News from Our Archives

The First KSHE Promotional Brochure


Station Policy
In this era of “Modern Radio”…resplendent with frenzied format…rapid-fire rhetoric…ear-splitting shrieks…and programming designed to set your teeth on edge…radio listeners are casting about frantically in this cackling cacophony (where even static can be soothing) for the small…still voice of sanity…programming designed to be listened to…with delight…not delirium.

In light of this need for common-sense listening and enlightened programming…K-SHE has painstakingly planned its listening day for the discriminating listener who expects more from radio than radio has been able to offer…until K-SHE.

Our format is adult programming for adult taste…adult intelligence and adult preference. Programming with a purpose.
K-SHE is the radio station in which people are interested.

Meet the Lady of FM
K-SHE began operations on February 11, at 94.7 Megacycles, serving an area, roughly circular, within fifty miles from Crestwood. Although she is still a very young lady, K-SHE has acquired a reputation with her listeners as a “good music” station, programming over 26 hours of better classical music weekly. This is almost double that of any commercial FM station in the area.

Full Dynamic Range Sound is heard exclusively on K-SHE. This is an electronic system, whereby music is reproduced and transmitted to the listener in exactly the way the artist performed it – the pianissimo passages are heard pianissimo – the fortissimo passages are heard fortissimo. Nothing has been added – nothing taken away. Music is alive – as though the work were being performed in the listener’s home.

Inherent in the FM system is good frequency response and freedom from static, distortion and natural or man-made interference. K-SHE has been painstakingly designed and constructed to take every advantage of these qualities. No effort or engineering talent has been spared to make K-SHE the finest-sounding station in this area. Distortion and compression on K-SHE have been brought to such a low level that they are almost unmeasurable. K-SHE sound is THE finest sound in the area.
Frequency response is flat to a fantastic range, far beyond the requirements of the FCC technical standards. Proof? Ask any listener.

Station image has carefully and rapidly been built into the operation of K-SHE. The call letters are always given with a female voice, with emphasis that K-SHE is the “LADY OF FM” with many moods. She is sophisticated, unpredictable, with the continental touch and ALWAYS INTERESTING.

Success? Many letters received by K-SHE are addressed to “the Sophisticated Lady” – “the Unpredictable Lady” – “the Lady of FM” – etc. Many telephone callers ask to speak to “The Lady.”

Finally, K-SHE is known as “:the station that DARES to be DIFFERENT.”

K-SHE is the area’s only FM station with a balanced program schedule; one that was designed, not an accident. Its programming is patterned after but not copied from successful FM operations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

COMMENTARIES:
“Raconteur” nightly with Bud De Weese.
“Madamoiselle” weekly.
Garden Time weekly.
Cocktail Hour nightly
Over 11 hours of Comment weekly.
FEATURES:
Musical Comedy nightly
Variety and Comedy nightly.
Over 4 hours of Comedy weekly.
Over 4 hours of Broadway Musical Comedy weekly.
NEWS
Chain of Events.
News at the local level with weather every hour at the half hour during the day and between programs at night.
OPERA:
Complete performance each Sunday evening at 9:00 P.M. on “Night at the Opera.”
JAZZ:
Profiles in Jazz – two hours of better Jazz each Sunday at 4:00 P.M.
ROCK AND ROLL:
We’re not sorry – none on K-SHE.
You’ll find a veritable kaleidoscope of worthwhile, better listening on K-SHE, the station that truly DARES to be DIFFERENT.”

By it-registrationsstlmediahistory, ago

Get Up and GO

He may be strictly for the early birds, but Gary Owens takes his civic responsibilities seriously. On Station WIL from 5:30 to 9 each morning, he wakes up St. Louis. It takes some doing. Gary must first rouse himself, then his wife “Arty” (Arlette), then one-by-one the “cast of thousands” who assist him in his morning shenanigans. Despite the heavy labor, Gary insists he enjoys the routine – “especially around 4 ayem, when I make coffee in my pajamas.” (“Sometimes,” quips Gary, “I wish we had a percolator!”)…But the cast of thousands don’t wake easily. For the most part they’re a rascally bunch, destined to get coal in their stockings come Christmas. Among the leaders are Clinton Feemish, career nepotist; Fenwick Smoot, unlisted; The Marquis de Sade; and an amoeba named Frank. For a fictional break, Gary puts on his horn-rimmed glasses and plays “Uncle Don” reading the funnies. “Suddenly a huge black-lettering balloon comes out of the head of Rex Migraine, M.D.,” narrates the GO-man, “and in big, black letters spells, ‘Sorry, I can’t remove your pancreas for only $25; however I may be able to loosen it a bit’…The nurses in the series,” puns Gary, “are just too cute for wards.”…Back in Plankinton, South Dakota, some 24 years ago, Gary didn’t have such heavy duties. Just born, no matter how hard he cried, he couldn’t wake more than 750 sleepyheads – the entire Plankinton population. On the “GO” ever since, Gary’s been artist, journalist and deejay extraordinary. Gary also has the distinction of being the first American deejay to phone Moscow to ask if they kept a Top Forty list. “It was a Party Line,” Gary surmises. “They told me the U.S.S. R. prefers the classics.”…Because his wife Arty majored in psychology in college, she understands GO and shares all of his “real gone” enthusiasms – like sipping espresso and playing Monopoly. But then it’s time for WIL’s wake-up man to quiet down. By nature he’s not an insomniac, but, before drifting off, Gary likes to think about his great system for rabbit-hunting in St. Louis. “You just wait for the rabbit to come by,” says GO, “and make a noise like a carrot!”

(Originally published in TV/Radio Mirror 1/1959)

By it-registrationsstlmediahistory, ago

Holland Engle, KMOX Star, Was A Child Prodigy

Holland E. Engle, announcer for KMOX, is the son of Olive and Harry E. Engle, pioneer residents of Fairmont, West Virginia. He comes honestly by his natural vocation which is entertaining, and his avocation, which is writing, having inherited these inclinations from his father, who was a newspaper man and vocalist.

Like many of our noted stars of radio, Holland Engle started his career as a child actor in 1910, when he played the juvenile lead in “The Little Wedding.” In 1912 when five years old, young Engle was playing a guitar before swinging doors for pennies, graduating finally into the inner “company rooms.”

Like other ingenious little boys of the time, Engle became fascinated by the radio when he was fourteen years old, and so he constructed a station of his own and broadcast from it.

Since that time he has performed over more than one hundred individual radio stations in the United States and Canada, and over the networks of the National and Columbia Systems several times. There are no outside hobbies for this radio enthusiast. He concentrates both serious and recreational interests in radio. His spare time is spent talking operators about the resistance in an antenna coupling condenser, or with continuity writers about “stunts.” His great ambition is to become affiliated with the Columbia Broadcasting System and win the Diction Award for five consecutive years.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 7/9/1932).

By it-registrationsstlmediahistory, ago

Georgia Erwin, KMOX Soloist, Is Real Pioneer of Radio in St. Louis

Georgia Erwin, who is regularly heard as a soloist over KMOX, is one of the real pioneers in the artistic side of radio.
Her very first radio appearance was when station WSBF was still in its infancy and since that time she has sung over KSD, WIL and KMOX. She has been on the station regularly since last summer when she appeared with Ted Straeter with whom she studies. She was a member of the Three Best Girls trio and since the first of the year has been featured in the Don and Georgia sweetheart duo and as a soloist.

Georgia’s real career began much longer ago than that. When she was quite a tiny youngster, her father had great aspirations for her singing ability and essayed to have her learn to sing with him. He laboriously repeated the lyrics of the songs and she would obediently say or sing them after him. Try as he would, she could not get sufficient courage to sing with him. But she was quite docile and enthusiastic so long as he sang them first.

One day he was seized with an inspiration and brought home a cylindrical recording of “Willie, Willie, Why Are You So Bashful” (or something like that) and played it on the “gramophone.” Little Georgia was simply intrigued and delighted with the tune and lay fascinatedly on the floor while that record played over and over. It so pleased her that she forgot herself and started singing the catchy lines with the record. Her father was enthralled – he’d achieved success!

From then on she sang lustily at the top of her voice all of the time and was featured in school entertainments, school what-nots and the like that were held in Granite City. She won contests in high school for the best voice, learned to play the piano and generally delighted her music-loving father.

When radio became a field for vocal endeavor, she was among the first to offer her services and has become correlatively successful and interested in its possibilities as radio has grown.

Her radio success, however, is attributed to her training with Ted Straeter of the Hasgall-Straeter studios who taught her the essential elements of radio technique.

Like most radio artists, her greatest ambition is to be a chain artist someday and she says in a happy-go-lucky semi-serious manner that she feels convinced that if she works hard enough and lives long enough she will some day attain her aim.
Georgia is blond and blue-eyed, pretty and vivacious and with the most irrepressible collection of humor possible in one person. She is optimistic about everything, completely enraptured with radio work and singing, to the exclusion of all else. Listen to her on KMOX.

(Originally published in Radio and Entertainment 4/1/33).

By it-registrationsstlmediahistory, ago

KXOK-FM Buys Broadcast Facilities

The purchase of the highest radio tower in St. Louis, and an FM transmitter radiating more power than any now in use in the area, has been announced by C.L. (Chet) Thomas, General Manager of KXOK and KXOK-FM, St. Louis Star-Times radio stations. Thomas said the tower, which is located atop the Boatmen’s Bank Building in downtown St. Louis, will also be used for television transmission when the Federal Communications Commission approves the pending application.

The tower, transmitter and equipment were purchased from station KWK St. Louis and includes a long-term lease on the entire 21st floor of the bank building, which has long been a familiar landmark on the Mississippi riverfront skyline. The tower atop the 23 story building is 574 feet above street level.

The eight-way antenna, fed by a 10 kilowatt Western Electric transmitter, will radiate 70-thousand watts. It will assure a clear, strong signal in a 17,500 square mile area.

Present transmitter operations of KXOK-FM are located in the Continental Building in mid-town St. Louis. The antenna there is 387 feet above street level and it was here that the St. Louis Star-Times pioneered in experimental ultra-high frequency broadcasts through W9XOK more than a decade ago.

The purchase of the new transmitter is subject to FCC approval and KXOK will take occupancy of the new headquarters as soon as approval is received.

Studios of both KXOK and KXOK-FM will remain in the Star-Times building in downtown St. Louis.

KXOK-FM is associated with Transit Radio, and according to Thomas, who is president of Transit Radio, Inc., the station, in addition to being received in thousands of homes throughout the area, sends its programs of music, news, sports, weather reports, time signals and announcements to 1,000 radio-equipped vehicles of the St. Louis Public Service Company.

The negotiations for the sale of the transmitter, tower, equipment and lease were handled by Thomas and Ray Dady, vice-president of KWK. No sale price was announced. Dady said the newly acquired facilities will give the Star-Times station the most powerful FM signal in the area. “It is a splendid plant,” Dady continued, “and the tower on the Boatmen’s Bank Building is the tallest structure in St. Louis. The Star-Times is fortunate in having acquired this excellent property,” he said.

(Originally published in the St. Louis Advertising Club Weekly 12/26/1949).

By it-registrationsstlmediahistory, ago

We All Live In A Yellow Submarine

At least most of the Staff members of your radio station live in a big house all together where they cook and sleep and laugh and learn. The house has a big staircase, lots of bathrooms (most of which don’t work) and a restaurant kitchen which is nice to have as there are always 15 to 20 people sitting down to dinner and lots of hungry folks who wander in and out during the day. There is a big signup sheet in the kitchen. It has boxes which say: Thirsty, Refried, Satiated, Saute, and other days of the week. Next to each box someone who feels like doing it signs their name for cooking that particular night and for cleaning up afterwards too.

There are quite a few bedrooms in the house counting the third floor and the living room, which is a bedroom right now. Almost every bedroom has two people living in it; some of them have three. People sleep at different times because of working off hours at KDNA. Lots of times folks will be working all night fixing electronic equipment or making tapes when it is a little quieter at the station and our equipment is in less demand.

Every Tuesday night is clean-up night. We vacuum, and wash woodwork, and scrub the stove and do all of the things we’re really too busy to get done every day. Since we all work together, it doesn’t take long and it feels good. Somehow, even with mostly men in the house, the dishes get done, homemade bread gets baked and the washing machine gets hard use.

Sometimes there are house meetings to discuss things like how we are all getting along and whether we are eating too many eggs, if you know what I mean. But most of the talk in the house is about radio. How do I make it better? What are we doing wrong? What are we doing? Some people in the house are into politics and meditation, but we’re all together on radio.

(Originally published in Fat Chance 2/1972).

By it-registrationsstlmediahistory, ago

Subscribe to our Newsletter