How I got into the radio business

I got started in radio at a young age. In 1963, I was working at my Dad's restaurant, The Patio in Westminster, MD one night, when I recognized a group of people coming into the restaurant - Emperor Paul Rodgers, Kerby Scott, Johnny Dark, and Alan Field from WCAO, the station all my friends and I listened to. They had the Pixies 3 and Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon with them as they had just finished a record hop in Westminster.

I seated the group in a private room and took their order. When I returned with their food, things got a little crazy. Freddie Cannon had stacked chairs against the door, and when I pushed it open, chairs flew every which way. It was a crazy day at The Patio! 

I got to talk to them and told them I was interested in radio as a career. They invited me to come to hang out at the station. I wasn't even of driving age, so my mom drove me and dropped me off. My hanging around became a regular occurrence. When I got my driver's license at 16, they hired me to be the sound guy at their record hops. I would set up the equipment and play the latest hits for dancing. By 17, I was an employee of the station answering phones, pulling music, and helping around the station. That was 1966; I have been working inside and with radio stations ever since!

Many days, I still channel that 17-year-old boy excited about being inside a radio station and what comes out of the speakers. I feel so fortunate that I've made an entire career of helping create great radio. You can still hear my work on stations like KVNA Flagstaff AZ, WXRV The River Boston MA, and WNCS The Point Burlington VT. Long live great radio!

The Future Work Enviornment

Positive feelings coming from the radio

For years, we talked about what it takes to create a successful radio station. The response was usually something to the effect of, "it's won in the hallways." Successful radio stations were fun places to be. You could feel the positive attitude coming out of the speakers. In recent years, financial pressures changed the feeling in the hallway.

After spending my professional career in the radio business, I moved into the tech world in 2013. I was delighted to see how the employees are treated by the tech companies. Even though the employees are paid modest salaries, workers are much more satisfied. It has to do with the overall working environment.

Live365 kitchen

At my office at Live365, the kitchen was always stocked with all kinds of snack food for use by our staff of 50 employees. Gourmet coffee and a large collection of high quality teas was always available. Bins were filled with various nuts, snack mixes, and even sweets. Protein snacks, oatmeal, yogurts and all kinds of foods could be found in the kitchen. And the drink fridge was filled with sodas, juices, flavored waters. Monday morning, fresh bagels and cream cheese were brought in. And on some Friday afternoons cocktails were served. Staffers could take breaks during their work day for a game of ping-pong.

Facebook, one of the top 10 workplaces

Facebook takes the concept even further. At their headquarters in Menlo Park, they have game rooms full of pinball machines, old style video game machines, Xbox360 consoles, foosball, chess boards, and even professional basketball courts. They have a music studio where musicians on the staff can get together and jam. Vending machines are full of all kinds of things like iphone cords, flash drives and other computer products for employees to make their job more efficient. One of the things that impressed me about the Facebook work area, they don't have the traditional work cubicles, but rather private spaces in a large work area. The room is wide open, but instead of walling off everyone in cubes, they have arranged the work spaces so that each desk feels like it has privacy, but still gives each person the impression of being in the room with everyone else.

Google campus

I visited a friend on the Google campus in Mountain View. It's a massive 26-acre office park including a 5-acre outdoor park. While there, he invited me to lunch. He asked what kind of food I'd like to have: Thai, Indian, Chinese, Seafood, Steaks, Sandwiches, Salads. Every restaurant has a master chef leading the food team. They only use locally-sourced produce and organic as much as possible. They have 18 world class restaurants on the Google campus, as well as micro kitchens throughout the offices where employees can find espresso machines, sandwiches, fresh-squeezed juice, cashews, dried fruit, cookies, and a variety of sodas and chips. My friend told me there is food within 150 feet of every office.  They also have food trucks parked around the campus. 

Gourmet food for employees at Google

We finally settled on Japanese. We walked into the restaurant, and a server greeted is with a tray of sushi. Have a few on your way to the grill or the fresh table. Fill your plate with as much food as you want. I could go on-and-on just about the food at Google, but the point is they have everything on campus that anyone could possibly want and it's all FREE. They provide bicycles for employees to ride from one building to the next. They've really thought of everything to keep employees happy. 

The key to this new working environment is employees are honored. Take a break and play a game, play your guitar, go have a fabulous feast - it's all part of keeping employees happy. And here's the one thing that surprised me - employees are allowed to, actually encouraged to, work on their own projects during the day. There are no restrictive covenants. If an employee has other, outside personal projects to work on, not a problem. The end result is employees want to be at the office and they give their all to their company work enthusiastically.

Is checking personal email a crime?

This is in stark contrast to the way employees at most companies have been treated in the past. It is frowned on when an employee takes a personal phone call, is checking personal email or going to Facebook, much less the employee working on an outside project that has nothing to do with their job. This kind of restrictive environment creates employees that are fearful of losing their job for doing something that might not be allowed. But one little change - making the work environment fun and honoring the employees will go a long way in making it fun again inside the workplace! 

My Trip to Outer Space

Looking for UFOs in the night Colorado skies

When I lived in Colorado in the '70s, there were stories in the news about UFO sightings in the mountains of Colorado. My friends Tim, Ron, John  and I would journey deep into the mountains on clear nights on the lookout for UFOs and lights in the sky. As hard as we tried, the most we ever saw was some shooting stars. No UFO sightings. But, my experience with UFOs happened when I was least expecting it.

Before deregulation in the late '90s, the radio business was filled with many colorful characters. Radio stations were owned mostly by individuals and small companies. The maximum number of radio stations any one owner or group could own was 14 stations in no more than seven markets. This allowed for much diversity in the ownership of radio stations. I had a consulting business that dealt with many interesting radio stations around the country. One of those diverse radio owners was Mr. M.

Magical waters

Mr. M owned an FM station in a small market in the West. His genetic makeup allowed him to be a card-carrying Native American. He made his fortune selling his water bottling company to a large soft drink company. He had been selling pure healing water from a natural spring on an Indian Reservation. The large conglomerate paid him handsomely for his successful water business, only to find out that the rights to the water were reserved for use only by Native Americans. Under the new corporate owners, the water inside the bottle was reformulated and became nothing more than filtered city tap water under the same label name. Consumers were never told about the change.

FM Radio towers 

With his bank account bulging from the sale, Mr. M decided to invest it by buying a radio station. Not being in the business, he contacted me to give him guidance on the programming of the station. We hired a staff and put the station on the air with an eclectic music format that fit the tone of the community. It became a huge success and he was able to spin his investment several years later by selling the station to a big conglomerate.

You might be wondering what all of this has to do with a trip to outer space. One day at dinner in a busy restaurant, I was having dinner with Mr. M and two other executives from the radio station. At some point over appetizers, Mr. M began telling us the story of how he and his wife had been abducted by aliens and taken aboard a spaceship and taken into outer space.

At this point in my life, I was on my health kick. I was eating an organic vegan diet. Alcohol didn't touch my lips. I was completely clean and sober with a sharp mind. I mention this because what proceeded from this point forward felt like some kind of drug-induced acid trip. As Mr. M told us of his UFO adventure, the hubbub and activity of the busy restaurant slowly faded into the background. I have a vivid memory of only seeing the four of us sitting at the table, and instead of servers and patrons buzzing around the table, what I saw instead was a universe of stars and galaxies. It was as if Mr. M was taking us on a space trip as we sat at the table.

Mr . M takes off

The story of his encounter at this point was insignificant. He told us that he and his wife were out driving one night and they were beamed up into the ship and taken deep into space. What was fascinating about the conversation was that he recalled it in such a way that we actually experienced what it was like. There was an experience behind the words. Time disappeared. It seemed like we were on this trip with him for a long time - hours possibly. There was no rush, but after this extended trip in space, we came back to our table and only a few minutes passed and we were served our dinner.

I haven't had any repeat trips to space, at least that I'm aware of. However, this event hasn't stopped me from being a space case.

Far out.

The Story behind KBCO's Beginnings

November 7, 1976: I was attending a Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert at Balch Fieldhouse on the CU Campus in Boulder. I noticed a young man wearing a KADE t-shirt. I approached him and introduced myself. He was Nick Frazer, a DJ and news reporter on KADE. We had a nice chat; he told me that the owner of his station was buying an FM station and would be needing a program director.

I had been doing mornings at Denver’s 105.9 KBPI, one of the city's last bastions of free-form progressive rock music. We played from a breadth and depth of music that was in the spirit of the underground radio movement of the late 60s and early 70s. Our main competitor, KAZY 106.7, adopted Lee Abram’s “Superstars format” in September, and KBPI reacted by tightening the playlist from unlimited titles to just 165 songs. And with that, the veteran airstaff – Jeff Pollack, Tom Trunnell, Larry Bruce, Bob Reid and me – found ourselves replaced by a new, younger crew that wouldn’t object to playing the same songs several times a day.

I ruminated about how all the great FM rock stations of the '70s were disappearing from the Denver airwaves. All that was left was KFML on a tiny AM daytime signal, and KADE, another daytime signal in Boulder. KTCL 93.3 from Fort Collins was fun and KILO in Colorado Springs could rock our world, but their signals were hard to get in Denver. 

I had an idea – create a radio station that reflects the feeling of Colorado. There was a big roots music movement underway – with bands and musicians like Stephen Stills, Firefall, Dan Fogelberg and others settling in the hills of Colorado. The name I came up with for the station was Coloradio (Color Radio) using the call-letters KOLO.

At Nick’s suggestion, I made an appointment with the station owner, Bob Greenlee, and presented my idea, complete with a tape of what the station would sound like. He liked what I had to say, right after the holidays, I started my employment at the station.

While we waited for FCC approval for the purchase of 97.3, I spent my days contacting record companies and ordering music for the new station and doing airshifts on KADE. Boxes and crates of records started showing up. KADE’s Program Director, Randy Morrison and I would retire to his home and unpack the boxes and listen to music hours on end. Besides reviewing albums by some of our local musicians, we went deep into catalogs of artists like Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson, Poco and others searching out songs that would fit the concept of Coloradio.

Days turned into weeks and months as we waited for the approval to turn the station on. And in the process, it became clear that the name Coloradio, while cute, was going to get old quickly, just as a novelty song is cute the first few times you hear it, but becomes an irritant after repeated listens. A different identity was chosen, one that would have lasting power: KBCO – the BCO standing for Boulder Colorado.

On June 2, 1977 at high noon, getting the green light from the FCC, the transmitter atop Lee Hill in Boulder was turned up to 250 watts and the station began transmitting. The first song was one that had just showed up in the morning mail. A brand new radio station needed a brand new song to launch. It was by one of our core artists, James Taylor – “Handy Man.”

What a thrill it was to be on the air that day! It’s exhilarating to hear the fruits of our labor become a reality. Driving home that night listening to the new BCO was certainly a memory I’ll carry with me always. I didn’t want to go to sleep.

When we first started, we had a small, dedicated staff. All of us were handsomely paid $3/hour for our efforts. Honestly, I would have paid to do the job. It was so much fun. I found myself working on the air at all times – daytime, nighttime, weekends – I just wanted to be playing the great music. It wasn’t until the Fall that I settled into the morning show, where I stayed for 16 years.

Here now for your listening enjoyment is KBCO from that first summer we were on the air. Less than two months old. It’s the evening and, yes, that hippie talking between the songs is me. I’ve chopped the middles out of the songs, but left the commercials so that you can hear the essence of Boulder in 1977. 

KBCO July 1977 - click here to listen

Through the years, KBCO grew to become the number one radio station in Denver. The transmitting power continually increased and when the station constructed its new tower on Eldorado Mountain, the power was raised to 100,000 watts giving it one of the strongest FM signals in Denver. And like those beginning days of a small dedicated staff, KBCO today finds itself with a small dedicated staff, hopefully making a little more than $3 an hour.

The Opposite is Also True

One of the best parts of life is hearing words of wisdom from people who see the world from a fresh perspective - from a different camera angle. 

Bill Ward, President of Golden West Broadcasters was just one of those true rebels. One of his gems of wisdom – “The Opposite is Also True.”

A magnet has two poles – both which have magnetic attraction. One pole isn’t better than the other; they just both exist. In the same way there are always two sides to every dilemma; two solutions to every situation. Neither is more correct than the other. They both work.

When we in programming at KSCA in Los Angeles wanted to do anything that smacked of traditional radio rules, Bill’s guidance was, “The Opposite is Also True.”

The great radio programmers through the years have taken this rebellious attitude. In the '70s, programming genius Buzz Bennett at 13Q Pittsburgh stripped away all station jingles and produced elements, and had the deejays stop talking over intros of songs – just the opposite of what other stations were doing at the time. 

Because of that, 13Q stood out in the radio world of sameness and was tremendously successful. It was truly inspired radio. It brought balance to what was being offered on the radio in Pittsburgh.

Today, radio has once again fallen into an imbalance. Virtually every music station is cutting down on deejay chatter. Most radio stations have the DJs record every break before it airs, even when they’re in the studio for a “live” show. The reasoning? The announcer will have the chance to redo it to keep it concise. The result: live spontaneity is lost.

The balance is off. 

There’s nothing wrong with stations that want to follow these radio rules and be very music-intensive and fast-paced. 

But the opposite is also true.

Where are the music radio stations where the DJs actually have interesting things to say? A place where you actually hear their enthusiasm about the music they’re playing. 

When you think back to memories of something you heard on the radio, it most likely has to do with something that was said.

To keep the radio industry inviting to creative people, there needs to be a creative outlet for them. It’s time to restore the balance and create radio stations where stories unfold, personalities develop and listeners are personally involved and connected to their radio station. Just this alone will invigorate radio and keep it thriving.

I miss Bill Ward, sitting in his presence and hearing him expound on his latest tangent. There were always nuggets of wisdom in everything he said. Bill had a very positive influence on creating great radio by reminding us that the opposite is also true.

Dennis Constantine

Meet the Beatles

One of the first record albums I bought was Meet The Beatles. I went to the local record store and plopped down $2.99 of my allowance. It was one of the best investments I made in my young life. I played the record over and over. Every song spoke to my youthful ears.

When I listened to the record, I never imagined that one day I would "Meet the Beatle" and get to sit down and spend twenty minutes in conversation.

It happened on November 4, 2005. Paul McCartney and his band were in Portland at the Rose Garden Arena on their American tour. My radio station KINK was selected to be the official radio station of the concert, and we would get to have an exclusive interview with Paul.

The Rose Garden Arena has all sorts of tunnels and private areas underneath the seats. Paul's crew was assigned the Trailblazers locker room as their headquarters. Pipe-and-drape covered the lockers. A line of tables on both sides of the room held computers where Paul's staff took care of all of the financial business of the tour. At the end of this room was a living room setup. A huge vegetarian kitchen was set up in a big open space, where Paul's personal chef was preparing a vegan feast for the crew.

KINK's morning man Les Sarnoff and I were the two people invited to be part of this special moment. We were asked to wait in the living room area.

I had prearranged an ISDN connection between the Rose Garden and KINK. ISDN allows for a studio quality connection from a remote location. The link was up and KINK was playing Beatles songs anticipating the live on-air interview with Paul.

There was lots of activity all through the evening, and things really started to get busy on the walkie-talkies as Paul's limo approached the Rose Garden. Then suddenly, as if on cue, the entire staff of a dozen or so workers all got up and filed out of the room, leaving only me and Les. Moments later, Sir Paul McCartney walked in by himself.

He came and sat between us. We exchanged pleasantries and we told him we'd be going live in just a few moments. He put on a pair of headphones to hear the station, and what was playing was the Beatles "The End" from Abbey Road. He started singing along with his own vocals from over 35 years earlier - "And in the end... the love you take... is equal to the love... you make." The song ended and the interview began.

Paul was a gracious interview. Les was prepared and had no problem with taking up twenty minutes of air time talking to Paul. I mean, he's a freaking Beatle. How much bigger can you get than that? Paul told some amazing stories on the air. He also was very much up-to-speed on new technology. He explained how EMI Parlophone was so meticulous about getting a high quality recording. The tapes have been kept in great shape over the years.

The process of transferring all of the Beatles recordings to digital was underway under the direction of George Martin and his son Giles. Paul explained that most of the original Beatles songs were recorded onto 4 tracks. To allow for all of the effects, the individual instruments were combined. For example, the drums and bass were mixed down to one track.

In the digital world, the engineers at Abbey Road studios are using notch filters and pulling out the cymbals, the kick drum, the snare, the bass and making individual tracks for each of those for remixing. Some of these remixes have been released on various compilations (most notably LOVE), but ultimately, the entire Beatles collection will be reissued with a more balanced mix and higher fidelity. Paul said that with today's digital technology, you can actually improve the quality of recordings, instead of letting them degrade as they did when tape transfers were done.

It was a wonderful time spent with Paul. There were no distractions in the room and his focus and complete attention was on us and the interview. When it was done, he recorded some personal station IDs and then it was off to the show. First song of the set: "Magical Mystery Tour!"

Yes, it was a magical mystery moment, to be sure!

Exploding Radio

I was sitting on the balcony of my apartment looking out over Biscayne Bay looking toward the city of Miami.  It was a beautiful calm night in the autumn of 1973 and all across the Florida landscape, the city lights shimmered across the water.

Suddenly, what looked like a flash of lightning lit up the eastern sky and an entire portion of the city went black. An explosion at a transformer station knocked out the power. Shortly after, another explosion happened at a transformer station in another part of the city. The electricians union was on strike and some weird things were happening all across the power grid.

At WMYQ, the station where I worked, the power went off, and then surged on again.  The surge was so powerful that it fried much of the sensitive electronic equipment.  The ballasts in the florescent light fixtures started exploding – the one positioned over the on-air console started dripping hot oil right into the main control board.  WMYQ’s studios were ruined.

The station needed to stay on the air.  But with no studio to do the show, what could be done?  A long-distance telephone line was quickly hooked up to the KCBQ production studio, Bartel’s sister station 2300 miles away in San Diego. What listeners heard for the next few days was truly astounding. They heard a 100,000 watt stereo powerhouse FM station with a poor quality mono telephone signal. Shotgun Tom Kelly and other KCBQ jocks were playing nothing but The Beatles and The Stones.

 Listen to WMYQ broadcast from San Diego

Soon after the equipment was repaired at WMYQ and the station was broadcasting, a power outage occurred at competitor Y100’s studios.  In a similar way, Y100 had to go to the transmitter to broadcast.  What listeners heard on Y100 was a record player with a microphone positioned in front of the speaker.  When music was playing, we could hear the hum of the transmitter and people talking in the background.  When the song ended, the deejay picked up the microphone and talked while he fumbled getting the next record on the turntable.  Then, we heard the needle drop and the deejay would put the microphone in front of the speaker. 

South Florida radio listeners certainly got to hear some wild radio on these two competitive radio stations. Eventually, the electrician’s union strike was settled and the electric grid settled back down and the calm returned to the city skyline over Biscayne Bay.