KADY was a commercial daytime-only

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

that was licensed to

St. Charles, Missouri Saint Charles (commonly abbreviated St. Charles) is a city in, and the county seat of, St. Charles County, Missouri, United States. The population was 70,493 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making St. Charles the List of cities in ...

, and served

Greater St. Louis Greater St. Louis is the 23rd-largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the United States, the largest in Missouri, and the second-largest in Illinois. Its core city—St. Louis, Missouri—sits in the geographic center of the metro area, ...

. It broadcast on from April 3, 1958, to January 20, 1965.

History

KADY signed on at 1 p.m. on April 3, 1958. The station broadcast with 5,000 watts during the day from a tower along State Highway 94 in Boschertown. Within three months of signing on, William R. Cady, Jr., an advertising executive, bought out majority shareholder Harman Moseley. The remaining shares were owned by Jack Chenoweth, the chief engineer at

KETC KETC (channel 9) is a PBS member television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, owned by St. Louis Regional Public Media. The station's studios are located at the Dana Brown Communications Center on Olive Street in St. Louis' Gran ...

television, and the Schnatmeier family. KADY quickly expanded to FM. In May 1959, it filed an application with the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

to build a new FM radio station in St. Louis. KADI 96.5 hit the air on December 22, duplicating KADY's programming and broadcasting after sunset; in 1964, it duplicated 63 percent of the AM outlet's programming. The combination of KADY and KADI promoted itself as "The KADY Twins" and used a cicada-themed logo. While the stations' programming consisted mostly of fine music, KADY-KADI snared the rights to broadcast

Missouri Tigers football The Missouri Tigers football program represents the University of Missouri (often referred to as Mizzou) in college football and competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). History Mis ...

games in 1961. In November 1962, the sale of KADY-KADI to KADY, Inc., headed by former

Filmways Filmways, Inc. (also known as Filmways Pictures and Filmways Television) was a television and film production company founded by American film executive Martin Ransohoff and Edwin Kasper in 1952. It is probably best remembered as the production c ...

president Rodney Erickson, was announced. Little changed in operations until February 14, 1964, when the station left the air at 11:30 a.m. as eight employees walked out in a pay dispute. The employees, including four engineers, claimed they had not been paid in two weeks and paychecks were being issued late. KADY-KADI, however, returned to the air on February 24, after 10 days of silence. By that summer, KADY-KADI had become affiliated with the

Mutual Broadcasting System The Mutual Broadcasting System (commonly referred to simply as Mutual; sometimes referred to as MBS, Mutual Radio or the Mutual Radio Network) was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the Golden Age of Radio, ...

. Yet again, it was unpaid engineers who started the second—and final—strike in KADY history. The station did not sign on as usual on January 21, 1965; the local representative of the

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a trade union, labor union that represents approximately 820,000 workers and retirees in the electricity, electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Guam, Panama, Puerto Rico, an ...

said that three IBEW engineers had not been paid for a month, and acting manager Homer Griffith shut the station down at the orders of ownership in New York. The next day, Griffith announced that KADY would remain off the air pending a "financial reorganization". KADI was sold in August 1965 to Vanguard Broadcasting Corporation, which would return it to the air. In November 1965, Michael Rice of

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filed an application to build a new radio station on the 1460 frequency in St. Charles. KADY still faced legal troubles: the FCC fined the station in February 1966 for failure to illuminate its tower—the first such fine the commission had ever issued—over the objections of the licensee, which claimed it was insolvent. The AM outlet was never sold; the FCC granted the Rice application in November 1967 and KIRL began operating from the former KADY site at Boschertown in the summer of 1968. The license for KADY was deleted on March 24, 1967

References

{{Daytime-only radio stations in Missouri Defunct radio stations in the United States 1958 establishments in Missouri Radio stations established in 1958 1965 disestablishments in Missouri Radio stations disestablished in 1965 ADY ADY