In 1972, four businessmen--W. John Driscoll, John J. Pascoe, Edward L. Scarff, and Wayne K. Van Dyck--got together to purchase the 58,000-watt KFOX-FM in Los Angeles. Since the station’s frequency was 100.3 MHz, the idea was to promote “100” in the call letters.
Since call letters are all letters--no numbers--it was necessary to find call letters that would suggest “100” somehow. The first choice was to have the call letters be KIOO since the “I” could be a “1” and the “OO” could be “00” but those call letters were already taken. Plan “B” was to go with an “I” followed by “QQ” so the letters “IQQ” could suggest “100.” Of course, pronouncing the call letters KIQQ as “kay-eye-cue-cue” would never suggest “K100,” so the station was promoted as “kay-one-hundred” and “kay-eye-cue-cue” was reserved only for the purposes of the legal station identification at the top of each hour.
The station was operated by Cosmic Communications until 1973 when Bill Drake and Gene Chenault signed a five-year contract to manage and program the station.
The studio and offices of K100 were located in Hollywood at the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga, across the street from the landmark Cinerama Dome theater.
Ron Jacobs told me that KHJ in Hollywood in the mid-1960’s had a physical setting which was very ordinary, if not “institutional”--similar in look or feel to what you might expect from a United States federal building. The reality is that a radio station’s physical look bears no relationship whatsoever to how the station sounds to the listeners.
If you’re spending bucks on something, you should always go with what the listener hears. Apparently this was unknown to the owners of K100, who chose the broadcasting company name “Cosmic Communications” and enlisted some hip 1970s interior designers to “do” the look at the offices and studios at 6430 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The logo featured prominent bolts of yellow lightning.
This would have been fine, except those eye-jarring lightning bolts popped up everywhere as though the designers had significant unresolved emotional issues associated with power. And one couldn’t escape the irony: While Cosmic K100 had high-energy lightning bolts on the walls of its offices and studios that suggested strong flashiness and boldness, on the air, the station had a very relaxed and mellow sound that included music from Johnny Mathis and The Carpenters along with Lou Reed and The Beatles. This soft rock sound mix was new in the early 1970s and the format attracted a loyal, albeit small audience.
But Cosmic K100 was hampered by a signal that was not sufficiently powerful to blanket the entire Los Angeles radio market like the big FM stations with transmitters atop Mount Wilson could. The format also proved to be a problem. It may have been ahead of its time, but the soft-rock blend of current hits, recent favorites, and oldies--all intended as a mellow alternative to rock ‘n’ roll stations in LA was not a financial success.
This format on FM ultimately proved to be a ratings winner in various major markets, but not in 1972 and not on K100 in Los Angeles.
There also were some peculiar decisions made about the music played on the Cosmic K100. I admit here with major shame that as production director I had to edit out the “hard rock” part of Stairway to Heaven before the song was allowed on the air. Like nobody would notice.
The changeover to the “new K100” under the management and programming control of the Drake-Chenault team featured a major format change for K100 to rock and roll hits from the original Cosmic Communications’ soft-rock format.
“You know, initially at K100 here, everybody said it was doomed to failure...that KHJ was totally out of reach. Well, that’s nothing new. They said the same thing about KHJ in ‘65. They said the same thing about KFRC in San Francisco. They said the same thing about Detriot, and Boston, and every other place. They said it about San Diego. They’ve always said that. I’ve never gone into a market where people didn’t say, ‘Well, he’s really done it this time.’ So, they’ve always said that, and consequently you get used to it.” --Bill Drake
The original K100 format emphasized late 1960’s to early 1970’s oldies and the “softer” current releases. Although this format was far from a total failure in its first year on the air, the station did not achieve ratings sizable enough to please the four owners, who wanted a more immediate return on their investment than they were receiving.
Well before the first anniversary of their new station, the owners took an unusual step. In November 1973, approximately half a year after the Drake-Chenault consultancy had been terminated at RKO Radio, a contract was drawn up giving Drake and Chenault part ownership of K100 until the end of 1977.
The comeback was now possible. The contract gave Drake and Chenault control over programming, commercial time sales, and general management.
Roger Christian, who was one of the seven original Boss Jocks at KHJ, was out. Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele, the two most famous original Boss Jocks, were in. Bill Watson ran the day-to-day programming and production.
Watson was another man who, like Ron Jacobs, had gained favorable attention because of competing against Drake and Chenault in another market. Bill Watson, who had programmed KCBQ in San Diego, was, at best terse. His role as national program director for Drake-Chenault radio proved pivotal to its success.
Bill Watson became my immediate supervisor at K100 when the Drake-Chenault team took the helm at the station. I never could figure out how Bill Watson used such few words to communicate so effectively. He gave a rare quote to a reporter in 1970 in which he explained why Drake-Chenault radio programming worked:
“If [the format is] good and working right, then they [the listeners] know they’re listening to particular format, and they just keep listening.” That phrase, “...they just keep listening...” should have been the official, trademarked motto of Drake-Chenault’s national radio consultancy.
I remember early on at K100 showing The Real Don Steele how to use the control board in the on-air studio since, he, like Morgan, had little recent hands-on experience running their own control boards due to the union shop at KHJ.
If there is one “most favorite memory” I have at K100, it was this: I was the one who edited the stereo remix of “You Can’t Sit Down” by the Phil Upchuch Combo. You will recall that this 1961 recording was used by The Real Don Steele as the music bed for his Fractious Friday sign-offs. Because KHJ was not in stereo, Steele had used a mono mix of “You Can’t Sit Down,” but when Steele arrived at K100, he wanted a stereo remix. Under his direction and guidance, I worked with him in the K100 production room and did physical edits—the old-fashioned way using a razor blade and white splicing tape!—to blend both sides of the 45 rpm single into one stereo remix.
Remembering The New K100
After “The New K100” came under the programming and management control of the Drake-Chenault team, there were high hopes for the station’s ultimate success. These hopes were never realized.
My employment at K100 under the original Cosmic Communications ownership and management started in 1972. My responsibilities were production of commercials and public affairs programming.
At K100 I wrote and produced a unique format of documentary programming for the station. Each broadcast was no longer than 3 minutes running time so it could be played on K100 in a commercial break before going back to music.
I am especially pleased to have had the opportunity to examine Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek with this radio documentary format.
When Drake and Chenault took over K100 in December 1973, all but myself, the sales and secretarial staff were terminated—not uncommon following the purchase of a radio station by new owners. Drake and Chenault brought in a crew of their own, notably, the two most famous “Drake jocks,” Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele; Bill Watson, national Drake-Chenault programmer; and Bernie Torres, Drake’s perennial personal business manager and associate.
Bruce Johnson, president of the radio division of RKO General, told me in 1975 what his reaction was as their former employer:
“We knew they were going to do it. They announced that they were going to do it, that they were going to get a station [in Los Angeles.] We first heard they were getting KFI, and then KRLA. They finally ended up with K100 and they just took right out against us.
“In my opinion, the motive of the whole thing was one of revenge...I knew that for a long time; you know they never mentioned KHJ on the air but they said the ‘United California Bruce building’ [a reference to the RKO headquarters at the United California Bank Building in Hollywood], and they went on about Paul Drew [then KHJ program director] and did some fairly nasty things on the air to the point that we called them up and told them ‘cut it out or we’re going to sue you.’
“The listeners didn’t know what the hell was going on—they couldn’t care less. So they [K100] really took after us and I felt it was foolish. They weren’t going to win anything. They might have hurt us a little bit. They weren’t going to beat us. They just kept on and on with this thing and we ignored them.”
It was difficult to ignore Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele, however. The pair, whose public images as LA radio celebrities, gave K100 a high-energy announcing style that had originally been the hallmark of Boss Radio in 1965. In many ways, K100 was a reincarnation of Boss Radio nearly 10 years later. One crucial difference, however, was that the 1973 Drake-Chenault programming on K100 did not boost the station to number one in Los Angeles like Boss Radio has boosted KHJ in 1965.
While K100 was promoted on the air enthusiastically as “the dawn of a new radio day,” promising a new future in radio programming, Rolling Stone magazine, noted the obvious similarities between K100 and Boss Radio and commented, “After listening to K100 one gets the feeling that the future sounds a lot like the past.”
K100 1974
K100 “Only the Beginning” Promos: These promos in 1974 promised the listeners that they were hearing “only the beginning” of the “dawn of a new radio day” in Los Angeles with the new Drake-Chenault radio format in stereo on FM (instead of in monaural on the AM dial on KHJ.) Robert W. Morgan is the main voice talent on these promos.
K100 Promo #1 (:36) MP3, 573 KB
K100 Promo #2 (:40) MP3, 634 KB
K100 Promo #3 (:40) MP3, 637 KB
Gone was the comfortable soft rock format that the Cosmic K100 had launched, and in its place was essentially a top 40 music station on FM that played longer cuts that the typical two and one-half minute variety. As reported in the trade publications at that time, under Drake-Chenault, K100 became the only top 40 station to play Bruce Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and Roxy Music’s “Love Is The Drug,” and the first station in Los Angeles to play Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Peter Frampton’s “Show Me The Way.”
The “dawn of a new radio day” never came, and in 1975, both Morgan and Steele left K100. That was the beginning of the end. What could have been a Los Angeles comeback for Drake-Chenault radio programming was no longer possible.
Personal Observations and Commentary
I found Morgan and Steele both were fun to work with as they delivered to K100 the kind of on-air magic for which they earned their reputations in LA radio. Despite the on-air frenzy he created in his on-air persona, in person Steele was, ironically, very down-to-earth. He and I got along well. Contrast that with Morgan, whom I found was never someone very easy to approach, despite how friendly and warm he sounded on the air.
Yet, these two original Boss Jocks could not, themselves, make K100 seem more like KHJ, nor could the pair spearhead the efforts to keep K100 afloat. And K100 got weighed down with negativity, which stemmed from the very reason why Drake and Chenault came to the station in the first place. The atmosphere at 6430 Sunset was not genuinely “fun” in the way that a successful radio station should sound like fun to the listeners. The reason was an ever-present sense that the Drake-Chenault team had to “prove something,” that they wanted very desperately to “get back at” RKO for having been kicked out by Bruce Johnson.
The earliest months of K100 under Drake-Chenault sounded “forced,” at least in my opinion. There was a “faked fun” feeling which grew from the essentially negative vibes. Late-1973 on-air promos called “the dawn of a new radio day,” tried to make K100 sound like the answer to LA radio’s needs. Robert W. Morgan’s voice, however, did not convey “fun,” it sounded as through the script called for “fun,” and he obliged because he was a total professional. But, Morgan’s voice revealed the secret that K100 was in trouble.
In my 1976 interview with him, Gene Chenault admitted to me that K100 was “behind target,” and that K100 had essentially become a “manually operated automation” format in which the disc jockeys maintained a low profile. One of the programming formats that K100 ultimately carried before being sold was Transtar’s “Format 41” adult contemporary satellite service.
Ken Levine, whose LA radio name was “Beaver Cleaver,” arrived at K100 in 1974 after I had the station, so we have never met. He has enjoyed a prolific career in LA radio (at KEZY, KGIL, KTNQ, and KMPC), has done play-by-play for the Baltimore Orioles and the San Diego Padres, and has written and produced television programs for M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, and The Simpsons. We have communicated back and forth by electronic mail communications, and he responded to my questions about how he remembers working at K100:
“I would have to say that K100 was the most creatively stifling job I have ever had. Between the rigid format and [Bill] Watson calling me 50 times a shift, it was all I could do not to mess up. What made it even more disillusioning was that I idolized KHJ so, and couldn’t imagine anything better than working with these Boss Jocks.
‘Steele turned out to be a joy, and we remained friends [after leaving K100.] Morgan was a different story. I remember once I had the winner of one of those big ‘secret sound’ type contests, where listeners were fed clues, etc. It had gone about a week, and the station had hoped to get the winner on Morgan’s show. A tip-off clue was scheduled to run on his show the following morning (excuse me ...’morgan’). But, as luck would have it, a contestant on my show, got the answer and won the big prize. Morgan was furious.
“K100 was never able to recapture the magic of KHJ. Lots of factors contributed. Different era, lousy signal, different competition, no Ron Jacobs.
“And although most of the same people were involved, it was not the same. I’m reminded of the talented actors and writers who gave us A Fish Called Wanda, arguably a classic. Then they tried to do it again and the result was Fierce Creatures. K100 was Fierce Creatures.
“With the exception of Billy Pearl, it was a very dull sounding station. One of the ["dawn of a new radio day"] promos you sent me said it all. Morgan is talking about all the ‘fun’ they’re all having, but his voice and the copy are so stiff that it completely belies what he’s claiming.
“There was nothing fun about K100. And the audience sensed it. KHJ was more than Steele, and Morgan, it was alive with a spirit and a freshness that was completely missing at K100.
“Sorry to seem so negative, and on a personal level, it was a thrill to finally be on the air in my home town, and to be hired by Bill Drake. But as a diehard fan of KHJ, it sure didn’t live up to expectations.”
Billboard magazine’s Claude Hall in 1975 told me his opinion of the Drake-Chenault efforts at K100: “It’s just never reached what I would have called the promise that a Drake should have had with it.”
Roger Christian, one the original KHJ “Boss jocks” was at K100 before the Drake-Chenault takeover and was among those let go in December 1973. He told me, “Because of the situation that had happened at RKO, it was kind of a vendetta I think just to show RKO that Drake could do it again.”
Irv Ivers, the original K100 general manager under Cosmic Communications, told me in 1973, “I think their priorities were all wrong...Between the time they were dumped out of KHJ and the time that they got to K100...the vendetta was beginning to grow and gnaw at them. And I think their priority at K100 was to approach it with a vengeance in order to seek some kind of revenge towards KHJ...Well obviously it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because the priority was wrong. They just tried to copy what was already in existence as opposed to trying to come up with something new and different.”
In the late 1980s, K100 was bought by Westwood One, which changed the call letters to KQLZ and the station was promoted on the air as “Pirate Radio.” Neither those call letters nor that imagery have lasted to today, however. The FM station at 100.3 MHz formerly known as K100 has had numerous formats and call letter changes over the years.
Posted by Woody Goulart. Filed under: Business •
(0) Comments • (4) Trackbacks • Permalink