a RADIO TYCOON is born...

"The music goes 'round and 'round and it comes out here!"




Let's see...Where was I?

It took me about a year to convince the powers at KICD that I was ready to take whatever broadcast challenge they were willing to hand me. The challenge turned out to be KICD-FM.
"Eff Emm?? What the hell was that? At this juncture, FM was strictly something that was experimental and unprofitable. (The latter being a cardinal sin in radio.) In any case, KICD had been granted a license for an FM station by the FCC and they, by God, were going to put it on the air. I was hired to make tapes for the automation system that was being installed to play the music to be broadcast on KICD-FM. What a thrill to spend hours on end in a studio recording Lawrence Welk's band doing their version of "Wooly Bully".And who could forget "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay" by 101 Strings? All of this musical hell was going to be heard by NOBODY but the general manager's wife's bridge club, but they were paying me $1.75 an hour to get these heavy hits on tape. So, who's complaining?

Life was good. In my mind I was a big deal in radio. I was 17, having fun, getting paid AND there was no heavy lifting like there had been at my old job as a carry out boy for Oscar Swanson, "The Watermelon King", at Swanson' Super Store on Spencer's Miricle Mile. (More like a "Miracle Two Blocks", but I think that comes under consideration as legitimate puffery.) I know that the girls in my class seemed impressed. At least I convinced myself that they were. This was, after all, the mid sixties when disc jockeys probably had the market in teen-age girls cornered. Well, maybe OLDER disc jockeys did. Little did I know that radio...and teenage girls were both WAY over rated.

I had been toiling at KICD for about six months when I discovered the bar in the basement. It was actually a party room used for client functions and as a place for on-air personnel to crash when the roads became impassable because of snow. Or, maybe it was a place for on-air types to sleep one off when they were ploughed. This station was seriously equipped! KICD was the second most profitable station in Iowa largely due to the rich agribusiness in the area. Thus, it had radar weather gear, automatic transmitter logging, several thousand square feet of studio and office space and...this FULLY STOCKED BAR.

It was a Friday night in the fall of 1965. I was getting paid extra for working that evening helping whoever was on the air by manning the phone and gathering high school football scores. High school ball scores were, and probably still are, a very big deal in that corner of the prairie. As the night wound down and the calls had dwindled, my pal David Erickson came by the station. I showed him around and he too was greatly impressed by the full bar in the basement.
"Look at all that booze," I said. "They'll never miss it if we help ourselves to a blast or two."

I do remember throwing empty bottles into the air in the parking lot and laughing like a moron as they crashed to the pavement, but the rest is lost in the ether.

The next day I was asked to turn in my keys and pick up my final check. A radio has-been at 17. I was never able to tell my parents what happened, though they continued to ask. I was back at Swanson's within the week; bagging groceries instead of chicks.




to be continued...