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My first Friday night in Denver, I decided that I wanted to meet someone to go out with. I had been completely out of my element the night before when I went to a club and could not find a way to meet someone there. I figured I would have better luck with something that wasn't available in the small town I came from: telephone personal ads.
I found one 900 number that I could call and listen to a large number of ads. One of the features of this service was that, once you paid their fee, they would connect you directly with the woman you chose from the ads. After listening to the ads, I found one that sounded interesting. Her name was Paz. I actually got to talk to her that night. We arranged to meet at Congress Park in Denver the next day.
On Saturday, I showed up at the park. We managed to find each other. She had long, curly blonde hair and was a little overweight, but it was a muscular overweight, if that makes any sense. She was wearing sunglasses the whole time, so I couldn't see her eyes.
I asked her where she worked. She said she was a travel agent for Travel Travel. She said that she had mentioned that on the phone ad. I didn't recall that detail, but she seemded kind of irritated that I didn't know that. (And actually, I got a chance to listen to her ad again a couple of months later on that service's free line, which plays some of their older ads. She made NO mention of being a travel agent.)
We didn't really talk a lot and it was really hard for me to get any kind of read as to whether or not she liked me. She didn't smile and she never looked directly at me. I actually thought the meeting was a bust.
A few days later, she called me and asked if I wanted to play tennis that Saturday. We would meet again at Congress Park. We would go out to eat after that. I agreed and borrowed a tennis racket from my aunt. I also had to buy some shorts. I actually bought some bicycle pants because they wouldn't show off too much of my (rather pasty white) legs.
When I got to the park on Saturday, it was raining, REALLY HARD! I thought, "Well, there's no way we're going to be playing tennis today." As I waited in my car. I saw the headlights of another car coming up behind me. The car pulled up beside me and the passenger window rolled down. It took me a second, but I realized it was Paz. She wasn't wearing her sunglasses, so I didn't recognize her at first. She said we should just go ahead and go eat. I still needed to change out of my pants. I got into the backseat of her car and asked her to avoid the temptation of looking in the back while I changed. She laughed at that. I don't know if she looked. I was too anxious about changing my pants.
I had found this restaurant called Chives that I thought would be a good place to eat. It wasn't too expensive. We went there and we had a good lunch. We planned to drive over to the park so I could get my car and then we would drive to her house. She said she was living with this woman and her child. She told me she didn't want her to know that she was dating someone, so she wanted me to pretend to be a plumber's assistant who was working to install a bathroom in the basement of her home. I kept asking why we needed to lie to her. She kept saying that she just wouldn't get it, but that we were going to be going out.
At the house, the woman she was living with had a psychology practice and her name was on a sign out in front that indicated she was a Ph.D. There were other people in the house. We went down into the basement. Paz asked me to get a pencil and draw some lines that indicated where the commode was supposed to go and so on. I drew an outside of a toilet tank in the middle of the wall. When the doctor came down to talk to me, I had to act like I knew what I was talking about. I mentioned the proposed location of the toilet, but said that the tank wouldn't be that high, but it would be located there. I felt like I was in an episode of "Cheers."
Paz asked the doctor what was going on with all the people upstairs. She said that they were about to start a meeting. Paz asked if we could take part in the meeting. She said, "No, because it's a meeting for lesbian mothers." I tried really hard to stifle my laughter, but a little blast came out. I don't think the doctor liked me much after that.
Outside the house, we could hear some music coming out of the backyard of a house in the neighborhood. A party was going on. Paz and I crashed it, although I did so reluctantly. There was a live band playing music. They played one song by R.E.M. and referred to the group as their "friends." There was this one person at the party that Paz was talking to. He was apparently gay. At some point, they were having a discussion about bisexuality. Paz turned to me and said, "You're bi, aren't you?" I said no, I wasn't. She said, "It's okay to be bi. Everybody's bi!"
We left the party. Paz said she didn't really like any of the people there. She thought they were stuck up. (While we did crash the party, it wasn't like we were eating up all the food and drinking up all the alcohol.) We started walking. We kept walking and walking through the streets of Denver. It was at this point that she started holding my hand. I was rather surprised by this development, but just went with it. We stopped at an A&W and had hamburgers. Then we walked some more, a LOT more. She said, "I think we walked off those hamburgers." I had no idea where we were at. We finally got back to where we started. I gave her a quick hug at the door and headed out to my car. Even though I had a good time and enjoyed holding hands with her, I was still glad when the date came to an end. I had been through a lot that night.
I continued to date Paz a few more times. I'll go more into detail about that in the next post.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Alternative clubbing in Denver
After I had completed my first radio job interview in the Denver area, I had nothing to do but sit and wait for the owner to call me back. (I did not get the job.) I decided to do something I'd never done before and that was to go to an alternative nightclub. All the so-called clubs in Clovis played either Country/Western or Pop/Rock. I wasn't interested in that because I listened to that all the time at my old radio job.
I got out the Yellow Pages and looked up "Nightclubs." I called a few. One of them turned out to be a fancy dinner club that I would have had to dress all formal for. That certainly was not what I was looking for. After calling a few more, I asked one guy which club featured alternative music. He said "Rock Island." I was able to find them and get the address.
It was in the Downtown Denver area, where I hadn't been yet. Actually, I hadn't been in any part of Denver the city up to this point, except to drive through on I-25. The address was 1614 15th St. I didn't know this at the time, but there were two different sets of streets that were in the teens. There was 13th Street and 13th Avenue, 14th Street and 14th Avenue and so on. There was no 15th Avenue, but there was a 15th Street. I just didn't know how to get to it.
After driving around all over the place, I parked outside a Walgreen's and went inside to ask for directions. I saw this woman at the counter and asked her if she knew where 15th was. She said that Colfax (the street where the pharmacy was located) was actually 15th, but she didn't know where this club was. Just as I was about to leave, she asked, "Did you go to school in New Mexico?" I said, "I went to ENMU." She said, "I graduated from there in 1983 and I saw you almost every day in the cafeteria during lunch." I didn't remember her. I commented on how strange it was that I happened to walk into the place where she worked. I don't know that I could have hooked up with her, but that's not what I was there for. I left the Walgreen's and I never saw her again.
I kept finding 15th St., but every time I drove on it, I wound up on a kind of bridge-like structure that took me out of the Downtown area. I did this back and forth about three times until I noticed that there was a street next to the bridge before I got on. I took that street and I found this place underneath the bridge (which I found out later was called the "aqueduct") where there were a lot of people outside. I yelled out the window, "Is that Rock Island?" They responded affirmatively. The next thing I had to do was find parking. I turned left on the next street and I found where several cars had parked. I parked in the next empty space next to this pickup. There appeared to be plenty of parking spaces on my right side. I went in the club and paid the cover charge.
They were definitely playing my kind of music, but I didn't know what the procedures were for dancing. It wasn't like people were dancing as couples. They danced in groups. I wasn't a part of any group, so I knew I would feel odd going out on the floor and dancing with myself, Billy Idol-style. (Although, that's actually a song about masturbation. I really would have looked weird if I'd started doing that on the dance floor.)
I hung out at the club for about an hour, but I didn't talk to anyone. I was just admiring the atmosphere and the excitement. All of a sudden, a thought occurred to me. I remembered all those empty spaces next to my car. I wondered if all those spaces were empty because they had towed cars away and mine would be the NEXT IN LINE? I ran outside, but my car was still there. Whew! However, I was so shaken by the concept that my car might be towed that I just went home before anything bad happened.
I would go back to Rock Island several times over the next three years. At one point, it had closed and a club with a different name opened in its place. However, the brand recognition of Rock Island was so strong that it reverted back to that name and kept going for the next several years.
A few years after I had left Denver, the city had taken down the aqueduct when it was building Coors Field. This probably made it a lot easier to find. I actually liked that I had to do a lot of hard work to locate it. It made it seem like it was really underground, although everyone in town seemed to know about it. The club finally closed in 2006. Their website indicates that they are expecting to return, but it's been nine years.
I know that there are a lot of people in Denver who look back very fondly at the time spent there. It's kind of odd to think about how perfectly I fit in back then, but wouldn't now.
I got out the Yellow Pages and looked up "Nightclubs." I called a few. One of them turned out to be a fancy dinner club that I would have had to dress all formal for. That certainly was not what I was looking for. After calling a few more, I asked one guy which club featured alternative music. He said "Rock Island." I was able to find them and get the address.
It was in the Downtown Denver area, where I hadn't been yet. Actually, I hadn't been in any part of Denver the city up to this point, except to drive through on I-25. The address was 1614 15th St. I didn't know this at the time, but there were two different sets of streets that were in the teens. There was 13th Street and 13th Avenue, 14th Street and 14th Avenue and so on. There was no 15th Avenue, but there was a 15th Street. I just didn't know how to get to it.
After driving around all over the place, I parked outside a Walgreen's and went inside to ask for directions. I saw this woman at the counter and asked her if she knew where 15th was. She said that Colfax (the street where the pharmacy was located) was actually 15th, but she didn't know where this club was. Just as I was about to leave, she asked, "Did you go to school in New Mexico?" I said, "I went to ENMU." She said, "I graduated from there in 1983 and I saw you almost every day in the cafeteria during lunch." I didn't remember her. I commented on how strange it was that I happened to walk into the place where she worked. I don't know that I could have hooked up with her, but that's not what I was there for. I left the Walgreen's and I never saw her again.
I kept finding 15th St., but every time I drove on it, I wound up on a kind of bridge-like structure that took me out of the Downtown area. I did this back and forth about three times until I noticed that there was a street next to the bridge before I got on. I took that street and I found this place underneath the bridge (which I found out later was called the "aqueduct") where there were a lot of people outside. I yelled out the window, "Is that Rock Island?" They responded affirmatively. The next thing I had to do was find parking. I turned left on the next street and I found where several cars had parked. I parked in the next empty space next to this pickup. There appeared to be plenty of parking spaces on my right side. I went in the club and paid the cover charge.
They were definitely playing my kind of music, but I didn't know what the procedures were for dancing. It wasn't like people were dancing as couples. They danced in groups. I wasn't a part of any group, so I knew I would feel odd going out on the floor and dancing with myself, Billy Idol-style. (Although, that's actually a song about masturbation. I really would have looked weird if I'd started doing that on the dance floor.)
I hung out at the club for about an hour, but I didn't talk to anyone. I was just admiring the atmosphere and the excitement. All of a sudden, a thought occurred to me. I remembered all those empty spaces next to my car. I wondered if all those spaces were empty because they had towed cars away and mine would be the NEXT IN LINE? I ran outside, but my car was still there. Whew! However, I was so shaken by the concept that my car might be towed that I just went home before anything bad happened.
I would go back to Rock Island several times over the next three years. At one point, it had closed and a club with a different name opened in its place. However, the brand recognition of Rock Island was so strong that it reverted back to that name and kept going for the next several years.
A few years after I had left Denver, the city had taken down the aqueduct when it was building Coors Field. This probably made it a lot easier to find. I actually liked that I had to do a lot of hard work to locate it. It made it seem like it was really underground, although everyone in town seemed to know about it. The club finally closed in 2006. Their website indicates that they are expecting to return, but it's been nine years.
I know that there are a lot of people in Denver who look back very fondly at the time spent there. It's kind of odd to think about how perfectly I fit in back then, but wouldn't now.
Monday, July 6, 2015
My first radio job interview in the Denver area
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.
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.
Friday, July 3, 2015
The Road to Denver
I left Clovis, NM on July 1st, 1988. I packed the rest of my belongings in my car and drove to Artesia for the weekend. My parents had left for a vaction on a cruise ship to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. That meant I was in the house all by myself that weekend. I didn't really go out and do anything because I didn't have any money. My last paycheck from the station wasn't going to be available until later that afternoon, but I didn't want to wait an unknown number of hours to leave town. Besides, I would have needed all that money for when I got to Denver.
Because I had no cash on me, there was really nothing for me to do but get my stuff organized for the move. The only thing I actually remember doing was finding a box of brownie mix in the pantry and making some brownies.
On Sunday the 3rd, I drove back to Clovis, stopped by the station and picked up the check. I only had to deal with the part-timers there. I probably didn't stick around more than 3 minutes. I then drove to Fort Sumner and spent the night at my Grandma Bend's house.
The next morning, Independence Day, I set out for Denver. Grandma Bend gave me some food to take, including some hard-boiled eggs. I was going to drive more than 400 miles in one day to get to my Uncle Ord's house. It would be the longest distance I had ever driven by myself.
I remember everything was fine until I got past Raton and started driving through Raton Pass before getting to the New Mexico-Colorado border. It's a steep climb and my '78 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme just didn't have enough power to get through at a high rate of speed. I thought that the car was going to overheat and die. I pulled over and decided to wait until the engine cooled down so I could check the radiator level. This was when I decided to eat the lunch that Grandma Bend prepared for me.
After about a half-hour, I checked the radiator, but the fluid level was where it should be and I continued driving. I was still driving very slowly, but I made it to the summit and entered Colorado. It was smooth sailing from there.
I remember stopping to fill up with gas in Colorado Springs. At that point, I was just an hour away from my destination, which was actually unincorporated Littleton. I didn't actually drive all the way up to Denver that day, but I got about five miles away.
I arrived at Uncle Ord's house, unpacked my stuff and hung out with his family. They had made plans to go up to Fiddler's Green to watch the fireworks that night. At the time, I had no idea what Fiddler's Green was, but the funny thing was that I would wind up working there just a little more than two weeks later.
We drove around and found a decent place to watch the fireworks from the lawn of a library. A lot of other people decided to watch the fireworks from there as well. It was a very exciting way to start the next chapter of my life, which would actually begin the next day.
I was looking forward to all of it.
Because I had no cash on me, there was really nothing for me to do but get my stuff organized for the move. The only thing I actually remember doing was finding a box of brownie mix in the pantry and making some brownies.
On Sunday the 3rd, I drove back to Clovis, stopped by the station and picked up the check. I only had to deal with the part-timers there. I probably didn't stick around more than 3 minutes. I then drove to Fort Sumner and spent the night at my Grandma Bend's house.
The next morning, Independence Day, I set out for Denver. Grandma Bend gave me some food to take, including some hard-boiled eggs. I was going to drive more than 400 miles in one day to get to my Uncle Ord's house. It would be the longest distance I had ever driven by myself.
I remember everything was fine until I got past Raton and started driving through Raton Pass before getting to the New Mexico-Colorado border. It's a steep climb and my '78 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme just didn't have enough power to get through at a high rate of speed. I thought that the car was going to overheat and die. I pulled over and decided to wait until the engine cooled down so I could check the radiator level. This was when I decided to eat the lunch that Grandma Bend prepared for me.
After about a half-hour, I checked the radiator, but the fluid level was where it should be and I continued driving. I was still driving very slowly, but I made it to the summit and entered Colorado. It was smooth sailing from there.
I remember stopping to fill up with gas in Colorado Springs. At that point, I was just an hour away from my destination, which was actually unincorporated Littleton. I didn't actually drive all the way up to Denver that day, but I got about five miles away.
I arrived at Uncle Ord's house, unpacked my stuff and hung out with his family. They had made plans to go up to Fiddler's Green to watch the fireworks that night. At the time, I had no idea what Fiddler's Green was, but the funny thing was that I would wind up working there just a little more than two weeks later.
We drove around and found a decent place to watch the fireworks from the lawn of a library. A lot of other people decided to watch the fireworks from there as well. It was a very exciting way to start the next chapter of my life, which would actually begin the next day.
I was looking forward to all of it.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Before I begin the next chapter of my life...
...I have to take a break. I just realized I've posted almost every weekday for the past 11 weeks and it all covered the four year period in which I worked at KZZO-FM beginning in college, living in Clovis, NM and deciding to move to Denver.
I don't normally post other people's videos on my blog, but I'm making an exception in this case. This is a pretty fair representation of what Clovis was like when I lived there. Even though this video was done seven years ago and I know there have been a lot of changes since I lived there, it's still very much the town I called home for two years. The song also echoes my feelings about that period.
I expect to return to the blog sometime next month. We'll see where my life goes from there.
I don't normally post other people's videos on my blog, but I'm making an exception in this case. This is a pretty fair representation of what Clovis was like when I lived there. Even though this video was done seven years ago and I know there have been a lot of changes since I lived there, it's still very much the town I called home for two years. The song also echoes my feelings about that period.
I expect to return to the blog sometime next month. We'll see where my life goes from there.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
KZZO in Clovis: A Post Mortem
I'm wrapping up my experience with KZZO-FM with this post. I'm going to attempt to explain how a station that was so exciting and so popular wound up being such a failure.
Recently, I found some scattered comments about KZZO in the 1980s. In one forum, someone said the local joke was that KZZO was so late in adding new music, the songs were falling off the charts by the time we were playing them. I'll admit this appeared to be a problem the first few years. What would happen is that MTV would start playing the videos virtually the moment they were released. If the song was by a well-known artist and the video was pretty good, it would go immediately into heavy rotation, thus just about everyone would be familiar with the song before it hit the airwaves. And, of course, there was that issue with "Don't You (Forget about Me)" in 1985. But the issues surrounding the music were not the main contributor to the station's failure.
As I've mentioned before, Jid the owner had a dream of owning an empire of small market radio stations. In order for him to achieve this dream, he had to charge a pretty high premium on advertising. Even though we were not officially the highest-rated station in town, our ad prices were set as if we were.
And this was part of the problem. Jid refused to sell the advertising for less than a specific dollar amount. If a potential advertiser stated they would be more inclined to purchase airtime if the sales staff could come down just a little bit more on the rates or allow a few more spots to run for the same amount, the answer was always no. I could see his reasoning on this. If we agree to a lower rate, they're just going to ask for a rate that's even lower. And they're not going to keep that bargain to themselves. The client would likely inform every business in town about the deal he got and then everyone would start asking for that same price. Jid did not want us to be the highest-rated station in town selling air time at bargain basement rates. He was not going to get the empire that way.
But when those first Arbitron ratings came out with a major error that completely screwed us over and we were not listed as number one, it would have been nice if Jid had realized he wasn't going to get his empire as quickly as he thought. He probably should have taken measures to try to make KZZO profitable and become a lot more reasonable on the rates.
Another issue was that we had about 12 hours out of the day that ran almost NO advertising whatsoever. This was between 6pm and 6am. There was plenty of room for ads. If Jid wasn't willing to offer lower rates for drive time and day time slots, he could have come way down on the prices for nighttime programming. Businesses who never advertised before would probably be more willing to buy ads at those times and if they saw an increase in their revenue, could then be persuaded to buy the prime spots. About the only advertising we did at night was the Domino's Pizza giveaway, and they weren't even recorded spots.
I guess it was two years later that Jid figured out that his dream for an empire was not going to become a reality. That's when he brought Mr W in as a partner. He still refused to come down on the ad rates. I'm certain Mr. W and Jid had many arguments about that. I mean, which is better: Allowing an advertiser to pay $200 and get more ads for his money, or refusing the offer and getting no money whatsoever? Jid likely pulled the "I know radio and you don't" routine on Mr. W to trump him every time. But during that whole year, Mr W's bank account continued to be drained and he couldn't do a thing about it.
And of course, there were issues with the advertisers themselves. They were used to the conservative nature of country music stations, so if we did something they didn't jive with, they wouldn't advertise. When we launched, there were some businesses that didn't want to be associated with a station that referred to itself as "The Zoo." I remember that we lost one advertiser who refused to buy air time as long as we were playing the song "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael. The stupid thing was that, when it was a hit, we only played it once a day and it was only at night. That was not enough to damage the morality of the whole town.
But we really found out about the radically conservative values of the local merchants when Heid started working six to midnight. I don't know if Heid was aware of this, but we lost one-third of our advertisers because of him. As I said before, he wasn't vulgar, just somewhat raunchy. However, it was still too much for the tender ears of the grown-ups in Clovis. Members of the sales staff said that if they were meeting with a client and they mentioned Heid during the course of their pitch, they knew they were going to leave empty-handed. The staff begged and pleaded with Jid to get rid of Heid or just switch him back to overnights. Jid wouldn't do that. He was too pleased with the buzz that Heid had created, even though it was causing financial chaos for everyone else at the station.
And when Heid left for Dallas, the sales team immediately went to their old clients and told them he was no longer poisoning our airwaves. But it was too late. They were either pleased with their advertising on the other stations or they found out they didn't really need to advertise on radio, period.
But there was another issue at play: Our sales staff just didn't know how to capitalize on Heid's primary audience. In the movie "Private Parts," Howard Stern is about to get fired from WNBC after two major advertisers pull their spots from his show. But his butt is saved when another advertiser buys enough to more than make up for the loss of those two clients. Good salespeople could have used the fact that Heid had so much appeal with younger listeners to find advertisers who wished to reach that demographic. Of course, they would have had an easier time doing that if Jid had been willing to come down on the ad rates at night. We just couldn't win.
After Heid left, Jid no longer had any involvement in the operations. It was left in the hands of the silent partners, who really had no idea how to run a radio station. The main thing they did was to try to make us seem like a new radio station by having us refer to ourselves as KZZO 107.5 instead of "The Zoo 108." This change forced us to get rid of the majority of our on-air jingles and they did not buy us a new package, nor did they try to get us new call letters. At the staff meeting announcing this change, they didn't state the reason why, but I figured out that they wanted to make it seem like we were no longer that station with the vulgar DJ and the two gay owners.
But the damage had already been done. I don't know if the new people in charge made any attempt to lower our ad rates, but we were not doing any better. I'm glad I was able to get out while the getting was good.
In 1991, when I was moving from Denver to San Diego, I stopped by the station. However, the General Manager was the only person I knew who was still there, but he wasn't in at the time. The next time I came through Clovis a couple of years later, I tuned the dial to 107.5, but it was no longer KZZO. It was a station running satellite programming. I could tell because their listener line was a 1-800 number. The next time I came through, there was silence on the frequency.
When I moved to San Jose, I looked for radio stations in Clovis and Portales on the Internet. I found that there was a new station on the same frequency. It was KSMX. They went by the nickname "Mix 107.5." They were actually the only station in the area with a website. KTQM/KWKA didn't have one. According to the site, a couple of guys from radio in San Diego bought the station and became the morning team. It seemed like they were doing pretty well.
A couple of years later, I went to Clovis and stopped by to check it out. (This was shortly after I had been cut to part-time at the newsradio station in San Jose.) The station was now located in the downtown area. I walked in. There was no one in the front lobby. I heard someone yell, "Hello?" I said, "Hi!" The person came out. It was someone I recognized. It was one of my Mom's cousins (making him my first cousin once removed). He told me he was from the sales department. I had to point out that I was related to him, but we actually hadn't seen each other in a long time.
He told me about how the new owners came in and really turned the station around to make it more a part of the community. He told me the station was doing so well, they were sold out of air time for the next month. When he told me this, I thought, "There's no way you sell out of air time on a radio station." I mean, I can understand how it relates to automation and satellite programming (which was on at the time). I can also understand how, if someone just wants a $200 order, the station wouldn't want to disrupt its traffic, but if Coca-Cola comes up and says, "We need to buy $50,000 worth of air time next month," the response they would get is: "Hey, look! New inventory!"
He said that because KSMX was doing so well, KTQM and KWKA had reduced themselves to offering ads practically for pennies. I'm glad someone was able to come in and squash them.
The owners weren't there when I visited. They were getting ready for a remote at some carnival that was taking place that weekend. I was really hoping to meet them. I don't know that I would have wanted a job there (after practically losing the one I had at the time), but it would have been nice to have that connection.
They proved it was possible to start up and have a profitable station. They probably had the best of luck in getting the Arbritron ratings to come out in their favor early on. I'm just sorry that Jid wasn't able to achieve his dream. But even if he did, he would have only been able to enjoy the empire up until 1993, when he died of brain cancer. It's strange to think that in three years, I will be older than he was when he passed away and that I did not accomplish anywhere near what he did during that same period of time.
Recently, I found some scattered comments about KZZO in the 1980s. In one forum, someone said the local joke was that KZZO was so late in adding new music, the songs were falling off the charts by the time we were playing them. I'll admit this appeared to be a problem the first few years. What would happen is that MTV would start playing the videos virtually the moment they were released. If the song was by a well-known artist and the video was pretty good, it would go immediately into heavy rotation, thus just about everyone would be familiar with the song before it hit the airwaves. And, of course, there was that issue with "Don't You (Forget about Me)" in 1985. But the issues surrounding the music were not the main contributor to the station's failure.
As I've mentioned before, Jid the owner had a dream of owning an empire of small market radio stations. In order for him to achieve this dream, he had to charge a pretty high premium on advertising. Even though we were not officially the highest-rated station in town, our ad prices were set as if we were.
And this was part of the problem. Jid refused to sell the advertising for less than a specific dollar amount. If a potential advertiser stated they would be more inclined to purchase airtime if the sales staff could come down just a little bit more on the rates or allow a few more spots to run for the same amount, the answer was always no. I could see his reasoning on this. If we agree to a lower rate, they're just going to ask for a rate that's even lower. And they're not going to keep that bargain to themselves. The client would likely inform every business in town about the deal he got and then everyone would start asking for that same price. Jid did not want us to be the highest-rated station in town selling air time at bargain basement rates. He was not going to get the empire that way.
But when those first Arbitron ratings came out with a major error that completely screwed us over and we were not listed as number one, it would have been nice if Jid had realized he wasn't going to get his empire as quickly as he thought. He probably should have taken measures to try to make KZZO profitable and become a lot more reasonable on the rates.
Another issue was that we had about 12 hours out of the day that ran almost NO advertising whatsoever. This was between 6pm and 6am. There was plenty of room for ads. If Jid wasn't willing to offer lower rates for drive time and day time slots, he could have come way down on the prices for nighttime programming. Businesses who never advertised before would probably be more willing to buy ads at those times and if they saw an increase in their revenue, could then be persuaded to buy the prime spots. About the only advertising we did at night was the Domino's Pizza giveaway, and they weren't even recorded spots.
I guess it was two years later that Jid figured out that his dream for an empire was not going to become a reality. That's when he brought Mr W in as a partner. He still refused to come down on the ad rates. I'm certain Mr. W and Jid had many arguments about that. I mean, which is better: Allowing an advertiser to pay $200 and get more ads for his money, or refusing the offer and getting no money whatsoever? Jid likely pulled the "I know radio and you don't" routine on Mr. W to trump him every time. But during that whole year, Mr W's bank account continued to be drained and he couldn't do a thing about it.
And of course, there were issues with the advertisers themselves. They were used to the conservative nature of country music stations, so if we did something they didn't jive with, they wouldn't advertise. When we launched, there were some businesses that didn't want to be associated with a station that referred to itself as "The Zoo." I remember that we lost one advertiser who refused to buy air time as long as we were playing the song "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael. The stupid thing was that, when it was a hit, we only played it once a day and it was only at night. That was not enough to damage the morality of the whole town.
But we really found out about the radically conservative values of the local merchants when Heid started working six to midnight. I don't know if Heid was aware of this, but we lost one-third of our advertisers because of him. As I said before, he wasn't vulgar, just somewhat raunchy. However, it was still too much for the tender ears of the grown-ups in Clovis. Members of the sales staff said that if they were meeting with a client and they mentioned Heid during the course of their pitch, they knew they were going to leave empty-handed. The staff begged and pleaded with Jid to get rid of Heid or just switch him back to overnights. Jid wouldn't do that. He was too pleased with the buzz that Heid had created, even though it was causing financial chaos for everyone else at the station.
And when Heid left for Dallas, the sales team immediately went to their old clients and told them he was no longer poisoning our airwaves. But it was too late. They were either pleased with their advertising on the other stations or they found out they didn't really need to advertise on radio, period.
But there was another issue at play: Our sales staff just didn't know how to capitalize on Heid's primary audience. In the movie "Private Parts," Howard Stern is about to get fired from WNBC after two major advertisers pull their spots from his show. But his butt is saved when another advertiser buys enough to more than make up for the loss of those two clients. Good salespeople could have used the fact that Heid had so much appeal with younger listeners to find advertisers who wished to reach that demographic. Of course, they would have had an easier time doing that if Jid had been willing to come down on the ad rates at night. We just couldn't win.
After Heid left, Jid no longer had any involvement in the operations. It was left in the hands of the silent partners, who really had no idea how to run a radio station. The main thing they did was to try to make us seem like a new radio station by having us refer to ourselves as KZZO 107.5 instead of "The Zoo 108." This change forced us to get rid of the majority of our on-air jingles and they did not buy us a new package, nor did they try to get us new call letters. At the staff meeting announcing this change, they didn't state the reason why, but I figured out that they wanted to make it seem like we were no longer that station with the vulgar DJ and the two gay owners.
But the damage had already been done. I don't know if the new people in charge made any attempt to lower our ad rates, but we were not doing any better. I'm glad I was able to get out while the getting was good.
In 1991, when I was moving from Denver to San Diego, I stopped by the station. However, the General Manager was the only person I knew who was still there, but he wasn't in at the time. The next time I came through Clovis a couple of years later, I tuned the dial to 107.5, but it was no longer KZZO. It was a station running satellite programming. I could tell because their listener line was a 1-800 number. The next time I came through, there was silence on the frequency.
When I moved to San Jose, I looked for radio stations in Clovis and Portales on the Internet. I found that there was a new station on the same frequency. It was KSMX. They went by the nickname "Mix 107.5." They were actually the only station in the area with a website. KTQM/KWKA didn't have one. According to the site, a couple of guys from radio in San Diego bought the station and became the morning team. It seemed like they were doing pretty well.
A couple of years later, I went to Clovis and stopped by to check it out. (This was shortly after I had been cut to part-time at the newsradio station in San Jose.) The station was now located in the downtown area. I walked in. There was no one in the front lobby. I heard someone yell, "Hello?" I said, "Hi!" The person came out. It was someone I recognized. It was one of my Mom's cousins (making him my first cousin once removed). He told me he was from the sales department. I had to point out that I was related to him, but we actually hadn't seen each other in a long time.
He told me about how the new owners came in and really turned the station around to make it more a part of the community. He told me the station was doing so well, they were sold out of air time for the next month. When he told me this, I thought, "There's no way you sell out of air time on a radio station." I mean, I can understand how it relates to automation and satellite programming (which was on at the time). I can also understand how, if someone just wants a $200 order, the station wouldn't want to disrupt its traffic, but if Coca-Cola comes up and says, "We need to buy $50,000 worth of air time next month," the response they would get is: "Hey, look! New inventory!"
He said that because KSMX was doing so well, KTQM and KWKA had reduced themselves to offering ads practically for pennies. I'm glad someone was able to come in and squash them.
The owners weren't there when I visited. They were getting ready for a remote at some carnival that was taking place that weekend. I was really hoping to meet them. I don't know that I would have wanted a job there (after practically losing the one I had at the time), but it would have been nice to have that connection.
They proved it was possible to start up and have a profitable station. They probably had the best of luck in getting the Arbritron ratings to come out in their favor early on. I'm just sorry that Jid wasn't able to achieve his dream. But even if he did, he would have only been able to enjoy the empire up until 1993, when he died of brain cancer. It's strange to think that in three years, I will be older than he was when he passed away and that I did not accomplish anywhere near what he did during that same period of time.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
The Return of Chez
A few weeks before I left for Denver, Chez came back into town for a couple of days. We had been talking from time to time and writing letters to each other. She told me about a lot of stuff that had happened to her and her family before I met her.
The most startling thing was that she had been raped by her half-brother when she was 14. Her half-brother was the product of her father's first marriage. Chez was severely injured by the incident, so much so that the doctor told her that she would never be able to have children. Charges were filed against the half-brother and there was going to be a trial. However, he accepted a plea bargain when he found out she was going to testify. In his deal, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Her family had come up to Clovis this time because her sister Kiz had just given birth to a baby boy. Chez invited me to go with her family to see Kiz and the baby in the hospital. When we went into her room, I was surprised to find that her roommate was someone I knew who had just had a baby. I said, "Hi, Kyz! Hi, Kiz!" I'll bet Kyz thought I was there specifically to see her at first, but wondering how I knew about her having a baby. She and I spent a little time catching up. I'm pretty sure that as soon as I left the room, Kyz and Kiz turned to each other and said, "So, you know Fayd, huh?"
We went to the area where they had the newborns on display. Chez looked at Kiz' baby and asked, "Fayd, wouldn't you like to have one of those?" I laughed a little, but didn't actually respond. Before I left, I told Chez that I would be at a live remote for the radio station the next day and invited her to come see me if she had time.
She did show up. We hung out and talked a little bit, but she had to get going. Her family was going to go back to see Kiz in the hospital. I stayed to finish up that remote before heading out to the mall.
I saw Chez again a few weeks later as I was driving from Clovis to Artesia after I had completely moved out of my apartment and prepared to move to Denver. I stopped by her house and we hung out for awhile. Considering that I went eight years between my first two girlfriends, Roz and Marz, and I didn't want to wait eight years for my next girlfriend, I decided to hedge. I told Chez that, when she turned 18, if I wasn't involved with someone and she wasn't involved with someone, we could look at becoming boyfriend/girlfriend. As a way of sealing the promise, I gave her my high school class ring. (I should point out I never got a college class ring.)
But I had no idea how we were going to make that work. I mean, I was still going to live in Denver and she was still going to be in Roswell. We could have done the long distance relationship, but at some point, one of us would have to move to the same town as the other. I figured that there was a good chance that by the time she turned 18, she would probably find someone else closer to her age who didn't call her the b-word.
However, I realized how seriously she took the promise when I walked her to her door and hugged her goodnight. She was trembling in my arms. I felt very responsible and very guilty for knowing that I was not really that committed to her.
When I came back from Denver six weeks later, Chez was still wearing my ring. I actually dreaded how I was going to handle the situation when she turned 18. At the time, I had met someone I was very interested in, but hadn't started dating her.
It was during this visit that I was able to take the photos that are included in the post. There were other photos that show her face, but I'm not going to publish those, including the one that clearly shows her wearing my class ring.
As usual, this story is far from over, but it's going to be awhile before I return to it.
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