Home :Remembering
KMOXKMOX is an AM radio station broadcasting in St. Louis, Missouri and assigned to frequency 1120kHz. It is a 50 kW clear channel radio station, which permits its nighttime signal to be heard in most of the continental U.S.. KMOX operates as "Newstalk 1120" and refers to itself as "The Voice of St. Louis." KMOX is owned by Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, which owns CBS Radio. KMOX's transmitter is located in Pontoon Beach, Illinois. KMOX was incorporated in 1925 as The Voice of St. Louis Inc. According to the station's official website, the "KMOX" call letters were randomly assigned by the Federal Radio Commission, according to the station's website. KMOX signed on December 24, 1925. In 1927, the station gave prominent coverage to the Charles Lindbergh flight across the Atlantic, in the Spirit of St. Louis. In 1927, it became one of the first sixteen stations in the CBS network; two years later CBS bought KMOX, and began the process of getting approval to build a 50,000-watt transmitter tower; when completed, it gave the now-clear channel station a signal that could be heard as far away as New Zealand and the Arctic Circle, making it one of the first international radio stations. In 1933, KMOX covered the first post-Prohibition case of Budweiser beer leaving Anheuser-Busch for the White House, a story carried nationally by CBS. During the 1930s and 1940s, KMOX was one of several St. Louis stations broadcasting Saint Louis Cardinals and Saint Louis Browns baseball games. KMOX lost broadcasting rights in 1948 when a new Cardinals radio network was formed by the team, but by the 1950s, it became the flagship station of that network (in part due to its clear channel status). In 1955 Robert Hyland Jr became KMOX's general manager, a role he held for nearly forty years. It was Hyland who emphasized and leveraged KMOX's relationship with the Cardinals; he also made the decision in 1960 to eliminate the station's afternoon music programming in favor of talk radio, a critical change which led to the station's subsequent dominance of the St. Louis radio market. On February 29 of that year, Jack Buck hosted the first "At Your Service" program, which included an interview with Eleanor Roosevelt. That program, like the sports talk programs that soon followed, pioneered a format for radio heavily dependent on interviews, guest appearances, and calls from listeners. After Hyland's death in 1992, the station began to lose its broadcast rights to St. Louis professional sports teams. In 1995, the St. Louis Rams opted to broadcast their games on KSD-AM 550 (now KTRS) when they moved from Los Angeles) In 2000, the St. Louis Blues left for 550 after having been on KMOX for all but two of the team's 33 seasons. After the 2005 season, the Cardinals will also move to KTRS. At Hyland's KMOX no story was too big. When President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, Hyland ordered all programming and commercials scrapped, costing the station thousands of dollars, to instead go with continuous coverage. If the secretary of agriculture came to town to give a speech, the talk was carried live, not because it would draw listeners but because he thought it was the right thing to do. And essential to his KMOX's success was sports. There was a time when the station carried everything that was important - the football Cardinals, the Blues of the NHL, the University of Missouri and most significantly, the baseball Cardinals. To do this, he found the best announcers with Caray and then Buck on baseball, Costas doing the ABA and then Missouri. Dan Kelly, the Blues play-by-play man, was considered the best in hockey. Former football Cardinals player Dan Dierdorf became a KMOX broadcaster before eventually moving to ABC's "Monday Night Football." KMOX's Big FallKMOX, especially its sports operation, is a shell of what it was under Hyland. In that era, the station was a grooming ground for men who became some of the nation's elite sportscasters. The list is impressive. France Laux ... Joe Garagiola ... Harry Caray ... Jack Buck ... Bob Costas ... Dan Dierdorf ... Joe Buck ... Dan Kelly ... Jay Randolph ... Skip Caray ... John Rooney. Then there are local legends such as Shannon and Gus Kyle. And Bob Starr, whom Costas has called the best radio football play-by-play announcer he has heard, was there for most of the 1970s. Now, with all the major decisions being made out of New York by Infinity instead of in downtown St. Louis by Robert Hyland, there is no one on the current staff who figures to keep that long tradition alive. (The possible exception is Dan McLaughlin, but he's only part-time.) The staff also has shrunk considerably since those days. But the decline of the station's sports operation extends beyond those facets. Compared to that era, it's lacking in fundamentals. Too often, scores provided during newscasts lag well behind where the games actually are. And updates during newscasts, when they're done by someone who doesn't work in the sports department, frequently seem to be of the "let's just grab something off the wire to fill" variety. For example, on a Friday afternoon two weeks ago, the local all-sports radio stations were reporting that former CBC and St. Louis U. standout Larry Hughes had reached a deal to move from the Washington Wizards to the Cleveland Cavaliers. It was an interesting local angle. But on KMOX, listeners instead were given a lengthy report about LSU re-signing its women's basketball coach. What? Another example of changing times: Last month, afternoon drive-time host Paul Harris did a preview of FSN Midwest's telecast that night of the Cardinals' game, which would include interviews with troops overseas watching the game. Joe Buck, who was doing the TV play-by-play, was interviewed as the telecast was hyped - in essence, pointing KMOX listeners away from the radio broadcast and to the telecast. Hyland, who disdained even acknowledging the existence of TV on his airwaves, would have been outraged. That's not a slap at Harris, because he provided an interesting tidbit. But it shows how dramatically things have changed at KMOX - which in its golden era was run more like a family business than like just one of 180 or so stations owned by a corporation. "That's the way it was, and that isn't the way it is now," Joe Buck said. "The emotional ties, I don't know that they're there." And the bottom line, according to Hyland III: "Dorsey (Tim Dorsey - who was No. 2 at KMOX for years under Robert Hyland) is a passionate Cardinal fan. Infinity is not." KMOX has had a long history of broadcasting sports. In 1926, it broadcast the Cardinals-Yankees World Series, and starting the next season the station was regularly carrying Cardinals games. The station also hosts sports programming such as "Sports on a Sunday Morning" and "Sports Open Line." Saint Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz hosts "Sports Open Line" which airs every weekday night except when pre-empted for Cardinals games. In the sports arena, KMOX voices of the past and present speak for themselves: Jack Buck, Harry Caray, Joe Garagiola, Bob Costas, Joe Buck, Mike Shannon, Dan Dierdorf, Gary Bender, Dan Kelly, Bernie Miklasz, Ron Jacober, Mike Grimm, Tom Ackerman, Mike Bush, Bernie Federko, and Joe Micheletti. A rich tradition of legendary sports broadcasters and play-by-play broadcasting has earned KMOX the title of "America’s Sports Voice.” Home of the St. Louis Cardinals, St. Louis University Billikens, and University of Missouri Tigers, sports fans throughout the Midwest tune to AM 1120 to get the latest sports coverage and sports talk programs. KPLR-TVKPLR-TV started broadcasting on April 28, 1959. The channel's call letters, KPLR, reflect the name of the family that owned the station for many years: Koplar. Between 1959 and 1983, KPLR produced and broadcast Wrestling at the Chase, a program featuring professional wrestling from the local Chase-Park Plaza Hotel. Originating from the hotel's Khorassan Ballroom until 1970, the show featured the most famous wrestlers in the National Wrestling Alliance, which was controlled in part by St. Louis promoter Sam Muchnick. Participants included Ric Flair, Harley Race, Dick the Bruiser and Ted DiBiase among others, and is considered one of the pro wrestling industry's most historic programs. For many years, KPLR has been the broadcast home of the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Blues. For most of its existence, KPLR was a traditional independent with cartoons, sitcoms, movies, dramas, sports, and news. KPLR turned down Fox affiliation in 1986, instead choosing to remain an independent station. In 1995, KPLR decided to affiliate with the newly created WB television network. Koplar sold KPLR to ACME Communications in the mid '90s. | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| Links & Recommended Sites | Oneliners, Stories, etc. |
| Questions? Anything Not Work? Not Look Right? My Policy Is To Blame The Computer. |
| About True Blues | Link To Us | Site Navigation | Site Map |