OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK
Robert Purcell, GM at KFWB in
L.A., interviewing me as a potential PD, couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You’re asking me to throw off almost a quarter of a million dollars in
billing.”
“Yessir!” I said. And then I remember I gulped very hard.
“Just throw off a quarter of a million dollars.”
“Yes ... sir.”
“That’s almost half of our billing.” Mr. Purcell gulped very hard. And very
loud.
The conversation stopped for a long, uncomfortable period until I finally asked,
“How much would a half a point ratings increase be worth?”
“Over a year a half a point would probably mean ... well, I guess about a
quarter million.”
“Well, if we do Color Radio, I’ll bet we could pick up three points in three
months.” I was really thinking that the first station to do Top Forty in this
town would own it. Ten points would be more like it, but at this point three
points in three months sounded a little more believeable.
“What’s Color Radio?”
“Oh,” I answered very quickly, eager to get off the subject of throwing away all
that money. “Gordon McLendon always had a different theme going on his stations,
always something very topical.”
“Who is Gordon McLendon?” Asked Mr. Purcell.
Wow! I thought. How can anybody in radio today not know who Gordon McLendon is.
But then I realized that of all the successes Gordon McLendon or Todd Storz had
enjoyed to that point, none had been done in any kind of a major market. And Bob
Purcell was a major market kind of mind. “Gordon is the owner of the last two
radio station I worked for. And he always uses kind of top-of-mind topical
things to identify his radio stations. When High Fidelity was a big deal in
records, Gordon’s stations were all Hi-Fi Radio.”
“What made them Hi-Fi. Was that just a name?”
“Oh no. He always made it seem very special. And very real. When we began
promoting “Hi-Fi is coming to radio” all the stations were told to back off the
higher frequencies of the actual signal a little bit each day for two weeks.
Without anyone really noticing, at least that was the theory, the actual
stations signal gradually became kind of dull, and duller. But then, we had the
big announcement ... ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome a new millenia in radio
broadcasting. This is K E L P HI-FI RADIO’ and with that we slapped all those
frequency adjustments back to normal and, Oh God! What a difference.”
“Was that legal?”
“I think so. We didn’t actually lie, we just made it sound different. Then when
Stereo hit, we were ‘Stereo Radio. That was a bit of a cheat. All we really did
there was add enough reverb to make the echoing effect audible. That was
supposed to represent separate signals for those who had “Stereo Receivers.”
Never mind that they probably hadn’t been invented yet. But Stereo Radio didn’t
last long. The echo drove everybody nuts. And then when Color TV was being
introduced big time, we became Color Radio.”
“And how was that presented.”
“It was just better radio. We had all new jingles. A rhythmic (?) sports ticker
behind the sports reports. New news intros that only Gordon McLendon could, or
would produce. All very colorful. And we also had new rules for DJ preparation.
Everything the deejays put on the air had to be very up, very positive and this
is the part that I really like, everything has to relate to the audience. The
jox had to do a lot of homework but the result was that instead of it just being
the audience tuning in the station, the station was in tune with the audience.”
Mr. Purcell thought about that for a long time and then said, “I like that.”
“Yeah, me too.” I said, “But Gordon’s stations, Kelp included, moved on to other
themes, some of which I thought were really silly and I made up my mind that if
I ever had the opportunity to program a station completely, it would be Color
Radio. Period.”
And then Purcell said, “I think we’ll be a good team”
“Yeah, me too.”
“You think you can put this all together by January First?”
Wow. That was less than six weeks. I’d been listening to KFWB for the past day
and a half and it was like a huge giant kinda wondering around bumping into
things. There was no real direction, there was no overall personality, no single
format. There was so much to do. Hire new jox. Teach the ones already there, the
deejays and the news people, how to do the format. Replace the ones that
couldn’t.
Construct a new logging system.
Set up a cueing communication between deejays and engineers (the engineers damn
near went out on strike over that.) Write new jingles. Record them. Conceive and
produce News Intros and formats. Sports and Weather formats. And then there was
Traffic, something I had never dealt with before, but obviously an important
part of big city radio.
How the hell am I gonna make that
colorful? (I eventually did it with sexy voiced girls talking to drivers, please
notice I didn‘t say reporting, about where there were actual traffic problems,
as opposed to info about heavy traffic slowing where heavy traffic always slows
at that particular time of day. The sexy sounding reports were called T.I.G.E.R.,
“Traffic Information Girl Exclusive Reports” which would always end with
something like “...The Santa Monica freeway is like moving through treakle, and
Oh yes, London Bridge is falling down.”)
I had to write my own policy
book. All of that had to be done and I knew there were tons of other things that
hadn’t even entered my mind. I put on my most happy, self-confident face and
said, “Absolutely.”
“Good.” He said, stopping to light a very large pipe while nodding his head
positively, “I think we’ll be a good team”
“Yeah, me too.” It’s amazing how articulate I can become when it really matters.
The first two weeks of the six week countdown to Color were spent back in El
Paso. I had to give Mr. Golombeck at least two weeks notice considering that
with my leaving he had to replace the PD of both radio and TV. That, and the
fact that I was taking his afternoon drive time jock, Ted Quillan, with me. But,
Herb Golombeck, always the gentle giant was more than generous with his
congratulations. The first thing he said was, “You’ll tear them up. How can I
help you?” What a rare and wonderful man.
During this time Bob Purcell was sending me daily air-checks of KFWB and the two
stations he considered to be the major competition KMPC and KLAC, both of them
kind of adult-contemporary. I say “kind of” because in those days stations were
not identified by the type of music they played. Instead the promotion was
centered on the deejays who themselves were a major part of the station
entertainment.
KLAC had The Fabulous Five. Dick
Haynes, “Haynes At The Reins” was the morning show and Dick Haynes was about as
corny and lovable as you could stand, but the accent was lovable. Peter Potter’s
Platter Parade was mid-day. Listening to Peter Potter as a ten year old boy had
taught me an early appreciation of alliteration. I thought his “... Parade of
pretty platters passing proudly by for your approval.” was pretty slick.
Now eighteen years later Dick
Haynes, still as corny as Kansas in August, and the fact that Peter Potter was
still parading his pretty platters made me think my job was not gonna be all
that tough. But I could never have imagined how quickly it would happen.
I got back to L.A. on the First of December. The next day Bob Purcell hosted a
staff luncheon at the famous Hollywood Brown Derby where I was introduced to the
staff and the staff was introduced to what was coming.
“Now, Chuck will tell you what we’re going to do and how, all working together
we are going to become Number One.” As I stood up to speak, Bill Ballance,
already a long time KFWB DJ, raised his hand and said, “How old are you, Chuck?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“Oh Good.” Ballance responded, “We’ve been hearing that some twenty-two
year old genius from Texas was going to come in here and teach us how to be
deejays.”
“When I was twenty-two I was listening to you Bill, learning what entertaining
radio was all about.” I thought that was a pretty good answer and not altogether
untrue, but just for good measure I added, “You taught me.”
From that moment on, Bill was my biggest booster. Not so with Al Jarvis.
Al raised his hand and said to Mr. Purcell, “Bob, I want you to know that
whatever it is you’re going to do, you’ll have to do it without Jarvis.” He
always referred to himself in the third person.
“Why is that Al?” Bob responded, “I was kind of counting on you to be the leader
of the team.”
I remember the grim look on Al’s face as he said, “Asking Al Jarvis to do the
kind of radio you’re talking about ...” He paused for the greatest possible
effect and then continued, “That’s like asking Picasso to paint a house.”
“Wow” I thought, “That’s the end of that Chapter.”
But it was only the beginning.
(...to be continued)
