By Hardy Price

The Arizona Republic, N1 – December 11, 1977

Two days and two nights on the road. Fighting fatigue and accidents by playing the radio. Picking up Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Chicago, Fort Worth. Listening to announcers pitching everything from pine tar and Pontiacs to alum and autographed photos of Jesus that glow in the dark.

Roaring up I-10 north of Casa Grande in the pre-dawn hours. It was with great anticipation that eyes started straining for the blinking red lights atop South Mountain. Not only would it mean that home was near and the end of a long trip, but the tinny car radio speakers would begin to shoot with familiar voices.

Hey that’s Toad Hall on KDKB and there’s Heywood on KOY and Spero on KXIV. Wonder what corn Len Ingebrigtsen is dishing out this morning on KOOL? Art Webb, W. Steven Martin and Richard Ruiz on KRIZ, KUPD and KRUX, respectively, will have already started to talk a mile-a-minute. Chris O’Connor at KNIX and Larry Scott at KJJJ have already fed the chickens, milked the cows and slopped the hogs, getting ready for four hours of Buck, Willie, Ol’ Waylon and Hag. Too bad Johnnie Linn is no longer talking about July pork bellies on KTAR.

Just as soon as the sun breaks over the Superstitions, the Christian stations will start saving souls, KMCR will begin educating and KXTC will be denying rumors that it will change from an all jazz format to a gospel-Christian-Catholic-Jewish-Zen-agnostic country-western station.

That’s good old Phoenix radio. A little something for just about everybody, unless you happen to be black. Phoenix has 33 radio stations (18 AM and 11 FM) but not one with a dominant black format. Matter of fact, Phoenix is the largest metropolitan radio market without a black station.

It would seem that Phoenix has just about more radio stations than anybody. According to Spot Radio Rates and Data, a monthly radio trade publication, Phoenix has more radio stations than Los Angeles, 28; San Diego, 18; Denver, 26; Miami, 24; Chicago, 27; Kansas City, 20; St. Louis, 23; Buffalo, 28; New York, 29; Boston, 28; Dallas, 18; Houston, 25 and Salt Lake City, 18.

Radio in Phoenix grew with the population boom. KOY signed on first in 1922, but KTAR gets the nod as the first commercial radio station to hit the air, also in 1922. KOY started out as an experimental station with the call letters of 6BBH. It turned commercial shortly after KTAR.

KJJJ (then called KPHO) went on the air in 1940 to be followed by KRUX and KQXE (formerly KBUZ) in 1946, KOOL in 1947, and KIFN in 1949. Things really began to pick up in the 1950s with KRIZ (1950), KXIV (1954), KHEP (1956), KSGR (1956), KMEO (1957), and KPHX (1958) right on into the 1960s with KNIX (1960), KUPD (1960), KRDS (1960), KDKB (1960), KCHS (1962), and KASA (1966).

You have to understand that some of the call letters are not the same ones as those originally granted the licenses. Many times when ownership changes, so do call letters. And a recent Federal Communications Commission recommendation calls for stations with both AM and FM outlets to have separate call letters. The FCC has already required that stations with both outlets provide substantial differences in programming, thereby eliminating the goold old days of cost-cutting, simultaneous broadcasting.

For many stations in Phoenix, cost-cutting is essential. There are just so many ways to split the profits pie and no matter how thin the slices, somebody always comes out with the crumbs.

“This just might be as competitive a radio market as there is in the country,” said one station manager. “And that does make it hard on the coffee pots (small stations). I would guess there’s always one or two stations in the Phoenix market for sale.”

Radio stations, just like any business, operate in different ways. One station use to pay its on-air staff by allowing the staffers to sell their own programs, splitting the fee with the station management. “I was trying to sell spots on my show for $8,” said a former disc jockey. “Come to find out this other jock is going to the same people offering spots on his show for $6. Helluva way to make a living?”

This instance is an exception to be sure, but would seem to indicate that all is not well on local airwaves. To attempt to judge the relative healthiness of a station by checking the rating can be just as misleading. There are almost as many ways to interpret radio ratings as there are ways to interpret the bible.

Station managers privately admit to this, but would rather see their children spirited away by gypsies in the night than tell a potential advertiser that his station is not at least No. 1 during some time of the day.

Several years ago one station manager wrote an advertiser, and friend, asking for a letter of recommending the merits of buying time on the station. The station’s rating was so low that even a ladder wouldn’t provide much help. “I really hated not to write him the letter,” said the friend. “I know it would probably help him, but next year when I go to buy advertising, he could pull my letter out and tell me I could afford to pay more since advertising on his station proved to be of such benefit to me.”

It is the fifth time KNIX has received the ACM award– the last time being in 1994.

The Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony take place Sunday April 3 from the MGM Grand, Las Vegas.

One question asks,
“WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE MORNING DJ(s)?”

Options (and percentages as of 5:45 this evening):
Ankarlo (Darrell Ankarlo), KTAR
2%
Barry Young, KFYI talk radio
2%
Ben and Matt , KNIX
30%
Beth and Bill, KEZ
5%
Dave Pratt, formerly of KMLE
31%
Doug & Wolf, KTAR
1%
Holmberg’s Morning Sickness, KUPD
4%
Howard Stern, Sirius Satellite Radio
2%
Johnjay and Rich, KISS
21%
Tim and Willie, KMLE
2%

You can place your vote here.

PhoenixAirchecks.com Analysis:
- Where’s everybody else? Surprised to not see Chris & Amy. What about JR & Mary? And why not Tom & Maria? Dave Pratt is still an option, yet it’s been fifteen months since he’s been on the radio. (Yeah, but he also blogs for AZCentral.)

- Speaking of Dave Pratt, Pratt is beating Holmberg’s Morning Sickness over septuple! (that means times seven)

- Johnjay and Rich seem to be the ones most pushing for their followers on Twitter to vote for them on this one. So far it’s gotten them to 21%.

- Why can AZCentral never spell Willy’s name right?

Ben and Matt were aboard a float. Hosts were scattered among intersections along the way, including Radio Free Phoenix’s Liz Boyle and Andy Olson at Scottsdale Road and Osborn, and a reunion of the KDKB morning team, Bill Andres and John Giese, at Scottsdale Road and Indian School.

[Thanks to Bill Andres for the correction.]

The Arizona Republic has the entire story, plus mugshot, here.

Tuesday morning power outages in the Valley have not only left an estimated 18,000 people without electricity, according to APS spokeswoman Jenna Henry, but also briefly knocked out several major Phoenix FM radio stations.

Several– if not a majority– of the FM stations went to static around 10:27am. The static lasted for a minute or two before broadcasts returned on-air. A few others, like KOOL-FM, went from static to silence for a few moments more.

A second occurrence reportedly occurred just minutes shy of 11am, that affected Bonneville’s KPKX and KTAR-FM. Since both stations returned just before the noon hour, we presume the hour was used for transmitter work. Both are located on South Mountain, which supports a majority of Phoenix FM radio station transmitters.

Tim & Willy are fixtures in Phoenix country music radio, and Ben and Matt have been doubted to be a viable replacement. Contrary to those beliefs, they have been doing well, even battling the Tim & Willy morning show on country competitor KMLE.

Ben and Matt were awarded as “Best Country Radio Personalities” by the Phoenix New Times in 2009.

Below: “Meet Ben and Matt” YouTube video circa January 2008

For more info, go here.