Friday, January 16, 2015

Arbitron Trends, '74-'76

Five book trends, October/November '74 to October/November '76 (there were only two Arbitron ratings periods per year at that time).

A big spurt for KAUM in '75, a  nice bump for KCOH, too.  KYND continued to dominate the Beautiful Music field as it would do for another several years.  KILT-AM (still rock at that time) holding out against all competitors but KRBE nipping at its heels especially in teens.  KLYX was running the NBC News format at that time and had not yet switched to Majic 102 so KYOK continued to dominate the Black listening audience numbers.

From a special edition of Radio and Records, the Industry's Newspaper, 'Arbitron Breakouts, October/November '76' devoted exclusively to reports like this on the top 75 markets.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

KYOK Mobile Studio

These pictures are from March, 1978.

Don Nash, Chief Engineer of KYOK in the 70s, built the studio which was in use frequently.  The turntables and cart machines were DC because AC wasn't stable enough back then.  Don reports there were frequent breakdowns of equipment which necessitated rebuilding the whole studio including the console within about 2 years.

The studio could be taken out cruising around Loop 610 and never lose a signal (the receiver was on One Shell, the tallest building in town at the time), but if they got too far west they had to pull over and raise the antenna.

When Don started at KYOK in 1971 he had a staff of four, necessary to operate the station at night.  By the time he left in 1980 he was the only person on the engineering staff.  He had designed and built a totally automated system which he wound up selling to Potomac Instruments of Silver Spring, MD.  He then left KYOK and went to work for Potomac for 10 years where he developed their RC-16 Remote Control System as Chief Digital Design Engineer.

As a side note, he was into computers early.  He bought one of the first Altair computers (serial # 26) which he took time off from KYOK to drive to Albuquerque to pick up.

KYOK was the last station Don worked at.  Previously he had been at WTOC (now WTKS), Savannah, GA, WRIP (now WYDN) Chattanooga, WEAM (now WZHF) Arlington, VA, WOKO (now WOPG), Albany, NY, KTLK (now KKZN) Denver, and WINQ, Tampa, before getting the offer from KYOK which was owned by the Starr Brothers at the time.  He served as either Chief or Assistant Chief at all those stations except the first one.  After he got into design work he let his license lapse.  He's retired now, living overseas, and maintains this website.  I am grateful to him for sharing these pictures and history.