KPNI, KSMU, KCHU, KNON and KCBI

It's an urban legend told at Class D,  carrier current, and other micro-stations at Colleges and Universities across America. I've heard many versions of it... and even some that had some basis in truth. The story always starts with the college radio station having a big signal, and it ends with them having little or none. IN the middle of the story they always do something a bit naughty, and the school president, or board of regents punishes the station by selling off  or downgrading their license.

I'd heard this story about KPNI at SMU. The story was that they had a license and that after ill-mannered DJs ran amock, the license was sold to KNON. It's totally untrue. The other rumor that the call letters are a dick joke are also untrue. The PNI part of the call letters refer to the school mascot: a pony.

I recovered and posted their defunct website history here. According to that history on their old website, KPNI was founded as the carrier current station KSMU in 1947. (Other sources put the start in 1949) University of Wisconsin described them in a 1949 paper as a "carrier current station." That's the earliest date I can attest to. There is no agreement as to whether the station was operating on 760 or 640 AM initially. That history and another at dfwretroplex.com both concede that the station went dark for years at a time on multiple occasions 1958, 1989, and again recently.

But in the 1960s they even reported to the "What's Happening" column oat Billboard Magazine. They broadcast illegally in the early 1960s, and returned to carrier current status in 1964 with the assistance of Prof. H.Charles Baker. More here. They only began using the KNPI calls after 1987, over 10 years after 91.1 KSMU signed on in Springfield, MO.  There never was a license for KPNI or KSMU, no AM, no FM, no Class D license, no LPFM, not even a CP.

89.3 KNON however, does have a license. Their completely unrelated story actually begins at 90.9 KCBI, the Criswell Bible Institute station. KCBI first went on air in May of 1976 on 89.3 operating at 1000 watts. Our friends at KCHU started work in 1971, but didn't sign on until August 28, 1975. Sadly the free format 90.9 KCHU only operated until September 1977 when it went off air due to insolvency. It was one of the legendary stations connected to Lorenzo Milam and Dennis Gross.

In 1978 KCHU was approached by Criswell Bible College about a license swap. KCHU was not enthused about reducing power form 100k watts to 1,000 watts.  KCHU remained silent through 1980, while they organized a local like-minded group to assume their license as KNON.  KCBI applied to the FCC take over the 90.9 spot.  A legal struggle ensued. The FCC issued an order that if KNON was not on the air by July 31, 1983, the license would be forfeited. They made the deadline. Despite that, in 1986 a judge ruled against KNON and gave their license to KCBI.  KNON lost on appeal but the FCC advised the parties to complete the frequency swap offered 10 years earlier. For their trouble, KNON got a $75k payment which helped stabilize the station's finances. More here. You will notice that KSMU and KPNI do not appear in that story anywhere...

George Gimarc & Johnny Rotten

Will you stop blogging about the Sex Pistols? Just one more. In the 1990s, John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten, hosted a radio segment called "Rotten Day." It was a syndicated daily distributed by Premier Radio Networks airing on more than 40 radio affiliates including WBCN, WREV, and XTRA in the U.S. It had a 2-minute 'This Day in Rock n Roll' sort of format. Except that it's focus was on punk rock, and it was designed to be a promotion for the book Punk Diary by George Gimarc. It was more or less plugola from the get-go.

The scripts were usually written by George Gimarc. The schtick was to note a music or cultural event on that calendar date and then Lydon would slag on it. You would that that would get old fast. It's amazing that it lasted from September of 1995 to February 1997. They show grew beyond the confines of Gimarc's book as did Lydon's radio aspirations. Lydon went on to record a weekly 4 hour program for eYada.com in 1999. But his most recent radio work that I know of was in 1999 to record promos for 91X. More here.

George Gimarc on the other hand is a radioman through and through.He began his radio career as a DJ at University of North Texas radio station KNTU in 1977. He moved on to intern at WRR-AM also in Dallas. At KNTU he started a very early alt-rock program called "The Rock & Roll Alternative." He took the show with him from there to a commercial station 97.9 KZEW-FM "the Zoo."  In 1982 he also became music director on its sister station KRQX-AM. The station continued on with the Zoo format until 1987. He was hired by KDGE in 1989 and he re-launched his alternative program.  Somewhere in there he also took his program to KNON, the home to all the weirdness in Texas allowed to stray outside of Austin city limits.

Gimarc's books, all four of them, are about music, three of the four mention Lydon by name and or the Sex Pistols or Public Image Ltd. But I suspect it was Premier Networks that connected Johnny Rotten and Gimarc. As canonical as his archive is, I doubt he had his home phone number. But the result was that Johnny Rotten got to harass celebrities at the Grammy awards one year, and then fade back into the B-list, possibly the C-list. Gimarc continues to work in radio. At Comcast now, he's developed a couple truly terrible radio formats that even Comcast tries to ignore.

DJ Cuzzin Linnie

A few months ago I read an all too short obituary for Cuzzin Linnie (aka Cousin Linnie, Cousin Linny) in the Dallas Observer. His friends just called him "The Cuz." It was said that Sam Cooke gave him that nickname. It was hard to cross the color line in broadcasting in the 40s and 50s. But for each format there is a demographic, and for Top-40 the DJs were as white as wonder bread™ in the 60s. Linwood  "Cuzzin Linnie" Henderson broke that color barrier when he was hired at 1190 KLIF-AM. KNON's Weird Warren Harris once said that Cuzzin Linnie was the "first guy to play soul on a rock radio station..."  It's a bold claim, but Harris was there and I wasn't.  Sadly Linwood was only inducted into the Texas Radio Fall of Fame posthumously. 

In all the hullabaloo between his tragic death and his hall of fame induction November 6th, the actual story of his rise to fame and his tragic fall has been lost. So lets get on with it. He started out at 1590 KPRS-AM in Kansas City, MO in the 1950s. He was born in 1937, so it was probably around 1958. KPRS-AM was the nation's first Black radio station west of the Mississippi River. It was founded by Andrew "Skip" Carter as a as a 500-watt daytimer with a transmitter donated by former Kansas governor, Alf Landon. I have no affirmative date on when he started there but the station signed on in 1951. The following year, Carter and Ed and Psyche Pate bought the station from Johnson County Broadcasting Corporation.It may be a coincidence, but In 1969, Carter became the majority owner and that's when Cuzzin Linnie shows up as the first black DJ on KLIF-AM.

In 1974 Linwood's career took a dramatic detour. I'll just cut right to the climax and work backwards. Allow me to quote the December issue of Texas Monthly, 1974:

"The arrest of KLIF's popular disc jockey — now ex-employee — Linwood (Cousin Linny) Henderson in September proved a cheerless and unnerving event for the station. Hendersonwas charged with (and later indicted for) two counts of third degree theft involving 37 stolen televisions and other goods valued at $13,000."

Despite the hubbub, Cousin Linnnie later returned to KLIF so his all-night show had two sequential runs with a brief interruption. It complicates his resume slightly. Consider it a brief interruption. He was at KLIF from 1969 to 1974 and again from 1977 to 1979.  Where was he from 1974 to 1977?  Was it prison?  No, while I have no firm data on that, it appears he went straight to 105.3 KXXK-FM, then a pop station. In 1977 he crossed the street to 730 KKDA-AM  a station known as Soul 73.

He remained there until station politics purged the staff in 1998. The year before that Dick J. Reavis published a texas guide book that mentioned The Cuz "The king of KKDA is "Cousin" Linnie Henderson, a thin, chain-smoking elder who refuses to disclose his age..."  He let commercial radio in 1998 at 61 years old, and began DJing at the legendary non-com,  89.3 KNON-FM.

Sex and Broadcasting

I've been reading the book Sex And Broadcasting by Lorenzo W. Milam. It's dated, published in 1975 before many changes in law, and many other changes in technology. But the concepts are all there and a lot of history. On page 229 he lists off "Sympathetic Broadcasters."  It's a list of community stations that he felt were of a free-form, highly local in nature. I noticed immediately that many of these stations were no more. Todays post is an update to that 36 year old list, and it makes for a sad story. You can buy one here.

The list is broken into categories, the first of these is On-the-Air. These are Community radio stations already in service as of 1975. Many of these still exist in more-or-less the condition they were in at the time of that writing: KAOS, KBOO, KOPN, KPFT, WPFW, WAIF KPFK, WDNA, KUNM, KPOO, WREK, WORT, WBAI, WRFG, WYEP, KDIC, KKUP, WAMH. Others have become what Alan Bernard at Poormojo News Wire calls an "NPR Zombie." Those stations include: KPBX, WYBC, KTOO, and WYSO. 1340 WYBC-AM became a simulcast of NPR zombie WSHU only a couple days ago serving as a reminder that this process continues. But, WYSO is a better example of how a station normally makes the change. They began broadcasting All Things Considered in 1972. It picked up Morning Edition in the late 1980s. By 2002 there was almost nothing left. The community that built the station had lost the station. More here.

For the record, I listen to NPR. I like a lot of the programs. But it's important to note that it's not local programming. There is a difference. Most of the below is bad news. Remembering those caveats, here's what really changed:

KERS 88.9 Sacramento, CA. It began in 1970 as advertised above. In 1979, KERS became KXPR and fully embraces NPR-zombiehood.Today it's a full fledged Public Radio network including KXJZ, KUOP, KXJS and KXSR. More here.

KDKB-AM 93.3 /KDKB-FM 1510 Phoenix, AZ - This legendary free form rock station ended the simulcast in 1978 with the AM side flipping to Oldies. By 1980 they were a rigid classic rock station. Today 93.3 is still a rock station today but not free form in any sense of the word. Today they even have 80's themed weekends. More here.

KBBF 89.1 Santa Rosa, CA- In 2009 they swapped their city of license with 98.7 KSXY for a cash payment thus "relocating" to Calistoga. They are still owned by Bilingual Broadcasting Foundation. An audit by the CPB found “egregious” violations back in February.  Station Manager  Jesus Lozano, a convicted drug offender has been  accused of embezzling.  He resigned when the news went public and they elected a new board in March. They filed for a a silent STA only a few days ago following a lightning strike. More here, here, and here.

KBDY 89.9 St. Louis, MO - It was a 20 watt station on the North side first licensed in 1972. It was cited repeatedly for exceeding power restrictions. This allowed 89.9 WLCA at Lewis & Clark Community College to challenge their license. They had a STA to return at 6 watts but that seems to have fizzled before 1980. 

KRAB 107.7 Seattle, WA - Founded by the author of Sex and Broadcasting, Lorenzo Wilson Milam. He helped found KRAB and more than a dozen other radio stations around the country. KRAB was virtually insolvent from the get go. They attempted to share-time with KNHC and didn't work it out. The owners, the Jack Straw Foundation sold the license to a commercial broadcaster and started 90.7 KSER which signed on in 1991 and is still alive today. More here.

WAFR 90.3 Durham, NC - In 1973 they were written up in Ebony magazine with a 5-page photo spread. Today 90.3 is vacant, allowing the presence of WNAA on 90.1 and WDCC on 90.5. WAFR signed on in 1971 with 3,00 watts and went off air in 1975 when CPB yanked it's funding.

KSAN 94.9 San Francisco, CA - This legendary free form rock station operated from 1968 until 1980. Station founder and visionary died from a heart attack in 1975. KSAN flipped to country music. KSAN is still a big classic rocker. A frequency swap moved the KSAN calls to 107.7. More here including a documentary film and here.

WBCN 104.1 Boston , MA - The station went off the FM airwaves on August 12, 2009 and became an automated HD-2 stream on 98.5 WBZ. Originally a classical station, they became a free-form rocker in 1968. The original airstaff included Steven Segal, one of Tom Donahue's minions. slowly it degraded into an AOR format. In 1979, the station was purchased by Hemisphire Broadcasting who ousted the old hippies. this begat a general strike and most were re-hired but the playlist continued to get more regimented. In 1994 they flipped to alternative rock. Today it's a Hot AC station WMBX.

WGTB 90.1 Georgetown, DC. - In 1979, Georgetown donated the WGTB license to the University of Washington DC. In 1997 UDC sold it to C-SPAN for $25 million dollars. After the sale, the station relaunched as WROX, via campus AM carrier current. It later changes calls to WGTB since it didn't matter anyway. It has faltered several times and gone dark. it had a notable resurrection in 1996 and finally relaunched as a webcast in 2001. More here.

WTBS 88.1 Boston, MA - They became WMBR on May 24, 1979, selling it's old callsign to Ted Turner for 50 grand.They spent the money getting a more powerful transmitter. Programming is still loose and local.  More here.

KCHU 90.9 Dallas, TX -  This station was also founded in part by Lorenzo Milam. The station signed on in August of 1975. After just a year-and-a-half their cobbled hardware began to fail and without a steady source of income they were doomed. The station was silent by 1980. Criswell Bible Institute mounted a legal challenge, and eventually they swapped frequencies with Criswell winning the more powerful 90.9 stick. After continued internal disputes Lorenzo turned the station license over to a group called ACORN, who founded 89.3 KNON, a station that in some ways continues the mission. More here.

WFAC 91.5 Columbus, OH - They were a 10 watt station in 1975. Today it's WHKC owned by Christian Broadcasting Services, 15,00 watts of Air 1. The transition from point A to point B involved NAB,the UAW, the FCC and new legal precedents.  I'll dedicate a whole post to them later.