Newport Tales – Part VII

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Our Schafer 903E automation system from the 1970s had been salvaged from KSKD when Keith and Jack left. Before Elite Broadcasting assumed this beast, Chris, our engineer, used it to heat his home in the winter. Once it was installed at KSND, the system ran off-air with old tapes so that I could practice operating the machine.

Next door to the automation room was our studio. Prior to recording all the programming elements for the Schafer, the studio had to be completed. Most of that work took place on weekends when Chris, who was the full-time engineer at KWJJ in Portland, could come down to Newport. While Chris and Keith worked on other equipment, Jack took on the monumental task of wiring the studio himself. I came over to the station to watch, help and eat lunch with the guys. Once everything was operational and our music service CDs arrived, it was time to record what we’d need for launch in March 1995.

The Schafer had four reel-to-reel decks. Two were for current music — A and B categories. One was for image gold songs — C category. The last deck was for regular gold songs — D category. Jack and Keith copyrighted a new format called “coastal contemporary.” It was adult contemporary, but the older songs had to fit a coastal mood. (Can you picture listening to this song while driving along the coastline?) Gold songs that passed the mood test and had superior audio production were Cs. The others were Ds.

C category songs at launch: Fleetwood Mac – Sara, Little River Band – Cool Change, Journey – Open Arms, Gloria Estefan – Traces, Brothers Johnson – Strawberry Letter 23, Loverboy – Turn Me Loose, and Alan Parsons Project – Sirius/Eye in the Sky. The latter was a perfect C song! We had somewhere between eight to 10 C reels with about 17 songs on each.

D category songs at launch: Huey Lewis and the News – The Heart of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Eagles – Take It Easy, Heart – Alone, Laura Branigan – Self Control, Cutting Crew – I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight, and Don Henley – The Heart of the Matter. There were around 16 to 18 D reels with about 17 songs on each.

We also had the A and B currents. The difference between the two was the number of plays each song on a particular reel received during a week. The A category held the hottest currents. Each song played 36 times per week. The B category rotated slower, with songs playing 24 times per week. There were two versions of each A and B reel, with songs recorded in different order on the second tapes.

A few currents we had at launch: Sophie B. Hawkins – As I Lay Me Down,  Linda Ronstadt – The Blue Train, Take That – Back for Good, Annie Lennox – No More I Love Yous, Eagles – Learn to Be Still, and Gloria Estefan – Turn the Beat Around.

We had a lot of work to do! Our library was recorded in real time around the clock for a week. I worked overnights during this process and loved cranking up the Bose studio monitors when no one was around.

Prior to recording the music, though, I had a final rookie test to pass. The Schafer automation system was able to give the current time — sort of. It had two time check tape decks. Every minute from 12:00 to 11:59 was verbally recorded. One tape deck held even times (12:00, 12:02, 12:04, etc.) while the other held odd times (12:01, 12:03, 12:05, etc.) The system automatically advanced each tape every other minute. I was given the task of recording one of them.

There was a BIG catch though. Every programming event — song, commercial or time check — had to have an inaudible tone recorded over the end. That tone triggered the next element to play on the air. The tone was recorded 1.50 seconds before the end of an event. The next element always had a 1.50 second dead roll before the audio began. This required perfection, otherwise the ending element played right over the starting event. There was a little leeway. Up to .02 seconds over or under still worked fine. Anything else and the element had to be re-recorded.

The problem with the time check was that it was recorded on a 30-minute cartridge tape that didn’t rewind. If a mistake was made, regardless of whether it was at the beginning or the end, the whole thing had to be re-recorded. It took about an hour to record 12 hours of time checks, so the last thing I wanted to do was restart in the middle. I had heard plenty of horror stories about that happening, either because a tone was off or the studio engineer had run out of tape before finishing. Good luck, rookie! Use the stopwatch!

Our station voice was the legendary Charlie Tuna. He recorded all the time checks onto reel at his home studio in Los Angeles and shipped them to Newport. I got busy re-recording them unto the cartridge tape one night. Charlie was a real pro. The sentence he read repeatedly was, “It’s (time) at K-S-N-D.” His cadence was consistent, and it was very easy to get the tone placement right — usually on the “at.” I got it right the first time through and finished with plenty of tape left over. The latter raised Jack’s suspicion the following morning. First of all, no one had ever gotten it right the first time. Second, there was way too much tape left. He figured I had recorded several tracks too close together. He double checked the whole tape, and was shocked that everything was solid. I’m still not sure he believed it. I was just glad to be done!

With staff hired, elements recorded, and testing completed we were very close to our launch date. We were pretty excited, but first there was some required reading from author Richard Bach.

A few pictures:

More to come in Part VIII…

Newport Tales – Part VI

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Keith and Jack wanted broadcasters, not just radio people. They wanted an airstaff that understood the technical side of the business, as opposed to jocks who only knew how to crack jokes and start the next song. That is how, during my first several weeks, I ended up studying audio processing, recording techniques, and sound engineering in Keith’s old college textbook.

Meanwhile, Jack had me running around with a cork in my mouth with the belief that it improved one’s enunciation. His theory was that my enunciation would be perfected once I could speak clearly with the cork between my teeth. That would then translate on-air. It was an interesting idea but a skill I learned better, as it turned out, without the obstruction.

While an eager employee, it wasn’t long before I felt in over my head. One evening, in January 1995, I walked into Keith’s office, and we had a watershed moment in our relationship. I described feeling overwhelmed, and he told me how much it meant that I could speak to him about it. He wanted an open door policy with his employees, and so we talked.

It was at this point that he explained the broadcasters versus radio people philosophy he and Jack shared. The textbook was just to give me an overview. Regardless of how it sounded when I was handed the book, there weren’t going to be any tests. Keith also mentioned the cork-in-the-mouth task was something Jack made him do when he worked for Jack at Salem, Oregon’s KSKD during the early 1980s. I was told not to worry about any of it.

That conversation created a tremendous sense of relief. I was green but had some radio experience having worked in the industry part-time throughout college and after graduation. None of what I was experiencing now, though, had been covered at any of those other stations. KSND was uncharted territory a long way from home.

For the first several weeks, there wasn’t a lot to do other than read the textbook. When a radio station is off the air, it’s not of great value. I sat at the reception desk and greeted visitors. There were a couple a week. I answered the phone. It rang every couple hours. I also monitored the station that was to be our main competitor — logging their song playlist and commercials. I entered our music library into a spreadsheet and went along on field trips and client visits. And like any rookie, I took my turn cleaning the restroom.

When we had staff on board, I cross-trained with the CBSI (now Marketron) representative that taught Bonnie, our traffic director, how to use the software for scheduling commercials and producing program logs. Pressed into service once during that first year when Bonnie was gone for a couple days, I came to highly respect traffic people for the difficult job they do.

As winter began winding down and our spring launch date approached, I did fewer of these tasks as it was time to record the programming elements we needed. I had one more initiation test to pass…recording the dreaded time check.

More to come in Part VII…

Newport Tales – Part V

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When I started at KSND in December of 1994 it was Jack, Keith, me and the office furniture. Once the new year was underway and the tower site completed, Keith and Jack began hiring the rest of our start-up staff.

While Jack and Keith were owners, they were actively involved in the day-to-day operations. Jack took the role of general manager, which meant he was largely in charge of the business and sales end of the company. Keith was the operations manager, overseeing programming and its staff. Both worked six to seven days a week at launch and pulled operations shifts, too.

I was the first employee, tapped to work overnights from 9:00 pm to 5:00 am Monday night through Saturday morning. This involved changing tapes when a reel ended, doing voice work, and producing commercials. (And of course, changing the reader board!) Basically a studio engineer and air talent. Keith was on from 5:00 am to 1:00 pm while also handling his regular duties. Jack had the 1:00 pm to 9:00 pm shift in addition to his normal responsibilities.

We still needed at least one weekend operator, a receptionist-traffic director (person who schedules commercials), and a couple of sales people. Enter the rest of the cast…

Paul, who owned the Sandbar and Grill in the Nye Beach neighborhood, was our first sales person. A great guy who let us tease him about the bar, which at one time had been a somewhat frightening dive. He turned it into something much nicer and welcoming for families — constructing a two-story ocean view addition in the back with deck. It wasn’t just a place for locals anymore.

We had one other sales person who joined us. I believe her name was Corey, but I’m not certain. She didn’t stay with us long but was one of the originals.

Bonnie was hired as our receptionist-traffic director. A very warm human being. We got along famously. She had a daughter about my age, and in many ways Bonnie was a surrogate mother — my “coastal mom.”

Cindy came on board as our weekend talent, which eventually morphed into a full-time weekday job. She had been a highly visible personality at several big stations in Portland but had wanted to live on the coast — moving there in the early 1990s. Very classy and kind…with a crazy laugh and a wild sense of humor. If laughter is the best medicine, she added years to my life!

We discovered quite a bit about Cindy one weekend early in our existence. There wasn’t a lot of work to do those days other than changing tapes and updating the weather. We had a nice studio, a couple of sound effects CDs and a microphone. Very bare bones, but that was all Cindy needed. She was great at doing character voices.

One Saturday morning she entertained herself (and us when we heard the tape) making an off-air skit of a character named Tugboat Annie, who didn’t like underwear and had a flatulence problem. That seafaring hag of the high seas was the complete antithesis of Heart’s Dreamboat Annie, a song on our playlist that Cindy was parodying. Completely ruined the tune for me. Thanks, Tugboat! The fact that Cindy had cooked this up was almost has funny as the skit itself. Just didn’t see it coming!

That was us. The dream team. Or at least the best that pocket change could buy. So what were we actually doing before the March 1995 sign-on? I was walking around with a cork in my mouth. Literally.

More to come in Part VI…