You’ve heard it before. The disc jockey gives the very distinct impression that you can call the station with your requests, and they might actually (gasp!) be played.
Most radio listeners are savvy enough to see through this scam today, but request radio actually can be traced back to the earliest days of the industry.
The first federally licensed station in St. Louis, KSD, based one of its earliest broadcasts on a request. In those days, there were few radio receivers. Only a couple dozen stations could be heard in 1921-22, and radio receiving sets were, for the most part, home made devices. But there were some amateur radio operators who took great pride in constructing larger, more-sophisticated electronic receivers. This is what led to the first all-request broadcast of KSD.
As outlined in the master’s paper of Luther Clark Secrest in 1960, the broadcast was staged on March 11, 1922, in a makeshift studio constructed in Room 301-B of the Post-Dispatch Building at 12th and Olive Streets just days after KSD was licensed. St. Louis’ Round Table Club, whose members were businessmen, had scheduled its regular meeting in the St. Louis Club Building at 3663 Lindell, some 25 blocks from the KSD studio, and the night’s entertainment was to center around listening to KSD on a special receiving set.
A representative of the group contacted KSD management, asking for “a program of entertainment” that the club members might enjoy. The ensuing broadcast even made a bit of radio history in St. Louis.
A lot of the standard content of early radio broadcasts was there. St. Louis talent was featured in the live musical presentations, including a piano solo, songs by the Peerless Mixed Quartet and Tremont Male Quartet, and tenor and soprano soloists. There were also a couple of readings and, as Secrest noted, “a portion of the broadcast was devoted to a reading of news scheduled for printing in the following day’s edition of the Post-Dispatch. Radio news in those early days, for the most part, comprised personal comments and views…KSD had an advantage, however, in that it could use the news-gathering facilities of the Post-Dispatch.” It also became the first St. Louis radio station to broadcast news, although WEW had been broadcasting weather and agricultural information.
In those days, the Post-Dispatch was an afternoon paper, and one can imagine that the publication’s management saw the new radio station as a vehicle to steer more readers away from competitive papers and toward theirs. But newspaper managers would also become leery of giving radio listeners too much news, lest the listeners decide they didn’t need to spend money for the paper when the news was free on the radio.
By all accounts, the March 11 broadcast built on the success of the previous ones. In addition to a positive response from the satisfied listeners at the Round Table Club meeting, letters and telegrams came in from as far away as Vandalia, Ill., about 60 air miles away.
Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/2007.)
Station KSD was the first radio broadcasting station to be given a class B license by the United States government. On August 31, 1922, just two months after the station opened, broadcasting was begun at 8 p.m. on the old wave length of 360 meters with a player piano roll of Sousa’s march, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” At the conclusion of this the KSD announcer told the world of a new honor just conferred upon the station and stated that after an intermission of five minutes the station would again go on the air with its new wave length of 400 meters as a class B station.
The program on this evening was given by Mrs. W.E. Hindle, coloratura soprano, M.A. Worthelmer, violinist, and C.G. Werner, pianist, all St. Louis artists.
In those days all class B stations were on a wave length of 400 meters and class A stations on 360 meters and it was not until the following spring that the wave bands were divided by governmental order, and KSD was assigned its present high wave length of 545.1 meters.
KSD is notable for having made a specialty of high class music. It has broadcast many important addresses, public events, sporting events, etc., but its greatest achievement has been the broadcasting of every symphony program played in St. Louis by the St. Louis Symphony orchestra during the three years of the station’s existence. Classical music, while a specialty at KSD, has not occupied all the musical programs. Many jazz orchestras of national fame have been broadcast by this station, but in jazz, as in classical music, KSD always has stood for the best, and has insisted upon every performance coming up to an established standard.
In some other respects besides the fact that it was the first class B station, KSD has been a pioneer and has set the pace for other stations. It was the first station to make the experiment of broadcasting in the open air. On June 26, 1922, the station was formally opened. It was tested out the preceding night in a manner which not only tested the station, but gave radio transmission experts and idea of the practicability of a new form of broadcasting. A microphone was placed in the footlights on the immense stage at the municipal open air theater in Forest Park, and was connected by remote control apparatus and land wire to the operating room at KSD. One entire act of DeKoven’s “Highwayman” was sent out to the listening public with the simple announcement, “KSD testing.” This not only proved the efficiency of the station, but it also was a demonstration of the feasibility of broadcasting open air performances.
KSD has never had any regular station entertainers. Its idea on this subject has been that variety was the thing most desired. It has, however, had some regular features, notably, the orchestra of the Grand Central, Missouri and Lyric theaters, City Club, Missouri Athletic Association, and Statler and Jefferson Hotels, theater productions, entire performances of grand opera, and other exercises of all sorts have also been broadcast.
KSD was the only station in America to broadcast any of the concerts given by the Sistine choir of Rome, Italy, during its tour of the country in 1923-1924, and was the first station to broadcast high mass from a Catholic cathedral. It was also the first station to send out the voice of a president of the United States. On June 21, 1923, President Harding was in St. Louis on the first lap of his tour which ended with his very sudden and tragic death. He made an address at the St. Louis Coliseum on the world court, and KSD broadcast this speech. Later on KSD broadcast the message to congress of President Coolidge and has sent out several speeches by President Coolidge as well as addresses by practically all the cabinet officers, by all the candidates for president in the last national election, and the entire proceedings of the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Some of the world’s greatest statesmen and most famous artists have been given to the public through this station. Fifteen countries of the world have been represented on the programs and all five races of man have had their representatives in the studio on various KSD programs.
In several respects KSD is unique. It has no slogan. It does not issue Ekko stamps. It does not read telegrams or letters to its radio audience, and does not permit persons on its programs to say “Hello” to their listening friends. It is unique, also, in having the only woman announcer who has been on the job since radio started. She has announced all programs of every description, night after night, except in vacation intervals, since the station was opened. It has been said of KSD that the voice of “Miss Jones announcing” is sufficient identification for the station without the call letters or the name of the city in which it is located.
When KSD signed on in 1922, the Pulitzer family proudly touted their new radio station in the pages of their newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Then other stations signed on in St. Louis, and other newspapers gave them plenty of publicity. By the time KSD affiliated with the NBC Radio Network, the local station had assumed a low profile, from which it would not emerge for several years. What happened?
There is no actual documentation available to explain what happened, but scattered newspaper accounts and a first-person memoir of engineer Robert Coe shed light on the subject.
Coe was instrumental in putting several St. Louis stations on the air. He credits the uniqueness factor with creating the early excitement among the public when WEW and KSD, the city’s first two stations, signed on. In 1921 that anticipation and excitement helped him get a job hosting public demonstrations of radio, picking up amateur broadcasts. “It is no real mystery the radio audience grew so rapidly even before there was much attempt at regular planned programming,” he wrote.
So when KSD began its experimental broadcasts they were trumpeted in advance in the paper. As soon as the station was licensed it began regularly scheduled programming, which was arranged by the station’s program manager, Virginia Jones. Since there were only three or four stations in St. Louis at the time, listeners were very interested in knowing when broadcasts were available. During KSD’s first few years, radio stations came and went in St. Louis. The station’s paid staff consisted of three engineer/announcers, one program director/announcer, a secretary and an office boy.
Then late in 1925, the city’s power brokers built a powerhouse station, KMOX. The only real competition among the stations was for broadcast time, since frequencies were often shared and only one station could use the frequency at a time.
But on Nov. 15, 1926, something major happened that changed the local broadcast landscape. The National Broadcasting Company, NBC, debuted, and KSD was on the list of 24 initial affiliates.
Before the network came into being, KSD’s programs were much like those on other stations: Live music concerts, dramatic presentations and lectures, all featuring local talent. The NBC affiliation allowed the St. Louis station to offer much more variety and big-name stars because most of the shows originated from New York.
Robert Coe wrote: “The mystery and fascination of just hearing a voice or a phonograph record over the air was not enough to sustain audience interest…Amateur talent and production was not enough and, more and more, the professionals demanded pay.”
Now KSD was carrying live broadcasts of the Rose Bowl, the Metropolitan Opera and the National Farm and Home Hour. While this was celebrated for its uniqueness, there were soon two other networks doing the same thing on local stations, and KSD fell into a rut. They had closed their local studio operation in 1926, employing only two engineer/announcers and one office girl.
Throughout the late ‘20s, network programming accounted for virtually all of KSD’s airtime. A change came only after the newspaper’s business manager was visited by a committee from the American Federation of Musicians. They pointed out the fact that all other local stations had contracts with AFM and had musicians on their staffs. The AFM reps told Pulitzer that, if a contract was not signed, pickets would go up outside the newspaper offices.
A signature was forthcoming, and musicians were hired. So were more staffers to handle the responsibilities of locally originated music shows. The three-piece band evolved into a twelve-piece orchestra with vocalists, new announcers, news and sports broadcasters followed, and KSD was back in the business of producing programs in its studios at 12th and Olive.
The local publication, Radio and Entertainment, hailed the change in its issue of Nov. 26, 1932. Columnist Fleet Smith wrote “KSD is giving more attention to local programs.” That was it – one line.
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 7/09).
That was how Marshall True described his economical diet in the early, lean days of starting a radio station in Belleville, Illinois. True, his World War II army buddy Marvin Mollring, and investors John Lewis, Paul Wnorowsky and John Schultz launched WIBV, 1060 AM, on July 13, 1947, at Fischer’s “Dutch Girl” Restaurant, 2100 West Main Street, Belleville. An hour of music that Sunday morning was followed by a remote broadcast of religious services from Signal Hill Lutheran Church at 8100 West Main, Belleville. No doubt the newcomers to the St. Louis radio market prayed along with the broadcast that the peanut butter would hold out.
True sold advertising, Mollring did the radio engineering work, Wnorowsky was General Manager and Paul Rusky served as Station Manager. True’s challenge would be to get WIBV a piece of the Belleville advertising dollar in a town where small businessmen had the habit of spending their money with two daily newspapers. Wnorowsky and Rusky would have to develop programming that would offer something unique for Belleville area listeners.
Paul Wnorowsky
Marvin Mollring
Mollring would keep the transmitter humming and maintain the broadcast equipment. The original broadcast day ran from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The restaurant/radio combination seemed to work well for both parties: Dutch Girl patrons could watch the announcers as part of their dining experience and the station had an accessible presence in the community.
The Belleville News-Democrat radio listings for October 4, 1948 presented the daily programming for seven AM radio stations: KSD at 550, KXOK at 630, WIBV at 1060, KMOX at 1120, KWK at 1380, WIL at 1430 and WTMV at 1490. Variety seemed to be the strategy at WIBV since the schedule had 15 minute segments of news, sports, farm features, Man on the Street, Good Neighbor, Pumpernickle, Roy Shaffer Show, Tumbleweed Tunes, Polka Time, Myrt and Marg, Victory Quartet, It’s Dancetime, 1060 Supper Club and Golden Bantam.
The Dutch Girl Restaurant
Country music was popular in the post World War II years and in 1950 country singer Johnny Rion joined the WIBV staff for two years as a live performer and record spinner. WIBV programming in the early 50’s featured Cactus Joe, Buy in Belleville, Dr. Crane, Country Preacher, plenty of local news and sports and Bill Bailey, who had compiled an impressive resume. Bailey advanced into the Program Manager and Station Manager positions and represented the radio station in the business and civic communities during that period. He later hosted the Downtown Club show from Schlosser’s Restaurant on East Main Street.
Bill Bailey
By the mid 1950’s peanut butter was still on the menu at the True household. The Federal Communications Commission allowed WIBV to move to 1260 AM at 1,000 watts of power. The increased power meant the broadcast tower would have to be lengthened. To save the expense of contracting the work, Marshall True fashioned a chair on a hoist and extended the tower himself, according to Terry True, Marshall’s son.
In the mid 1950’s Lee Pennock was cuing up the records and Reverend Ed Oxendine was a regular feature. Other programs included Hillbilly Hoedown, Wagner’s Wagon, Just Call Joe, Joe and Paul, and a new announcer who would prove to be very popular with Belleville’s sizable German audience. He spoke with a stereotypical German accent, told jokes, played records and touted himself as Otto Schultz, “the man with the sauerkraut head.”
Eddie George, also known as Otto Schultz, held a daily fifteen minute late afternoon slot and a half hour Saturday afternoon time period for the next twenty five years, introducing polka tunes and getting chuckles from his audience while relating the imaginary lives of “Fritz, Lena and the whole schmier.”
Norm Greenberg
Bob Hardy, who later became synonymous with KMOX, St. Louis, started at WIBV in 1955 and performed the usual chores of running the control board, playing records and reading news stories and commercials. Norm Greenberg began a 22 year career with WIBV in 1958. Greenberg debuted as a newsman-announcer, moved to advertising sales and eventually Program Manager, Assistant Manager and General Manager.
Moe Harvey
Lloyd “Moe” Harvey and Ron “Uncle Buck” Lipe joined the Belleville radio team in the 50’s. Moe spent about 30 years at WIBV. Part of his on-air shift included the “Stop the Housework” program and the annual “Let’s Talk Turkey” phone contests. Lipe became a “rocker” in the 60’s on KSHE-FM, St. Louis, assuming the moniker “Prince Knight.” Lee Coffee, WIBV Program Director in the late 50’s and early 60’s , left WIBV and enjoyed a long career at several St. Louis radio stations.
Bob Armstrong worked vacation relief in 1957 and recalls running the control board on Sunday mornings “for the live religious programs in the big studio. There was a gospel group from East St. Louis that had the place totally rocking!” Armstrong also remembers running the board for Otto Schultz with his trademark intro to polka songs, “You watch me Fritz, and I count ‘em off…ein…zwei…drei…schpiel’” Armstrong was promoted to the Program Director’s position and worked with News Director Al Schmidt, a retired Belleville newspaper reporter. In 1960, WIBV moved its broadcast operations from Fischer’s Restaurant to a new building at 3199 South Illinois Street, a mile and a half south of Belleville on Route 159.
WIBV Good Neighbor ad
Roger Gafke was hired full time in the news department in 1965. He wrote editorials for GM Glen “Skip” Deffendall, who had succeeded John Lewis. WIBV began identifying itself as “The Voice of Metro East.” Gafke remembered fellow announcers Tom Ryther, Charles Napier, and Jeff Hendricks, who WIBV sent to Viet Nam to interview area soldiers. Hendricks finished out his radio career with Chicago radio giant WLS. Roger Downey worked at WIBV in 1969 and 1970. Terry Ganey worked in the 1260 newsroom from 1968-1972, when Frank Walters held down the morning shift.
Late 1960’s photo of Pete Maer at the wheel,
Terry Gainey riding shotgun and SIU Edwardsville
Professor Harry Thiel standing outside the WIBV News Scout.
Note the broadcast antennae mounted on the
left rear bumper for covering live events.
Joe May estimates he has called between 3,000 and 4,000 high school, college and minor league games since he began at WIBV in 1970. Other staffers on the air included Pete Basch, Ron Jacober, Harry Swift, Joel Myers, Bob Agne, Frank Joachimsthaler, Tom Calhoun, Wil Jackson, Les Weatherford, Bill Cook, J.C. Hall, Ray Brammer, Mark Langston, Mary Ann Faulbaum, Mac Chamblin [and long time news director Jack LeChien].
Marshall True and Marvin Mollring retired and sold their interests in WIBV in the late 1980’s. The station was sold several more times before the year 2000 and each of those owners attempted to create a “regional” radio station that would attract more listeners and more advertising income. The WIBV call letters were quietly, unceremoniously retired when Disney Radio adopted WSDZ in late 2002.
(Excerpted and reprinted with permission of the St. Clair County Historical Society. Originally published in the Journal of St. Clair County, 2003.)
Sheldon Davis and his partners paid too much for his radio station in St. Louis. It had a lousy signal and half the market couldn’t pick it up. But for his employees, it was a helluva ride.
Davis bought a station in 1985 from Robert Skibbe and Janet Gorecki that was licensed to Jerseyville, Ill., so that’s where the broadcast tower was located. Even with licensed power of 50,000 watts WJBM-FM’s broadcasts couldn’t be heard in South St. Louis or Jefferson County.
Davis’ plan was to produce a station, marketed to St. Louis, that played country music. He wanted to give local powerhouse WIL-FM a run for its money, which would be no small feat, given the limits of the broadcast signal.
Thus was born WKKX-FM, “KIX 104.”
But there was a lot about the business that was beyond Davis, so he hired consultant Rusty Walker to put together a staff and guide the operation. Walker’s hire as the local program director was John King.
“John and I ‘imagineered’ KIX at the trivia machine in the bar at Tony Roma’s next to the hotel where we were staying,” Walker says of the station’s beginnings. “Neither of us took any notes – we were just ‘jamming’ and kept it all in our heads.
“The next day at the unfinished studio facility (concrete floors and card tables), we had to recreate everything we’d done the night before. I’m not sure how much we actually retained.”
Buddy Van Arsdale, “Bud Man” on the air, has similar memories.
“When I got there in September of 1985, the office and studio space on the tenth floor of West Port Plaza were pretty empty. John King had us tracking down music from the old Jerseyville station library or buying what we needed from record stores.”
King’s goal was to give country listeners something different. “The point was to be a pop sounding station that happened to be playing country music,” he remembers.
To that end, Van Arsdale recalls increasing the speed of the records slightly to brighten the station’s sound.
The first on-air line-up featured Mark Elliot and Diana Rivers in morning drive with Jack Warnick handling news; Bud Man from 9 – noon; John King 12 – 3; Scott St. John 3 – 7 (whose shift was taken over by King fairly quickly); Michelle Kent 7 – midnight; and Al Richardson overnights.
Staff turnover among sales personnel was so frequent that newsman Warnick said there was no use trying to remember their names until they’d lasted on the job for a minimum of six months.
Even the erection of a new broadcast tower in Godfrey during the station’s first year of operation failed to overcome signal problems. Mike Anderson, a former announcer, remembers a remote broadcast from Arnold in which the station’s broadcast team at the shopping center couldn’t even pick up the station.
After a year of operation, company president Shelly Davis admitted to an Alton Telegraph reporter, “We’re prepared to lose several million dollars and right now we’re doing a good job of it.”
There may not have been a lot of money, but the staff was young and competitive. Michelle Kent has fond memories of a concert sponsored by rival WIL. KIX jocks stood outside the Arena handing out their bumper stickers to ticket holders. When a WIL guy told them to leave, they did, but not before they “papered” the WIL remote van with their stickers.
“We all were working for a common goal,” she says, “the success of this start-up.”
Anderson remembers KIX as “kind of like a thrill ride at an amusement park. It was the station that always seemed to be climbing the hill but never got to the top. Every achievement was made against seemingly impossible odds.”
Commercial success never came. Consultant Walker says the staff experienced late payrolls, and jocks were shorted on talent fees. He himself worked for two years as a consultant without being paid.
Within six years the station was sold to Zimmer Broadcasting for slightly more than the original purchase price. There had been a lot of red ink, and a lot of fun.
Walker looks back on WKKX as “the most successful unsuccessful station in the history of country radio.”
(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/08.)
