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----- Original Message -----
From: Jim
Hilliker
Cc: Dennis
Gibson
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 7:25 AM
Subject: KTED-1520, Laguna Beach Hi!
My name is Jim Hilliker. I was also
interested in the story of KTED-Laguna Beach for many years, since I was working
on a history of AM call letter and frequency changes in the Los Angeles and
Orange County areas. I had the FCC dates for the license approval and
deletion, but not much else.
Then, last year, Roger Carroll, a retired air
personality who was on KMPC-710 for many years, told me his friend, Pete Smith,
started his radio career at KTED as a high school student in 1949. Pete
went on to work at many L.A. stations, including KNX, KDAY, KRKD, KNOB, KPOL,
KMPC, KJQI/KOJY, KGIL and Music of Your Life.
I was given Pete's phone number and he gave some
details of what he could recall about the station...He figures that shoddy
management or mismanagement practices led to the station going bankrupt and off
the air, the guy who ran the place didn't know what he was doing, paychecks,
bounced, etc.
So, here's a piece I wrote in December of 2004 for
the 55th anniversary of the first broadcast of KTED-1520. This was taken
from LARadio.com.
Jim Hilliker
Monterey
###
** Laguna Beach
Radio The station call letters were based on the owner's initials, Tom E. Danson. Danson had been the owner of Universal Radio Features Syndicate, which provided radio program logs to newspapers and magazines around the country. Other than that, Danson had no other radio experience. The chief engineer was Robert W. Hayes. There doesn't seem to be much information about this short-lived station today, 55 years after its initial broadcast. The KTED studios were located at 424 Glenneyre Street, above The White House Cafe in Laguna Beach, with the transmitter at ?Top of the World,? which is a hill about 1,000 feet above sea level, located about 1½ miles from Pacific Coast Highway. (Today, where the 1520-AM transmitter site was, there are expensive homes and a 'Top of the World Neighborhood Association'). The station used a directional 3-tower array with 1,000 watts of power in the daytime and 250 watts at night. The station's slogan was ?The Voice of the Southland's Riviera.? The station's telephone numbers in Laguna Beach were 1520, 1521 and 1522. Thanks to Roger Carroll, I was able to talk with his friend Pete Smith, who began his longtime radio career at KTED. Pete was a student at Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach. According to Pete, KTED had a regular program which featured most, if not all of the local high schools in the area. Pete was able to take part in the 30-minute weekly broadcast that Newport Harbor High did for KTED, which ignited his interest in radio. This soon led him to a job at KVOE-1480 [changed to KWIZ in 1954] in Santa Ana during weekends and summers for a couple of years. Pete told me it was a good idea then to start a radio station in that area. He said KTED had a good signal which was heard well in Newport and Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Corona Del Mar, and Santa Ana to the north. It also covered Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente to the south. Pete recalled two of the announcers who worked for KTED were Don Ross, who later did tv news for channel 8 in San Diego and Bruce Branson, who had been a baritone saxophone player in the Tommy Dorsey band. I also found the name of another announcer from those days at KTED, Ted Gates, who passed away January 19, 2004. Ted had previously worked at KWKW-Pasadena, and worked in Santa Barbara radio for several stations, after leaving KTED in 1951. The station's specific programming is unknown to me, but was likely block programming popular in those days mixed with local news, sports, weather and music, along with syndicated recorded programs. Pete Smith also remembered that for a while, toward the end of KTED-1520, the station aired broadcasts from the Liberty Broadcasting network, owned by Gordon McLendon, which was known for its re-creation broadcasts of sporting events. But the station also aired non-sporting network programs from Liberty. Pete said that the station lasted less than a year, maybe only 9 months! I have not checked this out yet, but hope to soon. Why the station went off the air is not completely clear. It was the only new AM radio station to come on the air after World War II in the Los Angeles area to fail and go off the air! Pete said the advertising was likely there and not a problem. What killed off KTED-1520 was likely the owner's inexperience running a radio station and possibly mismanagement. Pete recalls hearing stories from announcers he knew there about paychecks bouncing and other problems, and soon the station was silent. There may also have been other problems we don't know about. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find anyone in Laguna Beach or southern Orange County today who recalls KTED-1520. Its last day on the air is, so far, unknown to this writer. We do know that the station was not sold, but either the owner turned in the license or it was taken away from him. KTED's license was deleted by the FCC on May 1, 1951 or a little more than 1 year and 4 months after it went on the air. With KTED-1520 going ?dark,? that opened up the AM band in Los Angeles for KPOL-1540 to go on the air in 1952 and also for 1520 to be licensed to Port Hueneme-Oxnard. If anyone has any more information about the short history of KTED, 1520-AM in Laguna Beach, please email me with details. Again, a sincere thank you to Pete Smith for sharing with me what he knew about KTED.? - Jim Hilliker, Monterey jimhilliker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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