Our Era - Movies, Music, Radio and TV, 6th Edition

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Our Era - Movies, Music, Radio & TV, 1950‟s and 1960‟s.1955 & moreCourtesy 1080 WKLO Radio.com — http://www.1080wklo.com/paulcowley.htmWKLO Radio—Paul Cowley Remembers WKLOIn the mid '50s, I joined the WKLO staff after a stint at WLW in Cincinnati and WLEX in Lexington. At that time WKLOwas basically country with DJs Jimmy Osborn, Jimmie Logsdon and Tommy Downs. The only pop music was BeecherFrank in the evening who built a huge teenage audience. I was hired as a backup to him as rumors were flying that hemight be moving to another station. "Beech" did move later to WGRC (now known as WAKY) and I took over hisnighttime slot.Beecher and I were friendly competitors as we both were doing our shows from different Ranch House drive-in restaurants.Bob Colglazier owned several drive-ins in the greater Louisville area and they were great hangouts for kids growingup in those innocent '50s. (Example: Arnold's Drive In on "Happy Days.") Kids would park their cars for hours with theirradios on, listening and drinking malts and scarfing down Ranchburgers and fries. They would send in "curb notes" viathe carhops asking to hear a particular record dedicated to their boyfriend or girlfriend. WKLO even built me a privatestudio on the roof of the Ranch House on Shelbyville Road with their call letters and my name in neon lights on the roofof the studio.In the late '50s I was the voice of Coca-Cola doing live record hops broadcast from different high school gyms on Fridaynights. In those days we called them "sock hops" because to dance on the gym floors you had to take your shoes off toavoid damaging the gym floor. That was when kids danced holding each other rather than wild gyrations. What a differencea generation makes. (Too bad today's generation has taken the melody out of music...so much for rap!) The Coca-Cola Hi-Fi Club became so popular that later it went to two nights of broadcast and Allen Bryan was added. I continuedto do Friday night's broadcast and Allen did Saturday night. I think we both broadcast from every high school in the areaat that time.Around that time, Gordon McClendon in Dallas bought the old WGRC, and changed the call letters to WAKY. It wasclever the way he did it. The deejays over there played the same record over and over for 24 hours. I remember it well: Itwas Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater" and they had the whole town talking about them. That's when the radiostation wars began.Both stations tried to outdo each other with zany promotions. One of WAKY's best was The WAKY Mystery Walker whowould award you with cash if you could identify him on the street. You couldn't walk down 4th Street without severalkids stopping you and asking if you were the mystery walker. Business people who made advertising decisions were convincedthat everybody in town was listening to WAKY.WKLO became the "Home of the Good Guys," a promotion that backfired when the Courier-Journal printed a story andpicture of a guy in trouble with the police for some misdeed and wouldn't you know it, he was wearing a t-shirt that read"I'm one of WKLO's Good Guys."Later, I had the chance to get into management and joined the Polaris Broadcasting Company out of Chicago, who ownedseveral stations in the west and moved to Santa Rosa, California at KPLS, then to KGNU in San Jose, on to KEDO/KLYK in Longview, Washington and ending my radio days at KTRC in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I still live.Paul CowleyIntroducing RickyNelson at the KentuckyState FairIntroducing Elvis PresleyPaul Cowley‘s firtpublicity photo
Our Era - Movies, Music, Radio & TV, 1950‟s and 1960‟s.1955 & moreCourtesy 1080 WKLO Radio.com — http://www.1080wklo.com/paulcowley.htmWKLO Radio—Allen BryanAllen Bryan was part of the WKLO news department throughout much of the '60s and early '70s, first as a reporter/anchor and then as News Director. He graciously answered our questions about the inner workings of the WKLO newsdepartment and his time there as News Director.How did you get to be WKLO news director? What was your background in radio and news?I was hired as evening newsperson at WKLO in May 1960. I had been in radio for about 5 years starting when I was inhigh school. My job when I was offered the position at WKLO was the News Director and only newsperson of KCCOradio in Lawton, Oklahoma. Until I was hired at KCCO I had been a radio announcer/DJ, doing a little bit of everything.My only prior top 40 experience was at KSWO in Lawton for about 6 months in late 1959.While I attended the University of Oklahoma briefly after high school, I did not have a degree. I still don't today. In theearly '60s I developed a philosophy that the most important thing you learn every day is how much more you don't know,therefore the most important activity in daily life is continuing to learn.During my early career at WKLO I worked both as a newsperson and DJ at the same time, doing a 9 a.m. to 12 noon recordshow and the afternoon drive news shift every day. The news shift was a real challenge because we did two fiveminutenewscasts an hour plus traffic reports, sports, and other inserts during the hour, so I was on the air as much ormore than the DJ.After I returned to WKLO from the Army in late 1963 I was primarily working as a DJ until early 1965 when I returnedto news. Ken Rowland, who had been News Director when I started at WKLO, quit to go to work for WLKY-TV atabout that time. There was a period of two or three months where no one was named to fill the position, then I was namednews director in 1965.What set WKLO news apart from the competition?First what set WAKY and WKLO apart from the competition was the fact that we had so many more listeners than therest of the stations. The two stations generally controlled about 60% of the total radio audience in Louisville. We werealso both very aggressive in covering "breaking" news and particularly police and fire type stories. This dated back to thelate 1950s when WAKY came into existence under the McClendon ownership and WKLO went Top 40.In my opinion what set WKLO apart was that we had a more comprehensive journalistic approach to news coverage. Wecovered the full spectrum of news in Louisville and actually covered in person more stories and regular beats than anyother station.We had a high-energy fast-paced delivery like many top 40 stations, but we also had a very broad range of stories andtape actualities and on-the-scene reports. Our news gathering operation was very organized and methodical. We maintaineda schedule of all the regular meetings we covered, and a file of leads to follow up on at the appropriate time.Probably one of the most unique qualities of our news operation was the ability to make interesting stories out of thingslike the school board, board of aldermen, water company board, etc. This was generally accomplished by the newspersonthinking as the meeting was going on about what would be interesting to our listeners. At the end of the meeting, the newspersonwould have to focus on what was important and interesting, identify places in the tape of the meeting where audiowould support this important news, and then quickly build a story with audio inserts to tell the story. This would, ofcourse, be before we had seen the newspaper or heard anyone else's story.If there was one factor that made our news department successful and effective, I would say that it was an ability to processlarge amounts of information and sort out what was important and interesting in a very compressed time span, toproduce interesting stories and newscasts which were constantly changing. This was a skill that was learned on the job.The only effective teachers were other news people who had learned before you. It also placed a very high premium oncreativity, quick thinking, and the use of words.Our primary news competitors were WAKY, WHAS, and WAVE. WHAS and WAVE shared news resources with theirsister TV stations that were then under the same ownership, so it ishard to compare them. WAKY was more directly comparable, andmy guess is that we generally had one or two more news staffersthan they did, but I never really counted or made a direct comparison.Allen Bryan, 1967
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