Hung out with Chapman
at K-V-I-L
We made a little magic
as we gave ’em all hell.
Kay-Ville was once
the best in the nation.
But now she’s just
another radio station.
Back when Jim Hilliard hired me to be the National PD of Fairbanks, he’d just purchased KVIL for a million eight, and the Dallas radio people thought he was crazy.
Later CBS would pay 85 million for it, but I doubt they’d even get stick value for it today.
A couple of weeks after I started work in Indy, Jim said that we were going to make an unofficial visit to Dallas.
When the GM of KVIL, Bob Hana, picked us up at Love Field and Jim told him that this was my first trip to Dallas, he said, “Then let’s get this out of the way.”
While there, he also pointed out the famous grassy knoll, which has fueled hundreds of conspiracy theories for years.
Some forty years later, during his opening remarks at the KVIL reunion, Ron recalled that breakfast where he remembered thinking, “This quiet, unassuming Canadian is going to be our rating’s savior?”
A few years ago, in Chicago, I had the honor of inducting Ron into his third Hall of Fame.
Later that evening, while having cocktails in the lobby bar at the Palmer House, we reminisced about our early days at KVIL.
Ron claimed that he vividly remembers the day I changed his career.
He said it happened while we were walking down the hall when the station was in Hyland Park, and he was explaining to me that the reason that he didn’t have a phone in the studio was that he thought it distracted the air talent.
According to Ron, the phone went in the next day, and he spent the rest of his career answering it.
Over the years, a lot of people have taken credit for KVIL’s phenomenal success, so when I went back to the above-mentioned reunion, I asked Jack Schell to point out all the geniuses to me.
Jack said he couldn’t because they were all outside parking cars.
KVIL became so successful that even Mr. Fairbanks couldn’t handle it and said, “That bubble’s going to burst,” so he sold it. Burst it did, albeit some twenty years later.
Doing so would take D/FW into the top 10, which would pump a few extra million dollars into the marketplace.
We did a concept called “Build your own radio station.”
We also ran some Chuck Riley promos saying, “103.7 on the FM dial has been turned over to the people of Texas, so we need your help.”
When others said it would be nice to know if the world was still out when they woke up, we put Bob Morrison and Andy McCollum together to assure them that all was well.
Then when they said, “Hey, what about the weather, we gave it to them color radar style.
Oh, and our billboard that read, “Wise with Ron,”was on the front page of the Dallas Morning News.
We gave away all kinds of things like trips around the world, cars, diamonds from Tiffany’s, and a ton of cash.
Within three days, he received over a quarter of a million dollars and begged the folks to stop.
Then Ron did his show underwater in a shark tank with seven sharks when the movie “Jaws” made people afraid to even go in their pools.
Ron also did his first-ever parachute jump live on the air, and as he floated down, the TV cameras were waiting for him.
They even made a movie about the process, which featured Ron playing himself. (See movie poster below)
Or how about Major Tom Lewis, who became a prominent TV weatherman in DC and filled in on the Today Show?
“Look at that sky,” he said, “Cecil B. DeMille would pay a couple of million dollars for it, but you’ve got it free right here in Dallas, Texas.”
Rob Ray:You Forgot To mention the Amazing Chuck Rhoads as Program Director!! (Big D Little a)
Geo: That must have been when I was no longer involved, Rob, Chuck was Ron Chapman’s assistant during my tenure.