Construction Zones (part two)
In Construction Zones (part one) I had written about several radio stations being turned over to me for some major construction work even though they were doing quite well already. Management had their reasons, and I was up for all kinds of radio projects if they made any sense at all.
When I left Indianapolis and Fairbanks Broadcasting for San Diego and the beginning of my new consulting career, I will always remember Jim Hilliard running along behind my car as I was leaving yelling … Are you crazy, are you out of your mind, don’t leave, don’t leave. Don’t you know that the California sun is going to get in your eyes and you’ll just end up on the front cover of some magazine with your broadcasting career in shambles all around you.
Well some of that wasn’t quite true. But I did leave, I did end up on the cover of a magazine, and my career has always been in shambles.
Hey three out of four ain’t all that bad.
Back then I was very lucky to start out my new career having the legendary Jim West represent me. Jim was the only sales guy I ever met that could get certified checks hand delivered to him without ever leaving the office. He was the King of giving good phone.
One day Jim called me and said he just got off the phone with a guy named Bill Lacy. Bill had just bought an A/C station in Oklahoma City called KLNK.
Jim had done some work with this guy in Enid Oklahoma earlier where he had owned a little station. But now he was excitedly calling Jim because as he said, hey I’m in the big time now, and I want to be the KVIL of Oklahoma City and I want George Johns, and I know you can give him to me.
Jim told him I was pretty busy and he thought he probably wouldn’t be able to talk me into going to Oklahoma City anyway.
But he he told Bill he had some guys that had worked very closely with George that he could send and they would do a great job for him. Nope Bill said, I want George and I’ll pay double his going rate to get him.
Needless to say the next thing I knew I was flying into Oklahoma City and the very next morning bright and early I was standing in Bill Lacy’s brand new office in his spanking brand new location.
Bill seemed very excited to see me but kept pacing and muttering as we chatted … Damn, George Johns is in my office, damn. In between mutterings Bill explained to me that he wanted to change the call letters from KLNK to KZBS for two reasons. He had visited Zuma Beach in Malibu once and totally fell in love with it. The other reason was KLNK spelled clink or clunk to him and wanted his station to be a power house not a clink or clunk.
He wanted KZBS to be as close to sounding like KVIL in Dallas as he could get it and he was willing to pay what ever it cost to get it there.
About then Bill turned to me and said, I am so excited about this project but one thing bothers me. I asked what that was and he said I have heard about you for years. I’ve always admired you and I think I have been one of your biggest fans. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to work on a project with you. In fact I think I may have just bought this radio station in OK City because I knew I couldn’t get you to come to Enid, is that nuts or what..
So what’s bothering you I asked. He said if your as big as I think you are what the hell are you doing in my office in Oklahoma City. I responded with, don’t worry about it Bill it won’t happen often.
Bill had just purchased this station from a big radio research guy named Bill Moyes and it was doing fairly well with it’s highly researched music, and very laid back air talent. But Bill didn’t care he just wanted to blow it all up and start his station with his call letters and a whole new staff.
We talked him out of that by saying Bill lets just kinda evolve it, but do it in a very exciting way. I personally have never been into revolution much, I have always liked evolution much much better.
I explained to Bill that if we evolve it, you get to hang on to the revenue and maybe we can save some of the decent ratings that the station already has so we don’t have to start with a 0 share.
This project turned out to be my favorite evolution project of all time, and it took a crazy owner crazy enough to let us do it. Little did we know at the time that what goes up must come down. I guess it’s just the laws of nature at work.
The first thing we did was bring in a bunch of guys from our travel team. In those days we had guys stashed all over the country in some smaller markets just keeping their chops warm waiting for the next big event.
The local owners in the smaller markets where they were couldn’t believe they had such great talent working at their stations even if it was only for a short period of time.
Just the fact that they were there for a while gave the stations a real good shot at a lot of young up and comers who were attracted to their stations because and wanted to work with some of these pretty famous Jocks. Albeit a lot of them were of the bad boy variety.
I had two special guys working with me back then that headed up most of our projects. My brother Reg was one, and Reid Reker was the other.
Reg and Reid were the masters at handling all the, lets just call them sometimes difficult to handle kind of talent. Although now Reg I think has lost his appetite for most of the jox and their egos
Reid was the one who headed up this project so we get started by bringing in Cat Simon, The Magic Christian, Tony Maddox, Bill Bailey and if memory serves me correctly, I think even The Old Captain, Bill Gardner did a tour of duty there also. Plus we wanted keep one of the KLNK crew named Jan Jefferies who at the time was a decent jock but we had plans to turn into a newsman, which we did and sounded damn good.
Jan later on also turned into a real good team member and we used him a lot in the future as Reid’s right hand guy. I don’t think Oklahoma City was ready for that all star line up. But Bill Lacy was in heaven, I think he felt like he was Jerry Jones
Our first move is to get Cat to record a full four hour show in the production room after hours when no one was around so he could do it in secret.
This show had our new call letters on it, new jingles, new music, plus some very big exciting promos that we had pre cut plus some great contest stuff and even some cool liners.
We strung this tape up on a special tape deck in the on air studio and Reid who was in early had a cart with strange sounding static noises on it that he kept in his pocket.
At around same time each morning he would walk into the studio, tell the current laid back much more music morning guy not to panic, because everything would be back to normal in a moment or two.
Reid would then shove the cart into the machine, play the static on the air and fade up a portion of the new sound under it while fading down the current sound of the station.
There would be Cat just honkin’ talking about Oklahoma, playing cool jingles, promos, and liners, but of course selling the hell out of the new KZBS call letters.
After a while wouldn’ you know it the static would return and the new sound would start fading away and KLNK would fade up again.
I felt sorry for the current morning guy, but he had a nice warm voice and we liked him. Our plan was to team him up with Jan Jefferies in the morning for a huge news sound. He already knew we had plans for him so he was OK with Reid’s everyday interruption but he just didn’t know what the static thing was all about. Nobody did.
Only three of us knew what we were up to and why each time we did it the new sound would last a little bit longer before being over taken by static and the old sound returning.
It kinda sounded like a new entity was trying to take over but the old thing would fight back and take back the station again. It wasn’t long before the station’s phones would be ringing off the hook. The switchboard girl wasn’t in on the deal so she didn’t know what the people were talking about. When she asked the morning guy if he knew what they were talking about he just shrugged his shoulders.
By not telling the switchboard girl what was going on she didn’t have to act so she acted perfectly.
Everyday the new sound would just get longer and longer. People were calling us all day long to warn us that something or somebody was trying to take over the station. Nobody at the station knew anything and just a couple of the new talent were in town and they came in at night to cut promos and learn the board.
It wasn’t long before the papers got wind of it and because nobody at the station could tell them what was going on they demanded to speak to management, but we made sure Bill Lacy was out of town for most of it. So they wrote it up as some kind of a freak sky wave or something.
We did this for a week or so, then one day the new sound never went away and The New KZBS was on the air and sounding good. What a powerful sounding station. What a thrill it was being a part of it. Bill Lacy of course was soon captured on TV reading the now almost famous liner card … We never dreamed nor did we anticipate etc. etc.
But it seems all good things must come to an end my friend.
A few short months later I was having a rare enjoyable dinner with my family at our home in Coronado. The phone rang and because a lot of people didn’t have the number I answered it. All I hear are excited people yelling and screaming. It seems the Oklahoma crew has just received a great gift in the form of an enormous rating book.
They are all in the conference room drinking champagne while they wait for the limos to pick them up and take them to a big celebration dinner.
They were kind enough to call me and share their joy. I wished them big congratulations,hung up and went back to my dinner feeling very good about it all.
It had been a fun ride and the staff deserved the great results. They call one more time still yelling and screaming as they head out to the limos and the big night ahead of them
I get to finish my dinner finally, but hey I always have time for good rating books. But are you ready for this, about an hour later the phone rings again but this time there is no joy only anger. It seems that things are not OK in OK City. They have called back to say they have all quit.
Yep in a little over an hour it went from ecstasy to, were outta here!
It seems at the big rating dinner when it came time for some little speeches Bill lacy the owner stood up on the dinner table, yes right on top of it and proceeded to tell the staff how he was sole responsible for the whole win, and he took all the credit with a mean and nasty voice.
Don’t you just love owners. Their only part in the play is to take the risk but I guess don’t have anything else to do so they whine like little school girls about it the whole time and some of them just seem to go out of their way to screw it all up.
But hey I’m thinkin’ … Owners For President! Wait a minute didn’t we have one of those already.
MORE @ www.georgejohns.com
