KDWB Deane Johnson Air Check - 5/21/70







 
Deane Johnson in the KDWB control room.

This represents my final hours on KDWB before leaving the air to become General Manager of the station. I never returned to the air in radio except for a couple of fill in stints on later stations.

Music was lousy in 1970, jingles matched the music, and stations were rather unexciting in general. Nothing like the KOMA days of nearly a decade earlier. WDGY, the Storz Station, was doing a ripoff of the Drake 20/20 news format so I programmed a 20/20 triple play against it. Music sweeps were not yet being done so it was rather unique at the time. Contests were live with no delay. Jingles were the TM Charisma package. Microphone was an Altec 633A "birdcage". These had no equal until the ElectroVoice RE-20 came along, which sounded almost identical to the Altec. KDWB engineering was supurb at that time, with three full-time engineers.

We went the next two years with virtually no change in the talent line-up. Over those two years we climbed from the basement to finally beat WDGY in the final Arbitron before I left the station in 1972 upon it's sale to Doubleday. It only lasted one book or so before Doubleday skillfully destroyed the station.




© Deane Johnson
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