For a good while I was listening to ''Magia Solo Exitos [Bustos Media] on 1150. Signal covered up KKNW here,rather unusual. KKNW'S power way down. This was at 8;30 -10pm. Im in Tacoma FWIW. Question is where is the transmiter for Magia 1150 and night time power is how much? While Im at it, what year did 1150 start broadcasting 24 hours? I recall in the early 60s KKEY would sign off at dusk. One more question, What were the last words in English on 1150 before Bustos? Who was on?

The 1150 transmitter is still at 5500 E Fourth Plain Blvd in Vancouver WA. The station is in the process of increasing daytime power to 10kw with a 2-tower array. They are presently licensed at 5kw with 3 towers but have removed the center tower. Nighttime power based on the second hour of PSSA is 47 watts but will increase to 63 watts. The station was not 24 hours until at least 1998 and possibly not until Bustos assumed control.

I'd love to hear on this board from Mary Pierce, Al Emerick, former owner Ms. Weigand [sp], Jim Cuomo and all the other former KKEY figures including callers like Natale. What a great little local station. They were essentially an underground talk station-below the radar, but grass roots.

Herb

Al Emrich passed away a few years ago. I carry with me, a keychain that he picked up on a trip to Greece. Natale' was 90 years old in 1997. The "dahlia man" was 6 months older than he.

Florinda Weagant's husband, Ralph, is the real reason that station ever got on the air.

Florinda was a worthy competitor in the pursuit of 105.9 and even won the initial decision in the hearing that was frozen and terminated after the grand mistake known as the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. Like the rest of us, Jacor (Clear Channel) offered a ton of dough to everyone still involved (after 9+ years at that point) including 8 million bucks to Entercom (in a backroom deal) whom was not even an applicant to let them have the allocation, but I digress.
Like most small local AM stations run on a shoestring budget, just staying on the air for so many years after Ralph passed away was a miracle in itself.

Thanks for the inside scoop, Semoochie!

Herb

Thanks folks........Early60s I used to hear Warren Weagant on wkends. He did the KKEY coutdown show on Sundays. He used a lot of drops and sound effects.Great stuff. I remember some former Kisn Good guys there too. Either fired from KISN or tired of it.

Charles Weagant is the "real" reason that station got on the air, not to mention KBPS but Ralph certainly deserves credit for keeping it on the air and profitable for 33 years! You're welcome, Herb! Did you ever call?

..."He used a lot of drops and sound effects."

I love that stuff. Most PDs today hate it!

Nothing like a well placed drop to puctuate a talk set. It's just flat assed fun!

The secret? Don't overuse them.

BTW, from experience... If your demo has Drops and and SFX in it, your audition is DOA. Stick to the cards!

"You're welcome, Herb! Did you ever call?"

I think I did once or twice when they had a really funny host on. I think he called himself "Jim Hammer" or "The Hammer." I just remember he was off the wall and hilarious.

Herb

Jack Hammer

I used to listen to Jerry Dimmitt all the time. He did this thing called, I believe, "Quad Talk", where he'd put on four callers at the same time and let them duke it out.

Thanks again, Semoochie. Man, you are a wealth of information. Jack Hammer, that's the guy. Anyone know what he's doing now? Hilarious!

Herb

OK, I can't hold it back any longer: Jerry Dimmitt heard Jack Hammer's show and decided he wanted him as a vacation replacement. The Jack Hammer Incident(as it came to be known)involved Jack waiting for JD to be up on a mountain somewhere when the latter heard the story that the former had referred to someone(I don't remember who) as "Jerry's Buttboy"! This was immediately followed by the Dimmitt cutting his vacation short and rushing back to his show before his reputation was completely gone. The poor engineer on duty was somewhat naive and I didn't know what the term meant. This was followed by several days of the Dimmitt's version of the Hatfield/McCoy feud! All of this went out over the air! Jerry is quite a character and Ralph always hired characters. In fact, he once said he hired me because I was a character. I miss the times when Jerry would contemplate suicide on the air, once when his dog was ill!

Now you've got me wondering what Jerry Dimmitt is up to...as well as Jack Hammer.

Was it just me, or was Jack Hammer a wonderfully funny and wacky personality on-air?

Herb

His time on the air was short-lived but he was certainly "wacky".

I Recall a jock in Sacramento on KROY 1240 in the mid 60's naned ''Jack Hammer.Never heard him on KKEY. Was he the same guy in Sac? RE JD I used to talk to him on 2 meters on his way to work at KAYO. Boy what a mess of a station that was.

I don't think he was old enough.

1150 KXMG's power increase won't do anything for Salem, which is too bad.

Can they raised their nightime power to 1KW-DA?

As hokey as KKEY could be sometimes, looking back on it from 2007 it had a sort of unpredictable authenticity that is hard to find in radio today. While some of it was just plain awful, sometimes it could be very creative, informative and fun. While I wouldn't want a dial filled with KKEYs, it'd be nice to have one around.

Ditto!

I don't think they could reach Portland adequately with 1kw from their present site, especially since they can't send the signal that direction. Klamath Falls is a consideration and there may be others.

Seattle's 1150 would be another...

It would be relatively easy to protect Seattle since they already do so in the daytime. It's the idea of directing the signal south to reach Portland that's the problem since most of the 1150s are in that direction. It was determined a long time ago that 500 watts could be obtained with an additional tower doglegged to the side but that was before they removed the center tower.

Can't 1150 do something to improve their coverage of Salem?

If such a thing is possible, it would call for a sizeable investment that they're not very likely to recoup. I would say the main consideration is being able to be heard in the metro area, something that is becoming increasingly more difficult for much stronger stations.

I listened to KKEY for many days in the mid 1980's.
It was my favorite station. I liked most of the hosts. I made a few calls, talking with Lee Evans, Rodger Hart, Jerry Dimmitt. I visited Jim Creegan several times at his home which was within a few miles of where I live. I wonder if he's still alive. He was a pretty heavy Pall Mall smoker. I also wonder about Dimmitt and if he might be working under another name.

I loved that little station. Maybe that's why I also enjoy KLYC so much.

Herb

Jerry Dimmitt is employed outside of the industry.

Jerry Dimmitt is now fully retired, I have heard, and lives in a house boat somewhere in the Portland Vancouver area and spends a lot of time boating on the beautiful waterways. He was a bus driver for a local school district for some time after "radio" in Seattle.

My Dad showed me an article in the Columbian where he and Al Emrick and some other show hosts got together, on what radio station I dont remember, to do a " Clark County talk show host old days reunion" here a few years back, 2003 or 4 I think it was.

And another thought about Jerry. He started his radio career,or if not started, did a lot of it in Northern California before comming North into Oregon and Portland-Vancouver. Along the coast, Eureka then Lincoln City then Portland-Vancouver as I remember.

So the above comment about Jack Hammer might be accurate as J.D. was old enough to be in radio in 65'.

"My Dad showed me an article in the Columbian where he and Al Emrick and some other show hosts got together, on what radio station I dont remember, to do a " Clark County talk show host old days reunion" here a few years back, 2003 or 4 I think it was."

Boy, if you ever get a link to that article, please let us know.

Herb

I wonder if there is a way to get on the Columbian website and do a search? I could try that.

Columbian.com seems to have a very limited history section - mostly extremely noteworthy events, not the details like this. Probably the best bet would be if someone had access to a library newspaper database that indexes the Columbian. (Anyone have an FVRL card?)

Couldn't find the article but did find this and other stuff:

Alfred C. Emrich

Vancouver

Retired radio broadcaster and manager Alfred "Al" C. Emrich died at home Sunday, Dec. 8, 2002. He was 89.

Mr. Emrich was born June 22, 1913, in Portland and moved to Vancouver in 1960.

He worked in Vancouver for KGAR-AM and KKEY-AM radio.

Survivors include his wife, Win, at home; one daughter, Dian Golliday of Jordan Valley, Ore.; two sons, Cliff of Merced, Calif., and Scott of Vancouver; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

There will be a private service.

The Queen of Talk - June 9, 1998

Hail to the queen of media! And here she is now, relaxed in bicycle shorts, standing in front of her empire on Fourth Plain Boulevard between a taco stand and an auto parts house, talking about mowing the weedy strip of lawn that separates the front door from four lanes of fast traffic.

It's J.J. McKay, local radio personality turned local radio station owner. In January, she bought KKEY-AM, a sleepy little Vancouver station at 1150 on the AM dial that's almost 50 years old but with an audience too small to even make the Arbitron ratings.

Not that she plans to keep it that way. Friendly, energetic, quick-witted, at 37 years old McKay claims she's the youngest female owner of a radio station in any of the top 25 U.S. markets. That's not all.

"I'm the best looking," she adds, admitting quickly that there isn't much competition there. That's why one of her two business cards reads "J.J. McKay, Queen of Media."

Now that the coronation is over -- the sale closed in January -- comes the hard work of building a business and an audience.

Though this is McKay's first venture at owning a station, she's plunged into the business. She has changed the call letters to KKGT to create a new identity, drawn up a business plan, set up a budget, landed a $345,000 bank loan, and secured some other investors including Ted Piccolo, the station's sales manager.

She's been looking for this opportunity for a long time, since she started in radio at age 20 after getting fired from her job in a bank in Titusville, Fla.

"This little voice said, 'go into radio,' " she remembered, so she went to the Yellow Pages and called the first radio station listed alphabetically.

"I told them I was cute, funny, and would work for under $20,000 a year," she said. When the program manager quit laughing, she had a job.

Borg buster

Portland-area radio stations are hot properties these days. Local FM stations sell for millions of dollars, and many are now controlled by large media chains. So when she bought KKEY, "we're like the USS Enterprise, and I'm like Capt. Picard and Ted's like Number One," she says, lapsing into Star Trek jargon. "Those other stations are like the Borg."

She has a few thoughts on how to coexist. "Start small, keep your costs low, and make it sound big," says McKay. She won't discuss revenue figures but says the station is near the break-even point financially. Though it was small, KKEY was financially sound, and she's tried to retain that fiscal soundness.

She also retained some of that on-the-air sound. Like KKEY, KKGT will remain firmly in the conservative talk radio spectrum. Though McKay considers herself politically liberal, it's conservative stations that can pay their bills in the Clark County-Portland market. "If we were in California or on the East Coast, we could get away with doing more liberal talk," she explained.

She tries not to judge programming by ideology, however. "Don't look at the ideology, look at the content. Is it original?" She vows not to stray into what she calls "bitter-white-man radio."

With a limited budget and staff -- the station employs five full-time and seven part-time -- most of her programming is syndicated. But KKGT -- the initials stand for "great talk" -- offers local shows weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m.

McKay herself takes the Thursday shift. When a recent guest advocated smokers' rights, McKay, who has suffered from respiratory problems much of her life, was polite and sympathetic to the guest's position, but discussed her own background and opinions as well.

She's got several plans for the future. First, she's reviving her game show, "Affection Connection," and has signed a deal to syndicate it in 45 markets around the West. The show is a call-in matchmaking affair. It will air Friday evenings.

She also hopes to extend broadcasting hours later this year, and perhaps apply for a power upgrade in about two years, when she has the capital to rebuild the transmitter. Right now, the station's 5,000-watt signal can be heard from near Longview to Corvallis, Ore., though there are a few blank spots in Clackamas County.

In the end, though, her goals are personal. "I think success in the end is measured by the quality of your life.

"I love radio so much, it's like a kid. I want to have the best kid," she said.

"I don't care if I'm in a little station in Vancouver. We sound like a good Northwest station, and that's what matters." After all, a queen of media must have a legacy."

'GREAT TALK' RADIO

* WHAT: KGGT, 1150 AM (formerly KKEY)

* WHO: Owner J.J. McKay; five full-time and seven part-time employees

* FORMAT: Conservative talk radio

* HOURS: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, local programming 3 to 5 p.m. Mon-Fri


TROY WAYRYNEN/The Columbian * Talk time: KKGT-AM owner J.J.
McKay talks with a representative of the National Smokers' Alliance on a
recent show. McKay, the youngest woman to own a Top 25 market radio station,
bought the Vancouver station, formerly known as KKEY, in January.
Section: Business
Page: B10

Index Terms: RADIO
Copyright (c) 1998 The Columbian Publishing Co., P.O. Box 180, Vancouver, WA 98666.
Record Number: 1998160034

Business Briefing - June 8, 1999

Vancouver

Owners move radio station KKGT to Clackamas

Vancouver radio station KKGT is moving to Oregon.

Former Oregon gubernatorial candidate Bill Sizemore recently bought into the station and now owns it with fellow conservative activist Frank Eisenzimmer.

The new ownership is in the process of moving the station to Clackamas, said Michael Anthony, the station's production manager.

KKGT, 1150-AM, operates an all-talk format with a mix of local and syndicated programming aimed at politically conservative audiences. The station was known as KKEY until January of last year.

"The format's going to stay the same," Anthony said.

Station manager J.D. Fort said KKGT wanted to upgrade its office space and couldn't find anything suitable in Vancouver.

Eisenzimmer is the founder and initial financial backer of Oregon Taxpayers United, a taxpayer watchdog group that has sponsored term-limit and antitax initiatives on the Oregon ballot. A few years ago, Eisenzimmer was one of the principal authors behind Ballot Measure 5, which limited Oregon property taxes.

Sizemore has headed Oregon Taxpayers United since 1993. Last year, he won the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber. Sizemore lost the election, with 31 percent of the vote to Kitzhaber's 63 percent.

Vancouver

Salmon is topic of breakfast

Realtors and Salmon: Why We Should Care, is the topic of a breakfast planned Thursday, June 17, at Royal Oaks Country Club. Wes Lynch, executive officer of the Washington Association of Realtors, is the guest speaker.

Lynch will discuss how the Endangered Species Act and the recent salmon listing will affect real estate development and land values.

The breakfast will begin at 7:30 a.m. Cost is $13 in advance or $15 at the door. For reservations contact the Association of Clark County Realtors at 695-5980.


Section: Business
Page: C1

Copyright (c) 1999 The Columbian Publishing Co., P.O. Box 180, Vancouver, WA 98666.
Record Number: 1999159037

Is this Wes Lynch, of Washington Associationof Realtors, the same Wes Lynch that was on KGW in the late 50's/early 60's?

Wasn't Al Emrich the general manager of KAAR for awhile and why wasn't Al Jr(A C)mentioned?

Yes! Al Emrich became Vice-President & G.M. of KAAR on February 14, 1983 and had that position when I began at KAAR in 1985. He later managed the "Tower Mall" where KAAR had studios.

You know that article my Dad showed my might have mentioned A.C.Emrich with J.Dimmitt, not Al.

After reading Craig's copy of Al Emrich's obit I am convinced that Dad didnt show me that article at any time in 2002 or certainly not before. The article was published some time in the last 3 years I believe.

And then there is this :

U.S Public Records index :

A.C. Emrich
6310 61st Loop S.E.
Olympia, Thurston, Washington 98513

Phone : 360-923-1097
........................................

J. Dimmitt
Vancouver, Clark, Wa. 98660
Ph : 360-694-2648

...............................................

Couldn't find anything under A.C. Emrich or J. Dimmitt but did find one article on Jerry Dimmitt. This was a combination article on many topics but the last part was on Dimmitt. January 24, 1995:

LUCKILY, long-time radio talk show host Jerry Dimmitt has a good sense of humor.

Someone stodgier might have taken offense to the way his new station described him in a news release.

The station said Dimmitt "is a cross between William F. Buckley and Soupy Sales."

Over the years, Dimmitt, who is a Vancouver resident, has built a loyal following even while bouncing from station to station.

His new radio home is KXYQ, which bills itself as "The Voice of 1010 AM." Dimmitt's show is on weekdays from 2 to 4 p.m.

Dave Jewett's INK column appears here on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. If you have an item of interest, call Dave at The Columbian, 699-6006, or drop him a line.


Section: A section
Page: A3

Copyright (c) 1995 The Columbian Publishing Co., P.O. Box 180, Vancouver, WA 98666.
Record Number: 1995024018


OpenURL Article Bookmark (right click, and copy the link location):
FAIR ACTS SHOULD BE MORE THAN, WELL, FAIR

I believe Dave Jewett had that column before KISN went on the air the first time. Talk about a long run! By the way, I sat in on one of Jerry's KXYQ shows and was sort of a guest. At least, I took calls.

Glad to hear that JD is back in the saddle. Jerry has always had a " Soupy Sales " ambience on and off the mike and despite any particular political leaning. I first knew him as a Ham Operator in a grouping of young late teens and early twentys guys back in the early 70s. JD was on the Ham bands with us, an older personage than most of the rest of us. He was of course always a riot to talk to ! And because he was in Broadcast Radio, his exploits were of special interest to many of us.

For awhile back in the '70's KKEY was the only all-talk (though a daytimer) station on the West Coast between San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C. (Seattle had a talk show or two but no full-time station at that time) I also remember KKEY had a 12-plus rating of 3.8 in one book around that time. One of the local papers (the Oregon Journal?) did an article on the station headlined something like "Talk is Cheap, and Profitable, at KKEY." It was embossed and posted on the wall in the office on Stark.

After the Oregonian started posting ratings, the highest I saw was 5.5, tied with KMJK for #5. Right after that, KXL abandoned Beautiful Music for News/Talk. This was after Hirsh/Dimmitt, PMJ, Fenwick and Jack Hurd. I've always been curious what the ratings were then.

I remember Ralph used to worry in those days that the ratings were getting too high..the danger being that they would lure another station into the format. That, of course, eventually happened. (for a variety of reasons)

Another station would have been OK; it was when they lured every other station into the format that we ran into trouble!

The Dimmitt is alive and well and thriving in video-blog land:

http://www.youtube.com/user/k6tpl

webfoot, you are right about that.