Bee Gees Day was coming – as evidenced by TWO Brothers Gibb tunes in this aircheck recorded during KRLA’s “New Season of Excitement,” a high-energy format which sounded very much like rival KHJ. Of course, by January of 1968, KHJ had lapped KRLA (and everyone else!) in the ratings. The DJ lineup at this time included Reb Foster (PD), Casey Kasem, Jim Wood, Dave Hull (in morning drive), Bill Slater and Rhett Walker (a New Zealander who was KRLA’s answer to KHJ’s Tommy Vance and KFWB’s Lord Tim Hudson).
Bob Dayton (1934-95) left WABC in 1965 after the infamous “Hiroshima” broadcast and headed west, first stopping at KBLA in Burbank (later KBBQ and then KROQ), where — as evidenced by an aircheck elsewhere at this site — he “puked” for two years. Reb Foster hired him the day KBLA folded, and by 1968 he had toned it down to at least “Boss Jock” level. In early ’69 he even went up against The Real Don Steele in KRLA’s afternoon slot.
The “New Season of Excitement” ran out of gas, however, and by mid-1968 KRLA had all but conceded that KHJ ruled the town, giving way to large chunks of “automated” programming. Dayton stuck with KRLA off and on through 1973 (including a brief run back in New York at ‘CBS-FM). He died of cancer April 28, 1995.