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It seemed like it happened overnight. Sleepy, somewhat stodgy KMOX-FM suddenly came alive and set the market on its ear.

For years, KMOX-FM had been nothing more than a mellow music format originating in a huge automation system on the seventh floor at One Memorial Drive. The machinery was so voluminous it took up a whole room.
Jocks were told to do whatever they could to sound live, but the tape playback equipment would often malfunction, meaning listeners would hear announcers introducing songs, to be followed by a completely different set of records the announcer hadn’t even mentioned.

Ed Scarborough had been a disc jockey here in St. Louis for Pulitzer’s KSD, but when he moved a few blocks east to the CBS studios at One Memorial Drive, things quickly changed. CBS corporate had designated some of its FM stations for major format changes: WCAU-FM in Philadelphia, WBBM-FM in Chicago, and KMOX-FM. Scarborough’s job was to create the HitRadio format and make it a success in St. Louis.

Ed began the formatic transition in August of 1981. KMOX-FM went from the automated mellow format to a more contemporary, live sound. Scarborough remembers the transition time, “You might have heard John Cougar Mellencamp followed by the Mamas and Papas.”

An average listener may not have noticed all the tweaking that went on with the music playlist, but Scarborough worked long and hard to establish which new songs to play and which would not fit the format. He was quoted in an interview in Radio & Records as saying, “The most important factor is that the record sounds like KHTR or it doesn’t get on the air.”

He even credits station manager Tim Dorsey with giving him complete leeway to do whatever was necessary to succeed. The initial air staff of Kevin McCarthy, Bob Scott, Casey Van Allen, Craig Roberts, Scarborough and weekender Mike Jeffries eased the listeners out of the mellow sound and into the high-energy Hit Radio format, which placed emphasis on current music but was aimed at an adult audience rather than teens. Later Scarborough replaced himself on the air with John Frost, and Young Bobby Day was also added.

“I didn’t want the listener to hear a bunch of screaming kids on the stations,” Scarborough says. “I can’t say enough good things about those jocks.”

The transition was completed by December. All the older hits had been removed from the playlist and the call letters were changed to KHTR. In a move that is virtually unheard of today, local staffers had a say in the new logo design and selection of on-air jingles.

It was a standard joke around the building that the format didn’t sit particularly well with Robert Hyland, whose office was four floors below the KHTR studios. Hyland honestly didn’t understand it, but he had complete faith in Scarborough’s ability to make it work. This allowed Hyland to continue to focus his attention exclusively on KMOX, which at that time was showing an average quarter hour market share in the twenties. Combine that with KHTR’s highest Arbitron share of 10.6, and the two CBS stations in St. Louis had a combined average quarter-hour audience share over 30.

Hyland didn’t have to understand KHTR to appreciate its success.

Listen to KHTR, in 1984

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 02/06)

It was a relatively short and uneventful life for KGRV. The station came to life from the ashes of KACO, which was destroyed by fire. Operations of KACO were officially suspended by the FCC on January 5, 1970. The station returned to the air March 16 of that year with new call letters.

The 107.7 frequency had not been used to its fullest extent by the old owner, Apollo Broadcasting. They were on the air 36 hours a week, which resulted in a fine of $1,000 levied by the FCC. Music had been straight line middle-of-the-road, but in its KGRV identity, the music was termed “contemporary middle-of-the-road.”

Broadcast hours were 6:00 AM to midnight, and management boasted that 18-20 songs were played each hour. It was “music for groovy adults,” and there was even a female announcer who called herself Kay Groove. Studios were at 1215 Cole and the transmitter was at 532 DeBaliviere.

On November 25, 1970, Apollo finally found a buyer for the property, Kansas City-based Intermedia, which paid $250,000 for the station. On July 3, 1973, Amaturo Group paid $4.677,500 for KGRV and two other Missouri stations. The call letters KGRV were changed to KKSS effective January 1, 1974.

This station, which had a short, checkered history, was first licensed at 1400 Kc., 250 watts in April (or May 3), 1925 (conflicting reports). KFWF was owned by St. Louis Truth Center, Inc., at 4030 Lindell.

The frequency in 1927 was 1400 Kc.

On May 28, 1928, the station was told by the Federal Radio Commission that it would lose its license under the new radio reorganization plan. Then on November 11 of that year, the FRC announced another reorganization that moved KFWF to 1200 Kc at 100 watts, shared with WMAY and WIL.

WMAY was ordered off the air after its license renewal was rejected April 10, 1931.

On July 16, 1931, the FRC recommended that the license of KFWF be denied. Examiner Elmer Pratt testified the station was being used “primarily for dissemination of the views of certain religious teachers.” He said the broadcasts of Reverends C.H. and Emil Hartman resulted in the “devotion of public facilities to private use and, in view of the limited facilities available for broadcasting purposes, is contrary to a sound application of the standard of public interest , convenience and necessity.” The two ministers were not available to respond to his comments.

The FRC recessed without taking action on the recommendations. The station continued to operate in a frequency sharing situation with WIL. In January of 1932, they petitioned the FRC for permission to move the studios and transmitter into downtown St. Louis from the Lindell location. Authorization was granted with a time limit of April 30, 1932. (There is no indication that the move ever took place.) The commission also ordered a continuation of the frequency sharing, which gave WIL the majority of broadcast time. KFWF was on about 11 hours a week.

The appellate efforts of KFWF continued. On April 17, 1932, they petitioned for equal sharing of the frequency, while WIL sought banishment of KFWF from the frequency. WIL submitted evidence that KFWF used the station to solicit contributions under the guise of religion. WIL’s lawyer cited the 1928 notes of the FRC which stated that the KFWF operation “smacked of fraud.”

At the end of the 1932 hearings, Examiner Pratt recommended that KFWF be removed from the airwaves, giving WIL sole use of the frequency, stating “The programs and services of KFWF are of such a nature as to indicate that this station is used principally as the mouthpiece of Emil C. Hartmann in the dissemination of his personal religious views, and this, in view of the other facts and circumstances in this case leads to the conclusion that this station is devoted primarily to a private, as distinguished from a public, service.”

On April 14, 1933, the FRC officially ordered KFWF to leave the air. Elmer Pratt of the FRC wrote that although the Truth Center purported to be a religious group, there were only three members of the Center, and they were siblings. Reverend Hartmann was unable to give any accounting of what happened to the monetary donations gleaned from listeners, but it was noted that large sums were collected. In the station’s early years, at least $45,000 came to it, which was used to pay for the property at 4030 Lindell. That property would go to family members upon dissolution of the Center.

The Hartmanns appealed the order to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, but the injunction they sought was denied. The station was ordered off the air for the final time in May of 1933.

Radio station KFVE was in existence in St. Louis less than three years before its identity was changed, but it was a turbulent three years.

Originally licensed to the Film Corporation of America at 6800 Delmar in University City, KFVE went on the air in the summer of 1925. Its transmitter was housed in the Egyptian Building. In October of that year, noted composer Irving Berlin sued the station for copyright infringement, alleging that KFVE had broadcast his music without permission.

News of the station and its history is difficult to find. Many of the newspapers in the 1920s had financial interest in local stations and tended to give publicity only to “their” station. We do know that technical wonder boy Lester Arthur “Eddie” Benson built KFVE’s transmitter, one of three he constructed for stations signing on in St. Louis. Benson soon purchased the station from F.C.A.
In November of 1926 it was recorded that Santa Claus appeared on the station, speaking to boys and girls on behalf of Nugent’s Department Store.

The year 1927 brought on insurmountable problems for the station. Studios were moved from 1111 Olive, the offices of the Baldwin Piano Company, to the Missouri Hotel at 11th and Locust. Two weeks after the move, Benson cut back on broadcast hours. Although he initially said the cut was for the benefit of those people “living in the immediate vicinity of the antenna in University City,” the real reason later was reported as giving him time to decide on the future of the station. On March 3 the station suddenly went off the air, and newspaper reports indicated KFVE “would not be on the air until further notice.” Within two weeks, KFVE was purchased by Thomas Patrick Convey, the man credited with putting KMOX on the air in 1925.

Convey immediately announced another move. The studios and transmitter were relocated to the Chase Hotel, with the aerial strung on the building’s roof near the “Solarian.” The studios occupied a large portion of the north side of the ninth floor. Shortly after the purchase, Convey was told by the Federal Radio Commission that he would have to reduce the station’s power from 5,000 watts to 1,000 watts.

But while Convey got the station’s name and frequency, he apparently was outsmarted by Benson. It seems Benson also owned radio station WIL, and by June of 1927, WIL had hired everyone on KFVE’s old staff. In fact, WIL’s studios occupied the arcade level of the Missouri Hotel.

On November 25, 1927, Convey changed his station’s call letters to KWK. He was quoted in the local papers: “We received many letters wrongly addressed, indicating the fact that our call letters were not easily understood.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/2001)

A license was granted April 18, 1925 for the station owned by the Film Corporation of America at 6800 Delmar (The Egyptian Building, according to published reports). However, FCC records put the date of the grant at April 3, 1925.

The station was sued by Irving Berlin on October 22, 1925 for copyright infringement stemming from the broadcasting of his music.

Santa Claus appeared on KFVE November 12, 1926, speaking to boys and girls on behalf of Nugent’s Department Store.

On January 1, 1927 the studios were moved from 1111 Olive to the Missouri Hotel at 11th and Locust. The transmitter remained at the University City location, and the frequency was 1400 Kc. Lester Benson was reported to own both KFVE and WIL. On January 15, the broadcasts were cut back while Benson decided on its future. He eventually raided the station, taking most of its on-air staff and putting them on WIL.

March 19 marked the new birth of KFVE. Its studios were moved to the ninth floor of the Hotel Chase, and the new owner was Thomas Convey. The aerial was on the building’s roof near the Solarian.

KFVE and KMOX both broadcast baseball games in 1927. The frequency was now 1250 Kc.

The call letters were changed to KWK on December 1, 1927, and the frequency was changed to 1280 Kc.

Maybe it’s the fact that they don’t spend any money on tv commercials. You don’t see any bumper stickers containing their call letters. There’s that thing about their history, being owned by the same group since signing on in 1948. Oh, yes – They’re the oldest FM station in the market, and in the past two years, they’ve averaged a respectable 3.1 quarter hour 12+ share in Arbitron, delivering the kind of high-end demographics many advertisers crave. And then there’s the Marconi Award last year.

So why is it that when the “radio reporter” for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes a rambling, misinformed article on the lack of variety on the market’s music radio stations, she doesn’t even mention KFUO-FM? Doesn’t classical music count?

There is a uniqueness to Classic 99, including the fact that it’s still on the air, and still commercially successful. In the past few years, classical music stations in New York, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Denver have dropped the format, opting for something more popular – and more lucrative. Chicago Sun-Times Radio/TV columnist Robert Feder tells SJR his city once enjoyed “two full-time commercial classical music stations.” When big money came calling, the married couple who owned WNIB (having put it on the air for $8,000 45 years ago) sold for $165 million. Exit classical music; enter rock music.

Philadelphia saw the same thing happen. Kent Steinriede, who writes for the Philadelphia Weekly, says “WFLN was bought by a big radio chain that dropped the [classical] format because it didn’t pay.” It’s a rock station now, and the City of Brotherly Love can only hear classical music during a limited number of hours each day on the Temple University station.

Here in St. Louis, that situation was reversed. In 1994 the non-commercial radio station owned by the University of Missouri – St. Louis dropped its broadcasts of classical music, thereby giving KFUO-FM a sort of classical monopoly. At Classic 99, they’ve been running commercials since 1983, and although they provide a significant chunk of income to their owners from spot sales, there’s a slight difference in their operating philosophy when compared to other commercial stations.

In St. Louis, KFUO-FM is owned by the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, and the station’s director of broadcast, Dennis Stortz, says that gives the station a big advantage over those that were sold. “The mission of the station is really two-fold: to support the cultural well-being of the community and to represent its ownership in that quest. Broadcast groups search endlessly for the right format. This is a traditional format and people respect it.”

It appears the Lutheran Church is one of those “old-fashioned” radio owners that cares very deeply about serving the community. The station works hard at publicizing the entire St. Louis Arts community. They’ve established outreach programs to take music into the schools, provide musical instruments to students, and give disadvantaged kids a chance to perform the music they’ve learned. Dennis Stortz admits there’s no way to please all the listeners. “In 1990 or 91, it became apparent we had to start giving the audience a format based largely on the popular classics.” The result was a load of letters from an audience segment upset that they were no longer hearing entire orchestral works. Stortz says the jump in audience levels was significant the audience has stayed. The format also includes CNN news broadcasts during morning and afternoon drive and regular reports from the Wall Street Journal when the markets are open.

KFUO-FM’s uniqueness in the radio business extends beyond format and community service. “Our full-time staff hasn’t changed in any dramatic way in the past ten years,” says Stortz. Morning man Jim Connett has been there for 10 years; John Roberts, who holds down middays has been an announcer there since 1977; Dick Wobbe, who is in afternoon drive has been on the air at Classic 99 since 1985; and operations director Ron Klemm, whose voice is on many commercials an most of the station’s weekly specialty shows, has been there for 23 years.

Everyone at the station agrees there’s a special relationship between Classic 99 and its listeners. Afternoon announcer Dick Wobbe puts it succinctly: “I think the people who listen to us realize our station is something special.” And Dennis Stortz says staff members are appreciative of their relationship with the listeners: “We spend a lot of time each day answering emails from our audience. They listen. They respond. We never have remotes where people don’t show up.”

Staff members agree the two-way listener-station relationship is based, in part, on the musical product. Jim Connett, who is also the station’s program director, says, “People come here for the music. It’s their [listeners’] radio station.” And Ron Klemm says the listeners’ taste is due to their demographic backgrounds: “Classical music people are more educated, are more involved in the community. There is a connection with the listener that is so intimate that each of them has a sense of ownership in what we’re doing.”

One man, Paul DeVantier, has a perspective of the radio station that is unique. Now retired and living in Wisconsin, he served as general manager of the station for many years before moving to the position of Executive Director of Communications for the synod.

DeVantier says over that 28 year period, he saw a “leadership in the synod committed to classical music as its most appropriate use of the airwaves, because it tied in with the Lutheran understanding of the importance of music in life itself.”

Thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, there’s really no limit on the number of radio stations a company can own. Because of that four corporations own the bulk of the nation’s radio properties, and the days are gone when the corporate executives knew the names of the people who worked for them. That is, they’re gone almost everywhere. At KFUO-FM in the nation’s seventeenth largest radio market, the staff is well known to the owners, and to the station’s many listeners.

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 04/01)