Issue #417 - Robert W. Morgan, shown here with KHJ Newsman B.R. Bradbury, makes his final appearance on the cover of the survey. He and ex-KHJ alumni The Real Don Steele, Humble Harve, and Jerry Butler joined forces with Bill Drake at K-100 (KIQQ-FM) later in 1973.
Morgan, one of the original Boss Jocks, went on to work at KMPC (twice), KMGG (Magic 106), and KRTH. He passed away from cancer in 1998 at age 60.
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4 comments:
I remember listening to KIQQ very little, even though it had all of those DJs that I'd loved from previous years. I stuck with KHJ but by now was also listening to KKDJ.
B.R. Bradbury was among the defectors to K-100, as was Jim Carson, who came down to L.A. from KFRC to fill in the first week after Morgan left.
K-100 proved that KHJ was more than just hits and jocks. It lacked production value. So much of how good KHJ sounded depended on the engineers on the other side of the glass. At K-100, the jocks had to run their own control boards...something Morgan and Steele hadn't done in nearly a decade.
Factor in disgruntlement as the former KHJ stars figured out that this was always going to be done on the cheap, and there was very little compelling about it.
KKDJ (with Charlie Tuna, Jay Stevens, Russ O'Hara, Billy Pearl (until he and Harve essentially traded gigs), Kris Erik Stevens and T. Michael Jordan), on the other hand, was up, happy and full of production values. A terrific station that, had K-100 not split the limited available audience for Top 40 on FM, could very well have overtaken KHJ by early '75.
I guess that you could say that I was "part of the problem" since I listened to KIQQ quite a lot, especially from 1974-1976. I would listen to KKDJ occasionally.
I remember when KKDJ did a Top 300 countdown at the end of 1971, and I thought that their 6PM-Midnight DJ was terrible! He would only announce the ranking of a song about once every half hour, and even worse, he skipped songs! For example, he would announce the song at #186, then he would play the next four songs without any mention of where they were ranked. Then the fifth song after #186, which you would think was #181, he would announce as #180! How can you keep track of a countdown like that? (Rhetorical question, you can't) I was almost at the point of giving up listening to the countdown altogether, but at Midnight a new DJ came on and he was great.
Survey erratum: "Will It Go Round In Circles" by Billy Preston has the "Weeks on Survey" listed as 6. It should be 7.
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