Revised!
KHJ:
Inside Boss Radio
for
$79
(plus $10 S&H)
with FREE "Tina Delgado Is Alive!" button with each copy of this once-secret "Drake" Format textbook devised by Jacobs for KHJ.
(click here to send an
e-mail to Ron Jacobs and he'll send you info by reply e-mail)
ron@ronjacobsonline.com
KHJ RADIO
BOSS ANGELES, 1965
Commemorative 40th Anniversary
Streetscape
SOLD OUT!
Thanks to all of you for
remembering.
e-mail
Ron
ron@ronjacobsonline.com
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Previous
Articles
Where Were You?
(Abraham, Martin and John)
January 16, 2006
What's said in the land of the free
in public in private or on the phone
can shorten your life considerably.
Martin Malcolm Bobby and John.
Four spoke words like knives
in the land of the free and young,
tears ran down the cheeks of their wives.
Martin Malcolm Bobby and John. (click
here to continue reading)
Remembering Stan
Wilson
(May 2005)
I was born and raised in Honolulu. Turned
out that I had three heroes named Stan. First was the St. Louis
Cardinals’ future Hall Of Famer Stan Musial. In the 1950s baseball games
broadcast on radio here were “recreated.” In third grade I heard the
1946 World Series live, via crackling shortwave. The
Cards beat the Boston Red Sox in the seventh game. But I never got to
see Stan play. In high school I was a radio reporter for teenage shows on KGMB and KIKI.
“John & Marsha” by Stan Freberg was the funniest, and most
licentious, hit record of 1954.
(click here to continue reading)
British Boss Jock
Tommy Vance
(1941 - 2005)
(May 2005)
Tommy
Vance did a fine job of adapting to both an unfamiliar environment and a
new profession. Vance revealed when and why he decided to be a Top 40
deejay in the chapter he contributed to my book
KHJ: Inside Boss Radio.
It was the early-1960s.
Vance first heard American rock 'n roll radio while washing dishes
aboard a UK-registered “rust bucket,” a freighter docked in New York
City ...
(click here to continue reading)
The Great Elvis Hoax
(Published in HONOLULU Magazine, 1989)
Las Vegas, March 1989.
Tom Diskin sat down beside me and reminisced about Elvis Presley's
first sensational visit to Hawaii in 1957 ."Do you know how we came
to play Honolulu in the first place?" he asked I had never thought
about why. It was such a transcendent big deal that it just
happened, on the earth-shaking scale of the volcano erupting on the
Big Island.
(click here to continue
reading)
Aloha, Marv Howard
June 30, 2004
To: Bill Mouzis
From: Ron Jacobs
Dear Bill,
Well, another Boss brother, Marv Howard, has gone on up beyond the
highest frequencies. He's definitely, as they say, "In a better
place." I met Marv in San Bernardino, in the early KMEN days. Bill
Watson was the first California air personality-programmer to sign
up with our unknown Hawaii group. In 1962 we acquired KITO, our
first mainland station. (click
here to continue reading)
All
Night On The Ala Wai
March 22, 2005
During one
summer on a kids’ expedition I toured the grand studios of Hawaii’s
oldest station, KGU. The walls of this NBC affiliate were covered
with lauhala matting. The dried, woven grass was attractive
in a Polynesian way and served an acoustic purpose. KGMB's
modern facilities, appropriately shipshape for a CBS outlet, and the
small but tidy KIKI broadcast booths were familiar to me from my
experience doing teenage shows. But I wasn't ready for how
bedraggled KHON had become by 1955.
(click here to continue reading)
Ron
Jacobs remembers the late Robert W. Morgan
May 24, 2002
Near the end, RWM was frustrated by not being
able to communicate via computer or with his voice. He got his
biggest kicks listening to that "Mega" station, which is apparently
roughing up KRTH-FM. And good luck to THEM, now without Morgan and
Steele, their former is
station exposed as a combination juke box/slot machine, running
re-cycled KHJ stuff.
(click here to continue reading)
The Poi Boys had a
symbiotic relationship
February 8, 2004
Every few years, I'd ask
Dave Donnelly if he knew how many words he'd written for his
Star-Bulletin column since starting it in 1968. Well, over the years
the two of us would either delve into, or argue about, virtually any
kind of statistic. But Donnelly never wanted to pursue the answer to
that one. I figured it must be some sort of superstition about
numbers and streaks like ballplayers have, and always dropped the
subject.
(click here to continue reading)
MEMO
To: Randy Michaels
From:
Ron Jacobs
July 22, 2002
I’m not one to kick a person when he’s down,
but since you proved to me during our exchange of phone calls in May
2001, you are definitely not a person —and on behalf of
everyone in radio without the ability or vocabulary to do so—here’s
a Proclamation just for you, turkey.
(click here to continue reading)
May
2005
(click here to
continue reading) |
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REQUIEM
Requiem
Early spadework was done in the late
1890's.
Literally so: To his quest for wireless telegraphy young
Guglielmo Marconi and the family manservant dug
in the courtyard dirt.
The first sparks jumped when Marconi moved his
experiments up to the attic. Most radio people drop the name
Marconi having never read a biography of this man.
There's an incredible movie there. Sr. Marconi was not
only an intuitive genius, he was also a Latin Lover.
Marconi was the forebear of Sarnoff, Hearst, Hefner,
Ted Turner, Bill Gates - all the global-com entrepreneurs.
Marconi was not, "The father of radio," though.
Maxwell, Hertz, Tesla and DeForest all contributed to the
secret sauce that thickened what was merely thin
air since the beginning of time.
There were no remote cave door openers.
The bigger the rock, the harder the roll.
We can't imagine the impact of radio. It was magic
that scared as many people as it enthused.
I traveled to Stockton, California in the early 70s
to interview an octogenarian. I shook the hand of
this engineer, who shook the hand of DeForest,
who invented the audion tube. But the pioneers
merely warmed up things for the 20th Century.
Its last three-quarters were destined to be big
for radio . . . boom that became eventual bust.
The starting gun fired in 1922 with the birth of the
three-call-letter stations. At the creation, broadband
meant something else: Wide on the dial.
Clear channel, originally meant something else,
not the schlock-stained image of today.
It described 360-degree blasters.
Through World War Two radio grew. Sets sold
quicker than iPods. Wartime news brought credibility,
urgency, gravitas to the medium.
People hung on every word. Good night and good luck.
Postwar:
They didn't know it but networks were building foundations for TV
monoliths that would rule 'til cable struck. Radio, haven of
hustlers, survived by riding the waves of the music,
went with the changes.
Formats per se were certainly not "bad."
But, hey, those who copied, didn't innovate, or
create – merely regurgitate.
Beginning of the end. Cusp of calamity.
Two generations of air people with no role models
mired in what was left.
Along with all government, FCC sold out.
Free for all. Mergers and acquisitions.
Anarchy. Aloha regulation.
Radio.fucked.com.
By Y2K the medium had seen its day.
Mediocrity replaced creativity. Instead of resolve - denial.
Then finger-pointing. Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch,
Only nobodies, left to create nothing.
Can't see the forest for the treason.
Just another cycle in the overarching reach of humankind.
Radio as hula hoop.
Thank God we were there, John Rook,
to hear and work with some of the best.
Hello 2006.
We live in a New Age Preview.
Future will make Jurassic this means by which
I communicate with you as obsolete as a crystal set.
(What was that, grandpa, fancy glassware)
It was great fun, but it was just one . . . well you know the rest.
The funeral's over. Time to leave the wake. And WAKE-FM.
(To peer into the future, check out: "The Singularity is Near" by Ray
Kurzweil.)
e-mail
Ron
ron@ronjacobsonline.com |