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3 comments:
Anonymous said...
Great to see photos of the balloon. I got a (tethered) ride in it when it was at a KMEN event somewhere near Inland Center.
John from Fontana (back then)
Mon Aug 28, 09:46:00 PM PDT
Anonymous said...
William F WIlliams was at KCBQ in Spring 1967 for just a short time. He did afternoon drive, when King Jack Hayes left. Anyone know the sotry behind his ultra-brief tenure?
Fri Sep 15, 09:46:00 AM PDT
William F WIlliams was at KCBQ in Spring 1967 for just a short time. He did afternoon drive, when King Jack Hayes left. Anyone know the sotry behind his ultra-brief tenure?
Fri Sep 15, 09:46:00 AM PDT
William said...
Yeah, I know the story behind WFW's ultra-brief stay at the "Q", as he called it. He was hired by Lee Bartell as PD to turn the station around, and to do morning drive. Williams insisted that he be given control of the music, something that no prior PD had ever had. The play list had been tightly controlled by a woman there (can't recall her name) who had worked for Lee for years. Lee agreed, and gave the music over to Williams (the woman retired). He created an entirely new Top 40 format and radically changed the conservative play list. Shortly after Williams took over morning drive, the home office in Minneapolis removed Lee as GM and brought in an idiot as GM, Stan Torgerson. At the end of the week, a Friday afternoon, Stan called a staff meeting, and sitting behind his desk holding a football declared himself "coach", and Williams his "quarterback". After spewing out a number of trite football analogies and metaphors he dismissed the jocks and staff and asked Williams to stay. He then told Williams that he wanted, on his desk Monday morning, the play list and a "justification" for every record on it. Williams then cleaned out his office, walked down to the parking lot, got in his 1967 Mustang GTA and drove home to Highland, California. He never gave notice or had any further contact with the "coach".
William F. Williams
P.S. I learned later that he accused me of stealing the K/MEN hot air balloon. I never really understood that and, frankly, my give-a-shitter was broke.
Thu Aug 19, 07:04:00 PM PDT
6 comments:
As a former radio person,
that name, "Stan Torgerson", kept popping up along the way of my various DJ gigs; and VERY time his name was brought up, it always sounded like an bad omen.
It's a relief to hear how some of the stuff i heard about "Mr. Wonderful" Torgerson was true.
BTW: Good ole Jack Hayes was my P.D. for a time way back in the 1970's. Is he still alive??????
Although WFW might have been hired to eventually do morning-drive, I didn't think William ever got around to actually jocking morning drive. I know he did AFTERNOON DRIVE 3-6pm right after King Jack Hayes vacated that shift. From my knowledge, Huckleberry was still mornings during WFW's short time, until replaced by Barry Boyd that summer.
Isn't Stan Torgerson a generic term for really bad radio programmers everywhere...just as Alan Smithee is a name used by screenwriters who don't want their name on a really bad screenplay...(i.e. that last programmer was really an all-around Stan Torgerson")
Aloha, William ? Williams.
so, you're still throwing out those one-liners with crossed-fingers, huh?
just remember: the Man is still out here!
R.J.
Aloha! Still here! Thanks for asking.
WFW
Hey Bill Earl...
Yeah, I did mornings... briefly... it was shortly after I began the morning gig that the infamous Torgerson debacle happened. Torgerson not generic; his real name. Not surprised that the name became synonymous with FUBAR.
WFW
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