Old Studios

[G Thompson]

Just reading about some of the old studios like KTOW and such. Good posts. Who amongst us ever worked up on the hill in West Tulsa at KCFO at any time?

How about the old KXOJ building in Sapulpa?

Any others?

Any stories?

[NightAire]

I got to hang out at the old KVOO studios on Brookside before they moved to the Big Black Brick, started on the air in the barn on the hill in Claremore (91.3), was in the house in Sapulpa (100.9), did my time in the cinder block building next to the Sand Springs waste water management plant (102.3), walked up the hill when my car couldn't make it on the ice in west Tulsa (970), and got to tour the A-frame reserved for on-air staff while the sales staff worked in-town (106.1).

So, I've had the chance to see some pretty neat Tulsa radio history!

...Oh, and apparently I can't hold onto a job.   

[stan]

I got to hang out at the Trade Winds West motel when KAKC AM/FM were there.  And though the jocks on AM would say how nice it was poolside, we were actually not near the pool.

[JournalGuy]

Before my time, but I found this picture of the old studios from the fairgrounds.

http://tulsatvmemories.com/tulradi2.html

Seems cool.  Any info?  What happened?

[G Thompson]

Are those the studios Mel and Wavy did the 14K and 92K deal out of?

[Radiogre]

Are those the studios Mel and Wavy did the 14K and 92K deal out of?

Nope. 14K/92K was out of studios that became the Oklahoma Highway Patrol Headquarters on the north side of Skelly Drive, just east of Memorial.

[NightAire]

Right on,Radiogre; the Rotorama was from KELI's glory days in the 60s & 70s.  (I know far too much about that building for never having been inside it.)   

The building originally was used in the International Petroleum Exposition (like the IPE building) in the...  late 50s?  I think, by a company called Global Oil.  Remember the globe out on Bell's Amusement Park's miniature golf course that eventually had KMOD's logo on it?  Mr. Bell bought that globe (along with a number of light poles) from Global Oil after they were through with it...  it had been in the middle of the donut.

As I understand it, Global Oil had a walk-through "history of oil exploration" in the rotorama, with the globe rotating in the center that you could see through the floor-to-ceiling glass on the inside of the ring.  When Global Oil got tired of the display, KELI bought the building and moved it a short distance (Why?  Utilities?) and put a kelly-green canvas dome with "KELI 1430" on it in white.  When that dome wore out, a rainbow canvas dome was put on (would have been more appropriate for The Rainbow Station, KMOD, but whatever) and that's what you're seeing in the B&W picture.

When signal media bought 1430 & 92.1 they put up the studios on Skelly.  Apparently everyone who worked on the fairgrounds HATED the rotorama, although I thought as a kid that it was the coolest building I had ever seen.  It was incredibly expensive to heat and cool because of all the glass and being up in the air, and getting to work during the fair apparently was nightmare.  Add to that, no privacy anywhere in the station, and while I would have given my right arm to work in the building, everybody who actually did it apparently wanted OUT.

I went to the fairgrounds in the early 80s for a concert (81?  82?) and the building was gone and a flowerbed was in its place...  flowers marking the grave of a legendary studio...  now the flowerbed is gone and you can't even tell where the building was.

Ah, progress...

(Those studios on Skelly were SWEET, tho...)

[G Thompson]

Nighaire mentioned the old barn studios of 91.3, KNGX in Claremore. I got my start there as well. It was 1989 and the carpeted walls were from 1962. The place smelled like the Marlboro man died there.

Anyone remember the names Larry Filkins, Lou Lovette, The Red Barron, Status Quo, Sonny Night, and David Nixon? All spent countless hours in that rat trap.

I remember the ONLY restroom in the two-story building was upstairs and down the hall in the very back of the building.  The studio's were downstairs and at the FRONT of the building. So if you were pulling a shift, you had to find a "poop" song and run like heck. On the weekends we played Rock on KNGX (Now KRSC). You could always tell by listening to the station when a jock was using the bathroom. Freebird or a live album would be playing.

We spun vinyl in those days. I remember one jock finding an extra long cart and putting three songs on it back to back with station sweepers in between. We all thought he was a god for thinking of it. The station was a hodge podge of formats. The format that jock worked was big band. So the trick only worked if you were spinning a show between 7am and 6pm Monday through Friday.

[NightAire]

Larry Filkins, Lou Lovette, The Red Barron, Status Quo, Sonny Night, and David Nixon

Geez, yes, all of those names bring back memories!  There was also Mistress...  Lisa?  Somebody.  All I remember is somebody sampling one of her breaks and creating a techno track for EOI (Edge Of Insantity) that looped her saying:

You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music
You like the music / we like the music

I couldn't decide if I loved it and had to hear it again, or if I should go into the front yard and open a vein before they played it again.

(It must have been a pop record, huh?)   

The guy I remember was an old guy who did country in the evenings, a buffer between the big band and the rock, and he MUMBLED into the microphone the entire shift.  Not only that, but he was french-kissing the mic the whole time, and he chewed...  you can imagine what the mic smelled like after that.  If you followed him on the air, you learned to project from across the room!

One evening I was going to help him by catching up a meter reading for him.  He yelled and cussed and cursed at me and told me to put the clipboard down, to never touch it until he left, and generally gave me a good reaming.

I never tried to help him again.

That was the same station where I was talking on the air about how disappointed I was in U2's latest stuff (remember when they were a cool alternative band?) and I was MOONED by one of the female students / jocks through the studio window.

...I never did figure it out: was that an insult or a compliment?   

[billyg]

When signal media bought 1430 & 92.1 they put up the studios on Skelly.  Apparently everyone who worked on the fairgrounds HATED the rotorama, although I thought as a kid that it was the coolest building I had ever seen.  It was incredibly expensive to heat and cool because of all the glass and being up in the air, and getting to work during the fair apparently was nightmare.  Add to that, no privacy anywhere in the station, and while I would have given my right arm to work in the building, everybody who actually did it apparently wanted OUT.

(Those studios on Skelly were SWEET, tho...)

I remember visiting KELi at the Tulsa State Fair several times in the mid 70's, and I remember having a nice chat with Johnathan Apple before he went on the air. I thought it was a cool building but by the late 70's it was very run down, faded paint and water leak spots on the cealing.

I think the last time I visited it was in 1981 but by then KELi was devolving into a dull AC-oldies format before it surrendered to news-talk. The jock was using mostly carts for the hits, records for oldies.

I remember the control, news and production room were very small, basically closets. The control room had a  (RCA?) console with "ROCK ON" taped on the meter.

And I visited 14-K-92-K on Skelly once right after they flipped to CHR. Nice studios, probably built for the news format.