96.9 Format of the day

[Chris Hall]

Sorry, KISS-108 started out with 2 Technics SL-1500 turntables and mickey mouse constant cue into a Gates Executive console installed
the afternoon of the night of the change over. As for the Beautiful music announcers playing tapes made in the production room,
it did not happen. First, all the Beautiful Music staff was let go and club DJ’s were brought in starting with Conrad Cardenas.
I hired several board ops that played discs and pre recorded carts of ID’s etc. and watched the transmitters. Late night club time had the board ops, in the studio along with the club DJ mixers. Most of the club DJs were nightmares that had to be slapped down, they all wanted to control the EQ of everything,
you can just imagine what a mess that would entail and lots of I want to make it louder on the air by cranking the fader.
There were no reel to reels tapes as there was no place to make them. Stereo production consoles and stereo turntables did not exist at the station and would not for at least 4 or 5 months.
There may have been some tapes used further down the road long after stereo production facilities were installed.
Bonneville and Shulke required their Beautiful Music station production to be mono with microphone and commercial audio 3 DB lower than the
stereo music that’s why the older mono production facilities were never upgraded. KISS-108 sign on was a chaotic last minute seat of the pants situation that came off very well.