Thanks For The Memories

No I’m not going to write about Bob Hope who always sang “Thanks for the memories” at the end of his TV show or about the Hollywood starlet who told her plastic surgeon, “thanks for the mammarys.”  I had some comments last week which referred to me as “ole weird Rod” instead of “old wrinkled Rod” which is a more current reference.

Speaking of these memories, there is a great little book available on Amazon by the name of San Antonio Radio Memories.  It is collection of stories told by a number of different DJ’s who worked in the San Antonio radio market through the years. My contribution to the book was this.  

The Story of Ole Weird Rod

By Rod Tanner

Some of my fondest memories in my radio career are from the three years I spent at KONO Radio, a top-forty format in San Antonio when personality radio was in its hey-day.  I came to work at KONO in the summer of 1969 and left in the fall of 1972.  I became very good friends with B. Bailey Brown who was doing afternoon-drive. At some point B. began calling me Ole Weird Rod because I did a lot of goofy things on the air, used a lot of drop-ins and pretty well bent the format as far as I could.  Before long everyone was calling me Ole Weird Rod, including myself.  I think I truly did some funny stuff on the air but the funniest thing that ever happened at the station was actually off the air.

I was doing the 9 til-midnight shift.  Back then we had a live newsman until midnight. The station had gone through a number of newsmen in the period of a year.  Every time they hired a new guy my main goal was to try to break them up on the air at least once.  My latest newsman was Rudy Rocha and I had been trying to crack him up for a couple weeks without success.  One night after Rudy had started into the news I had gone for a bathroom break.  Till this day I still have no idea what possessed me to do this but I took off my shirt and wrapped myself from the waist to the top of my head with toilet paper.

I knew Rudy was getting close to ending his newscast so I slipped back into the control room.  The door to the control room was at the back of the room so I could step into it unseen until the last moment.  There was a large window on the right of the control room that looked into the news room and a second large window on the left side that looked into the KITY control room which at that time played classical music and was the only thing that Jack Roth, the owner, ever listened to. 

 At the end of the newscast, Rudy would give the temp and time and I would hit my jock intro to start the next hour.  Rudy would then have about thirty seconds to get ready to repeat the news on KITY at the top of hour.  As Rudy gave the temp and time I lurched out of my hiding place toward the control board and hit my jock intro to start my record. 

           

Rudy looked up and went into hysterics, falling forward and out of his chair.  The jock on KITY, some student who had been tracking classical music and studying his college books, automatically flipped on the news pot and heard nothing but laughter.  He stared big-eyed into the newsroom with a shocked look on his face. Rudy was still cracking up and I was thinking that this was the funniest stunt I had ever pulled. 

What I didn’t realize was that Jocky John Steel, who followed me at midnight, had been over at the Channel 12 Television Studios next door visiting and had brought a couple of executives from ABC in New York to tour the radio stations.  They had evidently walked up about the time I had started all of this.  As I turned around, I saw two men in suits who were gawking at me in all of my toilet paper glory. 

At that point Jocky John Steel deadpanned, “And this is Ole Weird Rod.”

I am very grateful that I was able to work in radio when it really was fun.  Fun for me, fun for the people I worked with and fun for the listener. I don’t think today’s radio is very much fun.  I was fortunate enough to work in markets that were very competitive which forced us to be more creative on the air.   I worked at KXOL where we were in a tough battle with KFJZ.   In San Antonio at KONO, where we went head to head with KTSA and while I was in Denver at KTLK we battled KIMN.   Finally at KRLY in Houston, I was up against KILT and KRBE.  The fun part is that everybody knew everybody and we had fun together. We respected our competition and yet did everything we could do to beat them.  This resulted in radio that was truly entertaining, and the real winner was the listener.

Radio stations use to be owned by people who loved radio and only had a few stations each.  Now they are owned by huge corporations and run by people (mostly lawyers and accountants) who don’t have a clue to what radio is about.  There is no competition and no creativity, just sister stations because most of the radio stations today are owned by four companies.

I don’t spend time grumbling about today’s radio, as I said before everything changes. I am just grateful I got to work in radio with some great talent such as Tim Kelly,  Steve Sellers, John Steel, Bob Moody, Harry Scarbough, Cris Cooper, B.Bailey Brown, Chuck Joseph, Mike Wade, Ron Foster, Ron Seldon, Johnny Shannon, Paul Kirby, Phil Gardner and C.C. McCartney just to name a few.  It was fun and exciting for the people listening and for the folks who were on the air.

I saw this picture on Facebook yesterday with the caption, “We were a different country then.”  I think somebody was having a Jesus moment because it was Easter, because I am pretty sure the picture was taken in the early fifties during the Great Vampire Scare.  It was caused by Senator Joseph (I’ll Drink To That) McCarthy after he told everyone he had a list of all the vampires who worked for the Government.  

Stay tuned for future adventures.