History of Mutual in the SF Bay Area After KFRC
David Kaye
On Jun 26, 9:07 am, spamtrap1888 <spamtrap1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Which was the Mutual station here? I remember Jim Bohannon, but
> nothing before him. And wasn't there a Mrs. Bohannon who also had a
> show? Google just says he's recently married to a woman named
> Annabelle.
Here is the convoluted history of Mutual affiliation as I know it.
Mutual arrived in SF as Don Lee/Mutual, a west coast network set up by
Don Lee (KFRC, KDON Monterey, KHJ, and a bunch of other owned or
affiliate stations) in the late 1930s. When Don Lee was sold to
General Teleradio (RKO General), the owned stations kept the
affiliation for the most part.
After the demise of network block programming and the KFRC affiliation
(which dropped Mutual after almost 30 years when they went top-40),
Mutual affiliation drifted all over the place. At one point in the
late 60s, it was held by KKHI, a classical station. And it was held
by KSAY, a daytime country station. I believe that KKHI took it only
because Mutual paid them a substantial amount to be their west coast
feed. By the time KSAY had Mutual (late 60s, early 70s), the feed had
moved to Seattle.
It was funny. The Seattle feed was basically a matter of unpatching
drive-time news and features from the national network, recording them
for rebroadcast 3 hours later, and filling in with Seattle-generated
programming to cover. But the station I think was a rocker because
the newscaster always sounded like Dave Stone. It was also done
combo, so, here we have a "world renowned" network where you could
hear carts popping and a top-40 dj trying to sound like Cronkite.
What's more, sometimes they forgot to unpatch the national feed, so
they'd run BOTH Seattle and DC feeds atop each other. This usually
happened in the 4:30pm drive time news and the 4:35pm sports. Nobody
in Seattle was monitoring their own feed!
Nobody wanted Mutual. Everybody hated them. Eventually KWUN (then a
daytimer) got it and held it probably longer than anybody, maybe 9
years. They wanted a bigger city sound, and network news was the way
to go.
And then KNEW decided they wanted a network, too, so at one point it
was held by both KWUN and KNEW simultaneously.
Herb Jepko, a KSL talkshow host who had an oddball cadre of near-
comatose folks who called in to talk about their cats and their
"Nightcap" gatherings, managed to convince Mutual to run his KSL
program nationwide. A super-salesman, he had actually convinced KIIS
in LA to carry it as a 2-station hookup.
For some reason Mutual thought this was the cat's pajamas, so they
picked up his show. A few Arbitron books out they noticed that nobody
was listening.
I'm not sure how Larry King came into the picture, whether Mutual
approached him or he went to them, but suddenly the Larry King show
debuts on Mutual and all hell breaks loose. It becomes the must-
listen show, as he was doing then what he does today: interview
Washington inner circle politicos, moneyed people, and entertainers.
At the time, though, nobody did this on a national radio show. In
fact it's hard to remember any national talkshow until Larry King.
Jim Bohannon was the fill-in host, and when Larry left, Jim got he gig
fulltime.
Eric Weaver
> Nobody wanted Mutual. Everybody hated them. Eventually KWUN (then a
> daytimer) got it and held it probably longer than anybody, maybe 9
> years. They wanted a bigger city sound, and network news was the way
> to go.
I'm pretty sure the clearance money paid by MBS was most of what kept
KJAY (Sac.) afloat...
Bee-doop~
David Kaye
> I'm pretty sure the clearance money paid by MBS was most of what kept
> KJAY (Sac.) afloat...
>
> Bee-doop~
Did Mutual pay KJAY for clearance? I know that KWUN, which was
clearly in the SF market, had to pay Mutual $250 a month for service.
I don't know what the arrangement with KNEW was. I think I'll write
to John Hawkins and ask him.
My impression was that Mutual was by then so second-string (can we say
third-string?) that they didn't seem to be in a position to pay anyone
for much of anything. Art Dlugach from KPIX got some stringer fees
for various sports stuff he fed to Mutual, though, but I don't think
it was more than $10 a shot.
During that era Mutual was owned by everyone from private investors to
3M and finally Amway before being sold to Norm Pattiz (Westwood
One).
Eric Weaver
> On Jun 26, 1:09 pm, Eric Weaver <w...@sigma.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm pretty sure the clearance money paid by MBS was most of what kept
>> KJAY (Sac.) afloat...
>>
>> Bee-doop~
>
> Did Mutual pay KJAY for clearance? I know that KWUN, which was
> clearly in the SF market, had to pay Mutual $250 a month for service.
> I don't know what the arrangement with KNEW was. I think I'll write
> to John Hawkins and ask him.
I don't know for certain, but I remember missed spots being a big deal
and I can't imagine Jack Powell paying for it.
One could make a case that KWUN didn't actually cover SF proper whereas
KJAY did cover Sac proper, if you tilt your head just right & squint a
bit...
David Kaye
> I don't know for certain, but I remember missed spots being a big deal
> and I can't imagine Jack Powell paying for it.
I can't imagine Jack Powell paying for anything if he could help it.
But, I dunno...paying for clearance of a 500 watt directional daytimer
in Sac?
> One could make a case that KWUN didn't actually cover SF proper whereas
> KJAY did cover Sac proper, if you tilt your head just right & squint a
> bit...
Well, the agencies and the networks definitely considered KWUN in the
SF market. Bill Adler, the owner when I was there, faced this every
day trying to get programming and co-op ad dollars. Stations
challenged every program he tried to get and national companies tried
to talk their local dealers into spending the co-op money on SF
stations, even though they weren't in the Diablo Valley area. It was
rough for him.
KWUN carried Notre Dame football only because nobody else wanted it.
When somebody, was it KSFO, KNEW? wanted Notre Dame, I believe had to
threaten to sue to keep the rights.
Stratum101
I imagine by now, Harry Shearer has a take-off on Larry King
heaping legendary adjectives onto Michael Jackson.
He's on tomorrow at 10 am Pacific on KCRW. Do stream
in.
Phil Keller
> On Jun 26, 1:09 pm, Eric Weaver <w...@sigma.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm pretty sure the clearance money paid by MBS was most of what kept
>> KJAY (Sac.) afloat...
>>
>> Bee-doop~
>
> Did Mutual pay KJAY for clearance? I know that KWUN, which was
> clearly in the SF market, had to pay Mutual $250 a month for service.
> I don't know what the arrangement with KNEW was. I think I'll write
> to John Hawkins and ask him.
>
> My impression was that Mutual was by then so second-string (can we say
> third-string?) that they didn't seem to be in a position to pay anyone
> for much of anything. Art Dlugach from KPIX got some stringer fees
> for various sports stuff he fed to Mutual, though, but I don't think
/s=
> During that era Mutual was owned by everyone from private investors to
> 3M and finally Amway before being sold to Norm Pattiz (Westwood
> One).
>
story four times I received $100, a lot of money back then. A separate
check for each use.
Phil Keller
SoCal Tom
> One could make a case that KWUN didn't actually cover SF proper whereas
> KJAY did cover Sac proper, if you tilt your head just right & squint a
> bit...
I do agree. KJAY had one bizarre pattern. It sort of resembled a glove,
with nulls protecting those out-of-state stations. Move six feet one way
or another and lose the signal.
--
SoCal Tom