List of Tulsa-area HD radio stations
List of Tulsa-area radio stations - with links to station web sites.
A small sample of KRSC's local, original programming: "The Local Flavors Show", all Oklahoma music from all genres on Mondays with Davit Souders at 7 pm; "Hillbilly Happy Hour" is old and new music with Johnney Hall, Saturday at 9 am. "All That Jazz" with Dan & Debbie Kara is great straight-ahead jazz Saturday at 3 pm. "The Meaning of Life" is hosted by Dr. Jim Ford. He serves up a different philosophical theme along with illustrative and free-associative alternative, classic rock, blues and soul, Sundays, 3-5 pm. "Saturday Nite Trip" at 7 pm is the best in Electronica. "Spectral Voyages" at 2 am offers an hour of ambient, electronic music from around the world! Here's the schedule. Folks at KRSC who have contributed to TTM include Dale ("Melvin Simpkins") McKinney and Bryan Crain. Listen online.
The syndicated portion of KWGS' HD2 straight-ahead jazz content by JazzWorks can be sampled online at their site. HD3 is the "Ideas" channel. Playlists for local Saturday night music programming can be found on KWGS' web site (look to the left).
Locally-produced KWGS HD1 programming includes: Rich Fisher's "StudioTulsa", intelligent talk at 11:30 am & 7:30 pm weekdays
KWTU-HD2 is Café from XPoNentialRadio (sample it online; playlist), an eclectic blend of blues, rock, world, folk, and alternative country---excellent listening, somewhat KPIGish (see internet stations below). KWTU-HD3 is World Radio from the BBC.
I remember KCNW being "countrypolitan" a format big in Kansas City that mixed country with light rock and worked! They and KTOW in Sand Springs were KVOO's attempted rivals.
During late '72 to early '74 we went from being Tulsa's Countrypolitan Giant to Tulsa's Good Music Station 1300. Toward late '73 (I believe) San Antonio Broadcasting came in and purchased KCNW and sister station KMOD (which was not on the air). San Antonio Broadcasting later changed its name to Clear Channel Communications. That outfit has come a long way, too. KCNW was a great place to work and I count myself greatly honored to have worked with a number of radio-TV legends during those years.
(from Guestbook 3) Don Lundy said: The call letters for radio stations, in some cases, stood for a slogan or ownership. For instance, WLS in Chicago stood for "World's Largest Store"(was owned by Sears, Roebuck and Company); WGN,also in the Windy City, stood for "World's Greatest Newspaper" (it was owned by the Tribune). Do you know the derivation of these Tulsa radio call letters?
1) KRMG 4) KFMJ
Where are those KRMG voices of the 70's - Don Cummins and Ed Brocksmith? Does KRMG still own KWEN? I heard Boaz Raushwerger at the KWGS tribute in '97 - where is he? Is KRMG all-news yet? Does KVOO still broadcast in AM Stereo - they were one of the first though the AM Stereo thing never caught on.
Don Lundy sent me the answers to the radio questions he posed a couple of weeks back. Here it is: "As Jim Back noted KRMG was for Kerr-McGee, owned by U.S. Senator Robert S. Kerr and his oil partner, Dean McGee. KAKC was for Avey, Kellough and Condon. Sam Avey was a Tulsa entrepreneur, owned the old Coliseum on 4th Street and Cincinnati (or Detroit) that burned down in the 50s, think Kellough (sp?) was a local businessman and Glen Condon was news director at KRMG in the early years. I believe this is correct, it was all part of a unit on Oklahoma history we took in the sixth grade mandated by the state. For some reason, this has all stuck with me. I had forgotten about KVOO, the Voice of Oklahoma. (according to Betty Boyd, the "KIND Voice of Oklahoma) KOME stood for Oklahoma's Magic Empire, which Tulsa was called in the 50's. KFMJ- it was owned by Tulsa auto dealer and his wife: Fred and Mary Jones. And, of course, KELi's predecessor at 1430KC was KTUL radio. (And KRAV=George KRAVis.)
I think KKUL was the soul station that took over KORU's frequency. Either Matt Bunyan of Starship Records or the late Honest John Foutz - told me of going out there to deliver records or spots. Said the studio was in a ratty old house - way out East of town by the tower. ...And to think I can still remember when you wanted to listen to classical music at night in the early 70's - KWGS, KAKC-FM, KORU, and I think the FM station in Bartleville had this every evening. All went away in time and we got commercial classical KCMA - who I guess has since been sold. Who does play classical music in Tulsa now? (KWTU; see top of page)
(from Guestbook 11) Jim Back said: Saw a comment in the Oklahoman about KOMA that I did not know. Article says the original call letters were KFJF. It was sold to the Griffin Grocery Co. of Muskogee for $10,000. The article doesn't say when that happened, but here's the interesting part: Says Griffin changed the call letters to KOMA to match their market area: K(ansas), O(klahoma), M(issouri), and A(rkansas). I always thought it was just "oma" as in "Oklahoma."
(from Guestbook 18) Mike Bruchas said: A geezerly digression on KWGS from me, too.
At the 50th reunion in '97 I was surprised how automated the station is now - back in the late 60's/70's and certainly back when a lot of post WWII guys/spouses were in school in the 50's - KWGS had a seemingly humongous staff to do all. I guess that is one thing that was brought home at the reunion - a lot of us started to learn our crafts and started our lifelong professions at KWGS - no matter the generation. We also had a chance to make a lot of mistakes and the public was generally forgiving - so that they got their classical music and/or heavy metal not offered elsewhere. There were a lot of programming slots to fill live or edited-to-tape "back then" - I am surprised now how little local original programming there is on KWGS, though the station is a well-oiled machine and sounds network quality generally. I went to TU to "learn radio", my voice never dropped to the stentorian levels of a lot of the 50's grads and so I slummed over into being a TV techie. But there is/was a great spirit of ALL of us having served at KWGS - and had a good time doing it. I hope TU's next generation of radio/tv grads get it too. I also heard "subterrania" in a form is back on a TU cable radio station on campus (broadcast by wire from dorm to dorm not off a real antenna for the general populace) but from the undergrads I spoke with at KWGS - it ain't perceived as "real radio". I remember Frank Elardo, Matt Bunyan, Tommy Roberts and others almost 25 years ago "bending the envelope" on KWGS Fri. & Sat. nights broadcasting "subterrania" music of the Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Joplin (no not Scott)- I guess what goes around, comes around!
Reading about Gary Chew brought back memories (he was my boss at KWGS.) Although this is a T-town TV board, please indulge my brief radio digression. I did news and "Sunday Sounds"(jazz/classical music mix segment) at KWGS for several semesters. Still remember Ed Dumit's Wollensak reel-to-reel recording of proper pronunciations. I learned my lesson - always listen to the tape! A fellow coworker at KWGS duped me into thinking "Modest P. Moussorsky" was really pronounced "MODEST PEE MOUSE-or-skee," and that's how I pronounced it. Got plenty of calls on that one. Mr. Chew, in his very urbane way, gently corrected me next time he saw me. I also locked myself out of the control room (where the automated NPR machines now sit at KWGS) taking a bathroom break while a record was on the air. I called TU Security to unlock the door..but they never came. I struggled with the control room door for 45 minutes. The recording ran out and I could hear the player's needle bouncing off the turntable platter's post: "SSHHH-SHH-SSSHHH." Dead air. All the phone lines lit up (didn't think anybody was listening on Sunday mornings!) I finally broke down the door, ran toward the turntable, potted down, and plopped another record on. Mr. Chew "counseled" me on that one, too. It's funny thinking about it now, but I was terrified of Mr. Chew back then.
Great stuff from Tulsey native, Terry Young!
In an effort to get more folks on the air and still be paid - we didn't have
volunteers on air shifts at KWGS when I was
If you did remote recording with the 50 lb. Magnecorders like Paul Goelz or myself - that was a freebie for the experience. Ditto later when a lot of staff did any news coverage - most had their own Sony 100 or 110 cassette recorders like Steve Smith, Lynn Wells or myself. Or we traded them to each other. Local radio "real news guys" like from KVOO and KRMG always treated KWGS greenhorns with respect - many had been in their shoes not long before. Though KWGS had a minimal budget from TU then - we had long distance service and a primitive phone hybrid for recording "actualities" and "voicers". Do you remember when radio phone patched broadcasts had that annoying beep in the background? The phone companies made that part of any non-surreptious phone conversation recording. I can remember when something happened in Alaska at Amchitka - either a volcano or a nuke carrying plane crash - we did several live and taped feeds via the phone lines. I also remember being asked to do a phoner with a local stripper - who had paraded topless downtown by the Mayo into the hands of the forewarned and waiting Tulsa PD. She was protesting her right of freedom of speech for undress....Yeah, sure. She was very logical in her reasoning but we decided not to air her soundbite. It really wasn't KWGS - didn't think we had a lot of topless dancer classical music fans - maybe for Subterrania.....
The station was located in a converted garage behind a commercial building at about 12th and Harvard. It was all reel-to-reel "elevator music." I was 18 (turned 19 during the stint) and it was my summer job in 1967. We had an on air "personality" named Jenny Wren. As I recall, she was a friend of Mike Flynn, who worked at KRAV at the time. I was really good at loading those huge reels so the 17 or so people listening to our station could hear Billy Vaughn, Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo. My station breaks were classics. NEVER could say KOCW.... always transposed and called it KCOW. I guess my COW fixation was a precursor to my being full of BULL as a politician!
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At KCNW we were honored to have some great air talents:
(from Guestbook
5) Mike Bruchas said:
KWGS - so many stories and so
many generations of folks worked there. When I was an undergrad - the success
of Bill Hyden and this new kid, Bob Losure - were cited by Ed Dumit -
on where someone could go from KWGS if they had the talent, voice and brains.
(Oh, yes - I listened to KTBA, too, I think it may have been ahead of it's
time, but I also think Bill Hyden was intuitive enough to see a trend changing
in music - to try the format.)
there - Ed Dumit or Bob Lauer worked
out a deal with TU. Minimum wage was $2.20 an hour then - we who pulled air
shifts - split the hourly wage and accepted something like $1.25 an hour
as a condition of being on-air staff.
One more before I give it up tonight. I may be one
of the only Tulsa TV guys who worked for a radio station called KOCW. This
was the predecessor of KMOD. It was owned by Claude Hill, who also
sold radio transmitters (I think the transmitters were CCA).