Tag Archives: memoirs

Newport Tales – Part III

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During the early days I spent a lot of time with Keith, one of the owners at Elite Broadcasting. We were fairly close in age and had a few things in common. Quite a few weekend evenings were spent at the Bayfront Brewery, now called the Rogue Ales Public House.

Trivia nights with Mr. Bill were in full swing there on Fridays and Saturdays. He put on a great show. Multiple rounds of trivia, music between questions, and fun prize giveaways. Being clever shoestring marketers we used our call letters as a team name, but there were quite a few, shall we say — questionable — team names. And as the night wore on and the kids were kicked out of the pub, the music became more risque, too: Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ L’il Red Riding Hood and Garry Lee and Showdown’s Rodeo Song are a couple tunes that come to mind. My eyes popped out of my head the first time I heard the latter.

Over the years KSND donated a lot of CDs as prizes. I got out of there a few times winning coveted Mr. Bill and Rogue Ales tee-shirts that I still have to this day. Fun times! The only problem was that smoking was allowed in pubs back then, so my clothes always smelled like an ashtray when we left. It’s a toss-up which was worse: the clothes or the smell on the bayfront when the fish processing plant across the street was busy.

It wasn’t just the cigarette smoke or fish smells that were troublesome, either. It stands to reason that on the coast, it’s going to rain. I expected that. What surprised me was that it rained…sideways. The wind was determined to blow rain whatever direction necessary to soak the unlucky person caught outside.

The wind made the weather interesting, though. Like the ocean, it demanded respect. The year after I moved to Newport we had a major windstorm in mid-December of 1995. It actually knocked the power out, which was very rare at the coast. Schools were closed. Buildings were damaged. Trees were blown across Highway 101. The peak gust was 107 miles per hour in town.

The wildest thing to happen was the roof blew off the Izzy’s restaurant during a senior citizen luncheon. The restaurant was unprotected on a small hill at the entrance to Yaquina Head. The roof ended up in pieces at the bottom of the hill along Highway 101. The Portland TV news crews came out for that. For the longest time following the incident and the restaurant’s prolonged closure, the locals called it, Wuzzy’s. No one was hurt, as the manager had sensed the roof was about to go and evacuated the building just before the roof gave way.

A few pictures:

Most of the time the wind wasn’t like that. Sure, I could sometimes walk on the beach, lean backward, and have the wind prop me up. Other times it would be nearly impossible to open the car door, especially at a coastal headland, if the wind was active. Mostly though, it was just a nuisance when coupled with the rain. That killer combination made one of my first jobs at the radio station a nightmare: changing the outdoor reader board.

More to come in Part IV…

Newport Tales – Part II

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As mentioned in Part I, I really hit it off with one of the owners at Elite Broadcasting. As a result he included me in a lot of different activities that were going on as we geared up for a March 1995 launch of 95.1 KSND…”The Sound of the Central Oregon Coast.”

Our broadcasting equipment was installed at the tower site in January of that year. The format was a closely guarded secret, but we enjoyed messing with our competitors a bit. They were openly guessing on their airwaves what kind of music we’d play. We were busy testing our audio processor settings and would play anything and everything for an hour or so a day during the process. That kept them wondering!

One night I was invited for a signal drive. Jack, Keith, our engineer Chris, and I all hopped into the truck and drove as far north and then as far south as we could while still receiving a clear signal. We ended up in Tillamook to the north and Florence to the south — 118 miles of coastline. I’ll never forget riding in the back listening to Heart’s Magic Man blast through the speakers as we drove along the ocean thinking I landed a killer gig that hadn’t even started in earnest yet.

We ended the night at Mo’s eating clam chowder and talking about how impressed we were with the equipment. KSND ran a mostly digital audio chain with a great deal of state-of-the-art gear — unheard of in a small media market. We were as clear-sounding as a CD. There was nothing small about the station or its presentation, and we were poised to be players — big fish in a little pond.

Not too long after this I got a call from Keith one night. Our music service discs had arrived. Did I want to come over and listen? Uh…yeah! I spent that evening with both Jack and Keith listening to a lot of the songs that we’d play in our format. We were going to be an adult contemporary station, but we were going to rock, too.

A few pictures:

For now this story is more about the job and less about my feelings on Newport, but they are intertwined. I have vivid memories of what took place during my five years on the coast and the people with whom I spent so much time. A lot of that time was spent outside of work, too.

More to come in Part III…

Newport Tales – Part I

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Last weekend my wife and I took a quick trip to Newport, Oregon. It’s a small city on the central coast. It’s also where I landed my first full-time job after college. I rolled into town Thanksgiving weekend in 1994 with hopes and ambitions and left in the spring of 2000 battered, disgruntled, and ready for a change of scenery.

Now every time I visit, I experience an emotional tug. This past weekend, it was a little stronger than usual. To understand why, it’s necessary to start from the very beginning…

Growing up, I loved the coast and wondered what it would be like to live there. It was always hard for me to leave and return home after a visit during summer vacation. Decades later, getting my first full-time radio gig in Newport meant I wouldn’t have to leave. I’d be a local rather than a tourist. A dream come true.

I was the first employee for a company called Elite Broadcasting. It was comprised of three owners: one silent partner who bankrolled most of the operation and a couple of guys, Jack and Keith, who had worked together years before and dreamed of having their own radio station. Both put up a good deal of their own money and were actively involved in the day-to-day management of the new station.

I came to know Keith over the previous year and traveled to Newport on occasion to see how progress was going on construction. As with any new operation there were quite a few false starts before things were up and running. I had eight or nine different start dates over that year before anything was finalized. I arrived in town about a week after the office furniture was delivered.

We were scheduled to go on the air in March of 1995. Over the course of the next three months we would have to build out the studio, install the transmitter and microwave units, erect the tower, hang the antenna, hire a few more people, load all the music, and complete myriad other tasks.

It was during this time that I got to be good friends with Keith. He became like an older brother and was eager to take me under his wing. There was only about a 10-year age difference between us, we were both alumni of the University of Portland, and our parents knew each other. That was a decent foundation to build on, both personally and professionally. It meant I was included in a lot of the ground floor activities that were going on.

More to come in Part II…