Why Did Woody Goulart Write About Boss Radio?

Why am I referring to myself in the third person?

When KHJ was on its way to becoming the number one radio station in Los Angeles, I lived 200 miles north in San Luis Obispo where--believe it or not--the hottest thing on radio at that time was a country music show hosted by “Mac the Scotch Hillbilly.” In 1970 I became news director and eventually station manager at KCPR-FM, the college radio station licensed by Cal Poly State University. Many of us in college radio listened to airchecks of 93/KHJ and we would fantasize that someday we would get to work in what 93/KHJ called “Boss Angeles.”

We felt a strong lure to move to the sprawling metropolitan area of Southern California, not only because Los Angeles is the number two radio market in the United States. The lifestyle of Los Angeles--swimming pools, movie stars--were certainly exaggerated and satirized by television shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, but the City of Angeles was an intense magnet nonetheless for small-town boys and other dreamers, then as now.

Getting a chance to work in Los Angeles radio happened for me without a warning. I was one of several college radio boys who would dream of someday working in Los Angeles radio. But, few of us thought it would actually happen since it seemed like an impossible dream. We felt stuck in a small radio market hundreds of miles away. We may as well have lived on another planet.

We could not listen to 93/KHJ where we lived because the AM signal did not travel very far beyond the Los Angeles basin. Late at night we would often tune in KRLA, however, since it had a much stronger signal that bounced its way to us far, far away.

Listening to tape recordings and late-night signals that bounced off the sky was how we familiarized ourselves with LA radio. Of course, we read Claude Hall’s column in Billboard magazine, so we knew of the legendary radio pioneers, Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs. We hero-worshipped these men and others--like air personalities Robert W. Morgan and the Real Don Steele--that we viewed as very uniquely talented. There was also that “other Don” on the radio that we couldn’t resist--Don Imus.

Preparation for Real-World Careers

At KCPR-FM in San Luis Obispo, we came to understand the reality that very few people would actually end up working in the Los Angeles radio market. What KCPR-FM did for us, however, was give us the chance to develop our skills and talents on the air. When I was involved at KCPR-FM, the music programming on the station, and how the station sounded across seven days a week, deliberately emulated successful commercial radio stations. College radio for us in the early 1970s at KCPR-FM was the exact opposite of free form radio, where the person on the air has the freedom to play or say whatever he or she wants. Free form programming on FM--particularly college radio stations--was very common in those days, and young people in their college years tend to measure the value of their life in terms of freedoms.

If they mature emotionally, however, young people may learn how short-sighted is their preference for freedom to do whatever they want on the air on a radio station. Without careful guidance from professionals who have worked in the real-world of broadcasting, a college radio experience can become nothing more than a time of escape and play for young people, who never intend to pursue professional careers in radio. That’s fine if you’re a young person and you want escape and time to play stuff on the air freely and without the discipline of a format. But, that can largely be a waste of time, money, and state-owned facilities.

If you’re smart and worth anything professionally in communications, you should be able to sharpen your skills and talents in college, graduate, and then end up with a professional career in a top twenty media market. That’s solid proof of your skills and talents. Even if you don’t remain in the broadcasting field, ending up with a professional career in a top twenty media market speaks volumes about what you’ve got to give. In the early 1970s, KCPR-FM was a proving ground where some of us deliberately emulated real-world, commercially successful strategies and techniques for how a station should sound. Doing so prepared us for careers in larger radio and television markets outside of San Luis Obispo. I wonder whether college radio participants today are being given a proper real-world context and appropriate audience adaptation mindset to prepare them for major market careers in radio or television broadcasting after they graduate.

Apparently, what the Cal Poly Journalism Department and KCPR-FM trained us to do can pay off professionally. Without warning, one of my college radio friends from Cal Poly escaped the confines of San Luis Obispo and made it to the neon fun jungle that is Los Angeles. His LA radio name was “Hurricane Hines” and he opened the door for me to work at K100.

My arrival in LA was not glitz and glamour as I had fantasized it would be. On my first night in Hollywood at K100 for my first and only radio gig in the Los Angeles market, ironically somebody broke into my 1970 Volkswagen Beetle and stole my radio. My car was parked in the garage behind 6430 Sunset Boulevard, where the station was located.

Since the Hollywood police station was just a few blocks away, it wasn’t long before a squad car arrived in response to my call. The cop was a stunning stereotype from the television cop shows--a lot of muscles and blond hair. As Hurricane and I stood in the crunchy windshield glass on the parking garage floor next to my VW, one of LA’s finest asked us, “Didn’t I arrest you two guys earlier this week for pimping on La Cienega?”