Bruce Vidal, 54; Longtime L.A. Disc Jockey Reveled in Having
                      Achieved His 'Dream Job'
                      By Myrna Oliver, Times Staff Writer

                      Bruce Vidal, a disc jockey for KIIS-FM
                      (102.7) for 15 years, whose booming voice
                      was as big as his 300-pound girth, has died.
                      He was 54.

                      Vidal, who spent 1982 through 1996 on local
                      air waves, died Friday of an apparent heart
                      attack at his home near Palm Desert, said
                      Don Barrett, author of the book "Los
                      Angeles Radio People." Vidal had suffered
                      from complications of diabetes.

                      During part of his tenure here, in the
                      mid-1980s, Vidal was married to his chief
                      competitor, Laurie Allen, whose job he took
                      at KIIS. Their on-air rivalry earned them an
                      appearance on ABC's "Good Morning
                      America" and articles in People magazine and
                      The Times, among other publications.

                      The two, who married in Las Vegas in 1976,
                      both spun patter and music from 6 to 10 p.m.
                      five nights a week, Vidal on KIIS and Allen
                      on KMGG-FM (105.9).

                      They joked about the two cars parked in
                      their Canoga Park driveway: a sleek, new red
                      Corvette and a not-so-sleek dented Dodge Aries.

                      "Whoever gets the highest ratings," Allen told The Times in 1985,
                      "gets to drive the Corvette."

                      Vidal, who attracted four times as many listeners as his wife, got
                      the sports car.

                      "It's my dream job," Vidal told The Times of his KIIS stint in
                      that dual interview. "Fifteen years ago, when I got into radio, I
                      wanted to come to Los Angeles, work at the No. 1 Top-40 station
                      in town, make a lot of money, live in the Valley, have a house with a
                      pool and drive a Corvette. And it's happened."

                      In 1997, Vidal moved on to smaller radio stations, first in
                      Thousand Oaks and in 1999 to what had become KELT-FM (92.7)
                      in Riverside.

                      Born in Los Angeles, the son of a postman, Vidal took five years to
                      get through high school and then graduated to a job parking cars.
                      But after seeing a television commercial for the Career Academy
                      School of Broadcasting, he took the six-month course in 1970 and
                      landed a job at a small station in Washington, Iowa.

                      Three years later, he moved to station KDLM in Detroit Lakes,
                      Minn., where he met Allen. In 1976, after marrying Allen, Vidal
                      went to work at KOIL in Omaha, Neb.

                      By 1981, he had moved to K101 in San Francisco. It was the scene
                      of his worst professional blunder. As a promotion gimmick, the
                      station had offered to pay $25,000 to any listener who caught a
                      deejay failing to play three songs consecutively between
                      commercials and announcements.

                      "It was very intense because we did commercials at 10, 20, 30 and
                      50 minutes. We all felt like a gun was to our heads," he told
                      People in 1985.

                      Vidal read an ad without playing the touted three-in-a-row songs,
                      and the station had to pay up. Soon after, he moved south, starting
                      with a part-time job at KIIS and then replacing Allen as evening
                      deejay.

                      Information about survivors was not immediately available.

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