What makes a radio station important?<\/p>\n
One of the disagreements I have with Wikipedia is that the Radio Project took the position that every<\/span> radio station has “notability” because it has an FCC license.\u00a0 That’s just not true.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While most radio stations have a few people who care about them, most radio stations have never done anything of interest to a national or global audience.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wikipedia is not a director or so their rules say.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wikipedia’s radio station listings are 95% generated by a script from existing databases and contain no research, and are now poorly maintained because the sheer volume of changes each day.\u00a0\u00a0 “Everything is notable” is the same as saying “Nothing is notable”.<\/p>\n KOA-AM is definitely notable<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s one of the original AM clear channel 50,000 radio stations located in Denver<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The 3 letter call sign tells you it was one of the first radio stations in the country.\u00a0\u00a0 Once the sun sets, it can be heard from the Rocky Mountains all the way across middle America and all the way to the East Coast if you’re a DXer.<\/p>\n KOA was built by General Electric<\/strong> during the dawn of the radio era and began broadcasting in 1924<\/strong>, 10 years before the FCC was created.\u00a0 KOA was one of the cornerstones of the early NBC<\/strong> Red and Blue networks.\u00a0\u00a0 In 1952, the station was sold to a local company that was starting a TV station – KOA-TV – in 1968, the radio and TV stations were sold back to G.E. which they again owned until 1983.<\/p>\n Alan Berg worked for KOA.\u00a0 Long John Nebel’s program was carried on KOA giving it close to national reach just from the one station (Nebel was the guy who laid down the prototype for overnight radio on the Mutual radio network – he was followed by Larry King and then Coast to Coast).\u00a0\u00a0 More recently, KOA was the flagship for Tom Martino (the Trouble Shooter) and Ken Hamblin (where is he now?).<\/p>\n KOA was acquired by Jacor in 1996 as part of the “Land Rush” following deregulation in 1996 and is now owned by Clear Channel.\u00a0\u00a0 The station has stood out as one of the few in the country that was still doing a live overnight radio show and a lot of local programming.<\/p>\n Rick Barber has been doing overnights for 30 years<\/strong><\/span> – essentially since Larry King left radio after having his heart attack.\u00a0\u00a0 Barber\u00a0 just did his last show on KOA – Jon Caldera who was on just before him is also gone.\u00a0\u00a0 Now KOA is just one more of the 100s of stations carrying Coast to Coast every night – 7 hours of it.<\/p>\n KOA still does 14 hrs a day of local programming<\/strong> – Rush is the only of the Premiere shows they carry – but another thoughtful voice in radio has just faded into the background of the nonsense of overnight radio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What makes a radio station important? One of the disagreements I have with Wikipedia is that the Radio Project took the position that every radio station has “notability” because it has an FCC license.\u00a0 That’s just not true.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While most … Continue reading