KOMA in
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, an ...
, and
WDGY
WDGY (740 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Hudson, Wisconsin, and serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul radio market. It is owned by WRPX, inc. and airs a Classic Hits/Oldies radio format. The station's studios and offices ...
in
Minneapolis-St. Paul). During the mid-60s, KXOK was one of the two dominant radio stations in the St. Louis market, along with
KMOX
KMOX (1120 AM) is a commercial radio station in St. Louis, Missouri. Owned by Audacy, Inc., it is a 50,000 watt Class A clear-channel station with a non-directional signal. The KMOX studios and offices are on Olive Street at Tucker Boulev ...
. KXOK was so successful during this period, that its
Top 40
In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or "conte ...
competitor,
WIL (AM 1430) dropped pop music in 1967, and switched to
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, o ...
; it helped that WIL refused to play
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developm ...
.
Top 40 DJs
A number of legendary air personalities graced the KXOK airwaves during the station's glory years, including Ed Bonner, Ray Otis, Bill Addison, Mort Crowley,
Danny Dark
Danny Dark (December 19, 1938 – June 13, 2004) was an American voice-over artist. For nearly four decades, he embedded pop culture with memorable lines in advertisements for Budweiser ("This Bud's for you"), Raid Ant & Roach Killer ("Raid - Kil ...
, Ron Elz aka Johnny Rabbitt, British DJ Paul Martin, Shad O'Shea, William A. Hopkins,
Don Pietromonaco
Donald Stephen Pietromonaco (September 15, 1935 – April 18, 1997) was an American child actor, award-winning radio personality and voice actor whose career would span more than 47 years.
Early years
In the summer of 1948 at the age 13 Don beg ...
aka Johnny Rabbitt, Don Shafer, Delcia Devon, Louise Harrison Caldwell (
George Harrison's sister),
Lou Cooley, Davey O'Donnell, Peter Martin, Keith Morris, Richard Ward Fatherley and
Bob Shannon.
Other outstanding personalities of the 1970s included Jerry Butler, Mason Lee Dixon, Jack Mindy, Craig Roberts and Scott Sherwood. The news staff included veteran reporters Bob Shea, Robert R. Lynn and Steven B. Stevens. It was under the leadership of Station Operations Manager Bud Connell and program directors Ray Otis and Mort Crowley that KXOK became one of the highest-rated stations in the country.
It was quite common for the DJs such as Rabbitt and Otis to travel to various teen venues with their specially selected escort bands to gage their audiences' interest in music and to make personal contact with their fans. The KXOK Sound Waves of Centralia, Illinois, were a fan favorite featuring members Ron Bousman, Mike Atchison, Greg Flanigan, Tommy Lee, and Joey Rhodes. Rhodes went on to become a Nashville recording artist and songwriter.
Many of the station's DJs over the years went on to successful careers as national talk show hosts, television news anchors, actors and nationally known freelance talent.
Danny Dark
Danny Dark (December 19, 1938 – June 13, 2004) was an American voice-over artist. For nearly four decades, he embedded pop culture with memorable lines in advertisements for Budweiser ("This Bud's for you"), Raid Ant & Roach Killer ("Raid - Kil ...
became the voice of
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
-TV, a post he held for an entire generation. Craig Roberts continues to work as a national television voice actor and announcer, still heard locally in St. Louis as the "voice" of
ABC 30.
Talk and news
With the departure of key air talents and the advent of Top 40 music on FM—most notably from
KSLQ (now known as KYKY)—KXOK went through several
format
Format may refer to:
Printing and visual media
* Text formatting, the typesetting of text elements
* Paper formats, or paper size standards
* Newspaper format, the size of the paper page
Computing
* File format, particular way that informati ...
changes toward the end of the 1970s The music format ended in April 1983, when KXOK flipped to
talk
Talk may refer to:
Communication
* Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people
* Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people
* Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct
...
and
oldies
Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as wel ...
. After being sold along with
KHTK
KHTK (1140 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Sacramento, California. KHTK broadcasts a sports radio format as "Sactown Sports 1140" and is an affiliate of the CBS Sports Radio network. It is owned by Salt Lake City–based Bonnevil ...
to Legends Broadcasting for $6.5 million in 1989, KXOK went to an all-news format, calling itself "All News 630". KXOK started adding an audio simulcast of
CNN Headline News
HLN is an American basic cable network. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, the network primarily carries true crime programming.
The channel was originally launched on January 1, 1982 by Turner Broadcasting as CNN2 (later renamed Headline Ne ...
in overnights in May 1990, replacing a syndicated
sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...
/trivia show from Boston,
with CNN audio replacing much of the locally produced daytime news blocks by September.
The station also featured ''Sports Extra'', a nightly local evening talk show hosted by Howard Balzer and Mark Eissman.
When KXOK dropped the all-news format in favor of
Motown
Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on June 7, 1958, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of ''mot ...
-oriented
soul music
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became pop ...
in February 1991, ''Sports Extra'' was retained due to listener demand,
but also became known for frequent technical issues that plagued the program's production.
Religion as KJSL
KXOK was sold in 1994 to
, which changed it to a religious station as KJSL; as part of the changeover, Crawford moved the station to new facilities in west
St. Louis County.
Under Crawford ownership, KJSL featured multiple locally originated programs, including a morning drive program hosted by
Al Gross and Tim Berends; KJSL attempted to promote the show to non-Christian listeners with a 1998 billboard that read "Hell Hates Tim & Al", trimmed in flames. Motivational speaker
Debra Peppers hosted a daily inspirational talk program from 1996 through 2006.
Bob Wells hosted a
conservative talk
Conservative talk radio is a talk radio format in the United States and other countries devoted to expressing conservative viewpoints of issues, as opposed to progressive talk radio. The definition of conservative talk is generally broad enoug ...
show,
once attracting local attention for protesting
Anheuser-Busch
Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV ( AB InBev), now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple ...
's local sponsorship of
St. Louis PrideFest. Area broadcaster Hank Thompson also hosted an overnight show on KJSL in the early 2000s.
Sale to BBN
Crawford opted to spin off the stronger of its two St. Louis stations, KXOK, to the
Bible Broadcasting Network
The Bible Broadcasting Network (BBN) is a listener-supported global Conservative Christian radio network staffed and headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was founded in 1971 by Lowell Davey, who was the network's president until his dea ...
in 2013. BBN paid $2 million and shuttered the station's local operations to carry the network feed from its headquarters in
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont (United States), Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Meckl ...
.
References
External links
KYFI official website
{{Bible Broadcasting Network
YFI
YFI
Radio stations established in 1938
Bible Broadcasting Network