The Don Kent Collection
Don on Oldies-formatted KWIZ, 1967 
Don Kent on the board at KNX, 1972
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Don Kent graduated high school in early 1964 and writes:"I had NO idea what career path to take. During my Senior Year I browsed through several college catalogs and came across "broadcasting" at Los Angeles City College. That sounded like fun. Besides, my dad had been in radio during WWII and it was sort of like following in his footsteps; well, kinda! I did pretty well at it, getting straight A's and a place on the Dean's List, so I figured that I'd found my "calling".
Back in those days I collected a bunch of aircheck tapes from my, then, favorite stations. I studied the techniques for school, but I just liked listening to them, too. Eventually, I connected with others who had done the same and we traded. While I was still in school I took a job doing the news part-time at KBLA in Burbank, CA. That was in 1965. It worked into a job offer from KWIZ AM/FM, Santa Ana, which, so far as I know, was the first all-oldie station anywhere. That ended in 1969 and I returned to the station in Burbank, which was now KBBQ (Country). I HATED the Country format, but by then I had a wife and son and I needed the job (didn't have to turn the monitor up, though!). The P.D. from KLAC, Los Angeles, heard me on the air and offered me a job at his station. Needless to say, I took it. After several months I switched over to the Engineering Department there. The station was co-housed with KMET-FM and I did Production-Engineering for both. In 1970 I moved over to KFWB, Los Angeles, as a Production Engineer. A couple of years later I briefly moved to KNX/CBS but didn't much care for it and returned to KFWB, where I stayed until 1979. That's when I moved over to television, where I did freelance audio work (common in that business) for a short time. That led to a staff offer from KTLA-TV in 1980. I started there doing "doofus work", but moved up the ladder to the position of Senior Engineer and later Crew Chief. Since moving to television my aircheck interests switched to restoration of early videotape recordings. I did all the restorations for the UCLA Film and Television Archive between about 1987 and 2002. In 1988 I won a Primetime Emmy for restoring the earliest television show recorded on color tape; "An Evening With Fred Astaire" (1958). Since then I have done several others, including The Nixon-Krushchev "Kitchen Debate" for the Library of Congress. I'm real proud of how those early shows turned out. Many years ago I collected rock 'n' roll records, but the "sound" changed from what I liked and I hung that up. I still have about three thousand records from back then though. In the intervening years since college, I just put those old aircheck tapes on a shelf in the garage. I haven't listened to them since the early 70's but they still sound pretty good, so enjoy! |
The Repository thanks Don Kent for sharing!
[Description by Don Kent]
This aircheck came to be when a high school friend left his Wollensak running after he had taped some records from his Hi-Fi.
Years later I asked him about an old record, and he started playing his tapes, looking for it. This turned up!
Al Lohman and Roger Barkley were longtime partners on KLAC/Los Angeles. They became a morning fixture when they joined KFWB in 1967.
Westinghouse was their new employer, and corp apparently wouldn’t allow Al and Roger to put phone calls on-air live, and this was the compromise. When the live show went off-the-air at 9:30 AM, L&B would take calls for possible broadcast later.
This is rare, raw tape, the stuff that was used to make the on-air features. The initial segments are staged, including a very funny segment with newsman David Rogers. Then, real callers are featured. We have carefully removed their names. As you will hear, Westinghouse required clearance from callers before the recordings could be broadcast.
There was a football game over the weekend, involving Oakland and Green Bay. David Rogers, Cleve Herman and Charles Arlington are featured, as are Tony Bennett and Brenton Wood.
It’s the last day of February, 1968, and Lohman and Barkley correct a widely-held belief that KFWB is changing to an All-News format on March 1st. In fact, the format changed on Saturday, March 8.
L&B seem quite relaxed and are having fun in the last days of their KFWB show. You’ll even hear a reference to Gil Henry, their former KLAC producer. Mrs. Dickie Bansback and Ted J. Baloney are featured in a duet. Newsman Ben Chandler confirms that L&B are still “authoritative and convincing”, and Joe Yocam makes a cameo appearance.
Description by contributor Don Kent.
Robert W. Morgan was subbing for fellow Boss Jock Bill Wade, and having a good time doing it. In fact, he was having so much fun that he decided to go incognito, calling himself “The Hamster”.
[From Uncle Ricky: The fidelity on this rare recording is very poor, but the content is so good we had to share it.]
KFWB Color Radio format.
They brought back several of the KFWB voices, and coupled them with the original music, production and Sande and Greene & PAMS jingles.
Unfortunately, they had to run some of the then-current KMET commercials.
I supplied the jingles and the records, although Dr. Demento got the on-air credit for the music.
This partial aircheck features Elliot Field and long-time KFWB newsman Cleve Hermann.
This came from Ted Quillin’s personal collection, such as it was. It was recorded at KRLA. Ted was doing “housewife-time” then.
He let me copy this in the early seventies, when he was working for Ernie Freeman Productions in Hollywood. He had NO airchecks from the years of his earlier on-air jobs!