Wow, what a station. KGFJ 1230 in 1969 "The Big K in L.A.". I think they were rated # 2 overall. Lucky Pierre, Russ (O'Hungry) O'Hara, and so many more. All of this with 1000 watts from a clothes line roof antenna with no ground radials on the odd fellows building at the corner of I-10 and the Harbor Freeway.
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"Big Announcement" Regarding John and Ken on Monday
- Thread starter henry
- Start date
I forget if KGFJ had an inverted L or a "T" antenna on the roof, but either is a very acceptable system, although not the most efficient. And they did not have a buried ground, but did have a counterpoise system which is also quite effective.
In the first 10 to 15 years of radio in the US, nearly all stations had "L" or "T" antennas. Through the 70's, many if not most of the AMs throughout Latin America still had them!
This thread got way, I mean way off topic
If you wanna talk about KGBS start a new thread
This happens on any forum I go
If you wanna talk about KGBS start a new thread
This happens on any forum I go
Your moderators all agree to some extent or another that part of the "fun" of this board comes from the sidebars and side roads.
We purposely let them wander. Only if the subject stops being about radio or is about politics do we intervene. All of us combined don't have the time to be thread police, so consider some of the deviations in subject to be a bonus, not a defect.
That's the answer---KBLA became KBBQ on June 17, 1967.
Not well at all. 1500's signal always kept it from being competitive, even in the 1960s (as KBLA) when the noise floor was lower, and both L.A. and the ratings survey area were smaller.
1,000 watts at 1280 on the dial. You're talking 30 miles back then (at a signal strength most people would accept) best case. So it was weakened by the time it got to L.A. proper.
Still, they did okay with it, managing to rank in the top ten in the fall 1967, 1968 and 1970 books. The fall '71 book showed the effect of KLAC, which knocked KFOX into a tie for 17th. After that, they never managed a 1 share in the L.A. ratings.
Yep. Second only to KHJ in fall '69. Third in the fall '70 and '71 books, fourth in fall '72 and still top five in fall '73. It took KDAY to knock them off.
Minor correction---it was on LaBrea, by the 10.
It's how human conversation works. One idea jogs a connection. That one prompts another. Stuff gets rmisremembered and needs correcting, and so on.
That said, maybe my script for Robin Bertolucci's re-introduction of Lohman and Barkley and Dick Sinclair's Polka Party didn't really need to end with a jingle.
"K-G-F-J The Sound of Success!". Even when they were only 250 watts and just 100 watts on Sundays!
I think KGFJ was on The Odd Fellows Hall bldg.
I guess it depends on when we’re talking about. KGFJ was at the Odd Fellows Hall, but moved to Sunset Blvd. in the 1950s. By the 1970s, they were at LaBrea, and stayed for a couple of decades:
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The KGFJ (KYPA) xmitter is of course today diplexed with 1580 and 930 on Alvarado St in Echo Park. It's been ages since I've been on the 10 Fwy in Central LA, for all I know the old KGFJ wire antenna may still be on the Odd Fellows Bldg.
A 1954 ad for KGFJ, with the Sunset Blvd. studio address:
It appears the transmitter stayed on the Oddfellows Building until 2009, but the studios moved in the early 50s.
It appears the transmitter stayed on the Oddfellows Building until 2009, but the studios moved in the early 50s.
What big "foreign market" in Los Angeles was listening to KGFJ's R&B block? The Hispanic audience? Did LA have stations programming Spanish-language music in 1954?
I think that may have been a phrasing issue and that they were referring to Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans. They were certainly a key component of Art Laboe’s audience in that era.
What a lot of people don’t know is that before it went full R&B, Dick Whittinghill and Johnny Magnus were on KGFJ and left there (13 years apart) to go to KMPC.
KWKW was first to broadcast purely in Spanish in L.A. That was in 1941.
KEN CHIAMPOU and John Kobylt electrified Los Angeles with their brash, clear-spoken brand of talk radio when they arrived at KFI 36 years ago and they haven't stopped. Wildly popular in Southern California, theirs is the longest-running talk show in radio history and changed the direction of the talk radio industry. In this exclusive conversation, Ken tells Dave Williams why he's retiring and looks back on 40 years of friendship with John, and the lightning they've held together in a bottle. L.A. radio will never be the same.
That's what I thought. I figured that 1230 was probably one of the last stations in the country still using a wire antenna, right along with KPPC 1240 Pasadena. Their wire antenna was on top of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church. They pumped out a ginormous 100 Watts from 6 AM to 12 Mid Sundays, and Wednesday evenings from 7 PM to 11 PM. When they were on the air KGFJ had to lower their power to 100 Watts also.
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It’s 100% performative. Most angry and acerbic hosts are.
John Ziegler is one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever encountered. He’d sacrifice seemingly anything to prove a point.
A significant portion of KGFJ's audience was Hispanic. According to an interview I heard with Lucky Pierre, when he did his first public appearance gig for the station he was surprised, if not shocked that around half of the folks appeared to be Hispanic. Both he and the KGFJ thought that the stations overwhelming audience was African-American, after all that was the target!
Yes, although not fulltime.
While recent immigrants would not have listened to R&B, the "zoot suit" crowd definitely would have. remember, this was 70 years ago. The heritage Mexican American community would have listened to KGFJ, but not the first and second generation groups of Mexican immigrant groups.
And several of the Tijuana stations were listenable in LA in those days, when noise levels allowed such stations to be heard clearly.
Not Quite. That is two years short of El Gobierno de la Mañana, the talk show I put on Z-101 in Santo Domingo in 1986 and which continues today and has a larger morning audience than even any TV show in the Dominican Republic.
There is radio outside of iHeart and outside of the USA.