My First California Aircheck

I taught myself radio programming three different ways: in the office of any program or music director who would let me hang around; from the pages of Radio & Records; and by ordering California Aircheck.

My interest in radio started with music, charts, and station surveys. At first, I didn’t understand the appeal of listening to radio with the songs missing. I visited one PD who told me what airchecks had just come in the mail, but I cared more about the new singles on his desk. That was fall ’76.

By summer 1980, I was taping stations myself. (It wasn’t a great time for CHR, but the battle was hot at home in Washington, D.C.) In early 1981, as a college sophomore, I ordered the current and classic California Airchecks— as advertised in the back of R&R — from George Junak, whose main job at the time was in radio format syndication.

I grew up hearing classic radio stations: WOL Washington, D.C.; WABC New York; CKLW Detroit; WLS Chicago. I knew the rough history of Bill Drake, “Boss Radio” KHJ Los Angeles, and “much more music,” although when I heard KHJ for the first time in late ’78, it didn’t sound boss, in part because it was trying not to. I understood something about music programming philosophy early on, but I was only starting to pick up on the formatics around this time.

Classic Issue #C-5 of California Aircheck was the beginning of my home-study course in classic radio. I learned things piecemeal. That first aircheck had KHJ, but from the late ‘70s. It had KCBQ San Diego, not as Buzz Bennett’s “Q-format” pioneer, but later as well. Instead, “the super Q” was represented by sister WDRQ Detroit. There were two of KHJ’s mid-’60s competitors, each trying to figure out how to deal with the “Boss Radio” juggernaut. There was also a lot of the savorless radio of the late ’70s, when Top 40 tried to sound like FM rock.

As I heard other classic issues of California Aircheck, I filled in more of the timeline. Eventually I heard KHJ and KCBQ at their most explosive and influential, as well as Chuck Blore’s “Color Channel 98” KFWB Los Angeles, as impactful in its time, and, at first, hard for my ‘70s/’80s-trained ear to appreciate. (That came later, in part when I read Blore’s autobiography.)

Between California Aircheck, R&R, and my radio mentors, I was able to “speak radio” when I arrived at R&R two years later, and hold my own with radio veterans, both as a reporter covering radio and as a colleague of R&R’s staff of radio veterans. Growing up near New York, I knew of Walt “Baby” Love, but from California Airchecks, I heard him at full throttle on WXLO (99X) New York. Three years later, I was Love’s assistant, and he was one of my mentors as well. 

I cannot imagine that airchecks affected anybody else’s life as they did mine, but if you’ve read this far, we share a passion fueled by both great and workaday radio. And a lot of what seemed basic on this tape sounds pretty hot now, compared to our current sparseness. 

I went back to listen to Classic Issue #C-5. In its cross-sample of 11 stations from 1966 through 1978 are almost all the major radio tropes of the era. I wouldn’t discover KCBQ’s original “Last Contest” for a few more issues, but the similarly intense contest promos it inspired are on almost every ‘70s station on this tape, for instance. (There was a lot of “when your phone rings, don’t say hello.” That one’s currently in the use in a major U.K. radio war this week.) Here is what I heard:

KTNQ (10Q) Los Angeles, Real Don Steele (12-76) – Steele is many people’s choice for all-time greatest jock. Until this tape, I knew him only as the self-parodying movie DJ of Death Race 2000 and Grand Theft Auto. I finally heard him on KHJ, but first, he was the star hire of this relatively late-era attempt to go after KHJ on AM. The first jock on the aircheck was actually Willie B., whom I did know in the early ‘80s from WBSB (B104) Baltimore. Steele was relatively straightforward here — he had ‘70s Top 40 energy, but his random “Tina Delgado is alive!” wackiness was toned down a decade later.

KRLA Los Angeles, Casey Kasem (2-66) – Growing up with “American Top 40,” I knew that Kasem was doing that sort of storytelling years earlier on L.A. radio, but now I could hear it. He teased a song by a superstar’s daughter who immediately went gold, something her dad had never done. That’s easy trivia now, but Nancy Sinatra had just broken through with “These Boots Are Made for Walking” at the time. There was an oldie from early ‘60s artist Ray Peterson and a story about how he began singing in a polio ward (and had become a celebrity golfer). KRLA had sweepers promising “Constant Music,” and even then, I knew enough to recognize that as a reaction to KHJ’s “Much More Music.” It was also giving time-checks as “2:25, Get Well Time” in response to a flu bug sweeping L.A. at the time.

KFRC San Francisco, Chuck Buell (10-75) – I heard two “jock’s jocks” for the first time here: Buell and night jock “Marvelous” Mark McKay, who I would become an even bigger fan of after hearing a famous 1980 composite of KFRC. Like Steele, Buell was energetic, but not screaming. As an Easterner, this was my first exposure to the legendary station under PD Michael Spears. 

KKDJ Los Angeles, Charlie Tuna (2-75) – The station now known as KIIS was in an earlier Top 40 incarnation here (future KROQ PD/alternative rock pioneer Rick Carroll programmed KKDJ), but this aircheck existed because Lily Tomlin was Tuna’s guest that morning. Tomlin was answering request lines as her Ernestine character from Laugh-In. A caller didn’t know who sang a certain song; she snapped, “Well, how do you think that makes the artist feel?”

KCBQ San Diego, Jimi Fox (1-78) – KCBQ was the station that started it all for the screaming ‘70s “Q-format.” By 1978, KFMB-FM (B100) was ruling CHR in San Diego. KCBQ was sort of toned down here, although Fox was still rocking and rolling. Fox was back on the radio in San Diego after programming 10-Q. Veteran TV writer/broadcaster Ken Levine (who worked for Fox at 10-Q) jokes about Fox having a worse radio voice than him, but the “big pipes” of the ‘70s are long forgotten now, and I didn’t notice anything unusual about Fox’s delivery when I listened again. 

KHJ Los Angeles, Bobby Ocean (12-77) – Part of the reason I didn’t fully appreciate KHJ at first was because I heard the toned-down, tight-playlisted late ‘70s version before I finally heard it as the boss of the mid-‘60s. Shortly after this aircheck, KHJ would bill itself as “Position 93” under John Sebastian and go for an even cleaner, more AOR presentation. By 1981, I already knew Ocean, and his wry/offbeat humor, as the cartoonist for Radio & Records. This was my first time hearing him on the radio, and it’s the best thing about the tape. I’d hear Ocean in an even better showcase a few years later on KFRC. 

KIQQ (K100) Los Angeles, Billy Pearl (6-74) – You’ve perhaps heard recently about the high-energy ‘70s Top 40 jock who became a conservative talk host? Well, there is that aircheck of Rush “Jeff Christie” Limbaugh on KQV (14K) Pittsburgh circulating from about this same time. But before Limbaugh’s talk radio stardom, Billy Pearl became a successful conservative host on KABC Los Angeles and others. On that 14K tape, you can hear Limbaugh’s persona developing. On K100, Pearl was a screaming Top 40 jock, but a kinetic, quick-witted one. And at this moment, he was on a new station that had not just Drake and Steele, but Robert W. Morgan and Humble Harv trying to recreate their KHJ impact. 

WDRQ Detroit, Steve Rivers (Summer ’73) – My first exposure to Buzz Bennett’s high-energy ‘70s “Q-format” was this Detroit outpost under then-PD Jerry Clifton. “Steve Rivers” is Steve Humphries, later a prominent radio consultant, but not the late major-market programmer of the same air-name. I’d heard high-energy ‘70s radio before, maybe even enough to recognize it as over the top, but Rivers was the first true “screamer” I’d encountered. A little later, Clifton would take this sort of radio to 99X, eventually inspiring the famous “Nine!” radio parody. (Rivers was also urging listeners to call and “rip me off for a Q-shirt,” a reminder of a time when somebody would actually call a station to win anything.)

KBLA Los Angeles, Dave Diamond (9-66) – Diamond was a pioneer of psychedelic-babble delivery and eventually one of the early progressive rock DJs. For ROR editor (and R&R mentor as well) Ken Barnes, KBLA was more musically aggressive than KHJ or rival KRLA, and thus his influential high-school station. The centerpiece of this aircheck was the newscast — Paul McCartney and Jane Asher were rumored to be getting married that night, and it was played as the story of the century, although the pair never wed. A few months later, on an aircheck of KBTR Denver, I got a better taste of the dada Diamond, doing an involved rap where he told the story of “The Spider and the Fly” by the Rolling Stones over its intro.

KIQQ, Jim Carson (3-76) – KIQQ’s Drake era was over. Less than two years later, KIQQ was mellow rock — like a hit version of rival KNX-FM, plus with a slicker presentation. Carson was with KIQQ for 16 years, through multiple formats, toggling several times between AC and CHR. The music was an odd mix of current hits (Bee Gees, “Fanny [Be Tender With My Love]”) and album cuts (Neil Young, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”). Carson teased that on Saturday night, KIQQ would play Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years and the Who’s Live at Leeds, both in their entirety.

KIIS-FM Los Angeles, Steve Weed (9-78) – Now likely known to you as a recently retired veteran programmer, Weed was a screamer on 99X, but toned down here on another one of the era’s many attempts to do Top 40 with ‘70s rock radio sensibilities, clean and mostly unproduced as “102.7 Stereo Rock.” Decades before streaming, when you could still tease a song well in advance, Weed announced that he would play Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” “in its entirety later this evening.”