… . . . BMR on Better Music Radio . . . …
After record-setting successes at early Top 40 leader KFWB and WMCA in New York, B. Mitchel Reed returned to KFWB in Los Angeles (by this time, owned by Westinghouse) for “The Wide, Weird World of B.M.R”. In this aircheck from October of 1967, you will hear “The Beamer” perfecting the personna that he took with him into the very beginnings of “underground” FM radio.
According to Don Barrett’s L.A. Radio People, Reed had met Big Daddy Tom Donahue at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and they discovered their mutual frustration with their current stations. Donahue went to KMPX and developed the first underground FM in San Francisco. Reed found backers for KPPC, which became the first in the new album-oriented format in Southern California.