We're less than a month away from the anniversary and so I thought I'd write down a few thoughts about this big project from "Act I" of my life.
Most of my business colleagues and some of my friends don't know anything about how I planned, built and operated a 100,000-watt FM radio station in my hometown. I don't usually list it on my resume as it doesn't really fit what I do today (leadership training, quality, standards, that kind of stuff)...and it's quite literally so long ago. With July 14 approaching we're coming up to 25 years since we went on the air. July 14, 1984 at noon to be exact...but more on that later.
I have a wonderful person to thank for first putting me on the KQMA path by putting me on the radio path...Tad Felts. Tad was the news director at KKAN, the AM station in my hometown of Phillipsburg, Kansas. Some time around 1972 or so he was casting about for kids from the local schools to provide a minute or two of "what's happening" for use during his news broadcasts. As he told me many years later, most of what he got back was pretty low on the "broadcast standards" totem pole, but one voice sounded professional, as if was recorded in a studio, and included actual interviews with other people like basketball coaches and principals. That voice, luckily, was mine.
Tad liked my weekly "Junior High News" so much that he asked my mom if I could work as a DJ at KKAN from 5-7 PM weekdays. And so, at age 14, I started my "radio career" at a very nice $1.60 an hour.
A couple of years into this gig, Tina Pool and I were co-hosting a Saturday afternoon call-in show on KKAN called Rock On, and amidst all the requests for Grand Funk Railroad and ABBA, Tina piped up with "You know, what this town needs is a good 100,000-watt FM radio station. The music would sound so much better."
So I built one.
Ok, ok, there was much more to it than that. I went to K-State and majored in radio-television, managing the student radio station to get an understanding of how things might work back home; I began to research how to actually go through the FCC process of allocating a radio frequency to Phillipsburg and then applying for a license to use that frequency; and I started figuring out how much all this would cost. (About $300,000 back then, as I remember.)
Most people don't know that along the way, there was much scheming by the owners of KKAN to keep my station off the air, including an offer of $50,000 to "go away." I don't think they ever realized that KQMA was never about the money...it was about realizing a dream and giving my town something that, in my mind at least, put it in the "big city" category.
I learned the concept of "leveraging" early by enlisting partners to donate enough money so that the First National Bank would loan me the rest to get the station on the air. Those partners included Mom, the "evil stepbrothers"...and Tad Felts. What an exciting win-win for me. Tad came on board and got ownership of a radio station, something that KKAN's owners wouldn't do for him; and I got what could only be called Phillipsburg's reigning celebrity to anchor all of KQMA's newscasts. Talk about irony: In 1972, I was 13 and providing news items for my "boss" Tad; in 1983, I was 24 and ostensibly "boss" of Tad. Neither of us seemed to be bothered much!
KKAN's owners stalled my applications, fought against my financing, and generally sulked about things, but we did it. The picture within this blog is a shot taken by my great friend Jeff Zillinger, whose dad worked as our "chief engineer" and who, along with his brother Fred, provided unbelievable support to me in the spring of 1984 as the station took shape. That's me in the pic looking at about a third of the 400-foot radio tower going up. (Jeff has pictures from the very top; I was way too chicken to ever go there!)
And on July 14, 1984, we did two big things: First, I got to celebrate my 25th birthday at the Vista Room of Martha's Cafe...and then Tad and I flipped a "switch" that Fred Zillinger Sr. had rigged up to bring KQMA alive and put the station on the air at noon. You can see the switch here with me on the left and Tad on the right.
I was determined to be "professional," so we used an automated format (very high tech in those days), with NBC News at the top of every hour and adult contemporary and Top-40 music playing most of the rest of the time. Tad brought his famous "Tadpoll" talk show over from KKAN...and we were an instant success.
All that before age 25! Perhaps too early for me. In any event, I decided after about a year that I really wanted to go explore more of life beyond Phillipsburg, and so in the end, we actually merged with KKAN and then I sold my interest and went on to Denver, and AMC Theatres, and Marriott, and RockResorts, and Noble...and now.
KKAN and KQMA continue to be a literal beacon for northwest Kansas, and Tad remains an icon of the community.
So, in a few weeks, at noon on July 14, I'll pause to consider two things. How I've come so far in life that "pre KQMA" is now exactly "post KQMA"...and how much fun I plan to have in Act II!
