Excerpt #8 from the long-awaited book that Chuck Blore has almost finished writing ...

www.chuckblore.com

OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK

Gordon McLendons’ KLIF in Dallas was attracting more and more listeners with his ever expanding presentation of local news.

Tod Storz, KOWH playing the same songs, over and over again was attracting more audience than any other station in Omaha.

When Gordon became aware of that little daytimer getting those big numbers he sent Bill Stewart, his PD at KLIF, to Omaha to listen to the station and report back to him. Bill listened for a couple of days but couldn’t quite figure our the formula. Actually I would guess it was a simple matter to discover that they were playing the same ten records over and over, but something was missing. The mystery was ... where’s the gimmick? Bill was much too good a radio man to ever believe you could play the same ten records back to back to back without boring people to death ... there had to be something he wasn’t hearing. He called Tod Storz, introduced himself and told him what he was doing. Tod invited him to his office.

Now, obviously I don’t know exactly what went on in that office, I only know the result of the meeting. But, it’s fun to imagine it went something like this:

“I don’t know much about radio.” Tod probably insisted “I just know that all they want to hear is the top ten records.” Bills’ question had to be, “You mean like the Billboard Magazine list of records people are buying?”

“No.” said Tod “We call the juke box company and ask what songs people played most.”

“But you just play ten.”

“Well, if you look at the list, the first thing you’d see is when you get much past ten, there is very little action.”

That’s it? That’s all you do. Ten records. Over and Over. The same records every day.” Bill told me later that he was really having trouble believing that was all there was to it.

“Well, it’s not quite the same every day.” Tod explained, “They change little by little. A month from now, the list will be quite different. Two month months from now it’ll be completely different. And that Billboard list you mentioned, that’ll say pretty much the same thing a couple of weeks later. Not exactly the same maybe, but pretty close.”

“So, the gimmick, “ said Bill, “is the juke box is telling you what records people want to hear right now. You’re letting the people in those bars program your radio station”

“Not completely. When we first called the juke box company they told us that the play they get in restaurants and almost any place kids hang out was about a month ahead of what they’re playing in the bars.” then he added, “We tried calling the record companies as well, but they all lied.”

“No kidding.”

“Yeah. They didn’t care too much about the records they’d already shipped, they wanted to plug their new stuff. And we didn’t care about that” Then Tod said, “Tell me about KLIF.. That sounds fascinating.”

It was fascinating enough that Tod hired Bill to help him do local news in Omaha. Tod had already decided what was working in Omaha would work in other cities and he was about to buy more radio stations. He offered Bill the opportunity to be PD of them all.

Bill called Gordon to report on what he had learned about the KOWH programming and, “Oh Gordon, one more thing. I won’t be coming back to KLIF.”

Or something like that.

Within days, both KLIF and KOWH were doing both music and news. At KOWH it was all done very simply, play the records, tell them what's going on and then do it again. At KLIF it was all orchestrated with Gordon’s magnificent production. Gordon also decided it would be a lot more fun if they were to indicate the relative popularity of the ten records they were playing. Number 10, 9, 8 and so on with the presentation of NUMBER ONE being complimented with an introduction so magnificent the records themselves nearly always paled in comparison. Maybe Bobby Darin’s Mack The Knife or Marty Robbins' El Paso would have held their own but they were both years away.

The ratings of both stations rocketed to unbelievable highs and it wasn’t long before the apery so shamefully common today was given birth. Music and news was heard in every city in America and then Australia and, of course without commercials, in the entire United Kingdom.

In spite of Bill Stewart’s report from Omaha, Gordon still had problems believing people would not like it better if the play list, a phrase yet to be introduced, was more then the same ten records. His announcers, (later to be called on air personalities and still later, disc jockeys, then deejays) were doing 4 hour shifts. Gordon was convinced the most popular records were the answer but he couldn’t buy the idea of the same announcer presenting the same records over and over again. So, he decided to play ten hits an hour but without the repetition in the same shift. In other words, ten top hits per hour in each of the four hours.
This obviously would require forty records ... the top forty was born.

What about the fact Tod Storz had said, “When you get much past ten, there is very little action.” Gordon’s response was “We just call more places. So in addition to the juke box play, we’ll call the local record stores. And if we have to, we’ll call the record companies.” Forty was almost as easy as ten. Far less accurate to be sure but almost as easy.

In each of the four hours each announcer would present two or three from the top ten, two or three from the second, ten-to-twenty group, a couple from twenty one-to-thirty and a couple from thirty one to forty. Ten hits per hour. But, Gordon also insisted the guys play a minimum of twelve, preferably thirteen records per hour. What should those extra two or three records be? Gordon loved Glenn Miller so the choice was obvious but even with so prolific a hit maker as Glenn Miller that wasn’t much of a library to choose from. So Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman were added along with Harry James and Artie Shaw. Even then, while the repetition of the top forty seemed to stand up pretty well, “People get tired of those old farts pretty quick.” So the announcers were told to include what came to be known as “oldies” to bring the number of “must plays” up to twelve an hour and in those hours where there was time for a thirteenth record the announcers were allowed to choose whatever they felt fit.

Amazingly, one more time, Gordon’s “hunch” was right. The Top Forty had every bit as much appeal as the Top Ten and actually replaced it at most stations.

The presentation of news was also Gordon’s baby. While the Storz stations with Bill Stewart’s guidance featured one five minute newscast per hour, Gordon presented two. One at the top of the hour and the other on the half hour. The half hour, two and a half minutes long, including a one minute commercial, was little more than three or four stories of three or four lines each. Basically a “teaser” for the much more imposing five minute newscast at the top of the hour.

In the meantime, other radio companies were featuring music and news and I was told a couple of them were actually playing the “top hundred records.” I’m sure the “repetition” factor which was the basis for the appeal of this kind of radio was pretty much lost in the Top Hundred approach and this format was not long for this world of music and news.

And as for me, I was off to San Antonio where Don Keyes would guide us to a dominance of the market ... except maybe for WOAI from time to time.

(...to be continued)