Reaching For The Stars…, er, UFOs – An Announcement: 610 KFRC San Francisco
January 12, 2013 
1 Comment
…”We don’t know if Extra-Terrestrials are real, but according to you, there’s a fifty four percent chance…”
From Contributor Antonio Dell’Agio.
I’m not sure where Antonio got this recording, but its been sitting here waiting for your webmaster to put it up.
The only thing I know about this is, it was aired sometime after Close Encounters became a blockbuster hit in 1977. Now, what station would DARE broadcast eight seconds of dead air – for ANY reason? Not today! Its a prime example of a creative promotion department doing something unique.
Podcast: Embed
Breathtakingly close on the description for this one.
It actually aired before Close Encounters was released…as part of a promotion in which KFRC was giving away passes to the opening of the movie. So as not to detract from the drama of this piece, that was done in a separate contest that ran concurrent with the promo you hear here.
It also isn’t the work of the promotion department at all (and KFRC had one of the best).
It was conceived and written by KFRC Program Director Les Garland, who won a Clio award for it, and voiced by the late Paul Frees (who we’ve heard over the decades as Boris Badenov, the narrator at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, and half of the things you always thought were Orson Welles).
There were multiple versions, the only difference being the time at which the test would be repeated. This allowed KFRC to space it out through dayparts over the week or so that it aired.