Radio

KDNA, “free speech radio,” the only place in St. Louis where you could hear decent jazz, live local musicians, unreleased tapes of Firesign Theatre, and one of the few, struggling listener-supported-no-commercials stations in the country, has been sold to a commercial business interest. Free radio, for many the only radio, is in perilous straights (sic) in St. Louis.

To put it bluntly, the two legal owners of KDNA’s frequency (102.5 FM) have sold the station in order to pay off debts incurred by the station’s original good angel, Lorenzo Milam. The sale price? The latest figure mentioned is a cool 1.1 million dollars.

But the money from the sale of the frequency to Cecil Heftel (owner of several “successful” commercial stations) will not be going to KDNA, nor to the dozens of people who have worked at starvation levels to help the station grow. It will be divided between Lorenzo Milam and Jeremy Lansman. The sale was made necessary by a series of events stemming from the beginning of KDNA.

In the beginning, there was an open frequency at 102.5 FM which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was about to allot. As has been the usual practice, hearings were held, and petitions submitted by those who were interested in owning the frequency. The main contenders for 102.5 were a church and Jeremy Lansman. Jeremy spent five years trying to get the frequency and, with a little help from his friends, he finally succeeded. Lorenzo Milam fits into the picture here. At various points in KDNA’s youth, as it was on its way to becoming “listener-supported,” he donated about $250,000.

Thus, KDNA was begin as a partnership: Jeremy’s work and Lorenzo’s money. As it grew, Lorenzo faded out of the picture. He criss-crossed the country helping to establish other listener-supported stations, and KDNA came to be run by a substantial number of “volunteers.”

Then one stormy night, Lorenzo appeared at the door of KDNA’s gaslight square studio-cum-office-cum-living quarters and told the sad tale of economic demise. It seems that he had spent rather recklessly, squandering his entire fortune on various ventures and had in fact, racked up about $400,000 in debts. The station was Lorenzo’s only major liquid asset.

A plan was formulated optimistically allowing for the greatest benefit to both Lorenzo and the station staff. It involved the formulation of The Double Helix Corporation, a non-profit corporation which, when the money was raised, would buy out Lorenzo’s share of the station and insure local ownership of the station forevermore. Lorenzo would get out of debt and the people of St. Louis would have free access to a radio station. As an incentive, Jeremy offered to donate his half-ownership to Double Helix if the money could be raised to buy out Milam.

However, raising $400,000 turned out to be very difficult. At the same time the station had to continue to run, and the $100 a day just to make ends meet had to keep coming in. By August 16, Double Helix had raised only $20,000 over and above the station’s minimal operating expenses.

Lorenzo’s creditors were knocking louder. During a recent conference of “free” radio stations in Seattle in mid-August, Jeremy and Lorenzo decided to sell the station to the highest bidder.

Lorenzo’s share will in part go to paying off his debts. The rest he intends apparently for developing listener-supported stations in other cities; he is disenchanted with St. Louis.

Lansman says that he intends to invest his half of the proceeds in a national non-profit foundation, as yet unformed, with the intention of building, as quickly as possible, listener-supported stations across the country. He and Milam have what they refer to as “the national perspective.”

There is something to be said for this “national perspective.” There are not an unlimited number of radio frequencies left in the U.S. Every so often the FCC opens up one of the remaining frequencies for grabs, and there is usually a frenzied scramble for it. According to Lansman, it is likely that all the available frequencies will be taken within a few years. His intention is to begin as many groups building free radio as possible before the medium falls into the hands of large entrepreneurs.

The lack of new frequencies is a major drawback in KDNA’s fight to survive. After the final contract is drawn up (a process involving several months) and the station is sold where will KDNA go? There are no more frequencies in the area. None. At first glance the prospects appear to be bleak.

The staff of KDNA has not stayed alive this long by taking a defeatist attitude, however. They are now pursuing a plan to share airtime with another station which only broadcasts short hours on weekdays. If they are successful they may be able to buy that frequency. At worst, they hope to be able to share the station’s air time in exchange for certain services.

In addition, the Federal government has recently changed its regulations to allow the office of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) to allot grants to non-profit, locally owned stations like KDNA. The Seattle “free” station has obtained a $20,000 grant, and a Pacifica network station has received some money. If Double Helix can raise some more money, they may be able to get an HEW grant. Lansman says aid will also be available through the national fund he intends to establish.

At any rate, the deal will take several months to close, and the station will be broadcasting all that time. They need donations to stay alive and to build for the future, and they need other kinds of help to pull it off.

So all is not lost. The survival of KDNA is basically a matter of the dedication of local people to maintaining the concept. The staff of KDNA is dedicated. Many are even optimistic about its survival on another frequency.

(Originally published in St. Louis Outlaw 8/25/1972, bylined “D.N.D.”)
 

In early 1968 WIL-AM was using an all-news format competing with KMOX. Tom Perryman, the manager at the time, convinced the owners to switch to a full-time Country Music format. He hired the most prominent program director in the nation, Chris Lane of WJJD in Chicago. Chris was also a great DJ, now a member of the Country DJ Hall of Fame. Perryman gave Chris a free rein to assemble the best DJs in the business to staff the station. It was a search that started in January of 1968 until June of that year. Chris was quoted as saying “I took my time in finding just the right guys until I had the ‘cream of the crop’ in DJs to really make an impact on the market!” All the DJs but one were rated number one in their respective markets.

The first was Davie Lee from Dallas who was also named as music director. That meant he was responsible for all the music to be played on the station. For about a year, Davie did the overnight show before moving to the 10 to 2 slot for the next 20 years. Next was Dick Byrd from San Diego, the morning man from 5 to 9 AM. Chris did the 9 to 11 AM slot.

Then there was Dan Daly from Charlotte, NC., to handle 11 to 3 PM. Walter Vaughn from Dallas was a late addition to do the 3 to 7 PM show. Mike Hanes from Knoxville, TN., was chosen to do the 7 PM to midnight shift. Today these guys are still close friends and admit it was the most fun they ever had in radio.

WIL-AM immediately became the number one Country Music station in St. Louis and was named the number one Country Music Station in America in 1969. After leaving WIL to buy a radio station in San Jose, CA., Chris Lane was replaced by Larry Scott from WLAC in Los Angeles. He is also a member of the Country Music DJ Hall of Fame. After him the following men were program directors at WIL: Tom Allen, Walt Turner and Mike Carta. Under their leadership the station continued to prosper.

There came a time that FM Radio became more and more popular, and WIL-FM also became a full-time Country Music Station. After some time, the ownership decided to go only with WIL-FM and bought out the AM DJs, changed the call letters to WRTH and became the middle-of-the-road format.

(Originally published in Gateway Country Music Association Who’s Who)

It was 15 years ago or more when I decided to put a radio station on the air. I was in the high fidelity business at Jefferson and Olive. Somewhere along the way I got the brilliant idea that if I put a radio station on the air I could advertise my high fidelity business and get lots of customers, because I would have a captive audience.

Without really checking into anything, and not knowing any better, I started looking around and bought an FM transmitter. At that time they were easily available because just about everyone in the country believed FM was dead. St. Louis even felt that way because I believe the only noncommercial FM station on the air at that time was KFUO. But nothing bothered me. I was determined.
I scraped up the money for the down payment and applied to the FCC for a license to operate a station at Jefferson and Olive. It was my intention at that time to put a small tower on the building there. I got the license and the list of available call letters. I liked the sound of KCFM and chose that one. Since then I’ve had reason to wonder why. People keep thinking it’s a Kansas City station.

Then the fun really started. I found an engineer to help me get things started. The first thing he told me was that with a small tower on a building at Jefferson and Olive I wouldn’t get a signal out 30 feet. He said I needed a larger tower with some height. I started looking around and found an old tower on top of the Boatmen’s Bank Building that was used by an old Transit Radio Company. I found out they were paying $5000 a month on lease, and would like to get out from under it. So we negotiated a reasonable deal for them, pretty high for me, where I got the tower for half price, payable in advance. Again, I scraped up the money. The great day arrived. My engineer and I hooked it up, turned it on, and strangely enough we got phone calls.

People loved the station with all of the classical music. Being naïve, we went full steam ahead. I was operating with free help. People loved the idea of glamorous radio and wanted in on the ground floor. For the first month everything was fine, and lots of volunteers came in to get in on the fun and help run KCFM.

These were truly dedicated people who believed in FM. They played the records, made the announcements and cleaned the equipment. But after a few weeks the novelty wore off and I would get calls from this unpaid help saying their mother wanted them to cut the grass, or one would call up sick, or one would have a big date. Before I knew what was happening I found myself running the transmitter and the turntables, day and night, and neglecting the high fidelity business. Glamorous it wasn’t.

It was inevitable. I had to start salaried people. Even though the salary rate then was around $1 an hour, we were on the air 19 hours a day, and no revenue was coming in. The electric bills were coming in though, and there always seemed to be a $700 tube that would pick a bad time to burn out. Things really got rough.

We practically bankrupted the Hi Fidelity Co. to keep KCFM on the air, and it was getting discouraging, particularly when we couldn’t sell a 5 cent piece of advertising. Nobody believed we had a big enough audience that would buy. I was beginning to believe they were right. It hadn’t helped my high fidelity business in sales.

But a few dedicated people and I marched on, and we weathered two hectic years. During that time I found out that among my other duties at KCFM, I would have to do some selling on my own. One of the accounts I sold was a banking institution.

The president of that bank claimed we didn’t have any listeners. So I got our announcers to ask everyone listening to KCFM at that time to drop us a post card with comments. The replies filled a bushel basket, which I promptly took into the president’s office and dumped on his desk.

The post cards and letters covered his desk and spilled over on the floor. That was one of our finest sponsors for quite a while.

Advertisers still weren’t breaking down our doors though, so I decided to get into the background music business to help carry the freight. I went to the people who had all of the transit radio receivers and bought them all for $1 a piece. That night my partner and I sat down and started rebuilding them to make them work for background music.

We played easy-listening music during the day and whenever a commercial came on, we pushed a button which shut off the commercial so the background music customer couldn’t hear it.

Unfortunately there were times when our system didn’t work, and the customer in the store would be listening to soothing music and suddenly the commercial would come on loud and clear and tell him to go to that customer’s competition.

While we were fighting this problem, the FCC came up with a ruling that we couldn’t use this system. We had to go into what they call multiplexing, which was a scrambler built into the transmitter which scrambled a separate program and for which you needed a special receiver.

This was a very fine idea with one minor exception. It didn’t work. But, we got the equipment anyhow and started ironing out the bugs. In one year we debugged it sufficiently to get ourselves into the background music business on a small scale.

Among the other impressions that multiplexing made on me – I found that I liked the sound of the word, and so our background music service became “multiplex music.” Multiplex music not only helped the overhead, it carried the entire overhead for a while.

Time marched on, and we decided to get out of the location we were in because we needed larger facilities. We rented a large warehouse on DeBaliviere and put up a small tower, right through the roof, and moved our equipment in.

To say the roof fell in is putting it mildly. Our signal at this location was not getting out the front door. After many phone calls to the company that made the antenna we were using, with many suggestions from them that didn’t work, they sent us a new antenna.

The men on the staff at that time, along with yours truly, climbed the tower that very day, at 2 a.m. We started making the necessary changes and taking measurements. It wasn’t funny that cold morning, but now it seems pretty comical.

Here we are, freezing on that tower in the pitch black night, and all of a sudden two policemen come up the ladder with flashlights and guns drawn and want to know what we are doing there. My answer was, “What do you think we’re doing in zero weather a couple hundred feet off the ground?”

Things finally got it shape. We got a signal out. We had a sales staff. Our problems seemed to be diminishing. Then one week later I got a call about midnight from the announcer on duty who said the place was full of smoke, what should he do? I gave him the only advice I could come up with at the moment. Call the fire department and get the heck out of there.

I got dressed and started out for the station. When I got within a mile of the place I could hear the sirens and see the flames. The tower was down, lying across the National Food Store next door,  and there was nothing left of the building that had been KCFM. DeBaliviere looked like the fourth of July. Within an hour every member of the staff was standing in the street looking at the ruins.

The next morning we gathered at the ashes and tried to decide where we could go with KCFM now. We could take the insurance money, which would not pay off one third of our bills and fold up. Or we could try to rebuild something. The consensus of the entire staff was “let’s go forward.” They even offered to go without their paychecks until we were back in business, but that didn’t become necessary.

Through the courtesy of Channel Nine, we put a small antenna on their tower at Boatmen’s Bank. We took the antenna out of the ashes and fixed it up, took an old transmitter and rebuilt it and carried it down to Boatmen’s on a Sunday, up the elevator and hooked it up ourselves.

(By Harry Eidelman 11/30/1969)

Receipt of authority to begin program tests for radio station KADY, metropolitan St. Louis’ newest radio station, was announced today by Harman I. Moseley, II, president and general manager.

Among well-known St. Louis radio and television personnel who are connected with the new station are, in addition to Moseley, Howard DeMere, well-known St. Louis radio and television personality, Marshall Pope, formerly with radio station KMOX, and Dick Kimball, formerly production manager and producer-director at KWK-TV.

(Originally published in Ad Club Weekly 4/14/1958)

Ed Goodberlet, studio control operator, was called into the manager’s office one day in 1926. There he found all the other KMOX engineers lined up before the desk of Thomas P. Convey.

Convey started abruptly: “I’ve been informed that you men have joined a labor union…What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you satisfied with what you’re getting here? Do you expect a union to do any better for you?”

His voice grew sharp as he pulled out a slip of paper.

“Now here is a statement I want you men to sign, saying that you’ll not have anything more to do with this union and that you’re satisfied to work at the prevailing wages.”

He handed the statement to Goodberlet first.

Goodberlet refused to sign, and he was immediately fired.

Convey then handed the paper to Erle White, another control operator. White, too, turned it down. He, too, was fired.
The other engineers looked coldly at Convey, and no one stepped forward to sign.

Convey waved them back to work and with a flushed face returned to his desk.

Shortly afterward, Bill Ludgate, chairman of the radio division of Local 1 of St. Louis, the cornerstone local of the Brotherhood, went to the KMOX office at the Mayfair Hotel to discuss the two firings with Convey. The station manager met him at the door, and in a torrent of profanity Convey said that no blankety-blank union was going to tell him who he’d hire or fire.

“I’ll hire or fire whom I please,” he said.

When Ludgate asked why the two men were fired, Convey replied, “I just didn’t like their looks.”

“Looks have no bearing whatever on the matter, Mr. Convey,” said Ludgate. “This is a matter we should be able to settle amicably. Meanwhile these men must be returned to their jobs…or we will be compelled to pull all your other operators off the job until the matter is settled. Either return these men to their jobs by five o’clock this afternoon, or we’ll take strike action.”

Five o’clock came, and Goodberlet and White were still out. The switches were pulled at the studios and transmitter, and on instructions from Business Agent Arthur Schading, the men began to picket.

Thus began what labor history has recorded as the first strike by organized labor at any radio station in the United States. This was a time when the nation was rising toward its first big financial boom. Radio stations were mushrooming across the country, as the Department of Commerce transferred its communications control work to the new Federal Radio Commission.

Ed Goodberlet, the first man fired, was working for $30 a week, on duty for 48 hours. An engineer performed every job at a radio station from emptying the wastebaskets to occasionally announcing Caruso records.

KMOX, “The Voice of St. Louis, Missouri,” had gone on the air on Christmas Eve, 1925. It was a pioneer station of the Midwest. Supported strongly by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat newspaper, the station had 15 financial backers – all prominent businessmen of the community. The site for the transmitter was donated by the Kirkwood Trust Company. Leading light of the establishment was Thomas P. Convey, a man described by Bill Ludgate as a “promoter of the bombastic type who literally wore his likes and dislikes on his coat sleeve.”

Convey came from Chicago to promote the St. Louis Radio Show at the Coliseum. He had been invited to St. Louis by William Mackle, secretary of the St. Louis Radio Trade Association. Seeing possibilities in the city, Convey persuaded local firms to underwrite a new broadcasting station. He had approached the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, owner and operator of Station KSD, without success. In time, he acquired enough capital and began his operation.

He didn’t forget the cold shoulder of the Post-Dispatch, however. Bill Ludgate, an engineer at KSD at the time, tells of witnessing the opening of a floral box sent to the city desk of the newspaper by Convey on the day KMOX began broadcasting.

The box was more than three feet long, a foot wide, and half a foot deep. Inside the box was a large bouquet of vegetables tied with a ribbon made of toilet paper. There were onions, carrots, beets, spinach, celery, and lemons. Accompanying the box was an embossed card with the inscription, “Compliments of Thomas Patrick Convey, General Manager, Radio Station KMOX.”

A little more than four months later, Convey’s actions had precipitated a strike at the new station.

A day after the men walked out, Convey called Ludgate and in subdued tones said that he had thought matters over and, since the Board of Directors of KMOX was meeting that night, he suggested that the union put its demands in writing so that he could present them to the board.

Schading, Ludgate, and other leaders of Local No. 1’s radio group put their demands on paper. They were simply this: The station must grant official recognition to the union.

These demands were delivered by special messenger to Convey at the Mayfair Hotel, who, upon reading them, dropped them back into the envelope, placed his name and address on the outside, pasted on a postage stamp, and dropped the sealed envelope into a mail box, knowing that the envelope would not be delivered to him until the next morning.

The union had anticipated such a move. A duplicate copy of the demands was sent to a member of the board who was on good terms with Local No. 1. (Of the 15 corporations represented on the board, no less than 11 had union contracts.)

Meanwhile, Convey telephoned Western Electric Company in New Jersey for the services of an engineer to help put the station back on the air. Tom McLean, KMOX chief engineer, met the WE man at the airport, assured him that there was nothing wrong with the equipment and urged him to leave it alone. The station remained off the air.

At the KMOX board meeting Convey was asked if he had received the union’s demands.

“I’ve had no word whatsoever from the union,” was his intense reply.

“That’s strange,” interjected a board member. “I have a copy of the demands that Mr. Arthur Schading, business agent for Local 1 of the IBEW, delivered to you by messenger only this afternoon.”

Convey’s methods were exposed, and the meeting adjourned on a sour note until the next afternoon, so that BA (Business Agent) Schading could appear and present the union demands in person.

The strike was settled and on the union’s terms. A new salary schedule was established, calling for $45 a week for studio operators and $55 a week for transmitter operators. The board of directors requested that a salary increase be held up temporarily to give the station owners time to increase their budget for 1926.

A short time later the KMOX board terminated its two-year contract with Convey, paying him in full. The deposed station manager went to Florida, but within the year he was back in St. Louis, where he made a down payment on another station, purchasing KFVE from Benson interests. He obtained the attic space in the Chase Hotel and went on the air with new call letters – KWK.

There he made his fortune…and with union operators all the way.

Nevertheless, he literally died fighting the unions, Local 1 historians report. In the early 1930s his appendix burst at a contract meeting between St. Louis stations and the late H. P. Koenig, Local 1 business agent.

(Originally published in IBEW Technician – Engineer 12/1958)

By Roy Malone
July 7 [2010] was the day lovers of classical music in the St. Louis area could hear it no more at 99.1 on their FM radio dial, as they had for 35 years.

KFUO-FM Classic 99 stopped broadcasting classical and instead, under new ownership, began playing Christian contemporary pop music.

The station was bought from the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod by Gateway Creative Broadcasting and the station is now called Joy-FM. The $18 million deal was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in May, despite complaints from enraged listeners of the classical music.

Joy-FM is listener supported and two prominent givers – the Cardinals’ Albert Pujols and ex-Cardinal pitcher Andy Benes – made large donations to help finance the sale. (Their dollar amounts were not reported).

The impending sale was in the news steadily since it became known last October. Letters-to-the-editor by dismayed listeners were countered by supporters of the Christian programs. “Just change the station if you don’t want to hear the word of God,” wrote one woman.

Some suggested that the classical lovers find their music elsewhere, like on some other station. KWMU-FM said it would play classical, but on an HD channel that few listeners could get.

Sarah Bryan Miller, classical music critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote on May 21 that the Radio Arts Foundation had given up its hunt for a replacement station, at least for now. “Currently there is no appropriate station available to buy,” said a statement from the Foundation. It said it was placing the hunt for another station on hold until one becomes available.

The Foundation had originally tried to buy KFUO-FM from the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod but was told the church preferred selling to a Christian enterprise, Miller reported.

(Originally published in the St. Louis Journalism Review 7/2010).