History of the 1320 frequency in Salt Lake is available HERE.
Someone associated with KCPX in the early 1970s is probably still around to comment about this. Regarding the Zeppelin promotional at right, how much hard rock made it onto the KCPX playlist? And, are there some better recordings out there of this Salt Lake City station? We’d be interested in the ‘competition’, as well – one of our visitors commented (below) that the old faux-Drake format of the early 70s was a lot ‘whiter’ than Drake had programmed KHJ. We like ALL the music from that era and want to sample all the available formats, so if you have something, please, by all means, feel free to donate it to our archives.
Original Comments:
Brad Stone is a good jock, 1980 is a great year for radio, and AM Music Radio is still alive, at least in the short term. This is our first look at the Salt Lake City market, and while this is a low-fidelity recording, all the elements of good personality radio are there! This shows us that even smaller markets sounded good back in the early 80s, whether they were on AM or FM. In fact, your webmaster would make the argument that music radio had reached it’s peak and 1981 was the very beginning of the end of great radio, even if it did take 20 years to see radio’s true demise come to fruition.
Please note: The audio quality of this is quite poor and the tape didn’t hold up very well. However, if you can get by that low fidelity, this is some darn good AM Top 40 radio that you may enjoy!
Should be 1320 KCPX not 1520
Frequency is 1320
A few comments:
1) The two previous commenters are correct–KCPX’s frequency was 1320.
2) During much of the 1970s, KCPX was owned by Columbia Pictures. When Clive Davis became head of the company in 1976, he resolved to get the company out of extraneous businesses (such as owning radio stations) and sold the station to a local developer. Eventually, the callsign was changed to KBUG, the station changed hands a few more times, and now it’s owned by Cumulus with the callsign of KFNS with a sports format (it used to be ESPN, but I believe it is now Fox).
3) I listened to KCPX at night after moving to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1972. At the time, it was a “fake” Drake (it used the jingles but was never consulted by Bill Drake or any of his colleagues). Musically, the station’s playlist was a great deal whiter than that of KHJ and other stations of southern California where I grew up.
@Ted Chittenden I also used to listen to this at night from Phoenix Arizona as well. Except sometimes it was hard to separate it out from 1310 KBUZ which became KQXE. I too remember the Drake Chenault Jingles. And also the K-Spix battle of the records. Do you by chance know what there power was and if it was directional? And if it was what was it’s directional pattern then in those days?