MIKE
CURB ENTERPRISES, KABC AND RADIO TODAY
MIKE CURB has
been very successful in just about all of his music endeavors. At the young age of 60, MIKE is a well-known performer, songwriter
and record producer. CURB started Curb Records in Nashville in 1989. MIKE expanded Curb Records into a major independent label
and publishing company which possesses hot Country acts such as LEANN RIMES, TIM MCGRAW, JO DEE MESSINA and BILLY DEAN.
CURB now plans
to purchase the legendary Nashville studios, the Quonset Hut and Studio A, where many of the greatest recording artists of
our lifetime put out their hits. For three decades, singers such as BRENDA LEE, PATSY CLINE, JOHNNY CASH, GEORGE JONES, LORETTA
LYNN, TAMMY WYNETTE, MERLE HAGGARD, CHARLIE RICH, BOB DYLAN, DUSTY SPRINGFIELD and BOBBY VINTON laid down their tracks at
the Quonset Hut. OWEN BRADLEY and his brother, HAROLD built the Quonset Hut in 1955. MIKE CURB has purchased Sony's headquarters
on 16th Avenue South with aspirations to restore the Quonset Hut to its once gleaming core of rhythm and harmony.
The Quonset
Hut was originally contrived as a film production studio. It was situated behind a house at 1804 16th Avenue South, where
the BRADLEY brothers had begun their recording studio. Columbia Records purchased the edifice in 1962, and used it as a recording
studio until 1982. Sony procured Columbia/CBS Records in 1988. Sony began a giant refurbishing project which tacked on several
thousand square feet to the framework, a fresh facade and modernized gallery. The Quonset Hut was encased within the structure,
where lately it has housed Sony's art department.
The 23,446-square-foot
structure was appraised for $2,145,900, but local commercial Realtors estimate a market value closer to $3 million. This is
what's considered to be prime property because of its location between Belmont University and the Music Row Roundabout. The
deal will be comsumated in June 2005.
The news
is out all over town. Houston's new Album Rocker, KIOL FM, has announced that former AM Drive air personalities at the now
defunct KLOL FM, WALTON and JOHNSON, are back in the same capacity at KIOL FM. This has been speculated for quite some time,
now it is reality. Another well-known former KLOL FM DJ, Outlaw DAVE, will help drive Houston home in the afternoons on KIOL
FM. WENDY MILLER came over from The Buzz, KTBZ FM, to take a walk on the wild side in the mid-day slot on KIOL FM.
BOB POWLEDGE (Austin,TX) bob@dgmarketing.com More on Old KABC San Antonio Jim-After doing some more digging this past week, I've come up
with a bit more on the early "mystery tower" for KABC San Antonio. Looks like this tower originally went up atop the transmitter
building at 811 E Mytrle in San Antonio sometime after 1924, but for station KTAP, not KABC.
KABC, a station belonging to Alamo Broadcasting Company, began life with
a home-built "breadboard" transmitter before taking over the KTAP tower sometime around 1934-35. KABC station engineer J.W.
Collier lived at the site in 1936-37, and my grandfather Kemp Cates lived there and ran the facility 1938-39.
In 1940 or so, Alamo Broadcasting Company became an affiliate of
the Mutual Broadcasting System and the Texas State Network. By '51, both the tower and transmitting building were gone. Bob
Powledge Austin
Seems like early radio was much more simple than today's giant corporate
hodgepodge. Wondered where BOB found his latest information on San Antonio's KABC-680.
BOB POWLEDGE (Austin, TX) bob@dgmarketing.com Jim-Stations are definitely more "corporate" these days, with a lot less
variety between markets! Amazing though, how fast it went from mom-and-pop transmitting for fun to corporate owners with multiple
stations. Less than two decades from kitchen to boardroom!
Since
I'm in the electronics business, my computer(s) tend to stay reasonably current (Pentium 4's with 512 RAM ,etc.), but - still
tend to do most of my work on my oldest one, which isn't nearly as fast. My kids have faster computers than I do!
I'm a technical
sales guy. My company sells the machines that companies use to build printed circuit boards, whether those boards go into
a PC, a cell phone, or what-have-you. My work takes me all over Austin, plus San Antonio and Houston. Like most of the people
I know who spend a lot of time in the car, I tend to listen to AM more than FM. More talk, less redundancy in the programming.
Better coverage over distance, too.
I was in San Antonio
again last week, and had a chance to re-check with the library there on my KABC "tower quest". Finally found someone who knew
more about the old Sanborn Fire maps than I did, and he was able to clue me into how they were originally made and then updated.
He pulled a different copy for me from the vaults than what I had seen before, it showed the KTAP and KABC tower - finally
confirming what my earlier info had suggested. Only by looking
at the updated 1924 version was I able to find the thing.
In 1951,
there were enough changes on the page that they completely redrew it - all traces that the towers had ever existed vanished
from the publication. So only by looking at an "updated" 1924 copy was I able to see what I needed. Only the 1924 original
and the 1951 re-draw were available on-line.
The rest
of the info came from the old Worley's San Antonio City Directories. These directories existed for most towns in the days
before people had telephones and telephone books, the main libraries of many cities have copies of the ones from their towns.
Usually, they're in the genealogy department or the Texana collection.
The directories
pretty much contained the same information as today's phone books, plus some extra tidbits. You can do a look-up the name
of a company or the name of an individual, and get where they live, a spouse's name, what they did for a living. On companies,
sometimes the officers and\or managers were listed. I did both for the years that I knew my grandfather was living in San
Antonio.
While
looking up info on KABC, noticed a number of other entries for other San Antonio stations as well, just didn't jot the
info down given the nature of my search. By tracking a given station through the various year's directories, you can
put together a pretty good picture of where they were, who was in charge.
The
last of the info I sent this morning - the part about KABC starting with a "breadboard" transmitter - came from the book "Texas
Signs On - The Early Days of Radio and Television" by Richard Schroeder. Texas A&M University Press, College Station,
1998, catalog call #Texana 384.54097 in the San Antonio main city library.
Thanks
again for your help on this. It's been fun tracking this thing down. I may start on some of the other stations he worked for
next. Bob Powledge Austin
Remember my first
experience of several broadcast properties in one location was in 1966. KHFI FM, KHFI-970 AM and TV-42 were
neatly arranged in its own nice two story structure in Austin. Radio was upstairs. TV was on the first floor.
Each and everything was in its proper place and everyone was just simply fantabulous.
DAN LOVETT was
Manager of KHFI radio and TV. CAL DRUXMAN was KHFI radio's General Manager. CAL was the absolute best broadcast administrator
I ever was around. DRUXMAN was a wonderful guy, too.
In 1967, I
moved to one of the biggest one-stop broadcast and media operations ever, A.H. BELO in Dallas. That was where WFAA AM (820
kc and 570 kc), WFAA FM, WFAA CH-8 television and the Dallas Morning News were situated.
MIKE SHAPIRO
was General Manager of both radio and TV. DENSON WALKER was in charge of the radio uperation. CHARLIE VAN was Program
Director. BOBBY BROCK was Production Manager.
The WFAA group appeared
to be a city within a city. Two massive structures side-by-side. The broadcast facility was to the left and the newspaper
ediface was to the right. These were divided by a long wide entrance which led to a guard station and massive parking lot
outback. Kind of like a military base.
In 1981, the
old KILT building on Lovett Boulevard here in Houston was quite similar to the one at WFAA, but on a much, much smaller
scale and without the TV and newspaper functions. Another huge difference was the parking lot, which squeezed in only
about 10-12 cars and the walking distance was mere feet instead of light years. This 30+ year old two story building contained
two radio stations - KILT FM and KILT-610 AM, three great production studios and a newsroom. The radio studios were
upstairs. During the Fabulous Fifties, Sizzling Sixties and disco seventies, this was Rock'n'Roll paradise.
For decades,
DICKIE ROSENFELD was KILT's General Manager. The legendary BILL YOUNG was Operationa Manager and Program Director.
BILL is still known far and wide as one of radio's top programmers, production masters and another one of those great
guys.
Now, Country KILT
FM, Sports Talk KILT AM, Hot Talk KIKK AM and Smooth Jazz KHJZ (KIKK FM) FM are collectively assembled in
one plant location with a new Infinity partnership. These broadcast properties are arranged in nice new
confines in the Galleria area at 24 Greenway Plaza.
Departed KILT
FM and radio in 1996.
My first view
of today's corporate conglomerate in action came when I visited the Alamo City a couple of years ago. Long
time friend JOHNNY SHANNON was a DJ at KAJA FM (KJ97). JOHNNY later became KJ97's Production Director.
As I entered
the downstairs lobby, immediately spotted an FM station, but the studio lights were on vacation. Headed upstairs. What
I saw next appeared to be a radio assembly line. Look to the left out the KAJA FM doorway and
you see the powerful 50,000 watt clear channel WOAI-1200's studio at the end of the long hall. Don't know
how many radio stations were there, but the studios sat side-by-side like radio dorms. My, how
radio has changed.
Jim Rose
Houston, Texas
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