Would WAKY/WKLO Have Survived On FM

[Kevin]

This goes to the question of why WAKY lost out in the mid to late seventies to FM.

Below is a link to an ad for KISS that most people of the seventies will remember. Why didn't WAKY promote rock concerts. Maybe that would have helped them. It seemed Sunshine Promotions and WLRS were a monopoly.

www.goatley.com/hunter/concerts/1977-12-12-kiss.html

[bruiser]

WAKY did promote concerts in the sixties. Have no idea why they stopped.

[Bobby Wasabi]

Quid pro quo...... True concert "promotion" requires an investment of money and time... these days, most radio stations "Welcome (band name here) to Louisville". The true promoters take all the financial risk while the radio station exchanges a schedule of commercials and mentions of the band coming to town in the form of ticket give aways, "meet and greets" and reminders that "great seats are still available". In addition the station garners the image of the act coming to town.

[Greg Biagi]

I listened to "KLO" as it was often referred to in the early 60s on FM, but that was only because I found an old 78 record player with an FM radio that a relative had used for classical music listening from a library station back in the 50s. It had one large speaker and I never could find anyone else who had access to FM back then. Where I lived you couldn't get either AM station after dust, but you could get the FM perfect. You can't imagine how sensational the KLO jingles and shouts were on FM compared to listening AM back then, but people just didn't have FM receivers. The "Johnny Randolph Show" which was mostly all music was particularly great to listen to in FM because he was constantly changing the reverb somehow with the knobs on the control panel as he talked as you could see from the showcase window. On AM the reverb wasn't as noticed. If WAKY had AM- FM back then or "1080 KLO AM and FM Louisville" had remained, there is no question that they would remained at the top because both would hopefully had tweaked changes over the years. It was a sad day for me back when the FCC forced KLO to stop broadcasting both AM and FM. It appears that the FCC decision was made to keep just a few stations from completly dominating the radio business as both were beginning to do. By the FCC ruling new FM stations rapidly were able to start up cheaply in the early 70s by mostly playing music and sometimes not even having DJs with the start of more automation in radio.

[Max]

Hunter Goatley is the guy whose link Kevin mentions above. Hunter and I grew up around the same time, but went to different high schools in E'town/Hardin County. Indeed, he has quite the collection of not only Kiss paraphanalia, but he has mp3's from other 70's/80's concerts he is willing to 'trade'. He has alot of concert tickets from that era, too.

Thought I'd direct a little interest down your way, Hunter!

[kevin502]

Speaking of KISS: I remember when KISS came to the WAKY studios in like...1977 or so. Does anyone know who the DJ was? And does anyone know if KISS had their makeup off or on?

[Max]

My guess is that they did, though I don't really know for sure. Their didn't go without makeup until the 80's. 1977 was around the time of Love Gun and Alive II, and unless they were going incognito I'd say they were in full color, especially if they were anywhere near the picture window.

[Scott Cason]

>>In the old days they cared about money too, but there was something more.

Yep, they cared about money in the old days, obviously. You can't run a station without it. However the difference now is that Wall Street got involved in the programming of stations back in the late 80's early 90's. Large companies need to return the shareholders' investment. So they buy up 10 stations in a market. You program 4 or 5 of them to do nothing but be a blocker/flanker for the larger, more profitable stations. That explains the current programming of 1080 and 790. The only reason 790 is programmed the way it is is to keep other stations from making a serious run at sports programming. However, I'd much rather listen to the ESPN stations that Pete Boyce owns with Scott Thompson than what 790 is doing. 1080 is nothing more than a flanker for 840. 1080 takes the "second tier" of talk shows to prevent another station from making a serious run at 840. However, I'd rather listen to Salem's talker 970 than either 1080 or 840. 840's IBOC hash makes it unlistenable to me. If I want to listen to Rush, I listen to 550 out of Cincy. In fact, other than the occasional tune in to Rush Limbaugh, I'm an XM listener all the way.

Yes, back in the old days, money was important. But so was community service, following the FCC rules, and entertaining the listener. For someone to compare WKLO to WDJX and WAKY to Kiss-FM diminishes the greatness and the originality of the formers. If there was a major disaster that hit Louisville, do you honestly think that KissFM and/or WDJX would break programming to cover it? No. Why? They don't have anyone on staff that could for one thing. And if it happened on the weekend, forget it!