Prior to my arrival in Denver, I had sent out resumes to just about every radio station in the metropolitan area. There was only one station that contacted me for an interview. It was KLMO-AM in Longmont. The owner called me and asked me to get in touch with him when I had gotten to the area. Since I arrived on July 4th, I knew I would have to wait until the next day to call him and set something up.
I contacted him the morning of July 5th. I was fully expecting to drive up that day to interview. However, he asked me to come in at 9am the next morning. My thinking was, "Okay, I don't have anything else to do today. I'm going to go see 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'" And that's exactly what I did.
Later that night, I tuned in the station. It was running a baseball game. I don't remember who was playing, but I knew that Denver didn't have a MLB team at the time. I didn't know if this was typical programming, so I couldn't tell what I was getting into. At the time, all that mattered was getting a radio job.
Longmont was about 55 miles away from Uncle Ord's house in unincorporated Littleton. (The area is now known as Lone Tree.) I figured that leaving at 7:30am would get me there in plenty of time. BOY! WAS I WRONG!
This would be my first encounter EVER with morning rush traffic. (I didn't even have to deal with this those two times I went to Ft. Worth while I was in college.) One of the things that freaked me out was the speed limit signs that said the minimum allowable speed was 35 mph. I thought, "COME ON, EVERYONE! LET'S GO! OR THE COPS ARE GOING TO GIVE US ALL TICKETS FOR DRIVING TOO SLOW!" (Yes, I actually thought that was possible.)
Once I got past Downtown Denver, I was able to pick up speed. I arrived in Longmont. Fortunately, there was no traffic on the city streets. I got to the station about five minutes before I was to start my interview.
The owner was an older gentleman. He told me that the station had a Country/Western format and that they had a small-town feel. (Okay, I could deal with that.) He said that they ran satellite programming at night. I don't remember too much of the interview. But I do remember he asked me what my expectations were for salary. I told him I wanted $15,000 a year. At KZZO in Clovis, I made a little more than $8,000 a year. I figured that since this station was in a larger market, he could afford to pay me that much.
One thing I realize now is that he did not give me a tour of the station. Years later, when I interviewed at the newsradio station in San Jose, the Program Director gave me a tour. After I was hired and saw him interview other applicants, he made it clear that if he didn't give them a tour, he knew he wasn't going to hire them. That should have been my first indication that I wasn't going to be working at KLMO.
A few days later, he called and said that he had filled the position with someone else. I was actually a little relieved because I didn't want to have to drive all that distance every day to work at a Country/Western station. (Yeah, I know I would have had to find an apartment in Longmont pretty quick, but that would have been at least a month away.) I guess the thing that did me in was my outrageous salary request. I mean, it was rather paltry compared to what Heid was making in Dallas, but I really felt like it was what I was worth.
At the time, I thought I shouldn't have set my sights that high on salary. As usual, I recently did some research on the station. I found out that owner died in 2012 from the effects of Alzheimer's disease. In the obituary, it mentioned that over the years, he had donated more than $3 million to the local museum. Wait, WHAT? That means he totally could have afforded to pay me $15,000 a year! Of course, that would mean he would have had to pay everyone on his staff that same amount of money.
He had owned the station from 1959 to 1998. Apparently, it was a lot more profitable than I ever could have imagined, judging by its simple layout when I was there. I wasn't aware of this, but it was an AM/FM combo. He never mentioned the FM side. This was probably where he made most of the money.
I found an article from December of 2014 that said the FM station was in the process of being sold to another corporation. The stations had since changed their call letters to KKFN-FM and KRCN-AM. The FM station is now a sports talk station and the AM has a business talk format.
But no matter what kind of programming the station had when I interviewed, I was still probably going to get screwed over if they'd hired me.
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