Radio Articles

When Edwin Armstrong provided a demonstration of FM broadcasting to RCA’s David Sarnoff in 1933, he was successful in showing off “staticless” radio, but RCA and CBS were both eyeing a technology with even more commercial promise – one that sent live, moving pictures through the air.

Realizing that his project was not a corporate priority, Armstrong continued to develop FM on his own, and in 1941 the federal government authorized commercial FM broadcasting. It would be several years before St. Louisans heard regular broadcasts.

Part of that delay is due to the fact that the country was involved in World War II, but many other cities, some of which were significantly smaller than St. Louis, were active in FM development. It wasn’t due to any lack of support from Washington.

As early as 1939, several existing AM stations in the U.S. had been designated as Apex station operators, and two of them were in St. Louis: W9XPD (KSD owned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) and W9XOK (KXOK owned by the St. Louis Star-Times). Many of these Apex stations around the country evolved into FMs.

The FM band, like its predecessor AM, also underwent technical changes on the way to its current incarnation. Early frequencies ranged from 41.02 – 43.98 mHz for the Apex stations with 40 kHz separation, and by May of 1940, 15 FM stations were on the air in the U.S. A year later the number had risen to 24. In 1945 the Federal Communications Commission reallocated FM stations to higher frequencies, 84 – 108 mHz, with the lower end, 84 – 88 mHz set aside for non-commercial stations.

There were several false starts here. WIL-FM was authorized at 92.1 and later moved to 97.3; KMOX-FM was allocated 45.9 mHz but later dropped its application; KWK-FM was assigned to 95.3; KXOK-FM was at 93.7; KXLW-FM was at 101.1; KSD-FM went on the air in September of 1948 at 96.1; and KWGD-FM became a reality in December of 1948 at 98.1 in studios now occupied by Sinclair Broadcasting.

WEW applied for an FM station in 1942, received a frequency of 45.1mHz, and was later given 95.1. WIL-FM was also on the air in 1948, as was KFUO-FM at 104.1.

The early days of FM in St. Louis were not as exciting as the early days of AM. Government control precluded a lot of unauthorized experiments that had been the rule in the early 1920s.

The first programs on AM consisted of whatever station managers could find to put on the air. Most FM stations here provided simulcasts of what their co-owned AM stations were broadcasting.

By 1950, several stations had already pulled their literal and figurative plugs here, but some new ones had been added. The dial included KSLH (91.5), KXOK-FM (93.7), WEW-FM (95.1), KWK-FM (98.1), KFUO-FM (99.1), and WTMV-FM (102.5). F.C.C. records in 1958 list only three FMs here, KFUO-FM, KCFM (93.7) and KSLH. It appeared the fad of FM radio would not take hold in St. Louis.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 11/1997)

Sheila Moseley had a long career in broadcasting, and she can thank the Philomathians for getting her started.

Working under the various names of Shila (pronounced SHY la) Shelp, Sheila Graham, Sheila Moseley, Nancy Willard and Nancy Dixon, her work in St. Louis covered many duties on several radio and television stations and hundreds of broadcast advertisements.

Her first appearance on radio here came after a series of developments that appeared on the surface to be unrelated. She came home in the summer of 1941 after her freshman year at Smith College, where they were building a radio station. Her mother, who had been taking a writing course here at Washington University, had written a 15 minute play that was to be broadcast on KFUO. Sheila’s father decided she wouldn’t be going back to school in the Fall because he believed the United States would soon be involved in war.

So Sheila went to the Concordia campus, which was the home of KFUO. New studios were being built, and the play was being broadcast from the robbing room of the chapel. After hearing her performance, station manager Rev. Elmer Knoernschild asked her to join the Philomathians, his radio drama group. It was a large group of actors and actresses who did dramas on KFUO each Saturday evening. “One time we ran out of material, so the station held a competition for writers,” Mrs. Moseley recalls “The top three submissions would be performed by the group. The winner was a young man named Rod Serling.

“Elmer later asked me to do the ‘Little Red Schoolhouse’ show for him, and I got paid for that. I also did ‘Through the Museum Doors’ which I had to write as well. I remember the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. I made my way to KFUO to see what I could do to help. Elmer was doing the announcing and getting information from wire copy. I answered phones.”

Her first job that really paid was a direct outgrowth of the Philomathians. She worked as an actress on a couple episodes of the “Land We Live In,” the Union Electric weekly drama on KMOX. (In the 1950s, she was a regular actress on the program on KSD.) She also did voice work on WEW and the “Mary Lee Taylor Show,” a national production of Gardner Advertising for their client, Pet Milk.

Behind the scenes, Sheila was making things happen too. At WEW in the early ‘40s, she was paid a starting salary of $15 a week as music director, choosing the selections to be played on the air. Unable to get a pay increase there, she moved to KXOK, where manager Chet Thomas paid her $22.50 to write scripts in the continuity department. She remembers “There were lots of complaints there from advertisers about Harry Caray’s reading of commercials. He was not an easy man to work with.

“In 1943, Harry wanted to get rid of France Laux, another sports voice on KXOK, so he went to Chet Thomas and persuaded him to broadcast Harry’s ticker tape broadcasts of the out-of-town games. Harry would really dress these up and France, whose personality wasn’t that appealing, finally left. I don’t think he ever knew how Harry set that up.”

The KXOK studios were on the mezzanine level of the Star-Times Building, and working conditions in the summer were very uncomfortable. “It was extremely hot. Back then, every word that was uttered on the air had to be written by the continuity department. We worked with the windows open and electric fans blowing, and if we didn’t put something down to anchor the paper, scripts would go flying out the window.”

The chance for upward mobility came in the form of a job offer – news writer and reader – from news director Harry Renfro. She turned it down at the insistence of her father. “He didn’t like the idea of me working with the newsmen.” Later she did combine with Jerry Burns for a daily sports show using the name Shila Shelp. In 1949 she returned to KXOK after an absence of several years and became the music director for popular disc jockey Hal Fredricks. “I worked with him for six months getting his music together and writing all his intros and ad libs.”

Along the way Sheila married Harman Moseley. Between 1951 and 1956 she was the host of “The Nancy Dixon Show,” a national franchise program on KSD sponsored by Cluett-Peabody’s “Sanforized” division. The program, she says, was a 15 minute commercial for the process that prevented clothes from shrinking, and it gave her a chance to spotlight local stores and do features.

Sheila and her husband moved out of the market then to pursue a business venture in Arkansas. When they returned she began a 15 year stint in the local Pulitzer broadcast operation doing vacation fill-in, which gave her a chance to do just about every job in the building, including producing Russ David’s “Playhouse Party” There was also a five-year run at WIL during that same time in which she was “Nancy Willard” doing several women’s programs on the air.

Sheila Moseley capped her broadcast career here with a short appearance on KADY, a station partly owned by her husband, and several years working as free-lance commercial voiceover talent.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 02/2004)

Newspapers and radio stations are usually portrayed as competitors for news stories and advertising dollars. But in St. Louis, as in many other cities, newspapers scrambled to be associated with stations, even taking ownership positions. Some were more successful than others.

(There is even a name given to the skirmish that escalated between the news providers: The Press-Radio War. It lasted from 1924 – 1939 and involved a series of efforts by print media to force radio stations to stop broadcasting news. At one point, the papers had radio reporters banned from Congressional press galleries.)

The most prominent newspaper/radio relationship was the Post-Dispatch ownership of KSD, which lasted from 1922 to 1978. The St. Louis Star jumped on the bandwagon with WEB in 1925, buying stock in the station, changing the call letters to WIL and moving the studios to the Star Building at 12th and Olive. No documentation has been found detailing the removal of the Star as an owner of WIL, but in the mid-1930s, the paper began application for ownership of another station, KXOK, which went on the air in 1938. The paper, by this time known as the Star-Times, built the station’s studios in its new building at what is now Tucker and Convention Plaza.

Through all of this, the city’s third major newspaper was left out of the radio ownership circle. The Globe-Democrat finally entered the fray December 19 of 1948 when it signed on with KWGD-FM. A brand new building was constructed at 12th and Cole with enough space for a radio station and, some said, a television station. The enterprise was short-lived. KWGD-FM went dark April 4, 1949, a victim of the very small audience listening to FM radio in those days. The paper responded quickly by purchasing minority stock interest in an existing radio station, KWK, owned by Thomas Patrick, Inc.

The agreement appears to be beneficial to both parties. The Globe was hooked up with a viable radio station and KWK got a facility big enough to house its proposed television station. Robert Convey’s station had been headquartered at the Chase Hotel from 1927-1949. The last program from that facility was broadcast May 8 of 1949. Quoting a newspaper account: “Then a staff of 75 will move in time for Ed Wilson, disc jockey, to greet the dawn from the new location, to be followed later in the day by such KWK favorites as Gil Newsome’s ‘Bandstand Review’ and Tom Dailey’s ‘Recall It and Win.’”

“From 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. tomorrow there will be a special program to mark the occasion, including a description for KWK listeners of the new quarters, which Robert T. Convey, president of KWK, has called ‘one of the finest radio stations in the United States.’” The new facility was called the Globe-Democrat Tower Building in all stories in the paper.

The Globe wasted little time in burying its old FM operation. Publisher E. Lansing Ray announced that the 98.1 megacycle frequency allocation had been returned to the Federal Communications Commission. It was expected that KWK would apply for the frequency later.

The announcement of the Globe-Democrat’s purchase of a minority position was greeted with surprise by the Washington commission. F.C.C. officials said they had received no notification of the paper’s purchase of stock in the Convey company, and such notification was required within 30 days of the transaction. All 29 employees of KWGD-FM had been fired and given two-weeks’ severance pay.

Finally, the newspaper could be on the radio ownership bandwagon riding in the same seat as its St. Louis competitors. It was no longer relegated to a second class radio operation hampered by an FM frequency few listeners could receive or were interested in receiving.

Within two months, the paper and its station planned a pair of parties. The first, an invitation-only affair, was for 1,300 ad executives and public officials, who were given private tours of the station. The second, two weeks later, was an open house for the public. Anyone wishing to take part in one of the three daily public tours was required to send in requests, along with self-addressed stamped return envelopes.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 6/00)

As a youngster, Don Corey fantasized about being a disc jockey. He’d set up a mock studio with his record player and do shows in his room, eventually getting a very low power transmitter and broadcasting to “three or four houses” in his neighborhood. Then, while a teenager, he hit the big time doing overnights on KSHE.

“I remember calling up Don Shafer at KXOK when I was about 12 years old. I asked him how I could become a disc jockey. He said, ‘Well, first you’ve got to be a little crazy.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ve got that down.’ He told me about the FCC license I needed and gave me some more details, and I decided that was the job I wanted.”

Originally Corey had wanted to work for KXOK, which was the top station among teenage listeners, but one day he was checking out the local FM stations and he found KSHE. “Being the naïve 18-year-old that I was, I put together a resume and tape using my bedroom equipment and took the stuff to KSHE. Then I went home and waited for them to call. It was about the dumbest thing I’d ever done because I had no real broadcast experience.

“I waited and waited and nothing happened. So I joined the Columbia School of Broadcasting mail order course. About halfway through the course, on Christmas Eve of 1968, my dad came to my room and told me there was a call for me. It was some guy from KSHE asking if I could come in to work. A bunch of their guys were sick with the flu. I told him I’d be there in five minutes.”

Don Corey had done his pretend broadcasts to his neighborhood over a very weak home transmitter, but he knew he wasn’t prepared for the real thing. Still, that didn’t stop him.

“I came in and the guy showed me the studio and he said ‘You’ve run a [control] board before, haven’t you?’ and I said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Which I hadn’t, but I didn’t want to lose my chance. When I picked up the tone arm for the turntable my hand was shaking.”

Things got easier as the shift progressed and management invited him back to do weekends. That soon became a regular midnight-to-6:00 slot on St. Louis’ first “underground” radio station, making Corey an electronic companion to the all-night crowd. There was no play list.

“You could play anything you wanted as long as it was in the studio. They weren’t afraid to try something different. We played everything but the title cuts because everyone else was playing them.

“I’d play the long songs so I could talk to the listeners who called in. They were really into the music. We used to play a song called ‘Don’t Bogart That Joint’ by the Fraternity of Man, and in the middle of the song the singer goes ‘Roll another one just like the other one.’ I spliced a tape so the word ‘roll’ went on for over a minute and played it on the air without saying anything. The phones went crazy and people were asking what was going on. I played innocent and said nothing was different. I got 30 or 40 phone calls, and I confessed after the record was over.”

Fellow staff members included Steve Rosen, Dick Merkle, Sir Ed (Rickert), John Williams and Prince Knight (Ron Lipe), and the studios were in the old cinder block building in the shadow of the 66 Park-In in Crestwood. Listeners would constantly come by, sometimes to buy concert tickets, sometimes just to talk.

“Sometimes there’d be groups of six or seven people in the middle of the night all standing around outside the studio window just waiting to get a chance to talk to the guy on the air. They made you feel like you were a celebrity. It was really an ego trip for a kid who grew up in Webster. Back then my dating life was awful. I couldn’t charm an old maid out of a burning building. All of a sudden, I’m on the air, and the girls are calling me.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 07/2003)

In spite of what he said, “Records” was not his middle name, but that didn’t stop Gary “Records” Brown from becoming very popular among the St. Louis “oldies” crowd. Few people, however, know that he got his start here as a disc jockey on a “black” radio station.

Gary Brown was hired at KWK by Bernie Hayes in the summer of 1970. Hayes remembers him “asking to observe us while we did our airshifts…Gary also volunteered to relieve anyone who wanted time off. We utilized his services and he became our main substitute.” The stable of jocks at KWK during that time included Jim Gates, Al Waples, Donn Johnson and newsman Al “Scoop” Sanders, along with Hayes.

Gary Brown lived on The Hill and he loved to brag about his Sicilian roots, a trait that entertained the KWK jocks. He also loved the camaraderie of the radio world and the world of professional musicians. Bernie Hayes has fond memories of the night Gary accompanied him when they took Earth, Wind and Fire band members on an all night tour of East Side clubs.

In the early ‘70s Brown got a chance to move to Kansas City where he was a jock at KWKI-FM, again with a Black format. He always enjoyed telling the story of a personal appearance of all the station’s announcers at Municipal Auditorium there. Before a concert all the announcers were introduced. Brown, who was last on the list, came running out on stage to shocked audience silence. None of his listeners had realized what his ethnic heritage was. His fellow jocks whooped it up and the audience followed suit.

Gary once told interviewer Patrick Murphy that his interest in radio went back to the early ‘60s when he used to catch the bus to KXOK’s Radio Park on North Kingshighway. He’d hang around watching Ron Elz do the “Johnny Rabbitt Show,” picking up techniques he later used as an oldies jock at several stations.

Many of his years in St. Louis were spent working for the various incarnations of KADI-AM and FM. It was there that he developed his oldies persona as host of the “KADI Original Oldies Show” on Sundays. Ownership borrowed a slogan from another market, promoting “the music that was playing in the front seat while you were playing in the back seat,” and Brown used all the clichés to make the program a high-energy listener destination. The station’s listeners didn’t seem to notice that he’d sign off that show at midnight and be back in the studio to sign on the AM station six hours later.

In the late ‘70s, Doubleday Broadcasting came to town and started spending a lot of money. Brown was lured to their AM station when the oldies format was introduced in 1984 and he stayed at KGLD into the ‘90s, functioning as a DJ and program director.

Gary Brown also realized the dream of having his own radio station. He bought WJBM in Jerseyville and later added an AM/FM combo in Pittsfield. Fate brought him back to St. Louis in the form of a job offer from KLOU where he worked as the morning personality from 1996 – 1999. During this time he held his ownership position with the Illinois stations, and he confided to friends that he had finally, after many years, figured out the key to being paid well for his on-air work: Getting a job offer when you didn’t need it. He was fired from the KLOU job in 1999 on the same day he had been given a pay raise for his work in increasing the station’s ratings.

Brown died in his sleep a year later at the age of 51.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 7/04)

In 1931, a young radio announcer named Woody Klose was sent on assignment to Lambert Field where his job was to be part of the first three-way conversation between pilots in flight and an observer on the ground. In a way, the broadcast was symbolic of the ups and downs of Woody’s career.

He came to St. Louis at age 16 with his family, and, seeking work to help pay for his education at Washington University, he ended up as an usher at the Missouri Theater. From that position he was promoted to doorman at the new Ambassador Theater, which was also owned by the Skouras Brothers.

His university work was aimed at his professional goal, which was print journalism, but Woody freely admitted that he wanted to be a professional singer. The problem was that no one thought he had enough musical talent. That didn’t stop him from trying, though. He spent most of his $12 weekly income on voice lessons, and the idea of becoming a print journalist never got off the ground. He dropped out of Washington University.

One July morning he went to the KMOX studios, which were located in the Mayfair Hotel, and actually auditioned for a singing job. The station’s director of programming, Katheryne McIntire, was in charge of the auditions, and she wasn’t impressed. Neither was station manager George Junkin, and Woody’s radio singing future crashed. A Globe-Democrat account of that day, published later, quoted Woody: “But just as I was leaving the room, Miss McIntire called me. She told me that, although she couldn’t do much for me as a singer, she thought I had possibilities as a radio announcer…I suppose I should have been deeply gratified. Instead, I was just a bit piqued that my talent as a vocalist had not been recognized.”

He went to work on the air at KMOX at the age of 18. Within a couple days, he was assigned to cover an endurance flight at what was then called Lambert St. Louis Flying Field. Sometimes there was nothing to relate, he told the Globe reporter, “too frequently nothing but the bare recital that the boys were floating around in the heavens.” At the end of the flight, he did a live report on the CBS network. It was a perfect way to celebrate his 19th birthday. Management was pleased with his work and gave him a regular, entry level shift of early morning announcing chores, which included a daily exercise program.

Within a few months he had been promoted to other shifts and was voted the most popular radio announcer in St. Louis in one newspaper’s poll. He was still convinced that he was a singer, though, and he explained to the Globe reporter how he saw a chance to impress the station’s listeners. The story bears a faint resemblance to the work habits of a future station manager, Robert Hyland.

“One night,” said Klose, “we were running late, 1 to 1:30. Local artists were the performers. It was my idea that Mr. Junkin would be in bed at that time, so I decided to slip in a song of my own. I was singing quite nobly when I happened to look out the window of the studio into the auditorium. There sat Mr. Junkin. Apparently he was not yet convinced that he had found a boy wonder. He simply grunted and told me to stick with announcing, which I did.”

Woody Klose left KMOX at the age of 22 to join a local ad agency. He continued to search for the magic career, working briefly at KSD as program director and taking the job of assistant manager of WTMV when he was 25. The latter part of his career was spent in advertising.

And that big broadcast involving the pilots and ground communication – it was a bust. All the listeners heard were repeated efforts to establish radio contact: “Come in, Woody.” “Can you hear me, Phil?”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 5/2003)