Excerpt #23 from the long-awaited book that Chuck Blore has almost finished writing ...

www.chuckblore.com

OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK

That first year at KFWB was like Wonderland. It was everything I ever dreamed it could be. And more. Lots more. I mean, who in his right mind would ever have dreamed one station could have damn near forty percent of the available audience in a market the size of L.A. But, as I guess almost always happens, you gotta take a little ying with the yang. But a tiny tad of bad when you’ve got so much good, ain’t really bad at all. Even so, there were two events in particular that were like speed bumps on my trip down Wonderland Boulevard.

The first one began when I was called into Mr Purcell’s office rather grumpily one day, “Blore! Get in here!”

I got in there, “Yessir?”

“What the hell is this?” He was shaking a piece of paper at me.

“I have no idea what that is.”

“I’ll tell you what it is.” Considering the level at which he was barking at me, I guessed right away Purcell was pissed. “This is a notice from the Federal Communications Commission. It’s a complaint stating that we have offended the church!”

“What?”

He was still shaking the FCC paper at me and the barking was now shaking the windows. “Alter Boys Are Forbidden By Law? ALTER BOYS ARE FORBIDDEN BY LAW? What the hell is that all about?”

“I ... have ... no ... idea.” I laid the words out one by one so that he would understand that I had no idea what he was talking about.

“This complaint contends that ...” Bob was now reading from the paper in his hand.
“... KFWB has repeatedly broadcast the phrase, Alter boys are forbidden by law. The complainant, a Reverend Charles B., asserts that he has heard this phrase broadcast over and over again in what must be assumed is an attempt to denigrate not only alter boys, but the church itself.” Mr Purcell pulled his horn-rimmed glasses down on his nose and glared at me. “What is this? One of your damned teasers for something I don’t know about, and certainly have not, or would not approve?”

“I swear, Bob. I have no idea what this guy is talking about.”

He handed me the complaint saying, “Well, you read it! And then you’d better find this Reverend and find out what the hell he’s talking about because we have been ordered to respond to The Commission with a complete and thorough explanation.”

I looked at the complaint, “How do I find him? There’s no address or phone number.”

“You figure it out.” Then, he began reading other material on his desk. A sign that the meeting was over and I was dismissed.

I had no idea how I was going to find this guy, so I did what I always did in situations such as this. I gave the problem to our News Director, Charles Arlington. In about two hours he was back with the Reverend’s name, age, church, and telephone number. “Charles,” I said to him,”you’re amazing.”

“By God boy!”, a phrase Charles inevitably used to begin a conversation with me, “You are absolutely right. I am amazing. And the good Reverend is on line two.”

The next afternoon the Reverend was sitting in my office, visibly trying to contain both his nervousness and his ever growing anger. He was really shook. I mean literally shaking, as he mumbled, almost to himself ... “Alter boys are forbidden by law!”

There was a monitor directly behind my desk and the station was always on at a very low level. I had trained myself to do whatever I was doing without really listening, but hearing it at an almost subliminal level which only intruded on my consciousness when something got screwed up.

The reverend was insisting that the offending phrase continued to be broadcast. “I heard it again as I pulled into your parking lot,” he said. “That’s why I was so furious when I walked in here. It was as though you had timed it to...” you could hardly hear him as he said, “...to offend me even more.”

“No, please, Reverend, believe me. This is a very good, God fearing radio station.” That was an expression I had never before used to describe the station and even now it was not God I was fearing, it was this Man Of God who suddenly jumped up out of his chair, pointing angrily at the monitor behind me.

“There it is again. There it is again!” He shouted, “They said it just then!”

I was out of my chair and into the announce booth in about a second. Elliot Field was on the air. “Elliot! What did you just say?”

“Nothing. Played a spot, Arlington did a news tease, I gave the time, and back to music.”

“Did you say, ‘Alter boys are forbidden by law?’” Even as it came out of my mouth I realized how ridiculous it sounded. Elliot underlined the ridiculousness when he said,
“Is that some sort of a trick question?”

I scared the hell out of Arlington when I burst into the newsroom, “Charles! Did you just say, ‘Alter boys are forbidden ...”

“By God boy! I can’t talk now. I’m on the air in four minutes. Did you talk to the Preacher?”

“He’s in my office right now.”
“Well, no alter boys in here chief. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on the air in three and forty.” I loved the way Charles talked. Always dramatic. He had been the final voice of The March Of Time, a weekly news-documentary short film feature seen in thousands of theaters across the country. And here, years later, when you had any kind of conversation with him, his part of it was always narration.

I went back to my office and Reverend B. “I’m sorry Reverend, I don’t know what to say but ...” Wait a second. There was one thing I hadn’t checked. The commercial Elliot had played. The Reverend followed me into the control room. “What commercial did you just play?”

“In the last break?” The engineer, a really good guy by the name of Joe Primm, answered without looking up from the console. “We played the Coca-Cola contest spot.”

Well, I knew that couldn’t be it. But, so that the Reverend would know we were being thorough I asked Joe play it for us. “Hang on a minute. News time.” After Joe played the news intro, he cued Charles and the news began. I introduced the Reverend to Joe who looked at his log and declared that, “It was cut three.” He played it for us. What cut three told us was that Coca-Cola was having a great contest. The winner got an all expense paid trip to Canada... blah, blah, blah. And the spot ended with, “Offer void where forbidden by law.”

“Oh ... my ... God.”, the Reverend said. He was white as a ghost. A Holy Ghost, I thought, and quietly congratulated myself how on clever I was. You know how sometimes when you hear something for the first time and some how you get it wrong, no matter how many times you hear it after that, you hear it the same wrong way. The Reverend had been suffering from a bad case of that. “I’m so sorry.” He said, almost to himself. He turned and left the station whispering a final, “I am so sorry.”

Three or four days later we got another letter from the FCC saying we should ignore the first one, the matter had been dismissed.

Speed bump Number Two had to do with a young guy who had put together a band and made a record.

A record distributor had assured the young man if he could get his record played on KFWB, they would distribute it for him nationally. Bill Angel did not like the record and told the aspiring superstar, “No.” The guy pleaded and pleaded until Bill said he would leave it up to the deejays to vote it on or off. It got zero votes. Again, they guy pleaded with Bill to have them vote again. Bill explained that it had gotten NO votes and there was no point in re-submitting it. The next day, Bill got a phone call which he thought I should be told about. “His girl friend called to tell us he was going to climb to the top of the KFWB Tower and stay there until we played his record.”

On the roof of the KFWB building on Hollywood Boulevard were two antenna-like towers, replicas of the original towers that were there when KFWB had its transmitter there. Somehow or another, the unsung record producer had climbed to the top of one of the towers, probably 25 feet into the sky above the building.

The girl friend had apparently also called the police, and local TV. Three or four of us ran to the street to see that the idiot had indeed climbed the towers. There was a crowd gathering. Channels 9 and 5 were already there. Several police cars had assembled, loudspeakers blaring at the kid to come down. And we could hear the KABC Helicopter approaching above it all.

Of course, I saw all of this as great promotion. So I went on the air, and probably sounding more than a little bit sanctimonious, said “Ladies and Gentlemen. Only you, our listeners choose the music to be played on KFWB. A young man is trying to force your station, KFWB to play his not very good record. He has climbed the KFWB Towers on Hollywood Boulevard and threatens to stay there until we play his song. KFWB does not listen to threats. KFWB listens only to you, the people of Southern California who have made KFWB the most listened to station in the nation. As for the man on the tower, he can stay there ‘till heck freezes over.”

I had actually planned to be very daring and say, ‘till Hell freezes over, but Purcell thought better of it. No matter, my little announcement was quickly pulled of the air when the girl friend called back to add, “If you don’t play his record he’s going to jump. If he kills himself it will be your fault.” Then of course, she broke into tears and I broke out in a sweat. I decided we could play the record one time and probably make some promotional hay out of that. Problem was, we had no way of communicating with the guy on the tower. We couldn’t get through the crowd in front of the station. The only way to the roof had been taken over by the police and we couldn’t get near enough to tell them we might be able to solve the problem.

“He’s gonna jump.” One of the girls in the office had a portable TV and was watching on a little ten inch screen what was happening, in real life, right outside our door. Several policemen had made it to the rooftop and the kid was being ordered to jump into a large trampoline-like thing they were holding. When one of the policemen pulled a gun and said jump, the kid did. The crisis was over, as was the kids recording carreer.

Couple more things for the lemons to lemonade file: We were live on KABC for nearly an hour that, I was interviewed on Channel 9, Purcell was on Channel 5 and we got a front page story in the Times. And, one more thing, in the announcement I had made I used the phrase ... “KFWB listens only to you” For about a month after that, in every break we were, “The station that listens to YOU!”

I always thought that was pretty hot.

(...to be continued)