Airchexx.com

In our continuing series featuring TV ad campaigns of radio stations, we present this from KLOL Houston. This is an ad for the morning show.

In June of 1982, 79Q KKBQ signed-on as a rare Top 40 launch on AM at a time when most CHR’s were moving to FM. After 7 short months, the station had become a major success under Scott Shannon and John Lander. Sister station 92.5 KYND was a floundering Beautiful Music station. Promoting the move for a few weeks before it occured on December 29. 1982, 93Q would become a Top 40 powerhouse for the remainder of the 80′s.

The launch sequence at 6:00am may sound familiar to some as the 6:00am launch with “Eye of the Tiger” would be repeated in New York some eight months later when Scott Shannon debuted Z100.

Here’s an aircheck that’s most definitely worth posting here! Broadcasting in AM Stereo, KKBQ, known as “Hot 79Q” is a serious Top 40 contender.

You have to have been there. In 1985, there was, for a time, a resurgence of AM top 40 as a handful of stations nationwide tried to come back as music stations while pushing the then FCC endorsed C-Quam AM Stereo system. It sounded great on the stations that did actually go stereo and many of these stations had fantastic sounding streamlined CHR formats! Unfortunately, the AM stereo experiment was an utter failure, mainly because of the failure of the industry and radio manufacturers to promote or even mass produce receivers capable of receiving AM Stereo. Kinda like today’s HD Radio, aka IBOC (which stands for In Band, On Channel), so this is a familiar situation.

KKBQ – long gone now as a Top 40 station but the scoped ‘check you’ll hear here was as good if not better than it’s FM competition!

This one’s not in stereo, sadly, but the aircheck itself sounds good enough to have come straight out of the studio skimmer!

And now… the legendary Hudson and Harrigan! Plenty of excitement and fun on this legendary Top 40 powerhouse in the waning days of AM Top 40!

This and the KRBE aircheck posted today came to us via an ‘anonymous’ contributor back around Christmastime 2004. Does this ring a bell – if you recorded this we’d sure like to know who you are!

KILT is now an all-sports station on 610, but back in 1977 this was THE station to listen to. Travel back in time with us now and imagine yourself heading to work listening to this pair on your car’s Delco AM radio… you remember, the one with one large speaker in the center of the dash… the one you probably bought an FM converter to try out with only to discover that AM still sounded better.

Talk about high-energy FM Top 40! KRBE was certainly an industry leader in the late 70s and this aircheck proves how great a market Houston was!

Two great jocks are featured here with the snappy one-liners and impeccable timing that WAS Top 40 radio before consolidation dried up the talent pool.

We return to the fabulous Robyn Watts collection for this trip back to 80s Houston CHR!

John Lander has a lot going on this hot Summer day! The astronauts on the Space Shuttle Discovery have checked in to give a message of congratulations to the Q for being Number 1, it’s Labor Day Weekend and Ray Parker Junior is coming into the studio (and the girls are going wild!)

This is a fast-paced morning show, typical of a period in time when FM had really just come into it’s own – and probably at the height of it’s period of creativity before consultants would come in and ruin the sound with liner cards, formulas, safe lists and ponderous in-your-face imaging. No, this is GREAT radio, from a time before consolidation and cost cutting sucked the life out of it.

Click HERE to Listen!