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In the late 1970's I listened to CFUN, an AM radio station in Vancouver that played a top-40 singles format. It was on 1410 kHz but branded as "14 CFUN" as the analogue-tuned radios of that era didn't need all that precision on the dial to find a strong local station. I remember hearing many of my favourite hits on this station and I really liked the funny bits from Jim Hault in the mornings. Looking back, I see my appreciation of that as a foreshadowing of my future attraction to personality radio.
I liked Hault's comedy bits enough that I would leave a tape recorder running to record what I could of the show when I left for school. Then I'd listen to it after returning home. It's too bad that I reused the tapes for recording Old Time Radio shows because now one can easily download the very same OTR episodes but not the Jim Hault show. I recently transferred these tapes to digital form and discovered some fragments of the Jim Hault show that survived.
It was a pleasant surprise to find that most of the airchecks had enough information in them to determine the date. For me the April 1982 aircheck is the most interesting one because it refers to a contest that caught my attention at the time, one that I'd thought of a few times over the years but could never recall when it was held. The contest was to guess the location of a $5000 diamond ring hidden somewhere in Vancouver based on a weekly clue (or was it daily?) announced on air; the first person to identify the hiding place would win the ring. If I recall correctly the ring was hidden under a certain seat in Empire Stadium; ok, maybe not hidden for real but that was the answer. I couldn't remember when this contest was held, so it was incredible to discover the recording and to so easily determine its exact date. Another surprise was a recording of Cathy Baldazzi doing the traffic report. Remember that era?
The other noteworthy thing that I remember about CFUN is that for a time they played episodes of The Shadow each weekend (but which day?). I had already discovered Old Time Radio via Jack Cullen's Owl Prowl and Network Replay on CKNW, so this was a further boost to my love of OTR: A concentrated dose of The Shadow, which I couldn't get enough of on CKNW. Soon I was to find even more OTR on CFMI's Lights Out each Sunday night, as well as some modern radio drama in The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre via Sacramento's KFBK (DX before I knew what DX was).
But things change. Jim Hault left, and then it must have been in 1982 that I became annoyed by CFUN's interruption of its top-40 music format for fifteen minutes of sports and news at the end of what seemed like every hour. I didn't know about formats at the time but I knew what I didn't like, and interrupting the music was high on the list. The result was that I went looking for a station that agreed with my tastes.
This was what I called "The Great Radio Station Hunt"; the plan was simply to find a station that was suitable for me to listen to. I didn't find anything I liked locally in the Vancouver area. As I recall it, rock and roll radio was limited to a few AM stations, and on FM I only remember CFMI and CFOX. I learned years later that CFOX went on the air in 1979, which means that it was fairly new at the time. I had no knowledge about radio formats but I do remember recognizing that CFOX played different music than CFUN did. I don't know if it was the playlist or whether I was stuck in a top-40 mindset — I don't recall — but I found that CFOX wasn't for me.
Somewhere I had heard that cable television had FM stations on it. With this knowledge I hooked up a splitter to my parents' TV cable and connected it to an old FM radio... Wow! Discovering that the dial was now full of stations was one of those life-changing events. The Great Radio Station Hunt continued: I sampled each station looking for one I could listen to; sometimes only a few minutes were enough to know, other stations required a few days before rejection. I remember finding KISW (Seattle) but for some reason I settled on listening to KISM (Bellingham) for a good many months before switching back to KISW in 1983, I believe it was. It's probable that I went back and forth a few times while mostly listening to KISM before deciding I liked KISW better.
I remember that when I was trialing KISW the teams were Crow & Hovanes (C&H!) and Langan & West. I don't remember when I first heard Crow & West together. That teamup probably happened while I was listening to KISM. I suspect that the classic KISW sound and feel — at least the feel I liked — wasn't established until Gary Crow partnered with Mike West and Robin Erickson & John Maynard came aboard. I know that when I switched to KISW for good I was very happy with what I heard; it was the right mixture of personality and music for me. It didn't hurt that it was also a time of musical discovery for me thanks to the format; as far as I can remember CFUN had only played current hits but here was a station playing rock and roll from as far back as the late 50's! I don't recall how much digging into the back catalogue KISM did, it may have had something closer to a top-40 format.
I've read that KISW had a very tightly controlled playlist. That feels at odds with the spirit of an AOR station but I suppose it makes business sense if the playlist can be used to hold on to listeners, and I do remember that KISW had a very consistent sound with a rich playlist; the same older songs were heard frequently enough that I can believe it was very calculated and controlled. Introduction of new music didn't disturb the station's sound; perhaps the stuff that fit was kept in circulation and what didn't was dropped. Whatever, the mix of music and personality succeeded in keeping my attention for years.
I don't know which team I liked better: Crow & West or Robin & Maynard. That's a good thing because it shows that I liked both, and it suggests that both teams contributed to making KISW what it was despite the differences between the teams' personalities and the feel of their acts.
None of the tapes I recorded have much of anything from KISW on them. However, I have one undated bit that should be very familiar to anyone who listened to Crow & West.
Sorry about the distortion — it was recorded waaay too hot, well into tape saturation. This bit occasionally appeared in the middle of a favourite song and could be irritating if I was happily grooving to the music, but now I look back on those moments of interruption with a fond feeling of nostalgia.
Memories of KISW:
The good times had to come to an end, of course. I don't know the background story but many KISW staffers, including Crow & West and Robin & Maynard, moved to a new station called KXRX in 1987. The feel of this station was different; to me it was like something was missing. I didn't know what it was but I now think it was something about the music; perhaps KISW's tight playlist, whatever it contained, was the right music mix for me. I know that musically I preferred KISW but personality-wise KXRX was the clear winner. The magical era where I could leave my radio on one station pretty much 24x7 was over; I found myself tuning to KXRX for Crow & West, Robin & Maynard, and one or two other DJ's but otherwise I often returned to KISW for the music.
The real disaster didn't happen until 1994 when this second incarnation came to an end with the demise of KXRX. The station was purchased, its call letters and format changed. Crow & West and Robin & Maynard went to different stations which I couldn't receive because Vancouver is just a bit too far from Seattle for dependable over-the-air reception and those stations were not available via cable FM.
During the last week of June 1994, when KXRX had gone off-air but before the new owners' start of programming, the cable FM signal was playing a mashup of comedy bits and music plus the occasional bumper that sounded like promo bits that would have been used to advertise KXRX's original creation. This material was in a loop about six hours long that was repeated continually for at least a few days. I found that I liked many of those bits, so I grabbed a few tapes and recorded a couple of hours of the loop. Now with my computer or PCM recorder I could grab the whole thing many times over; technology has come a long way!
I've transferred those tapes to my digital archives and extracted the KXRX promotional bits:
The end of KXRX left me listening to KISW, which I continued to do for a few years out of habit. Regulatory changes to the US radio industry had resulted in ownership rule changes and a consolidation across that country which had the effect of crowding out local talent with the spread of supposedly cheaper syndicated programming. Some of these started appearing on KISW and negatively affected its sound and feel. This was like CFUN all over again: Normal music programming was interrupted by something that I had no interest in. Eventually I woke up and also realized that there weren't any personalities at KISW that I liked listening to anymore, so sometime in the late 90's I drifted away.
The gatefold cover shows a now almost 30-year old view of downtown
Seattle from Beacon Hill's Twelfth Avenue South Viewpoint. There've
been a few changes since 1981: The Kingdome was demolished in 2000,
and a number of new towers have been built, mostly alongside the
others downtown.
Years passed... and then nostalgia struck me earlier this year. I did some eBay searches and found a copy of KISW's Epic Rock promo record from 1981 (Epic AS932); it's not terribly rare, copies seem to turn up every couple of months. It features a number of airchecks, comedy bits, as well as some live performances from bands of that era. The comedy bits include an episode of Leave it to Beaver (I always found this parody of the TV show to be hilarious. Were any of them preserved? If they could be released, I'd buy a copy!) and Mr. Bruce's Neighbourhood. I remember listening to both of these and while I preferred the former both of them were great radio.
When I gave up on KISW I knew that nothing could compare to the Good Old Days so I didn't even try; as of this writing I haven't done another Great Radio Station Hunt. In the meantime technology has marched on and Internet radio has happened; now there's the whole world to sample rather than just what's on cable. I'm starting to hope that there's something comparable to the old KISW out there but I also dread spending the time needed to do a Worldwide Great Internet Radio Hunt to find it. If anyone knows of something comparable please let me know!
A search through my cassette tape transfers has turned up two more airchecks of interest from this era. These are from CFUN, likely sometime in 1979. The first features Tom Jeffries and the second might be his voice too. Both airchecks involve Prism songs; Prism was a favourite of mine in the late 70's and I always enjoyed it when their songs hit the air. Thus the recordings.
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