Jack Ruby and KLIF

Anyone with any level of interest in the Kennedy assassination from the student, to the historian, to the conspiracy theorist knows who Jack Ruby is. But many of them won't know anything about 1190 KLIF-AM, and even fewer the connection between the two. The Kennedy assassination was a tragedy of course but also a huge news event so the city was swarming with local news people. So as coverage ramped up for the Kennedy assassination beat it also proliferated a witness list for the Oswald assassination which included a huge number of radio and news people. 552 different witnesses' testimony was presented to the Warren Commission. It included police, attorneys and Oswald's acquaintances.  But that list includes multiple radio staff:

• Corporon, John
• Duncan, William Glenn, Jr
• Jenkins, Ronald Lee
• Pappas, Icarus M.
• Richey, Warren E.
• Stuckey, William Kirk
• Underwood. James R.
• Walker, Ira N., Jr.

That list has zero overlap with the Ruby trial witnesses. Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24th 1963 in Dallas. Access was limited in secure buildings, but KLIF-AM was on the scene for the prisoner transfer of Oswald but did not broadcast the shooting live. NBC was the lone TV network to have broadcast live coverage. NBC News correspondent Tom Pettit, was the voice everyone recognizes shouting “Lee Oswald has been shot!”  The first mention of the shooting on KLIF is at 9:51 on this video:

First the events you already know about.  Sunday morning, November 24th, the police were ready to move Harvey Oswald to the county jail. A distance of one mile.  At 11:20 AM Oswald emerged flanked by officers. Captain J. Will Fritz led two detectives escorting Oswald through a basement garage toward a car. Moments later, Jack Ruby wearing his fedora, stepped out from the mob of detectives and reporters and fired a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver at Oswald's chest. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m.

First you should know a bit more about Ruby.  He operated a strip joint called the Carousel Club. In addition to the local contacts he made through his strip club, he was very social, and made his daily rounds in Dallas visited acquaintances around Dallas. He'd hit the bank, the Statler Hilton, the police station, the courthouse, the bail-bond office, the Doubleday Book Store, the delicatessen, the shoeshine parlor, radio station KLIF. He actually bought that Colt cobra through a police friend of his, Joe Cody to avoid paying sales tax. 

KLIF was owned by Gordon McLendon. Born in Paris TX in 1921, graduate of Yale, and sports  director at WYBC in New Haven, CT. He made a name for himself at the Liberty Broadcasting System. Liberty was a network that mainly broadcast "recreated" baseball games starting in 1948. Reputedly many listeners were not aware the broadcasters were not announcing the live events. [LINK]Ruby once identified McLendon as “the world’s greatest American.” In those days at Liberty McLendon was billing himself as “the Old Scotchman.” He had founded KLIF in 1947.  Ruby name dropped him in his hand-written confession. Later in his career McLendon became a right-wing radio wonk, and made a failed senate run. His career stalled a bit when he started a campaign to ban suggestive songs like “Yellow Submarine” and “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

He also name-dropped KLIF, DJ Russ Knight, better known as The Weird Beard.(No connection to the WAKY weird beard.)  When FBI Agents found Knight's personal phone numbers in Ruby's possession he won an interview. He had been at KLIF since 1960 and left in 1964 for a spot at WXYZ. Somewhere in there he was also on KILT. Knight had known Ruby for a year and had hung out with him half a dozen times, even taking his wife to the Carousel Club. Ruby for his part, ran ads for the club on Knights program at KLIF. [SOURCE]

Another familiar name that pops up at Liberty is sound man Wes Wise. Back in the 50s he was doing foley work to fake baseball games. Somehow he moved from there to at sports director for WFAA in 1961.  By 1963 Wes Wise was at KRLD-TV (CBS).  He was there with Bob Huffaker. He testified that he bumped into Ruby at the now infamous School book Depository building that Saturday Nov. 23rd; just a day before the assassination. In 1971 Wes Wise would be elected Mayor of Dallas, and he'd serve 3 terms despite being originally from Shreveport, LA. It's worth nothing that Wise kicked off a conspiracy theory in December of 1963 taking poor notes about a possible Oswald sighting. He got a plate number correct but the wrong color and make of the car. By random chance (ahem) the car listed was owned by a Carl Mather at Collins Radio, a company that worked with military communications for the CIA. [SOURCE]  

According to Ruby's own account, he he was trying to find a local disc jockey from KLIF and went into the police station to locate him to deliver some sandwiches from Phil's Delicatessen. He worked his way around the police station, and found instead some staff from KBOX. He asked for  KLIF's Gary DeLaune. Witness Willian Duncan Jr. testified that Ruby delivered sandwiches and soda to KLIF around 1:30 on Friday Nov. 22nd. He asked about DJ Russ Knight and left after 20-30 minutes. More here.   

Gary would see Ruby again when Oswald was shot. DeLaune was standing right next to photographer Bob Jackson when the latter took his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Gary's 's presence begat a conspiracy theory of it's own since Jack Ruby had a few connections to KLIF. Despite personally knowing Ruby, DeLaune testified that all he saw was "figure with a gun."  More here. Delaune later worked in Houston, then moved to San Antonio in the early 1970s to cover the San Antonio Spurs. Eventually he joined the sports broadcasting team at KENS-TV where he stayed for decades until his retirement.

Was there any more to any of this?  Probably.  But knowing DJs as I do... the basis of these friendships was probably free sandwiches, and drinks at the carousel club. It an unusual event where in covering the news of one crime find a dozen DJs testifying in the trial over another related crime. I can't think of another event like this one in that one respect.

They took KBDG away

90.9 KBDG in Turlock, California broadcasts a variety of middle eastern music, concentrating on Assyrian music. As obscure as that sounds, there is a second Assyrian in the US. That station, 89.5 KBES is in Ceres, just south of Modesto, CA. But though the two Modesto-area stations simulcast, and are both owned by Bet-Nahrain, they have different histories.

KBES was founded by Bet-Nahrain, and their application was accepted by the FCC in 1977. The station signed on in 1979. The story is simple and the station has been on and has been operated continually by Bet-Nahrain, a corporation owned by an Assyrian American Civic Club. It's an organization no different in may ways from the Jaycees, the Elks, the Moose or your local Polish club.

Coincidentally KBDG was also founded in the 1970s, but it was formerly owned by Turlock High School. Turlock High School.It only passed into the hands of Bet-Nahrain in 1993. Schools sometimes sell their FM properties. But at 730 watts KBDG is no LPFM. Like all deceased educational FMs there is always the legend of the bad DJ. This was recorded on Wikipedia of all places. I quote that below:

"Turlock High School played various types of music and was DJ'd by the students in Mr. Hoskins electronics class. Unofficially, the station prohibited students from DJ'ing any longer when Andrew Pozner and Jeremy Hover played songs by the infamous rap group named The 2 Live Crew."

This data was added by mystery Wikipedia user Slelham. I've never actually found even one of these stories to be true... except WXPN. This is not to say that student DJs don't sometimes misbehave. They certainly do. But it is exceedingly rare that they are punished a as group in such a permanent way when the guilty party can be singled out. In the 1908s the station was once vibrant enough to get noted in Jazz Times. But most other references are dubious. A listing for the station from 2002 lists the station as 'Spanish.'  I doubt that was the whole picture. It's just a shame that Mr. Pozner and Mr. Hover get recorded when the founder of the station did not.

KBDG first signed on at 10 watts in 1975.  An article in the Mostesto Radio museum describes their first moments here. The station was founded by instructors Jack Heald and a senior student, Mark Douglas. That is the same Jack Heald that was on the air staff of 970 KBOX-AM, and also was the director of a student program on 1390 KTUR-AM in the mid 1960s. More here. Heald  had 20 years of experience before he built KBDG. The station still carried the call sign inspired by that high school's mascot, the bulldog. But the station didn't make another 20 years but at least you can say it stayed local.

Radio and the Kennedy Assasination

No TV stations broadcast the assassination live, as the area through which the motorcade was traveling was not considered important enough for a live broadcast. Dallas radio stations KBOX-AM and KLIF-AM carried some live coverage, but neither of the actual shooting. Both later recreated the sounds of the shooting for records they released. It included excerpts of news coverage of that day.
http://www.historyofklif.com/pgtwo.html


On November 1963, the Dallas police were recording their radio transmissions over two channels. A frequency designated as Channel One was used for routine police communications. A second channel, designated Channel Two, was an auxiliary channel, which was dedicated to the President's motorcade. Up until the time of the assassination, most of the broadcasts on this channel consisted of Police Chief Jesse Curry's announcements of the location of the motorcade as it wound through the streets of Dallas. Links to transcriptions below:
excerpts here: http://www.geocities.com/whiskey99a/dbt2002.html
full transcript here: http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/dbt2002.htm

Very detailed piece on the sequence, overlap and gaps between the various dictabelts.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/scally.htm

In the early 40's, the engineers at Dictaphone Corp. developed a new recording media using a tube of very thin plastic. When the tube was cut, it created a continuous loop of plastic; also called a "belt." Audio could be impressed on to the "belt" using a stylus to cut a groove in the soft plastic.

This Dallas Police Dictabelt recording is the source of the audio track we so often hear paired up with the infamous Zapruder film. Video recorders of that era had no audio track.

Workers at Dictaphone went to work in WWI for the war effort to design and build radio monitoring and audio logging equipment to help the Allies break the German and Japanese codes. The corporation still exists and indeed will even still transfer your old dictabelt recordings to CD-R. http://www.dictabeltrerecord.com/

Remember, someone is always more obsessed than me.
http://members.aol.com/DRoberdeau/JFK/DP.jpg

Markets Merging...

Arbitron releases it's new market ratings and definitions twice a year; each spring and each fall. The biggest shake up I remember in recent years was been the deletion of the Westchester market. Typically market changes involve the addition or deletion of far more tertiary markets. But in the not so distant past Arbitron has changed major markets. Once Dallas and Ft. Worth were separate market areas. Obviously, this was no small change. Even today their downtown areas are 30 miles apart. Can you imagine the chaos if they merged Baltimore and Washington D.C.? That's only 35 miles. It is equally possible. I examine this change focusing on one particular station was went from the top of its game to an unrated station because of this market change.

KBOX-AM 1480 was the first all country 24-hour radio station in the Dallas Metro. This was historic. Group One Broadcasting of Texas acquired KBOX from Balaban Broadcasting in 1967 for $2 million dollars. KPCN-730 AM was the first country station in the area, starting in 1962, but broadcasted during the daytime only. KBOX quickly became the ratings leader for country music in Dallas. In its first ratings book, they moved from a 10.0 share Q3 1966 to a 12.1 share in Q1 1967!

KBOX-AM enjoyed six years of solid ratings, posting a high of 14.4 in the Q3 1967 book. In 1972 WBAP-AM began giving them stiff competition as a country-formatted 50k watt powerhouse. KBOX's ratings started to slowly sliding as a result. The Clear Channel owned WBAP was trying to chip away at their audience and it was working.

In the year 1973, the Arbitron markets for Dallas and Fort Worth were combined into one book, to reflect the merging of the two cities into one metropolitan area. KBOX, like other smaller stations, was hurt by this redefinition. KBOX did not even appear in the new ratings book. WBAP-AM became the clear country winner at that point, as KBOX barely reached the Ft. Worth half of the newly defined market.

In 1976 Group One applied for a nighttime power increase from 500 watts to 1,000 watts. The FCC approved it. This gave them a somewhat less marginal signal. It's probably what allowed them to struggle into the 1980's providing a decidedly more local service to the Dallas area. But by 1980 FM radio was growing in dominance and their ability to compete with a music format was waining.

on November 14, 1982 the KBOX call letters were dropped by Group One. KBOX-AM became KMEZ-AM and switched from its country format to a simulcast of the easy listening format of sister station KMEZ-FM. These days 1480 AM is occupied by KNIT-AM A Salem Media property running a decidedly more mundane gospel format.

You can hear a 2:00 .WMA of classic KBOX news from 1958 here:
http://www.michaelspears.com/kbox56k.wma
Great thanks to Michael Spears Entertainment just for existing.

great KBOX-AM history here:
http://www.knus99.com/kbox1480pt2.html