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In the the mid-twentieth century, the radio business was a lot different behind the scenes than it is today. One of radio’s unseen workers from those days has some pleasant memories.

Tom Lyons grew up in rural Southern Illinois, and he has vivid memories of listening to KWK on the farm radio. “I always liked it. ‘Recall It and Win’ with Tom Dailey and Gil Newsome’s record shows. Somehow as a ten-year-old kid I was really fascinated by it all…Later when I was a high school student, it was Spider Burks, Bob Osborne, Ron Lundy, Anthony Oren on KWIX-FM and some guys on the old Star-Times’ KXOK like Art Rice and Ed Bonner. These guys played great music.” As he got older, Lyons set his sites on a radio career: “Radio represented a quality of life I wanted. It was a romanticism, the fact that I would like what I was doing.”

He joined Local 4 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and got on their engineering “extra board” in 1968. “At that time you had engineers on duty at the studios and usually controlling the transmitter by remote control. They had to be on duty twenty four hours a day, so I’d get a shift to work here and there. I’d work at KXOK, KSD, WIL. It was fun. When vacation openings came up in 1968 at KATZ, Lyons got the assignment. He showed up at the studios, which were in the Arcade Building downtown. “Gabriel was their all-night disc jockey, and I remember he’d put the microphone on a long cord and run it over by the window and do his show there. The regular studio was pretty well insulated, but he wanted the sounds from outside.”

At that time, KATZ’s announcers were all using “drop-ins,” which were pre-recorded sound effects and quick voice quips, and this kept the engineers busy. As the “extra board” man, Lyons mainly did studio work. “I could do production work there, even though you had to do it while you were on the air.” So he’d be editing audio tracks for commercials and mixing music beds while records were playing on the air.

“Doug Eason and Donnie Brooks were both announcers there during those days and their on-air styles were very different. Doug was laid-back. He was about the easiest person I’ve worked for. Donnie was flamboyant, aggressive, had a lot of ego. This wasn’t necessarily bad. He was flashy.”

The disc jockeys of the ‘60s and ‘70s were true celebrities in the eyes and ears of their listeners, and they worked hard to earn that status. Because of that, the announcers each established a certain persona and then developed it. Lyons says his fellow engineers helped him when it came to dealing with the personalities. “By the time I actually got to the point where I was working with these disc jockeys, I had been told who had the egos and who were the ones who were okay…Dr. Jockenstein (Rod King) really developed a niche. He wasn’t the ego type. He understood what life was like. All the people who worked with him loved him…Back then they had engineers and they had talent, and the end product was electrifying. You could feel the energy coming through the radio.”

The on-air staff at KATZ were all male, and all African-American, or “Negro” as was the popular term of the day. It gave a man like Lyons, who had been raised on an Illinois farm, a much different perspective on things. “You became aware of injustices, improper treatment by police and malicious prosecution.”

And although they had earned the aforementioned celebrity status, most black announcers in the ‘60s and ‘70s were not paid as well as their white counterparts, which meant, Lyons says, that they were always hustling, doing personal appearances or concert promotion to earn extra money.

It was a different time in the radio business and it was an era that will never be repeated, but for Tom Lyons, the memories are good.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 06/04)

The two stations were called the Kaydee Twins, and they were heard in the St. Louis area until 1965 when financial problems and a strong labor union shut them down.

Station KADY went on the air April 3, 1958, licensed to St. Charles at 1460 Kc. The corporation’s president and general manager, Harlan Moseley, Jr., who was a former advertising executive with Young & Rubicam, announced in a press release that the station had received permission from the F.C.C. to start program tests on that date, and it was decided to air programming from 5:30 a.m. until sundown. The transmitter and studios were about three miles north of St. Charles on Highway 94 at Route B in Boschertown.

Within a couple months of sign-on, KADY’s ownership changed hands and the corporation’s treasurer, William Cady, took control by purchasing Moseley’s shares. He started planning the expansion of the company to include an FM operation, and KADI-FM signed on December 11, 1959, at 96.5 Mhz. Cady was also a former ad man, and he hit the streets in October with an advertising rate card for both stations two months before the FM station was even on the air. His creativity shown in the card’s editorial content:

“With the many conflicting claims made today by competing radio stations, one thing stands out – it’s not the numbers in an audience, but rather the purchasing power those numbers represent, that counts.

“More than 50 percent of the mail received at KADY-KADI carries postmarks from St. Louis County postal zones or municipalities, where the average income is over $7,000; where almost 20 percent of the families own two or more cars, where almost 72 percent own one car; where almost 75 percent have had some high school education or more; and where the population has increased by 40.5 percent since 1950.”

KADI-FM had its transmitter in the city of St. Louis’ entertainment district at Grand and Olive atop the Continental Building. Unlike its AM counterpart, KADI was not required to sign off at sundown, and its program day ran from 5:30 a.m. to midnight.

The AM signal was simulcast during the hours it was on the air. At 5:30 a.m., listeners of both stations heard the news and duck report. Another duck report was aired at 4:15 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Most of the rest of the FM programming consisted of the sort of musical shows normally associated with early FM radio: “Stereo Album Time,” “KADI Matinee,” “Melody Lingers On,” Candlelight and Silver,” “Lamplighter’s Serenade,” “Starlight Symphony,” and “For Dreamers Only.” News was broadcast hourly on both stations.

In late 1962, the stations were sold again to another broadcaster, Rodney Erickson, who owned interest in a station in Syracuse, N.Y. He resigned his job as president of a television distribution company to devote all of his time to his radio stations.

Aubrey Williams took the job as manager of the local stations, but it appears, in retrospect, that Williams and Erickson were in over their heads. Employees of both stations sent a telegram to the F.C.C. on February 14, 1964, saying they would shut down the stations unless management paid all past-due and current wages in full. They made good on their threat the next day, and it was several days before management could get back on the air using temporary employees.

Williams told newspaper reporters the stations were two weeks in arrears on wages but negotiations were taking place to bring workers back.

KADI-FM remained off the air though, due to “technical difficulties.” There are conflicting reports in area newspapers and F.C.C. files regarding the life of KADI-FM after the shutdown, but according to F.C.C. files, authorization was granted to the owners to keep the station off the air through January 1966.

But on January 21, 1965, members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who worked at KADY walked out because they had not been paid in over a month. Owner Rodney Erickson ordered interim manager Homer Griffith to shut down the station so “financial reorganization” could take place.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/03)