Tag Archives: KBOA

Time for Talk: KBOA830.com

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Time for Talk was (is?) a public access program on the local cable system in Kennett, MO. As I recall, it started about the same time I began working at the local radio station, KBOA.

Time for Talk was a labor of love for Dr. Russ Burcham (a local dentist) and his wife, Rosemary. Rosemary did the interviews and Russ worked the camera. Sort of Wayne’s World with Aunt Bea and Sheriff Taylor replacing Wayne and Garth.

Time for Talk was 15 minutes long, as I recall. And it was kind of big deal in our little town because it was about the only way you’d ever see your self on television without getting arrested or dying in bus crash.

Because I was “on the radio,” Russ and Rosemary had me on several times over the years. Before YouTube, the only way you’d see one of these treasures was to go to Kennett.

This one was recorded in 1998, fourteen years after I left Kennett. Rosemary asked me to talk about the website I created for the local station (my first effort at a website). Enjoy.

A quest to save AM radio

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Most of my on-air time for the dozen years (1972-82) I worked at my hometown radio station was on the AM station. In the 60s (?) the station sold (at cost?) “FM converters” because so few cars had FM receivers. This NY Times story tells the tale:

“In 1978 half of all radio listening was on the AM dial. By 2011 AM listenership had fallen to 15 percent, or an average of 3.1 million people, according to a survey by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private investment firm. While the number of FM listeners has declined, too, they still averaged 18 million in 2011. (The figures are averages based on measuring listeners every 15 minutes.)”

“In 1970 AM accounted for 63 percent of broadcast radio stations, but now it accounts for 21 percent, or 4,900 outlets, according to Arbitron. FM accounts for 44 percent, or 10,200 stations. About 35 percent of stations stream content online.”

“Nearly all English-language AM stations have given up playing music, and even a third of the 30 Major League Baseball teams now broadcast on FM. AM, however, remains the realm of conservative talk radio, including roughly 80 percent of the 600 radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh.”

James Arness

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When I heard that James Arness had died my first thought was, “How could he still be alive?!” It’s just that Gunsmoke was so long ago.

So I dug out this photo taken when Craig Watson and I “interviewed” the popular TV actor when he appeared at the Sikeston Bootheel Rodeo. KBOA news guys John Reeder did the recording and Craig (on the right) and I asked some questions. Marshall Dillon signed my Fanner 50 holster.

DJ Steve

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It was almost 40 years ago I got my first taste of being “on the radio.” It as a very little pond but I was happy fish. It was easy to convince yourself a lot of people were listening to you. Very ego gratifying. I marvel at the freedom we had.

KBOA photos (high rez scans)

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One of my first attempts at a website was KBOA830.com. That was about 13 years ago and I’ve moved it around several times since then. The impetus for the site was a bunch of photos from the late ’40s, given to me by one of the original employees of the station.

When flickr came along, I uploaded the photos there but the scans were low rez because I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve thought about rescanning but that’s one tedious chore.

A couple of months ago I boxed up 120 of the prints and sent them off to ScanCafe where they were “scanned by hand” for about 29 cents each. It took a while (I think the scanning is done in India) but the prints were safely returned along with a DVD of 300dpi images.

KBOA

Turns out I can’t delete the lorez images yet because I’ve linked to them from the KBOA site. Once I get that all sorted out I can get rid of the duplicates.

If you have a box of prints (or 35m slides or negatives), send them to ScanCafe (or one fo the similar services) and get them digitized. And then put them online, because that is the only hope you have of giving them a life beyond your own.

Footnote: I never tire of looking at these images. The tower and the transmitters and the studios… all of the expensive stuff it took to communicate in 1947. If you had something to say to your community (forget the world) you had to build/buy/go to work for one of these entities (radio station, TV, newspaper). All changed now. And changing. I love it.

“Radio Days: the celluloid afterlife of real radio”

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“In the movies, radio is a mythic force: local, rebellious, life-changing. This hardly describes the reality at commercial radio stations today, but it does tell us something about how radio was—and about how we want it to be.

The Clear Channel consolidations of the 1990s and the streaming revolutions of the last decade have given us change and innovation, but they haven’t forged the kind of cultural radio that thrilled and united 20th-century audiences. Sure, we’ve got talkers who excel at dividing us. And we’ve got little machines that let us become our own DJs. But we haven’t replicated the “real people” kind of radio that speaks and sings to us better than we can speak and sing to ourselves. Our new broadband-powered landscape hasn’t empowered that level of talent—yet. But don’t worry. It will. Until then, see you at the movies.

I stumbled across this piece by Matthew Lasar on ars technica. It brought back many fond memories from my days at KBOA (’70s). We said pretty much anything within reason and the same went for the music we played (on turn-tables). And I loved movies about DJ’s and radio stations. I’ll be forever grateful I didn’t miss “real radio.”

Joe Bankhead’s History of KBOA

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joebankhead

Joe Bankhead was there when radio station KBOA went on the air in 1947. One of the original employees. He recently retired (at the age of 92) and set down at his manual upright and banged out 17 pages of memories about the early days. My thanks to Joe (and his son, Jimmy) for allow us to share them here. You can hear some of Joe’s recollections in his own words (recorded in 1982)

AUDIO: Excerpt of interview with Joe Bankhead

Here’s Joe’s “History of KBOA” (PDF)