KMPS Memories

I was taken aback for a second then came right back with "Hi Phil, Ed from KMPS with your morning wakeup call." We talked for a second or two and I had to get the news on, had to rush off the phone. Did the news, it's around 5:00am already and George Garrett walks in the building and says "did YOU call Phil? " I said "Yes." George says "Did YOU make sure he was awake?" I told him we talked for a minute or two he says to call him back and make sure. Well, I will be whipped. I called Phil back and he was asleep so this time I talk to him and tell him the time and we talk about Johnny Carson which he watches every night. That's the reason for the phone call every morning. I was assured this time Phil was fully awake and on his way.

Ed Dunaway

More from Ed:

Hi all,

"Big Ed" here.

Been a long long time. I just wanted to say HELLO

I never will Forget my incredible experience at KMPS EVER.

I met and worked with some of the most talented personalities, the best sales department, PD, traffic, and support staff ever.

Everyone who was there in the long term and the short helped build a Dynasty the has endured to this day.

I am Real Proud to have been a part of it.

Ron I do remember the days at KGA Spokane.

What Fun Remember the Bingo Money Game Cool! My First Remotes!

I hate to say this, I really wanted to work at KAYO at the time. I remember my Dad listening to it when I was growing up in Seattle. But it just didn't work out that way.

I am so glad I ended up at KMPS I met so many cool listeners and made so many Life Long friends both on the air and off.

To me It is a time I will never forget. I spent a Great Deal of my Adult Life at KMPS.

Oh not to Forget all the Fairs we ended up at either. Kinda miss the fair season, Kinda.

Remotes at the KINGDOME Remember, Dan Fast Jingles I Love IT!

Oh Yeah SCONES Bar B Q Pete's The Cabin The Remote Trailer Harbor Island Record

Giveaways What's a CD? Will the last one out of Seattle turn off the lights. The Lawman 1000 Our First KMPS Picnic Glad handing smiling and making friends Wow

For me it was always about the Fun and the work. Great Days, Great!

I Miss it sometimes mind YOU only sometimes...............

For the last 12 years I have worked with the Auburn School District. I teach two classes

and run a theater as a Technical Director in charge of crews. Kinda like a PD.

So I am not far from the creative side of things and every once in a while the kids ask me to do voice parts for the shows which I jump at the chance to do. Me a Ham, No!

All in all my days at KMPS have made me a far better person today.

Thinking back on those days I wouldn't change not one thing.

I am so glad I was there.

Thanks again all it was a Blast, maybe we can do it again someday.

So to all of YOU

Past & Present

May the Universe Protect YOU and Smile on YOU Always.

To those we have Lost: I Miss YOU !

"Big ED" Dunaway

I really enjoy reading everyone's memories of the early days at KMPS. I love reading Ron Norwood's posts. I don't think that Ron has been given the credit he deserves for the success KMPS enjoys today. His love of the station is obvious from those posts and it still lives today.

I left KMPS in the early 80's to pursue a career as a Program Director cause I always thought I could do it better than Ron did!! Ha!! Don't we all feel that way about our PD's? But Ron was one of the first people, in my memory, to apply computer technology to programming music. And, boy was I glad, because Gary Vance and I used to spend HOURS sitting around the conference table stamping the date & time on 3 x 5 cards, pasting them to sheets of paper, and then running them through the copy machine to be placed in the control room. I used to think he was nuts cause it would make the sound of the station too rigid and stuffy. But Ron knew something we didn't know. Actually, he knew a lot of things we didn't know, but the one thing he figured out before many others in radio, was that if you rotated your music based on popularity, i.e. rotate the most popular songs the most, it would keep people tuned to the station longer because they were guaranteed to hear their favorite songs almost every time they tuned in!! What a concept. He even developed his own computer program for achieving those goals. Man I bet he wishes he had applied for a copy write and service mark on those programs. I might be wrong, but I think he was doing this long before Selector came into being!! My years of programming country music stations since leaving KMPS have given me a sense of just how good Ron was in those days. Ahead of his time in many ways. Hats off to you Ron. Speaking for myself, I owe much of the success I've enjoyed over the last 20 years to what I learned from you, even if I didn't realize it at the time.

Since 1987 (!) I've been the PD here at KLOG/KUKN in Kelso and Longview, WA. I got to put our country station, KUKN (Cookin' Country), on the air about 15 years ago, and it's been the 16 hundred pound gorilla in the market ever since. I now work for the son of the man who hired me, and it's a great family operation. I also created a Rock-AC mix format for our AM station, KLOG, and it does very well. We just managed to get rid of Entercom-who owned the other 4 stations in the market. We'll be sorry to see them go. We couldn't have asked for better competition. We've had a lot of help through the years from Jaye, Becky and some other super people at Broadcast Programming (Now JRN).

We're all local, no satellite. Voice tracks? You bet! But all local, and all done the same day.

Laura has a little antique store in Castle Rock, where we've had a home for 13 years, and she’s doing fine.

Anyway, I'm 61, been doing this for 41 years! And there's no end in sight. And I've always looked up to Jim Williams and Gary Vance like older brothers.

Remember the time Harper did the Thousand Dollar Phone Call and gave away the money?

He made the call, did the opening schtick, asking "what's your favorite radio station?" The guy on the phone said, "I don't know, what do you want me to say?"

It was the only time I saw Jaye Albright get really hacked! (Of course he never had to pull carts out of the library with Jim...)

I was the second of a number of program directors at KMPS. My tenure ran from February 14, 1977 to January 30, 1985, just a few weeks shy of eight years. KMPS began as a country station in 1975 when Hercules Broadcasting out of Sacramento bought KOL AM/FM, making the AM country and the FM Beautiful music as KEUT-FM. Why KMPS calls? I'm not really sure. However, Manning Slater personally told me that MPS were NOT his initials. He told me that being Jewish; he didn't have a middle name. KEUT calls were similar to sister station KEWT in Sacramento.

At KMPS's inception Hercules decided to take the KRAK format exactly as it was being done in Sacramento and do the same thing in Seattle. Rick Stewart was brought up from KRAK to be program director under the direction of Jay Hoffer, director of programming for the company. The FM was automated with "Schulke," a beautiful music format that was doing well in Sacramento and across the country.

Prior to the KOL to KMPS switch, the owners of KAYO decided to clean house. They got rid of all the old hillbilly jocks and really cleaned up the station under the direction of program director Ben Peyton. KAYO was a great sounding modern country station similar to many big city stations.

From 1975 to 1976 KMPS battled KAYO without much success. KMPS couldn't seem to beat KAYO. In the early part of 1977-KMPS management decided that something needed to be done and started looking for a new program director. I was hired out of Spokane from KGA where we had just taken the station #1 in total persons 12+ with a modern country format. Jim McGovern flew over to meet with me and see if I was interested in taking over KMPS and defeating KAYO. I accepted the challenge on the condition that Sacramento relinquish control of the programming and that I was in total charge of the station's sound.

So what was wrong with the sound of KMPS that they couldn't defeat KAYO? Actually the station sounded great! The music was good and the announcers were great, especially during the day with Rick Stewart, Art Lind and Lee Rogers. They had some hokey sayings like the "KMPS Corral of Country Hits" and other outdated country sayings, but nothing really all that bad. The problem was this: listeners were used to an old time traditional station and apparently were quite happy with the old KAYO that featured Buck Richey, Bobby Wooten, and Gary Vance. KAYO had changed the sound of the station to match the new KMPS and listeners didn't seem to like either one, but KAYO was already the market leader and listeners stayed with the station.

I'm not sure what this would be called today, but I called my programming strategy a "backward flank." I totally threw out the KRAK format at KMPS and the station went traditional with Ernest Tubb, Hank Thompson, Hank Snow, Webb Pierce and a good helping of traditional oldies. My intention was to snag all the old disaffected KAYO listeners with a sound that they were familiar with, beat KAYO with them and then slowly swing back to a modern country format. There are samples of both formats in Jim Williams' "KMPS 10th anniversary special."

On top of the format changes, we were out all over town. When I first got to Seattle, KMPS was the only station in town doing remotes. We were at the country shows at the Riverside; we were at the county and state fairs. Lee Rogers "and his band Stampede Pass" were all over the area doing shows and promoting the station. We went out and got new listeners one at a time. Our first ARB under the new "old" format we defeated KAYO.

The KMPS morning Show 1977 to 1985
>From the Pee Dee's perspective

Upon taking over the programming of KMPS in February of 1977, my first job was to take care of the morning show. I don't recall that the morning show had any particular problems, except that the morning guy was my predecessor as program director. The owner of the station, Manning Slater, made it clear what he wanted. He wanted a new morning show in place. The morning man was a great guy and a very good air talent, it was just awkward having him there and dismantling his format. Fortunately he went back to KRAK in Sacramento to work for the company under the legendary Jay Hoffer.

The morning man was replaced with Don Kennedy. Don and I worked in the Eugene, Oregon market at the same time and had garnered a mutual respect for each other. Don was the program director of top 40 KASH-AM and I was the PD at country formatted KORE AM/FM. Don was a real promoter and wheeler-dealer. I thought he would be great as a promotion manager and morning talent. About a week into Don's tenure, I could see that I had made a mistake! Don Kennedy was a good promotion person, but not what we were looking for in a morning person (whatever that was!)

In 1977 KMPS was operating with KEUT-FM. KEUT did pretty well against KSEA in the beautiful music battle. The main announcer at KEUT was Phil Harper. Phil was a "Grizzly Adams" type guy with a full beard, lumberjack clothes and, on occasion, barefoot especially in the summer. I knew that Phil was one of the guys that made up the famous 62 KGW in Portland. I offered the morning show to Phil and he reluctantly accepted. Don Kennedy remained as promotions and Phil Harper joined Carolyn Duncan on traffic and Don Riggs with the news for the KMPS morning show. The show took off slow but sure. We knew that the decision was a good one. All you heard about was "Carolyn, Don and Phil," and what they said that morning!

The combination of Carolyn, Don & Phil went on for a few years until Carolyn left the station to move elsewhere with her husband. Patti Par was a weekend talent (and the program director's Fiancée) when she was tapped to replace Carolyn Duncan as the morning traffic lady. This is where the KMPS morning show really took off. "Phil, Don, and Patti." Three people just got on the radio, were real with each other and had a good time. Sometimes very real personal things were said about themselves and their families. This just endeared the audience even more to this trio. Patti told me that sometimes she would get off the air, and her sides were actually hurting from laughing so much! Phil disliked formatted "live" radio so much that his style was to be a real person on the radio. There was nobody like Phil. One of the things about Phil is that when he sold something on the radio, people went out and bought it. Phil could motivate people and move product.

One of the joys in working with Phil was that he would come in my office 2-3 times a month and quit. He was a successful talent in voice-over and he didn't like working with formats. Finally after several years of great morning radio, Phil actually quit!

The president of the company came up with a man who had done mornings at Metromedia Radio in Los Angeles and New York City. Jay Lawrence. Working with Jay was a real roller coaster ride. He did some things on the air that took your breath away. The man was brilliant. Jay also polarized the audience. People either really loved him or really disliked him. Jay, Patti and Don did a radio soap opera that rivaled anything on the radio in Seattle. The soap opera was "Days of Lake Sammamish Hospital and Airline." One of the characters was Patti Par as "Wanda Fuca." Live remotes from clubs and the top of the Space Needle brought the morning show and it's listeners together. This morning show was really working!

Meanwhile, the suits at headquarters were positive that KRPM-FM would beat us if we didn't stop doing the personality thing on the FM in the morning. They decided to keep Jay, Patti and Don on KMPS-AM and do a new "less talk" morning show on KMPS-FM coupled with the "12 in a row" format. Brady Wright was chosen to host with Abby Kaplan as his newsperson. While the two of them put together a good morning show, the AM/FM morning show was wisely reunited after I left the station.

Near the end of Jay Lawrence's tenure at KMPS, we discovered that he was negotiating with KVI to be their morning man in a country format. We felt that Jay lacked loyalty to the station and would move even at the station's expense. We terminated our relationship!

I'll never forget the day I met Randy Evans (Ichabod Caine)! We were doing a live broadcast at the Puyallup fair and this funky looking dude walked up to the booth and was introduced to me as Ichabod Caine who used to do mornings on KUPL-FM. At the time Icky was making a living loading trucks for a moving company. Icky and I really hit it off and I tucked him away in the back of my mind as a possible morning man at KMPS. At the time, we were considering what to do with Jay and the KVI situation. The afternoons on KMPS-AM opened up. I snapped up Ichabod and put him in afternoons until the morning show situation was resolved. Jay Lawrence left and Ichabod Caine was the new morning person on KMPS AM/FM.

My Hero

Since Jim Williams keeps posting the ramblings that I have written, I'd like to add another chapter to the history of KMPS. Yes, the talent and brilliance of the people at KMPS in the air and sales staff would take your breath away. My God, what a team! For most of the history of the station we were #1 in adults 25-54 in a market the size of Seattle. I also feel that we never would have achieved what we did without the help and guidance of one person. That one person was Jay Q. Berkson, simply known as "Jay Q," president of Affiliated Broadcasting, which was a subsidiary of Affiliated Publications, publishers of the Boston Globe. Affiliated Broadcasting owned KMPS from 1978 to around 1987.

Most people in and out of KMPS never knew that the real guiding force of the station's success was really in the hands of Jay Q. As program director, I spoke with Jay Q probably 3-4 times a week discussing promotions, air staff, and the general direction of the station. It was Jay Q that got us out of that toilet on Harbor Island into brand new studios with state of the art equipment. He would always ask me what I needed to win, and if the requests seem halfway plausible, we'd get what we wanted. He would never pull rank on me and impose his ideas. He did whatever he could to make us a winner. Jay Q got us the money to throw a free picnic for our listeners and Reba Mc Entire $25,000 to headline the show. He was the one who bought the services of Bill Moyes who researched our music. He was the one who got me started in call-out research as one of the first in the market and the country. Jay Q sent us books all the time with the latest ideas. One of them was about "positioning" which is still valid today. From this book we coined KMPS "The Country Station."

It was Jay Q who encouraged me on the path to success and backed it up with hard cash.

So who really ran the place? Jim McGovern? Jay Q? Actually Jim was a general manager who was ahead of his time in the art of delegation. He allowed the station to be run on a day to day basis by the team of the program director, the business manager, the sales manager and Jay Q. Jim was a visionary and not a day to day operator. Jim and I never discussed programming. Although we had a good relationship, I doubt that I spent 15 minutes a week in his presence. Jim spent most of his time with sales and dealing with the movers and shakers. Jim was certainly one of the nicest guys I ever worked with. The arrangement seemed to work for everybody. Thanks Jay Q! It was great working with you!

There are some things about the morning show at KMPS I will always remember. It was probably the among the most creative shows of my life. Don and Patti were brilliant. Following Phil was not easy, for a while people kept saying Phil did it this way and Phil was, indeed, exceptional. I was, of course, humble and said that's great if it was good enough for Phil by God it's good enough for me. We were allowed by Ron to just "do it" whatever came to mind, and we were funny. We cracked each other up. It was the obvious, unshackled, non phony relationship between the people on the show, the people in the station (we used everyone, Charlye comes to mind, she was funny and natural) everything we did was just natural.

I tried to take a bit we did "you know you're in a second class restaurant when", " you know the plane is in trouble when" etc etc etc to other stations and it was never as successful because Patti and Don were the combination that made it work. There was just something about the chemistry. Phil obviously started it and I inherited a couple of brilliant bananas, Patti and Don and a programmer who allowed us to be a success. I got so pissed when some genius decide to split the two stations. I remember also asking for a raise about the same time (strange coincidence) that the Gene Autry
station asked me to do mornings. I had worked for Bill Ward before (in L.A. KLAC) and what with the am/fm split at KMPS.

It seemed a good time to move on. As it turned out Ward changed his mind, I wound up in Phoenix and have been here ever since. 15 years with KTAR doing talk. Sometimes full time sometimes part time. Oddly enough, Bill Ward's program Director for KVI was Scott Burton. A lesson for us all, don't piss off anyone if you can help it. Scott Burton became one of the program directors I've outlived here at KTAR.

I could have worked with Patti and Don for a long time. They made everyone who did that show successful (ain't humility fun). I guess Ron convinced the powers that were to put the stations back together and Icky was a great success.

It was a great time for radio and a programming philosophy that allowed for a Phil Harper, a Jay Lawrence, and on and on. Thanks y'all

Jay