Tulsa Media Category

Premiere Networks, Rush Limbaugh's syndicator, has added Your Morning Show with Michael DelGiorno to its offerings for national radio syndication. DelGiorno joins Glenn Beck, Clay Travis & Buck Sexton (Limbaugh's handpicked heirs in his timeslot), and Sean Hannity in the Premiere lineup. Congratulations to Michael for reaching this pinnacle. National syndication by Premiere is every conservative talk radio host's dream.

Here in Tulsa, Your Morning Show can be heard from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. on 1300 the Patriot (KAKC), which also carries Glenn Beck and Clay & Buck. The station is now simulcast on 93.5 (K228BR), a Tulsa translator for 106.1 KTGX-HD2 in Talala. The FM frequency was Chrome FM, playing oldies from 2007 to 2017. Broadcasting with 250 watts from 27th and Memorial, 93.5 covers most of the City of Tulsa east of the Arkansas River and the Cherokee Expressway. With 100,000 watts, 106.1 HD2 reaches from Hominy to Grove, Independence, Kansas, to Haskell.

DelGiorno launched Tulsa talk radio station KFAQ 1170 in 2002, but left in 2007 for a mid-morning slot at WWTN Nashville, which he held for 15 years. He launched Your Morning Show last October in Nashville, quickly adding iHeart stations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, then expanding to a total of 25 cities coast-to-coast. (Driving through Maryland earlier this year, I had the surreal experience of listening to DelGiorno on Freedom 104.7, then turning the dial and hearing the voice of the late Pat Campbell, DelGiorno's successor at KFAQ, promoting Purity Products vitamin supplements.)

In the linked story, DelGiorno thanks Brian Gann, among others, for making this happen. Gann was program director and news director at KFAQ when DelGiorno was there; he has been with iHeart since 2014, now serving as a regional news director.

RELATED:

The KAKC entry on Wikipedia has a detailed history of 1300's ownership and format, although the information from the 1990s is rather scant. My 2021 intro article on 1300 The Patriot delves into the station's documented history and my own memories of its previous news/talk incarnations.

Griffin Media converted KFAQ 1170 from news-talk to sports-talk KTSB The Blitz in 2021. In June 2024, Griffin changed the call letters to KOTV-AM and is using the signal to simulcast the audio of News on 6 Now (digital channel 6.3 over the air; channel 53 on Cox Cable). The move ended the daily broadcast career of The Blitz morning show host Rick Couri, although he continues to do sports play-by-play.

Older readers will remember that back in analog TV days you could tune your FM radio to the bottom frequency and pick up the audio of VHF channel 6, which occupied 82-88 MHz, just below the FM radio band. While it's great to have another way to hear Travis Meyer during severe weather, it's otherwise a waste of a heritage 50,000-watt clear-channel signal which once was the Voice of Oklahoma.

This Saturday, September 21, 2024, at noon, I will be a guest on Tulsa Beacon Weekend, hosted by Jeff Brucculeri. The hour-long interview program is heard in Tulsa on KCFO AM 970, live-streamed online here and on the KCFO app. The show is a production of the Tulsa Beacon, the weekly newspaper founded in 2001 by the late Charley Biggs.

My interview is the second half of the program. Jeff and I discussed the recent City of Tulsa election and Oklahoma primary, the mayoral recount and November runoff, and my recent entry about Tulsa municipal boundaries and fence lines.

The most recent episode is available to listen again for one week through the KCFO app and through the website: From the Listen Live popup, choose Menu, then the microphone icon, then choose Tulsa Beacon Weekend; Joe Riddle's Old Time Radio Theater is also available.

UPDATE: Here's a direct link to the audio file, which will be available through Friday, September 27. The first half of the program is an interview with former HGTV host David Benham, co-author with his brother Jason Benham of Miracle in Shreveport.

UPDATE 2023/11/20: Michael DelGiorno posted on his Facebook page: "Many have asked, so here's the specifics: "Your Morning Show" is now on iHeart app and Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC in Nashville. Starting Monday, December 4th on 1300 The Patriot in Tulsa. And, starting on Monday, January 8th on NewsRadio 1000 KTOK in Oklahoma City. More markets coming!"

iHeartMedia has announced that talk radio host Michael DelGiorno will return to the Tulsa airwaves in the near future. DelGiorno will be on KAKC 1300 The Patriot in Tulsa, KTOK Newsradio 1000 in Oklahoma City, and WLAC 1510/98.3 in Nashville. DelGiorno will begin broadcasting on WLAC on Monday, November 6, from 5 am to 8 am. Oklahoma City and Tulsa will "follow later" according to a RadioInsight story.

DelGiorno spent 17 years in the Tulsa market, serving as an afternoon host and program director at KRMG and operations manager for Clear Channel's Tulsa radio stations and KTBZ 1430 morning host. In 2002, DelGiorno turned legendary 50,000-watt country station KVOO, then owned by Journal Broadcast Group, into Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ, starting out in an afternoon talk slot, then moving to mornings for most of his five-year stay. He gave me the opportunity for a weekly guest slot that started with discussion of the Vision 2025 tax and grew to include local politics generally. In 2007, Cumulus Media hired DelGiorno as afternoon host at WWTN in Nashville, and he continued in that timeslot through March 2023.

After leaving WWTN, DelGiorno launched the 1850 Main Street podcast with David Zanotti, which will continue alongside the new morning show. As described about midway through the initial episode, 1850 in the name refers to a critical year in resolving America's divisions -- "you have 10 years to solve the conflicts that led to the Civil War." Earlier in that episode, DelGiorno discusses some of the formative experiences that shaped him as a political talk show host -- his involvement in Scott Pruitt's 2001 run for Congress, the slander and media bias that killed Steve Largent's political career in the 2002 gubernatorial election.

Tulsa has been starved for local talk since the illness and death of KFAQ's Pat Campbell. Rather than fill Pat's seat in 2021, KFAQ changed call letters and changed formats to sports talk. iHeartMedia saw an opportunity, and KAKC 1300 reformatted as The Patriot, picked up a number of national shows, and added Tulsa to Lee Matthews's 5 pm to 7 pm evening drive broadcast on KTOK.

That move turned out not to be the answer that we'd hoped for Tulsa talk radio. Matthews, based in OKC, has been focused on local discussion of national and state issues, with very little time to get into Tulsa-specific issues. If Matthews was taking a day off, he didn't have a substitute fill in; the local drive slot was simply eliminated and the following national show moved 2 hours earlier to fill the gap.

Michael DelGiorno will have some catching up to do after 16 1/2 years away, but he has the benefit of nearly two decades in Tulsa and family and friends in the city.

When Michael announced his departure from KFAQ in 2007, I summed up his impact on Tulsa's political conversation at that time:

When other stations were becoming more automated and homogenized, DelGiorno gave Tulsa talk radio about local issues. When other news-talk stations were cramming local content into ever tinier segments, DelGiorno provided time to cover an issue in depth.

DelGiorno provided a bypass around local media dominated by a few narrow interests. He gave politicians and activists the chance to get their side of the story out to the public.

Michael gave me a platform that I wouldn't otherwise have had. The exposure I got on his show brought more readers to this blog and ultimately led to the opportunity to write for Urban Tulsa Weekly.

DelGiorno brought concerned Tulsans, who otherwise wouldn't have met, together as allies. He helped them see the big picture, bigger than the specific problems that awakened their interest in local government.

Michael often expressed frustration that the same old issues kept recurring, and it seemed as if no progress was made. But as someone who has lived here most of my life and who has been involved politically for twenty years, I know that things are much different, and much better, for his work at KFAQ. Important issues that used to be under the radar are now front and center in the public dialogue.

In the UTW column I wrote later that month, I noted that it was during DelGiorno's time at KFAQ that Tulsa, for the first two times ever, elected a majority of city councilors who were not endorsed by the local power-brokers. DelGiorno's morning show made it possible for councilors like Jim Mautino, Roscoe Turner, and Chris Medlock to get elected, for the issues they raised at City Hall to get fair coverage and full discussion, and, in Mautino and Medlock's case, for their ability to rally support to survive a recall election.

I wonder what a three-city, two-state simulcast will be like. I'm sure there will be significant differences with 2007 in Michael's approach to covering Tulsa, but whatever form that takes, I'm excited to have Michael DelGiorno's voice back on local Tulsa talk radio.

Local (almost), live conservative talk radio has returned to the Tulsa airwaves, on the frequency that was the first full-time talk radio station in Tulsa over 40 years ago. AM 1300 KAKC, owned by iHeartMedia, has rebranded itself as 1300 The Patriot, as of September 15, 2021.

The station's line-up features live national talkers for most of the day. Glenn Beck is on live from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. after a long absence from Tulsa. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, the Excellence in Broadcasting (EIB) Network's choice to fill Rush Limbaugh's shoes, are live from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, is on from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Two competing afternoon drive shows are offered on delay: Jesse Kelly from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., followed by two hours of the Joe Pags Show from 10 p.m. to midnight. The eerie Coast to Coast AM with George Noory is on from midnight to 4 a.m., followed by This Morning: America's First News with Gordon Deal, an hour-long show repeated four times, from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. (Looks like a couple of those repeats could easily make room for a local morning show.)

From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Lee Matthews, program director at KTOK 1000 in Oklahoma City, hosts "The Drive," a call-in show that is simulcast on KTOK. (Matthews also does a two-hour 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. morning drive slot on KTOK.) I called into Lee's show Thursday evening to call attention to my post on Tulsa City Council redistricting and was surprised to get right on the air. Lee was very gracious, and I hope to talk to him again soon.

News breaks feature the familiar voice of Brian Gann, former program director and news director at KVOO/KFAQ. Gann moved to iHeartMedia in 2014 and is now South Central Region News Director, covering Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

RadioInsight reported on September 15:

KAKC was one of two "Buzz" branded Sports station in the iHeartMedia Tulsa cluster running CBS Sports Radio programming around the clock, while 1430 KTBZ carried Fox Sports Radio programming. With Fox moving to Griffin's new "The Blitz 1170" KTSB, KTBZ is now simulcasting local programming from iHeart's recently launched "94.7 The Ref" KREF-FM Oklahoma City from 6am to 6pm and CBS Sports Radio at night.

It was a smart move by iHeartMedia, a response to Griffin Communications' decision to convert 1170 KFAQ from news/talk to sports talk, now rebranded as KTSB, The Blitz 1170, a result set into motion by KFAQ morning host Pat Campbell's medical challenges last year.

On January 12, 2020, Campbell had a car accident caused by a seizure that had been triggered by brain tumors. Although he returned to the air on January 22, he went on to endure radiation and chemotherapy and had additional seizures and additional absences. A seizure in October 2020 required him to be intubated, which left him "sounding like Carol Channing," requiring vocal therapy before he could return, which he did on Election Day, November 3, 2020.

But Pat's show on December 4, 2020, turned out to be his last. Casey Bartholomew, until recently a full-time radio freelancer -- in August, Casey was named program director for two Cumulus stations in Columbia, Missouri -- became Pat's permanent fill-in, broadcasting from his home studio in another state; KFAQ program director Jeremie Poplin had already taken over the 10:00 a.m. to noon slot. We heard that Pat's return was going to happen after the new year, then in late January, and then no planned date at all.

In early May 2021, Griffin Communications announced that Pat would not be returning and that there would be a nationwide search for his replacement. Pat continues to be active on Facebook and Twitter, reporting continued improvement, but he has not yet resumed his broadcasting career.

In late July 2021, Griffin announced that they were scrapping news/talk for sports talk for mid-August; the launch date was later delayed until September 6.

Poplin had been a sports talk host at KTBZ The Buzz, spending 18 years at the station before being caught in a massive iHeartMedia layoff in January 2020; he landed at Griffin Communications as the new KFAQ program director a few weeks later, replacing Shelby Travis. Poplin never seemed comfortable dealing with controversial political controversy, and it's understandable that he would steer the station back in a familiar direction. For Griffin, however, it seems like a strange move, given declining viewership for sports in recent years.

According to FCC records, the station debuted at 1310 kilocycles on January 9, 1939, as KOME, licensed to Harry Schwartz and Oil Capital Sales Corporation, with a transmitter at 3904 S. Newport Ave. in Brookside and studios in the American Airlines Building at 910 S. Boston downtown. The station moved to 1340 with the 1941 NARBA frequency reallocation, then in 1947 to 1300 with a higher powered transmitter (5 kw daytime, 1 kw nighttime) at 86th and Harvard. The call letters stood for Oklahoma's Magic Empire.

For many years, KOME's studios were on the second floor of 724 S. Main St., in the building that was home for many years to Harrington's. It was there in 1957 that KOME disk jockey Rocky Curtiss (later known as Rocky Frisco) began his 600-mile ride on a three-speed bike to see Elvis at boot camp in Fort Hood, Texas, a publicity stunt to try to supplant rock-and-roll radio rival KAKC, then at AM 970. In 2009, Jim Hartz, retired host of NBC's Today Show and PBS programming, and Mike Ransom, webmaster of Tulsa TV Memories, did some urban exploration and took photos in the old studios, where Hartz had begun his broadcasting career in 1958. The studios had been abandoned for 40 years at that point. The building has since been renovated as loft apartments.

In 1973, the station (along with KMOD) was purchased by San Antonio Broadcasting (which became Clear Channel in 1979 and is now iHeartMedia) and renamed from KCNW to KXXO. In the late 1970s, KXXO became the first full-time news/talk radio station in Tulsa, featuring network programming from CBS Radio (CBS Evening News with Douglas Edwards, CBS Mystery Theater) and the Mutual Broadcasting System (Larry King Show) and local programming including Hal O'Halloran's Sports Night, play-by-play for local teams, daytime news and talk hosts like Kitty Roberts and Glenda Silvey, and commentary from local activist Vince Sposato. KXXO and KMOD shared studios in the City Bank building at 5350 East 31st Street.

The news/talk experiment didn't last long. KXXO changed call letters and format in October 1980, becoming KMOD-AM, then KBBJ (big band & jazz) in April 1982, and ultimately KAKC in January 1987, picking up the call letters that once graced AM 970 as a pioneering rock-and-roll station. 1300 has had a variety of formats since that time, including oldies, a mixture of sports and news/talk (featuring syndicated shows like G. Gordon Liddy in the 1990s and a local morning drive show with "Commander" Ken Rank), Spanish language ("La Bonita"), and sports talk.

It's great to have talk radio back on AM 1300, and I hope that the station soon finds room in its schedule for truly local Tulsa talk.

Pat Campbell with Daryl Simmons and Jarrin Jackson, on Election Day 2020. Photo from TalkRadio1170.com

Introduced by Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle," Pat Campbell, long-time morning host on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ, was back on the air this morning after a four-week absence. He was in studio for the full three hours with regular guests Jarrin Jackson and Darryl Simmons, discussing today's election and taking calls.

Pat reported that his absence was the result of voice problems caused by being intubated following a seizure. The intubation left him sounding, he said, like Carol Channing. He went through weeks of physical therapy to restore his vocal performance and allow him to return to the airwaves. He is still clear of cancer; earlier this year, a seizure revealed three cancerous brain tumors, which were surgically removed and followed with a course of chemotherapy and radiation.

Pat expressed his gratitude for the prayers and encouragement of his listeners. He was strongly motivated to come back this morning both to reconnect with his audience and to voice his strong opposition to State Question 805, the pro-career-criminal amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution backed with millions of dollars from out-of-state leftist organizations.

Pat is a great friend of BatesLine, and it was wonderful to be able to speak with him during today's 8 o'clock hour. His voice has been sorely missed, particularly during these critical weeks before the election, but we're blessed to have him back in the saddle again to guide us through whatever its aftermath brings.

After I posted my tribute in memory of Bob Gregory, I received an email from his son, Jason Pitcock, who included a copy of the eulogy he wrote for his dad and delivered at his service. What an amazing life he led! Like Bob Gregory's work, Jason's tribute to his father leaves me delighted by a story well told, better informed, and yet wanting to know more about the subject. With Jason's kind permission, I'm republishing it here.

I'm tickled to read that The Sports Buff was a regular haunt of his. It was a sports memorabilia store that was located in the shopping center that stood on the north side of 51st east of Harvard (demolished during I-44 widening). The Sports Buff was where you went to get authentic Major League Baseball caps and other sports fan apparel, as well as books and cards, when there wasn't another store like it in Tulsa. (I've got a Cardinals jacket and hat from The Sports Buff, and I liked to pick up the annual NCAA Football preview. Somewhere I've got the OU media guide with Billy Sims on the cover for his senior year, wishing for a second Heisman Trophy.)

"Dry your pretty eyes / And let me have a smile / Think how it's gonna be / When we're together again..." Lyrics from the musical "Applause." Dad loved Broadway.

Robert Bruce Pitcock, later Bob Gregory, was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1931. He was Bobby to his six siblings, his mother, Leona, his father, Reves, and his stepfather, J.B. The Great Depression hit hard in the early years. But dad and his beloved little sister, Betsy, often reflected, "It was tough on everyone and we always had family. We had each other."

In the early 1940s, dad and older brother, Billy, would take the bus out to Camp Chaffee, a nearby army base, to shine soldiers' boots. One pair got you ten cents. Everything back then was measured in nickels and dimes - hamburgers, cokes, movie tickets. And dad never adjusted for inflation. World War II, an event that imbued his life, was in full swing. A lifelong passion for newspapers was born.

After the war, at the age of seventeen, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served between World War II and the Korean War. And his father, Reves, barely averted combat in World War I. He was on a train in 1918 headed to fight in Europe when the Allies and Germany signed the armistice. Dad knew full well that life, as John Cheever wrote, is a "collision of contingencies."

He felt duty-bound to serve. He also knew that joining offered a chance to make his own way in the world. But it wasn't easy. Basic training in the freezing cold. Family thousands of miles away and no trips homes for the holidays. Letters and Western Union telegrams sustained him. He credited army buddies, many from the east coast, with broadening his horizons. Jocko McDermott, Augie Carlino, Russ Sarami, George McReynolds - his band of brothers. Stationed in Alaska, they were purportedly training for ski patrol. But dad, half-joking, would say, "we couldn't have taken Aspen." Always witty and ready with a quip.

In the service, he took an interest in jazz, tried Pabst Blue Ribbon, shot dice, and played cards. After a hot streak one night, he wired most of the winnings to family in Arkansas.

Dad kept a pocket edition of Shakespeare in his army fatigues and studied as duties allowed. He was self-taught. His trademark elocution and diction were the result of diligence, insatiable curiosity, love of language, and a burning desire to excel. A gifted pitcher, he was a star on the baseball team. And in order to rest his arm before starts, the commanding officer exempted him from "KP" duty. A professional baseball scout later expressed interest only to rebuffed, "I'm going to be an actor."

One evening in the barracks, inspired by a radio disk jockey spinning Stan Kenton records, he resolved, "that's what I'm going to do." And man, did he do it. His persistence won over doubters. Told repeatedly by a station manager back in Fort Smith that no positions were available, dad sought permission simply to observe, without pay. The manager relented and for the next six months, aged nineteen, he showed up every day, watched, waited. Finally, he got the job he dreamed of. The deep voice, the cadence, the delivery; dad was a natural.

Several years later, as television was in its infancy, he transitioned to that medium. Telegenic, articulate, hungry, he cut his teeth in Arkansas and Tulsa. His buddies in those days were Gary Chew and Hal Balch. In 1967, one year after he married the love of his life - our beautiful, kind, sweet, selfless mother - his biggest professional break came. It was a pivotal moment. Bill Small, CBS Washington Bureau Chief, called Tulsa. Come on up to the network. Without hesitation, off to the nation's capital they went, baby Kendall, just months old, in tow.

Walter Cronkite anchored the evening news at the time, a tumultuous period in American history. Eric Sevareid, one of Edward R. Murrow's "Boys," was a mentor. Dad worshipped him. Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, and Bruce Morton were among his colleagues.

When Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, dad received word from headquarters, 2020 M Street in Georgetown. He took an early morning taxi out to Hickory Hill, the Kennedy family compound in McLean, Virginia, to cover the story. Positioned on the lawn, dad was moved that Ethel Kennedy - grieving, distraught widow - brought out coffee and pastries for the press. Crooner Andy Williams was on hand to comfort the clan and donned monogramed slippers.

Dad saw Martin Luther King preach at the National Cathedral two weeks before his assassination. And after King was shot, he was at the White House and delivered the news to President Johnson's aide. Days later, as riots broke out on 14th Street in the Northwest DC, his cameraman was hit in the head by a protestor's bottle and the two fled to safety on a motorcycle. Soon after that he was with LBJ in the Texas hill country. Johnson wielded a pocketknife and tossed freshly sliced peaches to the assembled reporters, alternately fielding questions and telling folksy tales with that heavy drawl.

Dad, an ardent New Deal Democrat, interviewed President Nixon on numerous occasions and maintained that, politics aside, he was among the most charming, engaging men he'd ever met. He would say the same of Ronald Reagan, governor of California when they first crossed paths. There are hundreds more of these stories. Dad relished telling them. He never paused or failed to recall the slightest detail. The man spoke in complete paragraphs of lapidary prose.

Mom, dad, and Kendall left DC in 1970. He remembered the Cherry Blossom trees in full bloom along the Tidal Basin as they headed for Tulsa. They settled in. Scotty was born that year and dad began a 14-year run at KTUL, Channel 8, under James C. Leake. At the time, Leake also owned KATV in Little Rock, where little brother, Jimmy, would become a star. Dad wore it as a badge of honor. "Jimmy built that station," he would boast. It was the same with his older brother, Billy, who anchored at KOTV, Channel 6, in Tulsa. "Everyone loved your uncle. Mr. 10 o'clock."

Bob Gregory's documentaries and special features at KTUL won dozens of awards. The "Oil in Oklahoma" series, and companion book, were a sensation. For that program, he traveled to England to interview J. Paul Getty at his Wormsley Park estate. "I know people say he was a bastard but I found him fascinating," he'd say.

Dad's encounters were legion and legendary. Dinner with Menachem Begin at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem after the Six-Day War; a chat with Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco; a few minutes with Steve McQueen in Texas on the set of The Getaway, the Sam Peckinpah film co-starring Ali MacGraw (he'd gone down to interview cowboy actor and Pawhuska native, Ben Johnson); and over the course of just one weekend out in early Las Vegas with Balch, they hit a trifecta: catching a glimpse of Arnold Palmer on the golf course, receiving a warm "hello, boys!" from a tuxedoed Frank Sinatra in the lobby of the Sands Hotel, and watching Dean Martin lay thousands at the blackjack table.

In the 1970s in Tulsa, dad found his way into a loosely assembled quartet of creative camaraderie: Gailard Sartain, the actor and painter; Jay Cronley, the sportswriter and novelist; and Darcy O'Brien, the professor and author, who'd gone to Princeton only because F. Scott Fitzgerald had, and whose parents were Hollywood royalty in 1930s. Is it any wonder, then? They convened over drinks at Cognito Inn, Little Joe's, and the Tulsa Press Club. Lots of laughs, sure, but it wasn't all light banter. They loved books and movies and the art of the conversation. Dad treasured those times and reminisced often.

So many large personalities and famous names. So many momentous occasions and interviews in faraway places. But this was only the more public side of the man.

What we'll cherish most, what we'll miss most, is the lesser-known side. Birmingham Avenue has been home for almost 50 years. He loved it. Growing up, kids in the neighborhood enjoyed dad's many kindnesses. The Saturday runs were a particular treat. Cliff, Jonathan, Stemmons, Bandy, Jay Reed, cousin Marc. We'd load into the burgundy Cadillac and make the rounds: QuikTrip, B. Dalton books, the Sports Buff, Coney Islander. Dad savored every minute.

His bedroom was part-library, part-newsroom, part-shrine; signed photos adorned the walls. Stacks of newspapers and magazines. The seemingly scattered books were in fact organized, his way. At one point, he had three televisions on his desk. One for news, one for sports, and one for Turner Classic Movies. When the sports world was quiet, two were for news. For big occasions, the Oscars or Oklahoma Sooners football, he would join us in the den. There was the favorite lounge chair on the back patio. "I need some color," he'd say on sunny days. New York Times in hand and music playing, always.

I never once heard him say the words, "I'm bored." He found abundant joy in the simple things. He loved rain. "Listen, Jay. Isn't it great?" he'd gush, as the drops began to fall. The colors of the trees. The roaring fireplace in the living room. Homegrown tomatoes from his small garden in the backyard. Taking a photo of a red cardinal perched on a branch at the perfect moment.

In the old days, when he hauled us to Colorado Springs and Santa Fe for summer vacations, he took pictures of us - and of the West - with a Pentax. But after sister Betsy one year sent as a gift a digital camera, he photographed everything in sight. Flash drives replaced rolls of film. Thousands of moments - frozen in time. Family meals usually meant dozens of candid, mid-bite shots, our mouths full of food. He got a real kick out of it. And even as he slowed down, energy flagging, we still took him on drives so he could observe and capture nature.

Trivia contests were a mainstay of family dinners. Featured topics: The Golden Age of Hollywood, literature, history. Subjects he'd long ago mastered. He read avidly and his mind was a vault. Politics, war, biography. He was encyclopedic. A dear friend offered this astute and comforting appraisal: "Your dad, no doubt, lived an incredibly thoughtful and examined life. People are the richer for it."

He was kind. He was gentle. He was funny.

Music was another passion. The Great American Songbook: the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Loewe. He knew songs, lyricists, composers, dates. And, oh how he loved those melodies, especially when interpreted by Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Nat Cole. And so many movies: film noir, Westerns. Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck.

As the grandkids came along, the difficulty level of his trivia contests decreased. Dad wanted them involved in the fun, so he crafted questions by researching things he cared very little about. And he closely monitored the kids' progress, delighting in their successes.
Dad was effusive in his praise. He was a fierce advocate, an unwavering supporter. His love was unconditional. He was proud of every single thing we did. And he never played favorites.

All was vicarious when it came to family - the pleasure and the pain. The day Scotty's Columbia University acceptance packet arrived, dad was euphoric. His boy was headed to the Ivy League. Kendall's artistic abilities and gifts as a teacher were an immense source of pride. And I think he enjoyed my time working as a lawyer for the US congress in Washington more than I did. We were in touch constantly. Discussing who was testifying on Capitol Hill or sharing thoughts on the news of the day. He liked to know where I was. The Monocle, The Occidental, The Willard Hotel. His old haunts now were mine.

One afternoon when I lived there, I called home, anxious and upset. He could hear it in my voice. "Get on a plane," he said. "You can be home tonight. I am here for you. You're a great kid."

On the morning of the 9-11 attacks, he was on the phone immediately, as Scotty and Kendall were then living in New York. Kendall alleges that dad broke the story before NBC. The preschool staff where my sister taught, in lower Manhattan, hadn't heard the news but assured him that Kendall was safe.

Six years ago, I visited Antietam, a seminal Civil War battlefield. Standing by Burnside Bridge, I called dad. I listened raptly as he recounted troop movements and tactical blunders. He lamented missed Union opportunities. History was alive. It was September 1862 once again.

Dad was fond of quoting, as he did that day, Lincoln's rejoinder to the feckless, tentative George B. McClellan, "If the General doesn't want to use the army, would he mind if I borrowed it for awhile."

Ever the art enthusiast, dad awaited summaries when we visited museums: The Frick Collection, The Met, The National Gallery. He conveyed his tastes and judgments and in so doing cultivated ours.

For my 26th Birthday, he bought us tickets to see Bobby Short, the virtuoso cabaret singer, perform at The Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Scotty, Kendall, mom, and me. "Come on, dad. Come up and join us." "No," he said, "I've had my day, but call me right after and tell me everything. I mean, everything."

A few days before he died, a hospice nurse paid us the dreaded visit. Dad insisted on shaving, put on a Brooks Brothers button down and his New Yorker baseball cap. After a brief exchange, he said to the nurse, "Thank you, madame, you've been a great help, and we appreciate it very much." Dignified, brave, and courteous to the end.

The Roman poet Horace wrote, "I shall not wholly die, and a great of part of me will escape the grave." I know this is true of dad. He was too big of a presence, too brilliant a mind, too loud a laugher, too adoring of his family, too much a lover of life, to ever really die. He lives on in the photographs, the documentaries, the grandkids he treasured, the memories, and all those beautiful words he wrote, private and published.

We remain very proud of his critically acclaimed biography of Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean. The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell said of it, "Put 'Diz' on the short list of baseball's best biographies." Fitting, then, to conclude with that book's final paragraph.
Bob Gregory, our mentor, our hero, my best friend, wrote:

"The funeral was held...and a thousand people came. His favorites were there - the hillbilly singers, football coaches, politicians, and businessmen - and from baseball came Ken Smith...Hank Aaron; and Dean's old Gas House teammate...Joe Medwick. Most of the talk was about Dizzy's accomplishments and all the fun he'd had and the laughs he'd brought to others. Nobody, they said, ever loved baseball more. He was buried near a magnolia tree on a slight mound in the center of the...cemetery, and Medwick said, 'Well, that's the ballgame...'"

If you click around the FCC radio station database, you will find some interesting stuff.

Here's the FCC database entry for KFAQ, AM 1170.

If you'll click on the "Links & Maps" tab, then click on "History Cards for KFAQ (PDF)," you'll get a scan of the FCC's record cards for the station known for most of its history as KVOO, from its beginnings in 1925 until the FCC began using computers in 1980 -- call letters, studio locations, transmitter locations, hours of operation, transmitter power, and special permissions.

The most interesting thing I learned from these cards was that in its early years, KVOO shared its frequency with WAPI in Birmingham, Alabama. In the early years, the two stations had to take turns broadcasting, despite the low power and the significant distance. In 1931, they were permitted to broadcast simultaneously during daylight hours, but still had to split time at night, except for important live broadcasts, in which they reduced power and broadcast simultaneously -- President Roosevelt's radio addresses, the Rose Bowl, the 1936 Joe Louis - Max Schmeling fight, the 1936 Republican and Democratic National Conventions, 1936 pre-election party broadcasts from the Republicans, Democrats, and the Union Party, 1938 Oklahoma primary election returns, and the 1938 dedication of the Will Rogers Memorial.

On November 21, 1933, KVOO upped its power from 5 kW to 25 kW, a change which would result, about 10 weeks later, in a major career break for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, as their maiden broadcast on the station prompted enthusiastic audience response from as far away as Oakland, California. That earned the band a show on the station, and station manager Bill Way refused to cave to the threats of W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, who had managed to get the Playboys blackballed from several stations. That higher broadcast power made Bob Wills a regional star and made Tulsa his adopted hometown.

It was in 1938 that KVOO began broadcasting at night with a directional antenna to avoid interference with other stations on the same frequency. I haven't been able to find a guide to the abbreviations used on these cards, but it appears that the shift from 25 to 50 kW happened on August 5, 1941 (p. 15), although (p. 30) the equipment from 50 kW was installed on July 7, 1930.

Some highlights:

Ownership (page 2): First licensed on July 19, 1926, but shows operation under T. A. (temporary authorization?) from January 14, 1925, broadcasting as KFRU, licensed to the wonderfully-named Etherical Radio Company. Voice of Oklahoma, Inc., changed the name to KVOO and took over the T. A. as of October 21, 1925. Southwestern Sales Corp. took over as of October 26, 1926.

Transmitters (page 2): The transmitter location was originally at the Roland Hotel in Bristow, then Reservoir Hill, then 11 miles east of Tulsa, and finally 10 miles east of Tulsa, "on highway #66," as of April 26, 1932.

Main Studio Location (page 2): First listed is the Basement of the Wright Bldg. (lic. 5-28-29). Next is the Philtower Bldg (Ltr. 1-25-34 eff. 3-1-34) -- during that gap, at midnight on February 9, 1934, is the first KVOO broadcast of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. A letter dated 11-12-57 noted the switch to the new KVOO radio and TV studios at 3701 S. Peoria.

Frequencies and power (page 3): Originally broadcast on 800 kHz at 1 KW, from 4-22-27 to 6-1-27, then on 860. Nothing is listed until 11-11-28, when it switches to 1140 kHz, which was KVOO's frequency until the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA) went into effect on March 29, 1941, requiring KVOO to move up by 30 kHz to the 1170 frequency it has had ever since.

MORE:

Here's the FCC database's list of all licensed AM stations within 100 miles of KFAQ transmitters

Google Books link to KVOO references in San Antonio Rose, Charles R. Townsend's bio of Bob Wills.

STILL MORE (2020/02/03):

The Tulsa station at 1300 kHz, known these days as "The Buzz," was known for most of its existence (1938-1968) as KOME (Oklahoma's Magic Empire) and was an affiliate of ABC. It was KCNW (Country 'N' Western) from 1968 - 1973. San Antonio Broadcasting (owners of WOAI) bought the station in 1973, renamed it to KXXO, and turned it into Tulsa's first news-talk station, a CBS News affiliate, with Hal O'Halloran's SportsTalk every night from 6:20 to 7:00. San Antonio Broadcasting became Clear Channel Communications in 1979, and KXXO took the call letters of FM sister station KMOD in 1980. (It later became KBBJ -- Big Band & Jazz -- and then KAKC, reviving the call letters and music of Tulsa's pioneer rock & roll station.) The original transmitter was at 3904 S. Newport (now a residential part of Brookside). From 1946 to 1969, the KOME studio was at 724 S. Main, on the second floor above Harrington's Clothing; in 2009 Tulsa TV Memories' Mike Ransom and former NBC News anchor Jim Hartz did some urban exploration and photographed the old KOME studios, unchanged in four decades. (The entire building has since been redeveloped as apartments.)

Longtime Tulsa newspaper columnist, novelist, and screenwriter Jay Cronley has died at the age of 73. Cronley was an institution on the front of the City/State section of the Tulsa Tribune, then made the transition to the Tulsa World after the World's publisher purchased and shuttered the Tribune. Cronley's curmudgeonly voice ran under his own byline and also that the Tribune Picks, the cynical weekly take on the weekend's upcoming football games. Growing up in a Tribune household, I looked forward to Jay's thrice-weekly columns and weekly football picks (everyone suspected it was him). When I subscribed to the Tribune by mail in college, Cronley's columns were among the reasons I felt no embarrassment in leaving the Tribune on the commons coffee tables next to the Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal.

Cronley left the World just about a year ago, but continued to write three times a week, behind a paywall, on his own website, jaycronley.com. His final piece, "Mayfield Punishment is No Gimmie," appeared on February 26, 2017.

In his final column for the World, Cronley explained what it takes to be a descriptive writer.

Good column writing is descriptive.

At TU, I had them make a list of descriptions.

Cold as what?

One of them wrote cold as the devil.

What makes a good columnist?

It's simple: reading.

If I wanted to become a writer all over again I'd major in English, where you have to read literature. In journalism school, too often you read textbooks. The only way to learn how to write is to read. Reading literature is how you learn to think. You can be taught to be a reporter. When you read literature, you see what works through the ages and what didn't.

That's a good point in favor of the classical approach to education and the benefits of a liberal arts education. The only exception I'd take to Jay's suggestion is that majoring in English these days would likely get you bogged down in intersectional theory and identity politics, while keeping you away from the classic works that would make you a better writer. Better you should find a school that teaches the Great Books, the canon of Western Civilization. I've been encouraging my wordsmith daughter to take a close look at those sorts of schools, the kind that accepts the new Classic Learning Test.

The World has made available Jay Cronley's final columns for the paper and a selection of favorites over the years.

Randy Brown has been posting Top 30 hit lists from his days at Tulsa's legendary rock station KAKC (he called himself Bob Scott on the air) on Tulsa Memories from the 60's and 70's Facebook group. The lists were based on surveys of sales at local record stores. He posted the KAKC Top 30 from September 8, 1971, and wrote:

I always sort of made it my mission in life to take over the design and publication of the weekly Big 30 list at every radio station I worked at. In 1971, I gave our Big 30 sheet a pretty dramatic redesign. And lookie!! There I am on the cover, handing over a check for cash to a lucky KAKC contest winner who knew the phrase that pays in our Pay Phone contest. Survey dated September 8, 1971.

Well, that date rang a bell. In September 1971, right after Labor Day, I started at Holland Hall as a 3rd grader, back when the lower and middle schools were at 2660 S. Birmingham Place.

That's also the week when I first heard KAKC. At our house we listened to KRMG-AM and -FM (now KWEN 95.5) -- middle-of-the-road and easy listening, respectively.

Mom taught in Catoosa and Dad worked downtown, and we lived in Rolling Hills, then unincorporated territory east of Tulsa and about 12 miles from school. So I was in a carpool. Dad would meet the carpool at the 11th & Garnett DX (SE corner, now Mazzio's).

Mr. Ivers, the elementary PE teacher, was the driver, and he was a KAKC listener.

He had a Volkswagen station wagon, and somehow he managed to squeeze five or six students in the car with him. There were a couple of sisters and a veterinarian's daughter who lived near the KVOO towers. On the way to school we picked up a Monte Cassino student (a girls' high school back then) who lived in the Rosewood neighborhood NW of 11th and Mingo. (The neighborhood was demolished after the 1984 Memorial Day flood.) Then we drove south on Memorial, stopping to pick up a girl who lived on the west side of the street, just south of a creek, about where 13th Street would have been if it had gone through. On south to 21st, then west to Lewis, south on Lewis to drop off the Monte Cassino student, then left on 27th Place and the south entrance to Holland Hall's Eight Acres campus.

Since we rode in a VW, we played a game like "Slug Bug" -- counting VWs along the way. The big prize went to the first one to call the big VW repair shop on the SW corner of 21st and Yale -- dozens of beetles, wagons, and microbuses.

KAKC was the soundtrack of my daily ride to school, new music en route to a new school in an unfamiliar part of town. My life the two previous years had centered around Admiral and 193rd East Ave. -- church, school, the Red Bud grocery store, Raley's Pharmacy, TG&Y, Lon's Laundry, In'n'Out convenience store. There was the occasional visit to a doctor's office or big shopping center in "Tulsa proper," but that involved crossing four or five miles of farmland. I was leaving behind the school where Mom taught and where my neighbors and Sunday School classmates went.

The music made an impression, and a song from that week's top 30 list has strong associations with those first rides to school: The banjo-infused "Sweet City Woman" by The Stampeders. Maybe I identified with the lyrics. "So long, Ma, so long, Pa, so long, neighbors and friends" -- if only for seven hours.

Here's a playlist I put together of all 30 songs, starting with #30 ("Imagine" -- sorry about that, but it is what it is) and ending with #1 ("The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down").

Legendary Tulsa TV weatherman Don Woods is "gravely ill", but "in good spirits" according to a report on KTUL.com:

Don is now 84 years old. He spoke with Channel 8 News Director Carlton Houston Tuesday and says he's been in good spirits recently and enjoying the company of family and friends.

Don Woods was the meteorologist for KTUL channel 8 from its first sign-on in 1954 until his retirement in 1989, and every weathercast featured an impromptu cartoon of a character named Gusty illustrating the forecast. The cartoon would go to a lucky viewer whose name was announced on the air. Our wild weather is an inherently interesting topic, but Don Woods' lighthearted and friendly manner made it fun to hear about cold fronts and high pressure cells as he sketched them on the US map. I imagine I wasn't the only Tulsa kid inspired to ask for a home weather kit for Christmas by Don Woods and his KOTV contemporary Lee Woodward. It was a golden age for local TV, a time of homegrown creativity, replaced too soon by cookie-cutter consultant-driven content.

Woods often made appearances at churches and schools; I remember him doing a presentation at our little church sometime in the '70s, and everyone left with an original Gusty sketch. Since his retirement, Don has often appeared at the Tulsa State Fair and trade shows on behalf of a local company, drawing Gusty and visiting with the fans who grew up watching him. In 2005, Gusty was designated as the official cartoon of the State of Oklahoma.

As concerned as he was about today's weather, Don Woods's greater concern for his audience is epitomized in the title of a little booklet featuring Gusty as its main character: "Do You Know How to Have a Happy Forever?" You can read the booklet online (in English, French, Spanish, and Russian), download a printable digital copy, or order copies in bulk to give away.

It was touching that the KTUL.com story made special mention of the booklet and provided a direct link.

Don wants everyone to know that Gusty -- who is now the official state cartoon of Oklahoma -- is still uplifting people and making them happy to this day.

Don is also well known for a little orange booklet. It's called, "Do you know how to have a happy forever?"

It features Gusty's message that God loves you. Over the years, Don has passed out thousands of these books around the world.

You can find information about the book at his website, www.gusty.us/books.htm. There, you can also leave a note of encouragement for Don.

You can also leave a message for Don in the comments on the KTUL.com story, and they'll be passed along to him.

Please join me in praying for Don Woods's health, and take a moment to leave a happy memory and a kind word for him.

MORE: Tulsa TV Memories has more on the history of TV weather in Tulsa, with an eight-minute TCC video of Don Woods reminiscing about his years covering weather on TV. I especially enjoyed hearing about the origins of Tulsa's first TV weather radar and the filming of the legendary "The News Guys" western-style promo.

Urban Tulsa Weekly reporter Mike Easterling has accepted a position as managing editor of the Montrose (Colo.) Daily Press.

Week after week, for over two years, Mike has provided thorough, perceptive, in-depth coverage of local government for UTW. I'm happy to have had the opportunity to work with him, both as a colleague and as a source. It's always a pleasure to talk with Mike. He asks insightful questions, grasps the key issues, and conveys that understanding to the reader.

Easterling served as editor of the Oklahoma Gazette, OKC's alt-weekly, through the 1990s. (In April 2010, he wrote a piece for the New York Times to mark the 15th anniversary of the Murrah Building bombing.) Prior to his stint with UTW, he was a reporter and city editor for the Albuquerque Journal's Santa Fe bureau.

Mike Easterling's departure, back to the mountains he loves, is a great loss for Tulsa. I wish him all the best in his new endeavor and wish UTW all the best in finding someone to carry on his work here.

OKDemocrat.com is a very old-school message board, mainly about struggles within the Oklahoma state and Tulsa County Democrat organizations, but also touching on broader local political issues. If you want to find out which local Democrats don't like each other and why, this is the place to go. Sometimes there are rumblings of stories and scandals weeks before they emerge in the mainstream.

The tone of the board is set by its proprietor, Rusty Goodman, a Vietnam veteran and long-time Democrat operative. Rusty and many of the regulars on the board are old-fashioned, pro-military, pro-traditional-values economic populists who are frustrated with the anti-military, anti-traditional-values liberals who dominate the state and county organizations and, according to the OKDemocrat regulars, are running the Democrat brand in Oklahoma into the ground.

(An aside: I don't understand my fellow Republicans who wish our side had a message board like this. It's fine for the Democrats to air their dirty laundry for our amusement; why should Republicans return the favor?)

All that to say that Rusty Goodman and the OKDemocrat board have had a run-in with Tulsa's monopoly daily newspaper. On February 9, a message was posted on OKDemocrat, apparently by Tulsa World web editor Jason Collington, saying that an OKDemocrat post "contains a copyrighted story from the Tulsa World and it is printed in full on your website, which is a violation of the copyright,' and that the story had been altered, which "makes your website subject to civil action."

The post apparently from Collington went on to ask for the deletion of the offending post "and any other posts that contain complete versions of our copyrighted stories."

The next sentence tickled me: "You are welcome to excerpt our stories and provide a link back to the story." It was six years ago this week that Tulsa World VP John Bair sent me, Chris Medlock, and two other websites a letter saying that we were not at all welcome to do that, that the act of linking and excerpting constituted a copyright violation. (The Whirled made no effort to follow through after the threat received national attention and ridicule.)

I confess I have sympathy for the World's position. I love it when someone excerpts and comments on a BatesLine post, with attribution and a link to the post. I don't like it when someone posts the entire entry, particularly if there's no attribution and no link.

A newspaper needs money to hire reporters, editors, and webmonkeys, and that money mainly comes from advertiser dollars. If you put a complete newspaper article on your website, the reader has no reason to go to the newspaper's website to read it, where his presence boosts readership numbers which in turn can be used to sell ads, so that the reporters and webmeisters can be paid. If you don't even provide a link or attribution, the reader doesn't even know where to go if he wants to read more stories of that sort. The right thing to do is to excerpt a few sentences to provide the context needed for your comments, cite the source, and provide a link to the source if it's on the web.

That said, it appears that the Whirled is taking an odd route to defending its copyright, using people on the content side of the house to pursue the matter, instead of someone on the legal or corporate side of the company. According to statements on OKDemocrat, the paper's state capitol reporter posted a request on Facebook for contact information for OKDemocrat. Web editor Collington submitted his message to an OKDemocrat feedback form and, when that got no response, posted to an OKDemocrat topic.

In reply, Goodman stated, "I have copies of over 30 stories that broke here first and a few days later showed up at the Tulsa World. Some of them almost word for word were printed in the Tulsa World from this site. Yet no credit was given to this site for breaking the news first."

I'll be watching OKDemocrat to see how all this works out. Should be interesting.

Another unexpected honor: I've been nominated for the first-ever Tulsa Press Club Newsie awards, in the category of Favorite Blogger. The competition is fierce: Natasha Ball of Tasha Does Tulsa, and three of the daily paper's bloggers: Jennifer Chancellor, Wayne Greene, and Jason Ashley Wright.

The nominations came from Tulsa Press Club members, but voting is open to the public. Here's a direct link to the Newsie ballot.

Tickets for the Feb. 24 awards ceremony are $15 for members, $20 for non-members.

We've lost two Tulsa TV pioneers in the last little while. Newsman Jack Morris died in early December at the age of 88. Betty Boyd, host of local daytime shows and later a state legislator, passed away Thursday at age 86.

Whenever someone says, "It's 10 o'clock!" I mentally supply the rest: "Jack Morris news time!" I remember Morris at KTEW (NBC) in the 1970s, but his first television job was as news anchor at KTUL.

Here's an 15-minute profile and interview with Morris, from 1991, the year he was inducted into the Oklahoma Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame (Jerry Webber, who worked with Morris at KTEW, is the narrator). Morris talks about the course of his career, including his nightly commentaries from a conservative perspective, traveling to Israel right after the Six-Day War for a documentary on the mideast crisis for KTUL, and what it was like to have to deal with news footage on film. In 1978, he won a Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge gold medal for his commentaries. (For Hal O'Halloran fans, there's a brief glimpse of a promotional photo of the KTUL news team -- Morris, O'Halloran, and weatherman Don Woods - at 4:45.)

KTUL has a tribute to Betty Boyd, which includes a promotional video from 1965; it appears to be aimed at selling Boyd's daily noontime show to potential advertisers. In the video you'll see a brief Cy Tuma newscast, an ad for Wilson's MOR canned ham and BIF canned beef (the shot of MOR with sliced olives belongs in James Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food), an old-school weather cast, a Maxwell House commercial, and a bass player and a pianist who played the theme and incidental music throughout the show -- live.

MORE from Tulsa TV Memories: Jack Morris is featured on one of the "Newsmen" pages, and Betty Boyd has a page all to herself.

Here's Jack Frank's video tribute to Betty Boyd from a few years ago.

She mentions Hal O'Halloran and Cy Tuma at about 2:20. And at about 1:10 in, Lawrence Welk flirts with Betty.

You may know This Land Press as the folks behind Goodbye Tulsa, a podcast devoted to well-known and well-loved Tulsans who have recently shuffled off this mortal coil, but (as reported here a few weeks ago) the online This Land project has expanded to be something much bigger, and now it's extending its reach into print.

This Land has produced its maiden print edition ("Relevant Readings by Oklahoma Writers, Artists, and Thinkers), and it's available now at Dwelling Spaces, 2nd and Detroit in downtown Tulsa's Blue Dome District, for a mere $2.

I'm honored to have a place in this premiere edition. I was asked by publisher Michael Mason to put together the data and text for an infographic, by graphic designer Carlos Knight, illustrating the top 10 private land and building owners in downtown Tulsa and how much of downtown they own. It was fascinating to research, and I think you'll find it just as fascinating to read. Carlos did a beautiful job of bringing text and numbers to life through his design, and it was a privilege to get to work with such a talented artist.

I haven't yet seen the rest of the paper, but the back cover portrait by Michael Cooper of Rocky Frisco is worth the cover price alone.

By now you've surely heard one of the wonderful podcast tributes to recently departed Tulsans at Goodbye Tulsa. But Goodbye Tulsa is part of something bigger. This Land Press describes itself:

As a collaboration of Oklahoma's best writers, thinkers, and artists, the aim of This Land is to deliver engaging content that's relevant to Oklahomans, and to encourage a richer sense of community through our various projects.

The project is attracting a growing number of contributors, including some names you've seen on bylines in the local alternative press. For example, my friend and former colleague Erin Fore is writing about her new, simpler, nicotine-, booze-, and car-free life in Norman. Photographer Michael Cooper is posting portraits of fascinating Tulsans. He's posted a great shot of musician and sometime politician Rocky Frisco and one of Melinda and Marcia Borum making the mugs that are used to serve coffee at Melinda's Shades of Brown. Josh Kline is writing about movies. Ray Pearcey's first piece for This Land is about the Fab Lab in Kendall Whittier.

Some interesting things are happening at This Land Press. Keep an eye on it.

A couple of days ago someone sent out an apparently pseudonymous email attacking a local media personality. This email was sent to a whole bunch of local bloggers, activists, publishers, and competing media personalities, challenging us to have the courage to publish his allegations and expose this person as a phony:

Let's see which of you have the stones to expose the truth about [media personality].

Sir or madam, if you had any stones, you wouldn't wait on me or Jamison Faught or Mike McCarville or MeeCiteeWurkor or Charlie Biggs to put this info on the web.

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com
2. Click "CREATE A BLOG."
3. Follow the instructions.

If you have confidence in this information and want it made public, publish it yourself. If you think it's important for the public to know, put it on the web where Google will index it. Sure, if it turns out that your information is false and you know it, putting it on the web would be considered an aggravation of libel, but you've already committed yourself by sending the email to a couple dozen media people, so if it's that important to you, prove it by publishing it yourself instead of expecting someone else to take the risk for you.

The Tulsa Police Department could be making better use of the internet and social media tools to communicate with the public, particularly in emergency situations. TPD has a blog, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account -- you've probably received the ominous email: Tulsa Police is now following you... -- but they aren't using any of them in an effective and timely fashion.

For several years now, I've been on a Tulsa Police Department Media Relations e-mail list. Nearly every morning around 8, I receive an email with subject line "Daily" with an attached PDF file. The PDF consists of a description of significant TPD activity the previous night. Except for the TPD letterhead, the PDF is mainly text. Until recently, the body of the email contained only the name of the media contact of the day. Over the last week or so, they've begun to put the text of the document in the body of the email -- an improvement -- but they still attach the PDF and now they're embedding a 262 KB image of the TPD badge in the email, bloating the size of each email to about 1/2 a megabyte.

There are occasional bulletins, too, like the one I received Thursday night about a special-needs child who had wandered away from his south Tulsa home. The email included a high-resolution photo of the boy and a description.

The TPD's use of email seems to assume an old-media approach to disseminating information to the public: The assignment editor at the newspaper, TV station, or radio station receives the email, prints off the attachment, and hands it off to a reporter, who follows up with the TPD media relations officer of the day to prepare a story for broadcast that night or the next day's paper.

Let me use Thursday's missing-boy story as an example of how TPD's approach slows down the dissemination of information they want to convey to the public.

As soon as I saw the email on Thursday evening and decided to help get out the word, I saved the attached photo to my hard drive, uploaded it to my blog database (using the blog software's capability to produce a smaller version that would fit the blog format -- I might also have edited it myself), created a new blog entry with the text from the TPD email, and then published it. I went through all these steps mainly so I could have a link to detailed information that I could then post to Twitter and Facebook. Shortly after I got all this done -- within 30 minutes of TPD sending the email -- I learned that the boy had been found, and so I updated the blog entry and sent out the news on Twitter and Facebook. Had there been a blog entry to which I could have linked, I could have pushed the information out to my blog readers and social networks within a minute or two of seeing the email.

To the extent that word got out to the public, TPD was dependent on media outlets to be paying attention at 8 pm on a Thursday evening. There's a better way that would allow TPD to reach more citizens more quickly and more directly. Here's the way the missing-boy story could have been handled:

• TPD posts the photo of the boy, description, and details of the disappearance on the Tulsa Police Department blog.
• TPD uses its @tulsapolice Twitter account to send a bulletin with a link to the blog entry with all the details. The link should be shortened with is.gd or a self-hosted link shortener, so that more of the maximum 140 characters are available to explain what's up. As an example, here's my tweet from Thursday night:

  9 yr old special-needs child missing near 101st and Yale #tulsa http://is.gd/8aKXR Tulsa tweeps please RT

  (If such info were available via @tulsapolice, I'd have those tweets sent to my phone, so that I'd see them ASAP. I'm sure many other Tulsans would do the same.
• TPD sends a direct link (not a shortened one) via its Facebook fan page, and uses the boy's photo as the link summary thumbnail. The accompanying text should still be brief, but Facebook allows a bit more room to explain the situation.
• TPD sends an email to its media list with the text of the blog entry, a small version of the photo, and a link back to the blog entry. If a media outlet needed a high-res version of the photo, they could obtain it at the relevant blog entry.

The media and the public then would help TPD spread the word:

• Twitter followers of @tulsapolice retweet the link to the TPD blog entry. All it takes is a single click to spread the message.
• Facebook fans of Tulsa Police Department share the link to the TPD blog entry with their Facebook friends.
• Bloggers post info online with link to TPD blog entry, hot-linking photo from TPD site.
• Traditional media posts breaking news online (with a link to TPD blog entry), follows up with TPD for news story for later broadcast or publication.

Under this approach, when the boy was found, TPD would have posted an update at the top of the same blog entry, and then sent that same link to that blog entry back out via Twitter, Facebook, and email, with the accompanying message that the boy had been found. By putting the updated info on the same blog entry, someone reading the alert later and following the link would immediately see the latest developments.

(It should go without saying, but every such email and blog entry should include day, month, and year in the body of the text, to prevent out-of-date information circulating forever as an emailed urban legend.)

It's always a surprise to get a comment on an old post, usually a pleasant one.

Over the last 24 hours, two old blog entries have received comments.

The first, from Lisa S. of Joshua, Texas, was posted to my July 2008 entry about a visit to the pictographs at Paint Rock, Texas. Last week, she and her dad were heading back home from visiting the town of Paint Rock and decided to follow the signs to the pictographs. I guess she was looking on the web for more info, came across my writeup, and was kind enough to report her own wonderful tour of the pictographs.

The second, from Howard Giles, posted from an Albuquerque, N.M., IP address, complains bitterly about my May 2009 entry on a 1981 Downtown Tulsa Unlimited plan for redeveloping what we now call Brady Arts District (or, better, the Bob Wills District). I had quoted from an April 7, 1981, Tulsa World business news story on the plan, which included extensive quotes from planner John Lauder of Urban Design Group. Mr. Giles thinks I should have done further research -- actually sought out a copy of the plan -- before writing anything about it. I replied: "It's not meant to be a finished piece of research, just a snippet of information I thought deserving of wider exposure. I let my readers know the source of the information and where it could be found so that an interested reader could do further research on his own." In my reply, I invited Mr. Giles to share any specific information he has about the 1981 plan.

Apropos the recent story on high water usage, here are a couple of public service announcements on water conservation featuring Gailard Sartain:

Check out the Tulsa TV Memories YouTube channel for more glimpses into Tulsa broadcasting history, including several more clips from KGCT 41, the short-lived attempt at news-talk TV on downtown Tulsa's Main Mall.

TulsaGal has been posting scans of past Tulsa ephemera on her blog. The latest scan is of a little 16-page magazine called This Week in Tulsa, December 31, 1948 edition. Recently she posted a copy of the competing magazine, The Downtowner, from March 19, 1948. The magazines had ads for nightlife, restaurants, theaters, and more mundane retailers. Where possible, she's ferreted out photos from the Beryl Ford Collection of the places that advertised in the two magazines.

As an interesting point of comparison, Iowahawk has scans of a similar, but much racier, 16-pager serving the Chicago convention business: The April 3, 1959, edition of Night Life in Chicago.

MORE FUN TULSA EPHEMERA: Irritated Tulsan has a promotional flyer for Scene2News from the 1970s, handed out at the Tulsa State Fair, featuring Jack Morris, Jerry Webber, and John Hudson. When I see a clock that shows 10 pm, sometimes there's a voice that booms out in my head, "IT'S TEN O'CLOCK! JACK MORRIS NEWS TIME!"

Chris Medlock, former city councilor and former afternoon host on KFAQ, is relaunching his talk show as a podcast today, the first anniversary of his first solo show on KFAQ. The show (in MP3 format for downloading to your computer or portable music device) is due to be uploaded to his website, medblogged.com, at 2 p.m. today.

Relocate-America.com has named Tulsa the best place to live in America for 2009.

Throughout the calendar year, we accept nominations for cities & towns throughout the country to be considered as a "top place to live". The nominating parties must include their own reasons why they feel their city should make the list. The nominations, along with key data regarding education, employment, economy, crime, parks, recreation and housing are reviewed, rated & judged by our editorial team. Special consideration is taken on the Top 10 Cities as they are listed in a ranked order of America's Top 10 Places to Live.

The top 10:

1. Tulsa, OK
2. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
3. Pittsburgh, PA
4. Raleigh-Durham, NC
5. Huntsville, AL
6. Houston, TX
7. Albuquerque, NM
8. Lexington, KY
9. Little Rock, AR
10. Oklahoma City, OK

Jenks also made the top 100 -- a specific ranking wasn't provided.

This honor is a good excuse to publish the following. My dad received an e-mail from a fellow Santa containing a Tulsa TV jingle from the 1980s:

There's a feeling in the air that you can't get anywhere except in Tulsa.
I'll taste a thousand yesterdays and I love the magic ways of Tulsa.
From the green countryside, we share the glowing pride
Each time we touch the sky.
From where the rivers flow, where all good feelings grow
With all good neighbors passing by.

Makes no difference where I go,
You're the best hometown I know.
Hello, Tulsa.
Hello, Tulsa! TV 2 loves you......

(Turns out the "Hello News" package, written by prolific jingle composer Frank Gari, has been used in 36 markets in the U.S, and in Australia, Canada, and Latin America, with local references built in for each. More about the Tulsa and Dallas deployments of the theme on Tulsa TV Memories. Gari is also responsible for two recruitment jingles: "Be All That You Can Be" and "Be A Pepper.")

Again, no time to comment much, just to note the situation.

Tulsa has three Taxpayer Tea Party events scheduled for April 15:

• Civic Center Plaza, 5th and Denver, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
• LaFortune Stadium, on Hudson north of 61st St., between 12 noon and 2 p.m.
• Veterans' Park, 18th and Boulder, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

From the tulsateaparty.org press release:

A group of citizens in Tulsa, OK, the Tulsa Tea Party, are organizing two Tax Day TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party protest rallies on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009, the day tax returns are to be mailed, in the downtown Tulsa area....

The TEA Party is part of a national movement formed to protest the spending of trillions of dollars, which will leave our great-grandchildren a debt they must pay, and to restore the basic free market principals upon which our country was founded. This is a grassroots, collaborative volunteer organization made up of everyday American citizens. This is not about Democrats and Republicans. It's about the defending the Constitution and loving America.

Tax day rallies are being held in over a thousand cities across the nation and are being promoted by Americans for Prosperity, American Family Association, 912 Project and several national radio and television programs, among others.

While the multiple events at different times and locales will allow more people to participate, there's also some talk radio tug-of-war going on as KFAQ hosts are emceeing the Civic Center and Veterans' Park tea parties, and KRMG is promoting the LaFortune Stadium tea party.

Chris Medlock, who "no longer [has] a dog in this fight," has an interesting analysis of the Tulsa Tea Party situation (and a great graphic -- rockem-sockem radio stations) and how it could work in the protest movement's favor. The post has already generated 17 comments, including one from "joe.kelley," although I have trouble believing it was really written by the KRMG morning host -- the tone is way out of character.

Jai Blevins, who organized the February Tea Party at Veterans' Park and is organizing the Civic Center and Veterans' Park events for next Wednesday, seems to have found the whole experience eye-opening.

I've been around grassroots organizing for a long time -- neighborhood organizations, political parties, campaigns, and other causes. I've seen many people like Jai, who get passionate about an issue, get motivated, and seemingly come out of nowhere to get something going. We need people like Jai, who haven't yet become worn down, jaded, and cynical, who still believe that it's possible to make a difference.

These freshly-minted grassroots leaders often learn, to their shock and displeasure, that the biggest challenge to their movement's success may not be from outside opposition but from internal dissension, as some people seek to use the movement to promote their own agenda. Sometimes that agenda is hidden, sometimes it's right out in the open -- as it is with the radio stations and their understandable desire to use the tax party movement to promote their own business prospects.

But from the perspective of someone like Jai Blevins, this isn't a time to jockey for advantage, but a national emergency that demands patriotic cooperation from people who might otherwise be at odds. To call him a whiner or to say that he's insincere and doesn't believe in free-market competition is to misunderstand his motives.

Eventually, an activist learns how to deal with individuals and companies that are trying to use his movement. He learns to use them to promote his movement's agenda. They achieve a kind of symbiosis, but there's an understanding that the relationship is one of convenience, not permanent and grounded in principle. In the process of coming to terms with that reality, you lose some of your idealism.

Like Chris, I don't have a dog in this fight either. I haven't been invited on either station for months, and I don't expect that I'll ever be invited on either one again. I hope all three events draw big, enthusiastic crowds and get plenty of media coverage.

As for which one I'm attending -- it's also my wife's birthday, so I doubt I'll be able to get to any of them.

MORE: American Majority, which provides training for prospective political candidates and activists, is offering to help you learn how to make an ongoing difference after the tea parties are over.

Chris Medlock is back to blogging, having moved his blog to a domain with a matching name, www.MedBlogged.com. Since relaunching, he's written about both local and national issues, including the strange case of Obama excluding the press from a ceremony in which he was to receive an award from a press organization.

His most recent entry includes audio of Pat Campbell's comments on his show the Monday morning after KFAQ cancelled the Chris Medlock Show. Pat has kind words to say about Chris, and he made it clear that the cancellation of Chris's show reflected the station's economic situation, not Chris's performance.

Shortly before Pat's arrival in April 2008, I was informed that my weekly segment on KFAQ, which had run continuously since September 2003, was being discontinued. I was told that I might be called on from time to time to talk about a particular local issue that I covered here or in my UTW column. (And indeed that happened, with occasional appearances with Pat, Chris, and Elvis, most often with Chris, although the time of day didn't always allow me to participate.)

The change made sense: The station was launching a two-hour daily program devoted primarily to local issues, hosted by an expert. There really wasn't a need for my segment to continue. It was fun while it lasted, but I haven't missed having to get up extra early every Tuesday.

But now that there isn't a Chris Medlock Show, it would make sense to add a regular local politics segment alongside all the other weekly segments on the Pat Campbell Show. And it would make sense for that segment to feature the insights of a former city councilor and mayoral candidate named Chris Medlock.

MORE: Muskogee Politico notes that KFAQ has reposted the final week of podcasts of the Chris Medlock Show; MP calls it a "good start." Steven Roemerman says the gesture is "too little, too late."

The breathless tweets began about noon:

NewsTalk740KRMG: MAJOR NEWS about the Tulsa radio landscape to be announced in three hours - at 3pm. Please RT.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:02:11

NewsTalk740KRMG: MAJOR changes to be announced AND implemented at 3pm on Tulsa's KRMG.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:47:58

I duly "retweeted" the message (that's what RT means in Twitterese) and so did a bunch of other folks.

The intensity gathered momentum with a little over an hour to go:

NewsTalk740KRMG: Make no mistake about it, behind the scenes here we're working feverishly to get our 3pm announcement and implementation ready.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:48:34

NewsTalk740KRMG: Mindful of radio stunts, I want to insist that this IS NOT a radio stunt. We're moving mountains over here.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:50:04

NewsTalk740KRMG: Channel 6 has TV cameras in our Talk Studio for our CW12/19 morning broadcast. I've had to feed them color bars to NOT see what we're doing.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:18:47

With 40 minutes remaining, we seemed to be nearing the boiling point:

NewsTalk740KRMG: I've just learned that we had a leak of information. It's OUT. Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:20:46

NewsTalk740KRMG: 30 minutes until the announcement. We're going to be cutting it close. Listen at AM740 or at www.krmg.com
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:31:11

NewsTalk740KRMG: I wish you could see what's going on here. People are FREAKING OUT. We have 15 mins until the BIG DEAL. I just saw our PD in the fetal pos.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:45:20

NewsTalk740KRMG: KRMG just sent out a text alert to those who subscribe to Breaking News Alerts with scant details.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:52:50

NewsTalk740KRMG: I'll give you a hint - Sean Hannity actually spilled the beans an hour ago in OKC. Hannity will also talk about it just after 3pm on KRMG.
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:54:10

As zero hour approached, I had my headphones, which are normally plugged into the computer, plugged in to the old AM/FM/cassette player I keep on my desk. This pretty much encapsulates how I felt when the announcement came:

"Underwhelmed," I tweeted. I noticed similar sentiments from a few other Twitterers.

After reading a statement explaining the reason for the change, I could better understand the excitement within the walls of KRMG:

AM740 has a massive signal that reaches great distances across the length of Oklahoma. But, the weakness of AM740 is the limitations of north-south signal strength. The signal strength of AM radio across the US also faces limitations when it comes to penetrating large buildings, such as offices and some homes.

Adding FM102.3 to our stable of delivery platforms will nearly eliminate any of the weaknesses that AM740 presented our listeners.

102.3 is certainly easier to pick up at the office, doesn't seem to suffer as much from nearby computers, and it's a much more vivid sound. And I've experienced the massive dead spot in the KRMG signal pattern, driving home at night down US 75 or US 169 from the north. 740's signal is limited because two other stations on 740, one in Houston and one in Canada. (You can sometimes hear a few seconds of it around sunrise if the transmitter switchover takes a bit longer than normal.)

Here are three maps to illustrate the problem:

KRMG 740 daytime (50,000 watts)
KRMG 740 nighttime (50,000 watts)
KKCM 102.3 (50,000 watts)

(The reason for the bizarre KRMG signal pattern: U. S. Sen. Robert S. Kerr, the station's founding owner, wanted his station to cover both Tulsa and Oklahoma City.)

So KKCM 102.3 (the FCC database still shows the old call letters) will fill in the gaps for KRMG in the northern half of the metro area. They'll also be able to reach MP3 players and portable radios that have FM reception but no AM reception. In a sense, they're taking over for KOTV, providing a way for FM listeners to pick up breaking news and weather bulletins. (KOTV's assigned frequency band, 82-88 MHz, made it possible to hear the TV station's audio on the radio, but that's gone with the end of analog broadcasting and frequency reassignment.)

So I can understand the KRMG guys' excitement, but I'm not sure if they realized the expectations they were creating with the build-up to the announcement. They gave us each an opportunity to assume that our own hopes for Tulsa radio were about to come true, and I suspect most of those hopes pertained to content, not broadcast reach.

For example, FixedOn66 thought KRMG might move Rush Limbaugh one hour earlier, so that Tulsa would hear his show live. I imagine a few people were hoping for a replacement for Michael Savage -- maybe Fred Thompson's new talk show.

Several people expressed hope that the announcement would represent an expansion of local talk radio programming to compensate for its recent, sudden contraction. In other words, they hoped they'd be hearing something like this at 3:00 p.m.

This announcement made for an interesting experiment in marketing through social networking -- and there were dozens of local PR and advertising pros watching it unfold on Twitter. KRMG created buzz, but there was a disconnect between the significance of the news for them and the significance for most of their listeners. When the big announcement came, they could have done a better job of explaining the benefits to the listeners. They had people paying attention to the frequency announcement, but they may have blunted the effectiveness of the strategy for future announcements.

Although the announcement of the FM frequency was not about content, upon further reflection, I can see how it might expand opportunities for content. BBC Radio 4, which is mainly spoken-word programming, broadcasts on three bands: VHF (what we call FM), mediumwave (equivalent to our AM band), and longwave (148.5 to 283.5 kHz, not used for broadcasting outside of Europe). Most of the broadcast day is simulcast, but certain programs, like the Shipping Forecast and play-by-play coverage of cricket test matches are heard only on longwave. (I seem to recall that KOMA in Oklahoma City used to do something similar some years ago -- simulcasting oldies on 1520 and 92.5, but carrying paid religious programming on 1520 only at certain times.)

Speaking of the BBC, they set the standard for frequency-change announcements back in 1978.

Oh, about returning to the FM dial: Circa 1970, KRMG-FM broadcast "beautiful music" on 95.5 MHz. Our parents would sometimes set the RCA clock radio (just like the one Bob and Emily Hartley had, except that ours was gold) in the hall, tuned to KRMG-FM, to help us get to sleep. KRMG-FM later changed its call letters to KWEN. (Chuck Fullhart worked at KRMG-FM back in the day and shared his recollections of this early example of an automated radio station on TulsaTVMemories.com.)

MORE: Tyson Wynn is "giddy" at the thought of an FM talk station. He explains why, and uses KRMG's announcement to put KFAQ's cancellation of the Chris Medlock Show into perspective:

KRMG will be the Tulsa radio king as long as it carries Rush Limbaugh. Frankly, KRMG has a heftier overall lineup of syndicated shows (with the exception of the legend-in-his-own-mind Michael Savage). That said, I am a fan of Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin on KFAQ. But, KFAQ's real mode of attraction (when it started up) was the passion of the live and local Michael DelGiorno and its running shows live so that listeners could participate (they even ran promos about it)....

As far as KFAQ goes, it's not enough merely to be the other talk station in town. Newspapers are learning they can band-aid their dismal situations by cutting local reporters and filling space with nationally syndicated columns, but that doesn't fix the big issue. Radio, in the same way, can fill time with any number of nationally syndicated hosts, many of them very good, but none of them provide the localism radio must have if it is to be successful in a market. If your national hosts are largely second-tier, if your local news team is second-best, you better out-passion and out-local-issue the other guys.

Further, KFAQ's handling of the Medlock dismissal betrayed years of positioning. No one buys that the station that claims it is "standing up for what's right," did the right thing by dismissing Medlock, the only daily injection of passion and loyal opposition in Tulsa, especially so suddenly. They added insult to injury by not allowing him to say goodbye and then removing every trace of his existence from the station's website (though it is a fairly typical practice in radio).

Read the whole thing.

I hadn't planned to post again today, but I've received several e-mails from people who tuned into the Chris Medlock show on 1170 KFAQ this afternoon and were surprised to hear the Laura Ingraham show two hours early instead of Chris.

Chris was laid off this morning. The new schedule has Laura Ingraham from 2 to 5, an hour-long call-in show from 5 to 6, hosted by Elvis Polo, followed by Mark Levin from 6 to 8.

Although I'm told that Chris's ratings have been good -- the best for his timeslot since Tony Snow was on mid-afternoons several years ago -- parent company Journal Communications is suffering. In June 2007, the stock neared $14 a share; it was at $5 as recently as last September; yesterday it closed at 39 cents. (It ticked up today, back to 50 cents.) According to the transcript of the company's 2008 4Q earnings teleconference, Journal had a net loss of $223 million for that period. Journal Communications' flagship is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper:

At the daily newspaper, total revenue of $50 million was down almost 13%. The major revenue category of advertising was down 18.6%, while circulation revenue was essentially flat and our other revenue category was up nearly 12%.

Other revenue includes using the presses in off-hours to do commercial printing. Read the report for specifics.

I'm not in a position to criticize the move as a business decision, but I'm disappointed to lose a knowledgeable voice on local issues from the airwaves, and I'm disappointed with the way the layoff was handled. If it were my station, I'd have given Chris a chance to say "so long for now" to his listeners.

I would not have tossed his webpage, his blog, and his podcasts straight down the "memory hole" -- deleted from the website without any acknowledgment of what had happened. (I wasn't surprised, however, because that was done when Michael DelGiorno left in 2007 and again when Gwen Freeman left in 2008.) Something I appreciate about the the Urban Tulsa Weekly, Tulsa World, and some of the TV stations is that they see their archives as more than just ephemera; it's a part of the contemporaneous record of Tulsa's history, so they don't purge articles by former staffers. Chris's commentary and that of the newsmakers who spoke on his show ought to be a part of that record as well. (Ditto for KFAQ's other hosts, both past and present.)

I wish Chris all the best and hope that he'll continue to be a part of Tulsa's civic dialogue. I hope, too, that KFAQ continues to engage local issues in some form, but it will be harder to do without Chris Medlock's contributions.

MORE: Steven Roemerman is not happy with the cancellation of Chris's show or with the way it was handled, and he wrote KFAQ management to complain. He received a response from Brian Gann, Operations Manager for Journal's Tulsa stations, which read in part:

The economy has forced many businesses to make choices. With our move at KFAQ, we've had to make a difficult choice to stop working with someone we really care about by canceling the Chris Medlock Show. It was not an easy decision. We do hope to be able to call on Chris' expertise in the future.

Just a reminder that tomorrow morning at 6 on 1170 KFAQ, you'll hear the first edition of the Pat Campbell Show.

This morning was the final edition of KFAQ Mornings -- Chris Medlock will be moving to afternoons, 2 to 4, beginning on May 5 -- and during the 7 a.m. hour, Chris interviewed Pat. It was interesting to learn that he started out as a talk show caller. He said that he started listening to Rush Limbaugh during the 1991 Gulf War and would stay tuned to listen to the local liberal host. No one else was challenging what the host was saying, so Pat would call in and argue with him. A couple of competing station managers heard Pat and called to offer him a tryout, impressed at his ability to debate the host extemporaneously. That's how he got his start.

I have the impression that Pat has been carefully studying state and local issues in preparation for his debut, and he's already got a good grasp of who the key players are. Even as a newcomer, he could clearly see from the opinion section in Sunday's Tulsa Whirled how hostile our daily paper is to the conservative views of the vast majority of Oklahomans.

With a new host you can expect changes. For a start, the show will begin at 6, not at 5:30 as the previous morning show had done ever since Michael DelGiorno moved from afternoons to mornings back in 2003.

I'll be sleeping later tomorrow than I usually do on Tuesdays, although I still plan to wake up in time to hear the start of Pat's first broadcast. With the change in show format, there won't be a regular time to tune in to hear me, although I'll certainly be available if Pat or Chris, or Elvis Polo, Bruce Delay, or Darryl Baskin on the weekends on KFAQ, or, for that matter, Joe Kelley on KRMG or Rich Fisher on KWGS wants to talk to me about an issue on or off the air. If I'm asked to be on one of those shows and I know far enough in advance, I'll be sure to post something about it here.

Best of luck to Pat, and welcome to town!

I found out last night; the promos started running today: Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ's search for a morning show host is over, and the new man is Pat Campbell, formerly of WFLA 540 in Orlando. As I noted a month ago when Pat was in town to try out, he seems to be a solid conservative. In 2006 and 2007, he was named one of Talkers Magazine's 250 most influential talk show hosts. Pat's first day will be next Tuesday, April 22.

Elvis Polo will stay on in the mornings as Pat's producer. Chris Medlock will move to afternoons from 2-4, starting in May, and Brent Smith will run the boards for him. (Chris's show will displace "Brian and the Judge.")

MORE: Pat announces the move on his blog: "I was just blown away with my visit to Tulsa. Journal has put together a top notch team led by Randy Bush and Brian Gann. I have all the tools needed to make a real ratings splash. I'm surrounded by a team of professionals that will help us take KFAQ to the top." Pat also mentions that his contract with Journal is a three-year deal.

KFAQ, with its emphasis on local talk and its motto of "Standing Up for What's Right," means a great deal to many Tulsans who for many years were frustrated by the one-sided way the mainstream local media outlets framed the issues. I'm happy that KFAQ has found someone of Pat's caliber to carry on that legacy, and I'm sure I speak for many others in the "Q nation" in wishing him a warm welcome

RELATED: Last month, KFAQ's parent company, Journal Broadcast Group, announced a special election year emphasis for its TV stations and news/talk radio stations during the month before November's general election:

"Our stations are always committed to providing comprehensive, high-quality news coverage of important local stories. This year we renew our initiative to provide viewers and listeners in each of our markets with the best we have to offer in election coverage," said [Doug Kiel, President, Journal Communications Inc. and Vice Chairman and CEO, Journal Broadcast Group].

The Journal Broadcast Group's "2008 Red, White and Blue Election Initiative" on television newscasts and news/talk radio stations includes:

• A minimum of five minutes of news coverage daily, Monday through Friday, in the 30 days prior to the general election. This coverage will be broadcast in the afternoon and late evening newscasts on television and in high listener time periods on radio.
• The coverage will be focused on candidates running for office in federal, state and significant local elections.
• Coverage will consist of interviews, profiles and viewers' questions.
• Debates will be offered where appropriate.
• Stations will run public service announcements encouraging viewers to get out and vote.

An edited version of this column was published in the April 26 - May 2, 2007, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here is my initial post on Michael DelGiorno's departure from KFAQ to WWTN, and here is the blog entry linking to this UTW column. Posted November 1, 2023.

DelGiorno Departs
By Michael D. Bates

Friday marked the end of an era in Tulsa radio with the departure of Michael DelGiorno from News Talk 1170 KFAQ. After nearly five years at the station, he is moving to WWTN, the top news/talk station in Nashville.

Many readers' brains may explode as they read the following sentence, but it's true nevertheless: Politics and public dialogue in Tulsa are better off for Michael DelGiorno's tenure here.

All told, DelGiorno spent 17 years in the Tulsa market, serving as program director and afternoon host at KRMG for nearly a decade, then as operations manager for Clear Channel's Tulsa stations and host of the morning show on KTBZ 1430 ("The Buzz").

At loose ends after parting company with Clear Channel and then working on State Sen. Scott Pruitt's unsuccessful 2001 run for Congress, in the spring of 2002, DelGiorno approached Journal Broadcast Group management with the concept for KFAQ's format, a talk radio station that would be, like the bulk of metropolitan Tulsa's population, unapologetically conservative.

While right-wing national talk show hosts were easy enough to find on Tulsa radio, local talk was dominated by John Erling, who delighted in poking fun at Tulsa's conservative Christians. The daily paper had (and still has) a lockstep editorial board that's liberal on social issues and never met a tax increase it didn't like.

Here is a market that repeatedly sent conservatives like Jim Inhofe, Steve Largent, and John Sullivan to Congress, that attracts students from around the world to attend two major charismatic Christian colleges, home to evangelical and charismatic megachurches, and hundreds of smaller churches with a conservative social and political inclination, but you'd never have known it by listening to local radio.

There was a niche to be filled, and DelGiorno, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, persuaded Journal Broadcast Group to let him step in and fill it.

Where other attempted alternatives to Erling had come and gone - like Ken Rank's valiant efforts on KAKC 1300 in the late '90s - DelGiorno succeeded. He switched from afternoons to mornings in 2003, and swiftly moved past Erling in the ratings.

It was DelGiorno's passion in speaking about the issues and his ability to rally listeners to action that made the difference. Even those who disagreed with him found his show to be compelling listening.

As the Vision 2025 debate heated up that summer, for the first time the opposition to the establishment consensus had a 50,000-watt platform for their message.

And it was that aspect of the DelGiorno show - giving a voice to people whose concerns had been ignored for years - that is his most significant legacy.

Community activists in north, east, west, south, and midtown Tulsa found out that they weren't alone in their frustration with the status quo, and through KFAQ, they started to find each other and support each other's issues.

Coalitions were born. The long ignored and less prosperous periphery of the city began to be heard. Friendships were formed across partisan and racial lines. It's telling that, during his final broadcast, DelGiorno singled out two African-American Democrats, Jack Henderson and Roscoe Turner, as the city officials for whom he felt the most respect and affection.

Issues like zoning and appointments to boards and commissions and airport management weren't on DelGiorno's radar when he began, but he could see the common thread of media bias and the use of government power to benefit the politically connected - the daily paper's tardy acknowledgement of their significant ownership interest in Great Plains Airlines being a prime example.

Here's one way to quantify his impact: Since KFAQ was launched in May 2002, we've had two City Council elections, the only two (so far) in which the daily paper failed to get a majority of its handpicked slate elected. The 2004 election almost went the other way, but DelGiorno used his show to spotlight voter irregularities in Council District 3. The result was a court case, a new election, and Roscoe Turner back on the City Council.

I feel a personal debt to Michael: I first got to know him during the Vision 2025 debate. After the vote, he asked me to come on the show on a weekly basis to track the implementation of Vision 2025. As the 2004 city elections approached, our visits expanded to include all aspects of local government. Those weekly spots attracted the attention of then-UTW reporter G. W. Schulz, and his profile of me led to the opportunity to write this column.

I've often been asked whether his on-air persona is a pretense, a shtick to gin up ratings. For better or worse, Michael's personality, his demeanor, and his opinions never changed when the ON AIR light went dark. His passion for Tulsa was heartfelt - it's his wife's hometown and the birthplace of his kids and was his own home base for a decade and a half.

DelGiorno often expressed his frustration with local leaders who seemed too pleased with themselves over half-measures and irrelevant initiatives while the big, basic issues - crime and infrastructure - continue to go unaddressed.

It was hard for him to have hope in the future of a city that put a priority on building new facilities when we can't afford to maintain what we already own. Why build a new arena and pocket parks and a jazz hall of fame when we can't field enough police officers, fix our streets, keep the expressway lights on, or put water in our pools?

At the state level, he saw the embrace of casino gaming and a state lottery as the first step toward Oklahoma becoming just like his hometown of New Orleans, with all the social dysfunction but minus the Old World charm. Perhaps he understood the risks better because of his own weakness for gambling.

Adding to DelGiorno's frustration with what he saw as a lack of political progress, personal pressures took a toll: A libel lawsuit by City Councilor Bill Christiansen (now in its 20th month, and the pretrial conference won't happen until July 30th), the year-delayed revelation of his expulsion from two Indian casinos in a single day, and the foreclosure on his home.

There had always been humor and playfulness to leaven the earnestness, but those qualities weren't evident much over the last year or so. He was ready to start over somewhere else.

Despite the continual pressure on station management to take him off the air, DelGiorno left on his own terms. His contract was due to expire at the end of 2007, but he had already been investigating other possibilities. In early April, after a visit to WWTN, he requested and Journal granted him an early release from his contract. Two weeks after he accepted the Nashville station's offer, he was doing his last Tulsa broadcast.

WWTN is the highest rated of the two talk stations in the Nashville market, despite the fact that its competition, WLAC, runs the top three syndicated talk shows - Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. DelGiorno's hiring represents his new station's increased commitment to local talk. He's replacing the syndicated G. Gordon Liddy and Bill O'Reilly shows, increasing WWTN's local content from 8 to 12 hours daily.

DelGiorno may seem mild compared to his new stable mates. Morning host Ralph Bristol once hung up on John McCain when the senator seemed to be dodging his questions. Afternoon drive host Phil Valentine is legendary for leading the "Tennessee Tax Revolt of 2002," stopping efforts by a Republican governor and Democratic legislature to impose the state's first-ever income tax. Michael should feel right at home.

More and more drivers are tuning out traditional radio and tuning into narrowcast music stations or national talk shows on satellite radio or programming their own stations on their iPods. Local content may be the only way for analog broadcasting to compete, whether that means local politics or locally programmed, consultant-free music.

Wisely, KFAQ management's understands the value of local content. While the pioneer has moved on (still pulling arrows out of his back), the station remains committed to the mission of "Standing Up for What's Right" and to maintaining a focus on local news and politics.

If DelGiorno's detractors were celebrating at news of his departure, the party didn't last long. His longtime sidekick Gwen Freeman and former Councilor Chris Medlock are the new co-hosts of KFAQ's morning drive, ensuring a continuity of the station's point of view. With Medlock on board, I would expect as much if not more focus on local and state issues. And unlike the competing news/talk station, KFAQ's format will continue to allow time to discuss issues at length and in depth.

Michael DelGiorno could be frustrating. He would let passion get ahead of precision. It could be tough at times to get a word in edgewise. Thoroughly suburban in his outlook, he was never going to see eye-to-eye with me on the importance of a healthy urban core.

But Michael's time at KFAQ opened up the airwaves to voices and issues that never before got a hearing. Although it was time for him to move on, I'm thankful for his time here. Even if you didn't care for his manner or his take on social or religious issues, if you value the richer, broader, more open public discourse we now have in this city, you ought to be thankful, too.

It appears that Mayor Kathy Taylor is waffling on signing the ordinance annexing the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. After the measure passed 5-4, Taylor said that the Council "did the right thing for the right reason." So why, two weeks later, has she still not put her signature on the measure?

One possibility is that she's feeling pressure to veto from individuals who could help or hinder her climb up the political ladder.

If that's so, it's disappointing. Although I didn't support Taylor's election, she had a reputation for decisiveness, and I hoped that a mayor with plenty of her own money would be insulated from the financial and social pressures that afflict politicians of more modest means.

Her first instincts were sound: The Council had the benefit of a great deal of financial analysis by administration and Council staff and came to the conclusion that it was good for the City of Tulsa and would not harm the interests of Tulsa County government. In addition to the five voting in favor, two more councilors indicated that the economic case supported annexation, although constituent concern aroused by the fair board's prophecies of doom kept them from voting yes.

While a mayoral veto might endear her to County officials - at least until the next time they regard a City initiative as a threat to their interests - it would alienate five councilors who risked a considerable amount of political capital to do what they believe to be in the City's best interests.

The Mayor has until Friday to make her decision. I'm still hopeful that she'll make the right one.

In one of my first entries, I lamented the decline of locally produced television. So I was thrilled to learn about a new locally produced half-hour comedy program called Beef Baloney, which airs on Fox 23 every Saturday night (actually Sunday morning) at midnight.

Tonight's episode was all about politics. They had a man on the scene at the Democratic debate in Stillwater, talking to the activists and to several of the candidates. Presidential candidates aren't quite sure how to respond to a reporter who says he's from Beef Baloney.

They did a hilarious parody of the Vision 2025 ads. This was an ad for Vision 2026, a tax initiative to stimulate the local production of comedy -- it's for the children.

Then there was an instructional video for politicians -- how to disengage from a conversation with a voter. It's a five step process, evidently, involving a pat on the arm, a point of the finger, mutating into a wave and a thumbs up. After explaining each step in slow motion, Beef Baloney then presented film of an actual politician executing the maneuver to perfection -- Joe Lieberman, as he backed away from the Beef Baloney reporter.

Most of the remainder of the program was taken up debates and commercials in a fictional mudslinging local campaign.

Support local comedy and tune in. This episode will air again Friday and Saturday nights at 2:30 am and Wednesdays at midnight on channel 71.

UPDATE 2023/11/26: The instructional video for politicians is now on YouTube:

Also, I've updated the link to my earlier entry to the "new" naming system. Here's the old link, for the record.