Kool KAAY

Michael writes:

I Grew up listening to KAAY in the late '70s in North Little Rock and loved it. I had a tiny hand-held radio that I dragged along for everything I was doing. It was one of several things that later pushed me to get into radio. Today I work in Miami and occasionally, when co-workers and I are talking about radio stations we heard growing up as kids, I try to explain the many things that made KAAY so cool.

Thanks Michael for the comments. I found that listeners were very loyal. We had competiton, HiFi KAJI, they advertised "HI-FI" and WE were always yelling more music. Both were lies. The listener loyalty had little to do with the music. It was what was between the music that made the difference. It was getting out all over the state. It was constant fun. The Djs were having fun and transmitted that to the listener.

When FM came along, it was all about the music. How much can you play without interuption. What do they have to show for this? The Ipod. Non-stop music, no DJ, no news, no contests, no fun. The difference with Ipods and today's radio, is that anyone can be a DJ. With a small investment in equipment, anyone talented or not, can have a podcast and be heard world wide. But the market is too fragmented. Do any of you know a good podcast? Let me know. I use a podcast service, but I use it just to have a way of linking audio to this blog.

By the nature of it, podcasts are not live. And here is another key ingredent. KAAY was always live. We had a play list. We simply rotated 45s (records for you young folks)from the front to the back. The DJ had the liberty of going down three or four records in the stack to find the record that fit the moment. Same way with the oldies. He could pull his own selections.
I always had a certain feeling for what to play next. That feeling continued through the disco era. I seemed to know what to play next to keep them on the dance floor. I did a class reunion a few years ago and played all the music off computer....what a terrible feeling. I did have a snow machine that blew snow on the dance floor. That was kool.