[BC] Re: How we got our first break in radio....

[Glen Kippel]

Well, since everybody else is doing their autobiography, I might as well,
too.  <g>

When I was about 8 or 9, my family was living on a farm a few miles east of
Loveland, Colorado.  Every saturday night, we would gather around Dad's 1936
Zenith radio and listen to The Grand Ole Opry from WSM in Nashville, and
then the National Barn Dance from WLS, Chicago.  And then some hillbilly
music and snake-oil salesmen on XELO, "Clint, Texas" and XERF.  I was
fascinated that it was possible to hear stations from so far away.  The
radio also tuned shortwave, and I started messing around with that, and was
awed when I picked up HCJB in Quito, Ecuador and LRA "SIRA" (Servicio
Internacional de Radio Argentina) from Buenos Aires.  So I got very active
in shortwave and mediumwave DXing for a very long time.

Eventually, we moved to Denver and I got my Novice ham license, upgraded to
Technician, and started hanging around local stations that I could get to on
my bicycle.  Mostly Gena Amole's KMYR (1340) up on Ruby Hill and KLIR (990)
out on Morrison Road.  I got my First Phone in 1959 and scouted around for a
radio job, finally getting on at KOLR (now long dark) in Sterling, CO.  I
would play disc jockey from 6 to 10 PM and then work on the equipment.
After about a year, a DXer that I knew was working in the Texas
Panhandle said they needed an engineer, so I moved to the big city of Tulia,
which is between Amarillo and Lubbock, if that's any help.  That wasn't the
best gig, so by mutual agreement I parted with them and went to work as a
disc jockey and Production Director for KIXZ (940) in Amarillo, which was
Top-40 at the time, and doing transmitter watch shifts.

This could get very long, but anyway, in a few months I moved on to KICM
(1250) in Golden, CO as Production Director, and about the time I was
getting tired of going to work at 3:25 AM in minus-24-degree weather, a guy
I had worked with at KIXZ called and offered me a DJ job at KASK (1510) in
Ontario (actually Cucamonga) and I was in Southern California three days
later.  So, aside from one year in Florida, I have been in California radio
since 1963 doing just about everything in radio except for sales.