adult contemporary | Clarke Hylton

March 23, 1995, was a cloudy Thursday. I woke up that morning with great anticipation, but there was a lot of waiting around before we signed on. Friends and family of the owners were arriving from out of town, and a priest was coming to bless our building. Most folks were traveling from Portland — about 130 miles to the northeast and more than a two-hour drive away.

Prior to the big day, Keith and Jack produced an 18-minute sign-on piece to run out of the studio. When that ended they would push the button launching the Schafer automation system, and we’d be off and running. I was scheduled to work my first shift from 9:00 pm to 5:00 am that night.

With loads of time and nothing to do, I wandered down to the station to see what was going on. Flowers and balloons were delivered, and the lobby looked festive. Otherwise, it was fairly quiet with a palpable excitement bubbling under the surface. I took some pictures and headed back home.

My apartment was really close to the beach so I went down there for an afternoon walk, thinking about what was happening. It had been a long journey for me with multiple false starts. I was elated to be on wonderful team and with a start-up operation, which is so rare in the broadcasting business. I knew I was in the right place.

That afternoon I participated in the blessing of the radio station, helping wave incense in all the rooms that were blessed by the Rev. Charles H. Osborn of the Anglican Parish of St. Mark in Portland. This was where Keith and I met in 1993. When the blessing finished, everyone found a seat in the lobby while Jack and Keith entered the studio to begin the sign-on ceremony.

It was an emotional broadcast for them. The first song played was Dance With Me by Orleans — inviting our new listeners to join us on this new radio adventure. Keith spoke of his love for music and the people who influenced him growing up, including his music teachers, which led to In My Life by the Beatles. Keith also explained why the music would sound so much better on KSND than it did on other stations. From there, the broadcast went into Listen to the Music by the Doobie Brothers.

Jack took over at that point. He read a little from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. That led directly into Be by Neil Diamond — the recording artist who wrote the soundtrack for the movie our staff had watched the previous night. There were a few closing remarks, and then it was the moment everyone was waiting for…the revealing of the format. We came screaming out of the sign-on broadcast at 5:30 pm with Gloria Estefan’s Turn the Beat Around. Adult contemporary it was! Licensed to Lincoln City with studios in Newport and transmitting facilities atop Otter Crest, KSND was broadcasting with 6,000 watts of effective radiated power. Game on!

Jack and Keith exited the studio to applause. There was cake and then most people scattered to have dinner. Keith and his family went out for a private celebration. I went to dinner with Norma, one of Keith’s friends from college. Jack stayed at the station as full-time operations got underway. I returned from dinner just in time to start my first shift. Our listening market was Lincoln County, which encompassed the communities of Newport, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Gleneden Beach, Seal Rock, Waldport, Yachats, Toledo and Siletz — about 50,000 people. A small market station with a large market presentation.

We launched with a window sticker campaign in partnership with the Subway restaurants in Newport and Lincoln City, as well as a TV commercial run on local cable. We were a bomb in the birdcage that was the Central Oregon Coast. Good things were to come.

A few pictures:

More to come in Part X…

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: