him would trip and spill him down the stairs. He never fell, though.
I got my first part-timer check in 1960 and it was a month late, but signed by Eaton himself.
His Cleveland stations' licenses were in abeyance since the 1960's when a WJMO preacher was nailed for broadcasting numbers racket winners disguised as scripture references. As far as I know, they didn't settle the license issue until Lee Zapis bought them in the 1990's. I wonder what happened to Pierre?
Eaton lost his DC AM for the same reason: coded scripture references that were lottery codes.
