Excerpt #27 from the long-awaited book that Chuck Blore has almost finished writing ...

www.chuckblore.com

OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK

The Color Radio format was, I guess, pretty inflexible. But the things the deejays brought to it made it seem like it was one big celebration of itself. One thing for sure, it was a lot of fun and most of the fun parts were initiated by the on-air guys.

I mentioned how, during the KFWB strike, when the deejays were not allowed to work, Don McKinnon had done a spot with his daughter explaining where the regular guys were. Someone had stolen our Bees and they were out trying to find them. It was a great idea and we built on it.

“All of our Bs are missing. They’ve been stolen by a no-good so-and-so, and so all of
the KFW(pause) good guys are out trying to find their bees.” We edited all of the jingles, cutting out the Bs. What was heard, or not heard, every time the call letters were sung, was “K F W (blank space) Channel 98!” All of the other pre-recorded material suffered the same ignoble fate.

Branding is the combination of tangible and intangible characteristics that make a brand unique. Branding is developing an image -- with results to match. Self-branding or Personal Branding is essential to career advancement because branding helps define who you are, how you are great, and why you should be sought out. Branding is your reputation. Branding is about building a name for yourself, showcasing what sets you apart from others, and describing the added value you bring to a situation.
“Number One on this weeks KFW (pause) Fabulous Forty Survey is...”
And, of course, “KFW(pause) time is ___” and,“76 degrees and a little smoggy at KFW (pause)” And so on ...

This was pretty provocative all by itself, but we never wanted to miss a chance to involve the audience. Aha! We should have some kind of promotion. Dazzled by my own intuition, I called a local Bee Keeper. When I identified myself the guy went bonkers. “KFWB? Oh my glorious God!” he exclaimed, “I listen to that station all the time. I play it for my bees. They like it better’n any other station. They hum along with every song.”

I asked him if we could buy 10,000 bees. He obviously thought this was some kind of a put-on, “What on God’s green and glorious earth would anybody, ‘cept I guess me, want with 10,000 bees?’

Okay, how the heck do I explain to a guy whose entire life is devoted to bees that I want to use them in a little contest? “Uh ... we want to free them.”

“You want to buy 10,000 bees and then just let em go flyin’ off to The Good Lord knows where?”

I told him it was a station contest. “We thought it would be fun if we told our audience that someone had stolen our bees.”
He shouted back, “We heard that! Me and my bees heard that ‘bout fifteen minutes ago on our little radio and I swear to the glorious God, I said to ‘em, ‘Better their bees than you guys?’ And them bees have been buzzin’ ‘bout it ever since. And do you know...”

It wasn’t easy to shut him up long enough to explain, if our listeners find any of our bees they’ll win $5,000.00. Then I said, “Of course, we’ll have to find a way to identify them as ... KFW bees. So, I wonder if maybe you could put some gold paint on them, or something like that, before you release them.”

“You want me to paint my bees?” Mister Beekeeper said. “That’s weird.”

“No. I don’t want you to paint the whole bee, just maybe the tips of their wings. Something needs to be golden.”

“And then you want me to just ... let ‘em go?”

“Yeah. We think it’ll be fun if a lot of people are hunting all over Southern California searching for our golden bees. We’ll interview some of the hunters on the air.”

The voices of the ‘hunters’ we ‘interviewed’ were all the same man. The same man who did the voice of Elmer Fudd, (the cartoon character that Bugs Bunny was always ‘bugging.’) and many other lovable characters.

“Will you tell them, them golden bees are from HoneyBee farms?” asked Mr. Beekeeper

“Sure we will.” I did have one concern, “The bees won’t hurt people will they? I mean they won’t sting people?

“Well, I can’t give you no 10,000 bees that won’t sting people. But I do have a good and glorious group I’ve been working with, praise the Lofty Lord, who don’t have no stingers. I could probably let you have about a thousand of them. But how they gonna catch ‘em? You can’t just walk up to a bee and say ‘Excuse me bee, would you mind gittin’ into my little box here with some of your buzzin’ buddies? That’s good don’tcha think? Buzzin buddies. I used to call ‘em that.”

“No, no. People just have to spot them. That’s why we want you to paint them. And you can’t tell anybody about that. We’ll just remind people that KFW bees are very special bees and they’ll know them when they see them. Then all they have to do is call the station and tell us what was special about them and if they say they’re golden, they win. So you see, that’s why you can’ t talk about what you’re doing to the bees.”
“Hot darn!” he said. Then after a long pause he added, “ That’s a good one.” The bee keeper agreed to paint a thousand of his little stingerless darlings and let them go.

About three days into the contest, which we were promoting heavily, we hadn’t had one call. Bill Angel, conscience to the PD, said, “I told you this idea was stupid. Nobody wants to mess around with bees.” In retrospect I would have to agree. This whole thing sounds really kind of brainless now, but damn! It sure was fun then. And it did explain why the regular deejays weren’t there. Kinda.

Still I couldn’t believe that we didn’t have at least one caller. I called Mr Beekeeper and asked if he had released the little critters.

“Yeah well ... now, y’see, I was gonna call you about that. See, I painted ‘em like you said, and I set them little golden beauties free ... free as a bee. But, uh ... the goldang paint musta killed ‘em. Next morning I came out and I swear to my good and glorious God, there was all these pretty golden bees deader’n hell. ‘Bout fifty yards from where I gave ‘em their freedom.”

“Deader’n hell you say?

“Yep. Ever last one of ‘em. Deader’n hell.”

So was the contest.


Another thing that actually made headlines began with a comment from our Morning Man, Bruce Hayes. Bruce was very funny, but funny in a really unique way. Non-sequiturs were his signature thing. One morning I was driving to the station and I heard him say, “Oh man, would you look at that? I think there is an amoeba loose in here. Oops, too late. Gone.” I stopped the car and called him on the hot line.

“What the heck is an amoeba?”

“It’s a little one celled creature ...a protozoa.” I think that’s what he said. Anyway, it sounded funny to me so I suggested he continue with the ‘There’s an amoeba loose!’ idea.

If there is one thing in our policy book that would be underlined and in caps it would be the sacrosanct rule ... Never interrupt a record! Which explains why I was stunned when I got back in my car just in time to hear a record interrupted with what sounded like Air Raid Warning Sirens. Then Bruce, “Ladies and Gentlemen. We’ve just received news on further amoeba sightings. Another amoeba was just seen sliding over the siding on The Pasadena Freeway. Ladies with butterfly nets are chasing him.”

By the time I got to the station, I heard another wailing of the Air Raid Warning and Bruce, suddenly sounding very melodramatic. “Two more amoeba sightings. The first is from Zuma Beach, where local clam diggers report amoebas emerging from the wet sand and frightening the clams. The diggers have fled. Report Number Two, from The La Brea Tar Pits where the thick black muck is belching up amoebas which are, in turn, belching dinosaur waste. And now back to Fats Domino ... Ain’t That A Shame.

When I walked in, the station was alive with the non-stop ringing of telephones off their rocker. Our one receptionist/operator had enlisted three people from the traffic department to help with the phones. “No, ma’am. It’s a joke. Amoebas are microscopic. No one has every actually seen an amoeba” “No. No amoebas have been reported on school busses.” “You’ve seen an amoeba where? No ma’am, they have nothing to do with private body parts.”

“Chuck!” Shouted Milly, our beautiful receptionist/operator. “You better take this one. It’s the FCC.”

Ohmygawd. The local FCC office had been overwhelmed with complaints about what we were doing on the air. “Who do you think you are, Orson Welles? People think it’s another ‘War Of The Worlds.’” he said, “ The Health department called saying they’ve been getting so many calls about amoeba protection, they’re entire phone system crashed. The city is at risk. What are you doing over there?”

I told him. “Check it out. It’s just a fun thing for our listeners.”

“I’ll call you back.” He hung up.

He called back in about an hour, “I think it’s funny. But, you should do a disclaimer every half hour. Tell people what you’re doing. Maybe explain what the heck an amoeba really is.”

“Will do.” And we did.

At that point in time there was an afternoon paper in L.A., The Herald Express. That afternoon, the entire front page was a giant cartoon. A picture of a guy who had climbed to the top of lamp post. He’s holding a radio to his ear, looking down in a great panic. The words coming out of the speaker on his radio say ...” The amoebas are coming ... The amoebas are coming...” The whole damn front page!

I thought we’d better back off. We stopped the ameoba sighting reports and ran a disclaimer every ten minutes ... adding “The last of the amoebas was seen over an hour ago, heading toward San Francisco.” That was actually part of our original plan. The next day our San Francisco station was to have broadcast the further adventures of the creepy little critters and then, send them off to our station in the Twin Cities in Minnesota for them to play with.

The FCC man said ... “Nah ... you wouldn’t want to do that.”

And he was right.
 

(...to be continued)