Oral History Interview:

Larry McDowell, KFON-KFOX

Interviewed by Jim Hilliker, with George Riggins

This interview took place on Friday afternoon, January 17, 1992 at Mr. McDowell’s home in Long Beach, California.  This is a slightly edited transcript of that discussion.  Such an interview is spontaneous in nature, so the answers to the questions are recalled to the best of the interviewee’s recollections.  In the case of Mr. McDowell, many times I would ask only one or two questions, and he would continue to talk, adding new stories and information while reminiscing about what radio broadcasting was like in the 1920s and ‘30s. 

Background

Lawrence W. McDowell (1905-1997) was the original engineer for radio station KFON (later KFOX and since 1977, KFRN) in Long Beach.  This interview came about thanks to help from Larry’s longtime friend, George Riggins, who was a history writer for Radio World magazine at the time.  The interview tried to cover many aspects of what radio broadcasting was like in those “pioneer days” at KFON, as well as his early interest in electronics and radio.

Larry McDowell was born in 1905 in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in the College Hill section of that city.

Questions were asked by Jim Hilliker (J) and George Riggins (G), with answers given by Larry (L).

J:  How did you get interested in radio and electronics?

L:  Well, I guess as far as I can remember, I was interested in electronics from the day I could pick up a screwdriver.  I made a couple of little things when I was about 9-years-old.  Three of us decided to run a telephone line between our houses, which were about a quarter of a mile apart.  And I later went to work in an electrical supplies store in downtown Cincinnati. You had to have a work permit. I was probably 13-years-old.  So, from there, one thing led to another in electrical work, radio and what not.  When I started at the electrical supply company, I was an errand boy; the janitor during the day. If there was any material (merchandise) to deliver, I would deliver it, even by pushcart. If it was close by (the customer), I’d push the cart 5 to 6 blocks in downtown Cincinnati. If it was any further than that, I’d get on the streetcar.  (Editor’s note: Here Larry talked about delivering rolls of wire and porcelain fitting. Electricians used porcelain knobs and porcelain feed-through tubes for the wires).  Those were the days of open wires on plugs (wall sockets), through the various parts of buildings. They’d drill a hole and put a ceramic tube through it, and so forth.

First Amateur License and Working for Crosley

L:  I lived in College Hill and the Crosleys lived there, and they played tennis. And I used to play tennis when I was allowed to get on the court, ‘cause I was little. My buddy’s folks owned the court, so, we did that every once in a while, when they (Crosley’s family) were finished, providing we cleaned it up and re-lined the dirt court. So, I got to know him (Powel Crosley). I hadn’t gotten my amateur (radio) license yet, but he knew I fiddled around with electrical things. And he said, “We’re going to start a radio manufacturing business.” They were in the  phonograph business; they actually just made the cabinets. Somebody else put the machine in, because phonographs in those days had wind-up motors and a tone arm, with a horn that magnified the sound. So, he (Mr. Crosley) said, “We’re going to start a factory and I know you know something about wiring and that kind of thing. I’d like to hire you, because we’re going to start a production line. I know Henry Ford, so I went over there to see how he did it. I think I’m gonna set up a factory down there to do the same thing. What I need is somebody that can tell me what goes wrong with it (the completed radios if one fails to work). What I need you to do is, after we hire all these girls, and we’ll start out with this radio…” (Larry continued talking about how the production line worked.)

L:  It was a one-tube set, and the first girl would put the pieces on (the chassis), then passed it on to the next one. And she’d put the green wire and red wire on, and passed it on to the next one. And she’d put the blue wire on, until it got to the end, and it was finished.  (He then continued explaining the process in Powell Crosley’s words to him). “Then, it (the radio) will go over to you, and you test it out to see if it works. If it doesn’t work, then you find out which girl put the wrong wire on! Go back to her and tell me what she did wrong. And if she does it twice, she’s fired.”

And that’s the way it was. If she made two mistakes, she’s done. Get a new one. They didn’t know what they were doing. All they knew was they put the wires on, and if it got in the wrong place every once in a while, I’d tell the girls, “You’ve got to put the red one where it belongs, in this spot to that spot. Just don’t mix them up. If you get it on the wrong one, and you put another one in its place, the whole thing won’t work!” They didn’t know why. Anyway, I stayed there a while, about 1920.

I was still in Cincinnati, so I got my first amateur license in 1921. And I worked for (Powel) Crosley a while doing the same thing. He had a radio station (which soon became WLW) out in College Hill where I lived. It was either 50 watts or 100 watts and it first operated under a ‘Z’ call I believe, and he was allowed to play music and so forth on it. He decided to move it down to the factory, and I gave him a little help doing it. He had a qualified engineer that worked for him too. I really didn’t do too much with it, except that, I sort of helped a little bit. I was still in the factory, inspecting the radios coming off the production line. Then my folks decided to move out of Cincinnati and come to California. So, Crosley moved his station from his house to the factory. One hundred watts was pretty good power way back then. And when I came out to California, I didn’t have any further contact with what they (Crosley/WLW radio) did until many years later. I went back and visited them when they got up to 500,000 watts (1934-1939).  (Editor’s note: WLW radio remains on the air today at 700 kilohertz on the AM band, with 50,000 watts of power. It was the only AM radio station in the United States ever to be allowed to use more than 50,000 watts, on an experimental basis).

Arrival in Los Angeles—1922

(Editor’s note: At this point in the interview, Mr. McDowell proceeded to explain what happened when he moved to Southern California and the various jobs he had, related to the early radio industry).

L:  When I came out here (Los Angeles), I still wanted to get into anything to do with electricity. I got off the train downtown at the old depot, and walked up Third Street to the Rosslyn Hotel, where my folks were going to stay for the night. (Editor’s note: The actual address of this hotel is 112 W. Fifth Street, not Third.) I walked down Third Street and saw “Radio Supply Company” on the side of the street. This was on a Sunday. I went back on Monday and said, “Do you need anything? I’m looking for a job; just got in from Cincinnati.” And he said, “Yeah, what do you know about electricity?”  “Well, I worked in an electrical supply company in Cincinnati, and at the end of the day, one of my jobs was to put all the stock back on the shelves again. So, I had to know all the parts, any kinds of switches, that kind of thing.” So he said, “That’s fine. What do you know about radio?”  “Well, I was a radio amateur in Cincinnati, and I believe I could start a radio supply outfit.”  It (the store, Radio Supply Co.) was the same kind of place I worked at and they didn’t have a radio department. So I said, “I think I know something about it anyway.”  I said, “I have a whole trunk load of stuff I brought out with me.” And he said, “Good. We’ll start out with that kind of stock.”

L:  I had a spark transmitter, which was getting to be obsolete, but I still put a spark transmitter on out here in California. But I had a lot of other parts. Radio receiver parts, tube sockets that Crosley made, and the book condensers (later called capacitors) that were built like a book. It opened like this (makes a motion with his hands), and you changed the capacity with a wheel that turned in the middle of it, and we had a bunch of those.  (Editor’s note: The “book” tuning condensers were invented by Hugo Gernsback and Crosley used them for low-cost in his receivers. They had an adjusting screw that moved the plates apart in the way a book opens.)  Plus other things I put on the shelf down there. I said we ought to get more stuff. There was a salesman I got some radio gear from, who came by every so often. We put up a pretty good-sized store in there. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those old Magnavox loudspeakers. He had one of those (horn) speakers, and we took that one. It was so hard to get radio parts out here in California, there was nothing out here to buy. So we put that (Magnavox loudspeaker) up there for sale, and we sold that three or four times before anybody ever took it! Somebody would buy it, they came back a day or two, and someone else would say, “I’d love to have that,” and we’d raise the price a few bucks and sell it to the new guy. That damn speaker sold for so long, I thought it was going to wear the damn thing out before somebody really took it away. I still remember that old Magnavox horn. But it was a pretty good horn; it was a good loud horn. It had a permanent magnet. They hadn’t yet put the electromagnet in the base of it. Later they did.

Second Job in Los Angeles

L:  So I stayed mostly around the fringes of radio. I decided to get a different kind of job. So this place on Pico (Brodie Electric) made storage batteries and winding armatures. Well, I hadn’t learned how to wind an armature yet, so I said I ought to learn how to do that. I also took a machine shop course. So, I went over and they said, “We’ll teach you how to wind armatures.” So, I started learning that. (He explains how they were wound). Put wire around, pound it down. It wasn’t insulated wire and if you weren’t careful, you’d cross the wires and short them out, and that’s the end of that.  They then decided they wanted to get into the radio business. They said, “What do you know about that?” I told them. They said fine. “Do you think you could design a crystal radio that we could sell?” They were still selling crystal radios in 1923. I said, “Sure.” So I designed one, and they said, “How are we going to build this thing?”  I said, “Well, when I worked with Crosley, we had a production line. We hired these girls and we ought to have about four of them to build the crystal set. And at the end, I test it and see if it works.”  So, we set up another production line. And that went on for a while and I guess I got tired of that. I sold for a while and I designed a radio for another outfit, but it was unsuccessful. (Larry went on to explain the next job).

Radio was so new then, that they (Radio Supply Company) had a storefront on Main Street in downtown L.A.  And my job was, to start out at the desk in the window with part of an assembled set, and start putting the radio together, so people would gather outside the window and start to watch me. And then, I had a loudspeaker on the outside of the window, and after I put it together, I turned it on. And you’d just see a bunch of parts in front of me to start with. I’d gradually put it together, turn it on, tune in a station, and music would come out of the front (outside). That was my manufacturing business. I always stayed in the electronics field, though.

Taking Radiotelegraph Exams

L:  Being close to radio, I knew there was some commercial stuff from people. I knew you had to have a commercial license to operate a broadcasting station. So, I decided to study a little bit. I went down to the YMCA in 1922, I guess. (Editor’s note: The YMCA in downtown Los Angeles ran a radio school in those days.)  The exam for a Second Class radiotelegraph license. So I kept going, and in a week or two, took the exam for First Class radiotelegraph license. I had no experience in commercial telegraphy or broadcasting. What little I did was with (Powell) Crosley. The YMCA in L.A. was the examining location. They did exams for the Department of Commerce and radio inspectors would come up there. There was also a hiring hall there. So, I got to know a few of the guys and they were all ex-marine operators. And that’s the only thing there was, either that or amateurs. So, I applied for a job at this hiring hall. They said, “Well, we’ve got a commercial ship that needs a wireless operator.” And I’d never been on a boat before. So they said, “Go on down to the harbor, they’ll be shovin’ off shortly.” I went down and said, “Here I am. I’m your new wireless operator!” They only had one. This was a quenched gap, 500-cycle transmitter. And it was a freighter and it left in November. I could see why the other guy got off. In San Francisco, it was okay. But when we left San Francisco, we ran into a blizzard gale. There was no heat in my cabin. Except when I changed the batteries, the resistors got hot. So, I left the door open and this storm hit that night. And I woke up the next morning and my stateroom floor had a coat of ice on it. And the bulkhead where the door was open had a half-inch of ice on it, and it was colder than hell inside (laughter). And so, I made it back to Los Angeles and said, “I don’t think much of this wireless operator kind of business.” I went back to the YMCA and looked for another job.

Beginning of Radio Station KFON

L:  They said, “Well, there’s a guy in Long Beach that needs an operator and somebody to be able to put a broadcasting station together. He’s got a license (for the station), but the guy that started to build it quit.”  And the work wasn’t finished yet. And, when you’re that young, you can do anything. I had done enough things. I’d already put together an amateur radio station. I got out of the spark business and I put together a tube transmitter, so I had a little experience in tube transmitters and so forth. Amateurs didn’t run radiotelephone in the early days, only code, but I still knew how to do it. I had read a little bit about it. Gernsback, remember Gernsback? Gernsback was the manual that all the hams read. It was quite a book to learn from.

J:  He also had the Broadcast News magazine (in the ‘20s).

L:  I think so.  So, they sent me down to Long Beach and I went to see Hal Nichols and his brother who had the license for this station, KFON. And their business was selling Echophone radios. They asked me what I could do. I told them. And I figured I could finish building this station; that was no big problem. It was only going to be 100 watts and I could do that all right. They were not radio people. They were musicians. Hal was a fiddle player and his brother Earl was a piano player and played the piano and xylophone. And they came out from Denver, and in Denver they had a radio station built by this same guy (the engineer who quit) from Wyoming. It (KDZQ) was about 10 watts, I think. And they played every night and broadcast on this radio station. That was all that was on it, just the dance band in Denver. And they decided to come to California. They just closed down the dance hall, closed down the radio station and took off. They didn’t sell it. Couldn’t sell it anyway. And when they got here, they started a dance hall on the Silver Spray Pier and off the Pike. It was a real nice dance hall down there.

And then, they decided to do like they did in Denver. They had another guy that was a friend of Earl’s (Mr. W.H. Warinner) who was the auto agency for all the cars the army needed during World War I. Made a fortune; made himself very wealthy. He knew Hal and Earl and he said, “I’ve got a friend in Chicago who owns the Echophone Radio Manufacturing Company. Why don’t we start a distributorship in Long Beach? I can get the distributorship for Southern California.” So he did, and they rented some space in the Markwell Building (Editor’s note: Location of building was on Seaside Ave. at the end of the Pike. Studio/offices on mezzanine floor, address 27 Arcade, Markwell Building for KFON/Echophone Radio Shop. Transmitter and antenna were on the roof). And Hal said, “We’ll do like we did with our dance hall and get a broadcasting station.” They just applied for it (the license). There wasn’t any problem getting one, you know. It was easy to get one. So, they got their license and this guy that put the other one on in Denver, he quit and went back to Wyoming. That’s when they (YMCA Radio School) sent me down to finish putting it together. 

(Editor’s note:  The Markwell Building was later called the Jergins Trust Building.  It was located on Ocean Blvd. at Pine Street.  The building was constructed in 1919 and was demolished in 1988.  KFON radio was inside this building from 1924 until the end of 1928.  The transmitter and antenna were on the roof of the building.  The studio was on the second floor.)

J:  What did that entail?

L:  Well, it was partly there, and a lot of the parts were there, but…they had a lot to do on it yet. So, I finished putting it together and got it on the air. And it’s been there ever since. 

(Editor’s note: KFON’s first broadcast was at 8:00 p.m., on the night of Wednesday, March 5, 1924. The program began with an address by the Long Beach Press Sunday editor, Frank P. Goss, since the Press and KFON apparently had made a deal to promote the station’s broadcasts in the newspaper, and the Press would do newscasts on the new station. Goss would later become the newscaster for KFON. A speech was also given by Long Beach Mayor C.A. Buffum, extending the city’s greetings to radio listeners. Musical entertainment was also broadcast from KFON that night, from several Long Beach singers and musicians. One highlight was a cornet solo from Herbert L. Clarke. Clarke had been a soloist with John Philip Sousa’s band, and was now director of the Long Beach Municipal Band).

Some Technical Details Regarding KFON

L:  It was a hundred (100) watts (transmitter power) and we had, of course, vacuum tubes. They hadn’t yet invented the AC filament. The AC filament wasn’t invented for many years later. It lit up off of the DC, which meant they had batteries (to run the station equipment and transmitter). And at the radio shop down below (on the second floor), we sold these radios. I didn’t do anything with the radios. I was strictly with the broadcasting station. They used batteries to light the filaments and “B” batteries. Well, I had to build an amplifier for this station and we didn’t want any “B” batteries like they used for the radio, ‘cause they didn’t last too long. So, we’d get a whole bank of 135 volts of 2-volt cells. They were about as big as…well, a little bit smaller than a mason jar. We had them lined up to make our 135 volts and a couple of big storage batteries to light the filaments (of the tubes).

Using KFON to Sell Radios

L:  One thing led to another. We didn’t operate this station (KFON) all day long.

(Editor’s note: The station, in its early days, was on and off the air about two or three times a day. By March 14, 1924, KFON had an evening concert broadcast at 8 p.m., plus a luncheon broadcast from 11:30 to 12:30 and a dinner program from 5:45 to 6:30.   The station was off the air the rest of the day. At this point in the interview, Larry McDowell explained what happened when KFON was not broadcasting regular programs).

L:  A salesman would go out to demonstrate these Echophone radios to somebody. And he’d call back in and say, “Larry, how about turning the station on and play a record or two and dedicate it to Mrs. Jones, who we’re selling this Echophone radio to.” So we did, and I’d say, “Mrs. Jones, we hope you enjoy this radio; this Echophone’s a great set!”  I didn’t do that; Hal did that, okay? And the salesman would maybe make his sale and come back in. And (laughter), I’d turn the station off. We didn’t run it all day long.

I don’t know how often we turned it on. I know we didn’t turn it on in the morning very often, because there was nobody listening anyway. There were a few people who would listen then, actually, but there were no commercial stations, you know. I say “commercial stations.” I mean other than people that were advertising what they owned. We owned the Echophone distribution company, so we called it “The Echophone Radio Station.” KFWB was owned by Warner Brothers (to promote their movies), and KFI was owned by Earle C. Anthony (Packard auto dealer), and KHJ was owned by the L.A. Times, and you know, down the line. But, that’s all they advertised. You really didn’t hear anything else on those stations except what they sold. And we didn’t have anything on our station except Echophone radios (to sell). Hal’s cousin and this friend of his owned a little candy shop around the corner. I don’t think we even mentioned that! Well, we never thought about putting a commercial on the radio and advertising, except for something you owned, I guess.

Early Remote Broadcasting

L:  I wasn’t an announcer. That wasn’t what I was hired for. I was the engineer. We didn’t call them engineers then. We called them “technicians.” I had a first class license, which qualified me for anything in the broadcast business, I guess. Although the examination didn’t ask you one damn thing about broadcasting (laughter)! But now, I had the license that qualified me to do this. But, we decided to broadcast the Long Beach Municipal Band, which was across, where the Pike ended really, at Pine Avenue, but there was Seaside Boulevard a lot further east. And there was a wooden auditorium across the street. And the Long Beach Municipal Band used to play there in the afternoon. So I ran a wire across the street to the band, and hung a microphone up from the ceiling.

(Editor’s note: It was on March 18, 1924 that this work took place. A story in the March 19, 1924 Long Beach Press stated that KFON could not go “on the air” the night before. The station was partially dismantled while a microphone was installed in the Municipal Auditorium to broadcast the concerts of the Municipal band. The story went on to explain that electricians didn’t get their wires installed in time to permit operation of the station that night.)

L: This old wooden building had just tremendous acoustics! Even better than the one they built later on. There were all kinds of reverberations in the one they built later on. But this old wooden building, that band picked up on a single microphone just like you were listening to it there! So, Hal didn’t want to do the announcing on it. He was working on selling Echophone radios. And Earl was sort of a mechanically inclined guy and he would put them together and what not. So, they said, “You’re going to announce the band.”  The station (transmitter) was up on the roof, five floors up, and the studio was down on the second floor, which was an arcade with a balcony around it.

So, I went up to the bandleader and say, “I’m going to broadcast the band today. What’s the program?” And he’d give me this list, and I’d look at it, and I’d go back and say, “We’re broadcasting the Long Beach Municipal Band under the direction of Herbert L. Clarke”, I think it was. (Editor’s note: It was! The 1925 program listings in radio magazines and newspapers of the day list Clarke as director of that band.) “And the first number’s going to be…” and I’d look at it (title of musical piece) and say something. (Laughter) Whatever it was, and I’d do that for a little while. And people would call up (the radio station) and say, “Does that guy know what he’s saying?” So, I blabbered through it. A little bit later on, I went to see the bandleader and looked down the list (of tunes) and I’d say, “How do you pronounce that one?” And he’d tell me and I’d make a little note over it. So, pretty soon, I got so good that it didn’t sound so bad. They (the titles of musical pieces and composer’s names) were pretty much like they should’ve sounded. But my total announcing experience was very limited. And we went along like that for a while. Then we finally broadcast (remotes) from a couple of other places close by. Any place that I could run a microphone to, that I could do without any amplification or anything like that was fine. I hadn’t learned about amplifiers or remote lines yet. We decided to broadcast from a dance hall downtown in the afternoon, and we ran a line, just an open microphone, no shielded line. Then, there was another place up the other way. It had a ‘follies’ type of thing, with girls dancing on the stage, and we had that thing later on.

More 1920s Memories of KFON

L:  The Echophone Radio Company started to fail. It wasn’t worth a damn anyway. We finally came out with a loop antenna. It was supposedly good, but they had to put an amplifier on it. It (the radio) had a horn (speaker) that went with it. It was a wooden kind of horn…through the back of it, and if you were in a room like this (Larry talking about his living room) with nobody talking, you could hear it (the radio) pretty good. What we played for our records (over the radio station) wasn’t much better. There was no…nobody had developed a motor-driven turntable yet. It (the phonograph) was a crank-up kind. That’s what we had in 1924. And they hadn’t built an amplifier for the tone arm. The tone arm was just a diaphragm that went into the arm that fit into a box that had amplifying characteristics from its design. If you’ve seen one of those phonographs in those antique places…wind-up arm and a…well, that’s what we used to use to broadcast records.  And Hal would go down and meet with the announcer, wind the thing up, put the thing on, and put the microphone into it (the speaker). (Laughter) And it did pretty good, I mean if nobody made any noise in the studio. Later on, they came out with the first motor-driven turntable that we had. It had a little motor with a wheel on the side of it, and laid it on the rim of the turntable. And that turned the turntable to speed; all the records were 78 RPM. We just had one speed. But, that did away with the winding part of it. But nobody had come out with a magnetic pickup yet, when we were doin’ that. We still had the microphone in front of the horn. But we now had the motor and we didn’t have to wind it any more.

So, those were pretty amateurish kind of days, but…I don’t know what some of the other stations were doing; I don’t think many of them did much different. I think a lot of us learned (broadcasting) from things that we would talk to other…Most of us in the operating side were…either came from aboard ships or were amateurs. There wasn’t any other training around for them. I suppose Westinghouse might have. I don’t know. I know Crosley didn’t. All he had was a qualified graduate electrical engineer, and he didn’t know anything much about radio broadcasting. And I know all the people I talked to were either radio amateurs…A few of them had gotten into voice transmissions, but most of them were still doing code.

J:  It was all pretty new, even for the people that got into announcing. A lot of them, I’ve read, started out as singers.

L:  Well, if they had a good voice, sometimes they did. A lot of them got into the broadcasting business by some other thing that they could do, or they might’ve had a voice that sounded good.

KFON Broadcasts a Wedding

L:  In the middle of this transition from other amateurish things that I was doing, I was going around with a young lady, and it was 1924. I was about 19-years-old, I guess. And Hal said “Why don’t you and your girlfriend get married, and we’ll broadcast it!”  All right. So, we decided to do this, and we’d get married and we set the date. I didn’t know anybody in Long Beach. Both of us came from Los Angeles. She came from Texas and I came from Ohio. So she brought her sister down to be the maid of honor. I knew Hal’s friend who sold popcorn in the candy shop downstairs. I said, “I know Bill. I’ll get him for best man, and Hal, his cousin, can do the rest of it.”  So we got the preacher and got the wedding all set. We had the studio on the second floor. It wasn’t very big; about as big as this room. And the transmitter was on the fifth floor. And I thought, I’m getting married. Somebody’s going to have to be there to run it. So, I got a friend of mine that didn’t know anything about vacuum tube transmitters. I’m not even sure if he had a license. Anyway, I told him what I was going to do and would he come down and stay with the transmitter when we got married. Fine, so we got set to be married. The preacher was set, and I think Hal and Earl played the music, whatever it was, because we didn’t have any band and we weren’t playing records. Anyway, about that time, the phone rings, and the guy on the roof says, “There’s something wrong with the transmitter!” He said “Something’s not right up here.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well, it isn’t working.” I said,“Well, the wedding’s about to commence! Okay, stand by a minute, I’ve got to go up and fix the transmitter!” I ran up to the fifth floor and went to see what was wrong with it. A tube was burned out. A very minor thing, except it wasn’t working. So, I fixed it and turned it on to see if I could hear the voices downstairs. I said, “Everything’s okay now. I’m going down and get married! Don’t call me if you don’t have to.” (Laughter) So, I went down to the second floor and got married, and that was that. Got in my car, took a little ride around town, and that was it. I didn’t have any idea of going on a honeymoon. Heck, I didn’t get any time off anyway. Had to go to work the next day.

(Editor’s note:  The wedding of Lawrence McDowell, Chief Radio Operator for KFON, to Miss Vera Mabel Lee was broadcast on KFON at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday night, August 27, 1924.  The Long Beach Press ran stories about the “radio wedding” in the August 27 and August 28, 1924 editions of the paper, along with two photos.)

J:  How’d the listeners react to that, or did they care?

L:  They didn’t care. (Laughter) They didn’t even pay attention to it. You really didn’t have a lot of listeners. This was in the evening and there were other stations on. You had these big stations, well they weren’t “big” stations. KFI was only 500 watts. That was big power then. It wasn’t that much of a deal.

J:  Were you guys friendly with the other broadcasters? Was there any competition or jealousy?

L:  No. I knew some of them, only because they were hams or ex-wireless operators. But, other than that, we didn’t have any connection or any relationship with them. Most of them didn’t, except the radio operators knew each other, because many of them were off of the same ship or had been on the same line, or had an amateur station and would talk to each other. Other than that, there was really no connection between the radio stations. And none of us had any commercials on.

First Commercial Message on KFON

J:  What year do you remember the first commercial on KFON?

L:  Well, we called KFON the Echophone Radio Station, but now that was gone. There wasn’t much else around. Our first real commercial, other than what we were selling (1924/25) was for a tailor shop on Pine Avenue. He used to listen to us and he’d walk down to visit people in the arcade. I think he knew another tailor (nearby). He’d go into the station and see Hal and talk to him. He said, one day, “I listen to your station whenever you turn it on. And it comes in great up at my store.”  Well, it should. It was only five blocks away! (Laughter)  “I tune in all the time and listen to the band when they’re playing. Why don’t you mention my tailor shop sometime?” And he said, “I’ll make you, Hal and Earl a suit of clothes. I won’t make it in my tailor shop on Pine Avenue. But I own one in Beverly Hills, which is a “high-class” tailor shop. We’ll get your measurements and my tailor will have a suit of clothes made for you. We’ll send them down to the Pine Avenue shop and you can pick them up.” So, we did and we got the three suits of clothes, and that’s the first thing we got (commercial) other than what we were selling (radios).

(Editor’s note: This was likely Sam Abrams. In early 1926, the KFON program schedules list a one-hour block of time, Wednesday’s from 9:00 until 10:00 p.m., “presented courtesy of Sam Abrams. The Sign of Good Tailoring.” This was obviously a commercial plug for his business over the air. It’s unknown if Mr. Abrams paid KFON any money for announcements about his business, but this was obviously the infancy of radio advertising. This may have been in trade for the suits he made for the KFON staff. Another KFON schedule for September 26, 1925 lists “The Markwell Saltwater Taffy Shop program” from 7-7:30 p.m. This may have preceded the commercial message for the tailor shop and also clears up Larry McDowell’s earlier remarks about whether or not a candy shop in the Markwell Building was ever mentioned on the radio station to promote the business).

More Advertising on KFON

L:  Then we said, we’ve got this radio station and maybe we can get some money somewhere. We heard these other stations call themselves by a name. We couldn’t call ourselves the Echophone Radio Station anymore. But, we got in touch with a grocery store chain still in business back east, called Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store chain. They decided to come out to California.  They said, “You don’t have a name for your radio station. How about calling it “The Piggly Wiggly Station”, and we’ll pay cash money for it (mentioning the store on the air to advertise what’s for sale, promote the business and increase the number of customers).” That was the first cash money we got from anybody. Later, when they moved out of California, Piggly Wiggly was no longer interested in advertising here. We (KFON) got acquainted with the Hancock Oil Company. And the owner said to us, “Why not call it ‘The Hancock Oil Company Station’?” So, we sold them the name, and that went on for a number of years.

(Editor’s note: The Piggly Wiggly Western States Company franchise operated more than 200 of their self-service grocery stores in Southern California by 1928.  In 1929, the Piggly Wiggly stores in California were acquired by Safeway Stores, Inc.  Today, Piggly Wiggly stores still operate in 17 states, mostly in the southeastern United States).

Call Letter Change to KFOX

(Editor’s note:  The call letters for Long Beach station KFON changed to KFOX at midnight, December 30, 1928.  The first full day as KFOX was on December 31, 1928).

L:  KFON, (the call letters), that was just assigned to us (randomly) by the U.S. Department of Commerce. But we got connected with the (William) Fox Movie Studio in Hollywood. (Editor’s note: A story in the Long Beach Press-Telegram on December 30, 1928 reported that the owners of KFON changed the station call letters to KFOX because of a new alliance between the Fox Film and vaudeville interests.)

And we had a pretty good deal going. Somebody said we’ll call ourselves the ‘Fox Station’, but how about changing the call letters to KFOX? That sounded pretty good, so we changed the call letters to KFOX and opened an office and studio at Sunset Boulevard and Western. Everything was going fine, but then the Fox Studio went bankrupt. So, we already had our call letters, which weren’t too bad. And it would be quite a job to change them again, so why change them? KFOX sounded just as good as KFON. But we no longer had Fox, so we didn’t try to sell the name of the station (to tie in with the Fox Studio). So, by that time, we sold advertising, which had become a routine kind of thing on radio by then. Radio stations selling commercial advertising to people wanting to sell products. But, ours sort of crept in accidentally. How it got into other stations, I don’t know.

Station Slogan

J:  How did the station slogan “Where Your Ship Comes In” get started?

L:  Well, we thought that was good because we did have ships coming into the harbor here. And being on the harbor, we thought it would sound, (he pauses for a moment and thinks).  We had a whistle we’d blow (on the air) for “Where Your Ship Comes In.” We had a, what do you call it, a wooden horn. We blew it, you know, in your mouth. And it sounded like a ship’s whistle. So, it was something that sounded good. We hadn’t started commercializing all this other stuff yet. “Where Your Ship Comes In” sounded good. Nobody else could say that, because their stations weren’t on the coast.

J:  I just noticed this from the August 1928 KFON schedule in Radio Doings magazine. It also says the “Piggly Wiggly Station” under “Where Your Ship Comes In.”

(Editor’s note: In doing more research on KFON history, I found the origin of the slogan in the March 9, 1924 edition of the Long Beach Press on the front page of the paper! This was four days after KFON had its first broadcast. There was a contest sponsored by KFON and The Press.  More than 4,000 cards and letters were sent in, with ideas on what slogan should be used by the radio station. The judges of the contest were KFON owner and station manager Hal G. Nichols, W.E. Montfort, city editor of The Press and Squire F. DuRee, city superintendent of recreation. The winning slogan announced the night of March 8, 1924 was “LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, WHERE YOUR SHIP COMES IN.” Maurice Selberg of Wilmington, Calif. thought of the slogan. For this, he was awarded a three-tube, model A Echophone receiving set (radio), offered by Hal Nichols of the Echophone Radio Shop, in the Markwell Building. The article said the radio has a “one-tube detector and two stages of amplification and has a value of $135.” Announcement of the award was made on KFON on Monday, March 10, 1924 during the broadcast of The Press program. The story also states that the double meaning of the KFON slogan won the appreciation of the judges. It indicated the port phase of Long Beach development and the opportunity and promise of ease and contentment so commonly expressed in the term “where your ship comes in.”  So, Larry McDowell’s memories of the KFON slogan indicate it was used quite often, likely during station identification announcements, along with a ship’s whistle. The story from the March 9, 1924 Press went into greater detail as to how and why a slogan was chosen for KFON.  After the station became KFOX, the slogan was apparently still used as late as 1938.)

First Microphone Line Amplifier for Remotes

L:  No. I built some mobile equipment and amplifiers up until, I guess, 1940. Being a ham, I probably had more shortwave mobile equipment (for remotes away from the main studio) than most stations had. But, we had the station that we built at 100-watts. Everything was “home brew”. (Editor’s note: This is a ham radio term for all the equipment built from scratch by the technician.) There was nothing you could buy; only transformers and other parts. There were some (transmitters) built; I think one (station) in Los Angeles bought one. But, when we started putting advertising on KFON, the Western Electric Company came down and said, “This is a commercial radio station.” The fee was $500 for commercial use of a station. I said, “We could’ve built five stations for that!” He said we had to have a license, so okay. We were then getting into the advertising business and getting a little money, and so we decided to buy some equipment. So we bought a new 500-watt Western Electric transmitter. That was at the same building downtown. We put up a couple of towers in the meantime, and an antenna (made of wire) strung between them. The first one (transmitting antenna) was a couple of pipes with some guy wires on them.

Move to Anaheim Street

L:  We moved to Anaheim Street because we decided we could make a deal with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to build a studio on top of their building (220 East Anaheim Street). And if we moved the transmitter out there, they would build the studio and office for us on the top of their building. Then, they would get some advertising out of it. So, then we decided to increase our power to 1,000 watts. And we had the 500-watt station at the Jergins Trust Building. To finance the new station (higher-powered transmitter and other studio equipment) we made a deal with the First Church of Christ Scientist. In return, we agreed to broadcast their church services for buying our equipment (one-year agreement).

Now, we’re out on Anaheim Street and the transmitter is ready to go. I did a lot of the installation work. Western Electric sent an engineer to supervise. The church service was the first broadcast on the new station. It started at 8 o’clock at night. I had an operator at the station at the Jergins Trust Building and I was at the other one on Anaheim Street. The announcer downtown said: “This is KFOX from the Jergins Trust Building in downtown Long Beach. This station is signing off, and we’re now transferring to our new station on Anaheim Street.” So they turned the station off and we turned the (new) station on. “This is KFOX from Anaheim Street. Now, we’re going to broadcast the First Church of Christ Scientist, the first broadcast from this new equipment.” By that time, the oil company (Hancock) was involved with it. We did pretty good. We made money. We did a lot of live broadcasting (music, singers, live plays, dramas, comedy, variety shows, etc.). We had two writers, six or eight directors, some doubled as announcers. One doubled as a salesman and they were on almost all day, so we had more technicians working.

KFOX Coverage of the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake

L:  We weren’t in this building very long, a couple of years, and the earthquake hit Long Beach. (Editor’s note: The quake hit on March 10, 1933 at 5:54 p.m.) We were on the second floor and the (antenna) towers we built were self-supporting. The main tower went down to a concrete block about 8-feet thick and 14-feet square. We had to build the base of that tower so big, so it would spread enough to straddle the entrance to a work bay for big trucks. The entrance was about two stories high. Tower at the back end was fine by itself, normal size. They serviced large trucks there, not passenger cars. The antennas were pretty solid, but the building was constructed when the city didn’t watch closely where the cement company got sand, and some had salt in it from the beach. After a few years, the bricks got soft. The rest saw this lousy cement fail and bricks and the wall fell down. Us and a lot of stations were still using generators; no power supplies yet with high voltage and transformers. Here’s a 2,000-volt generator and we had to clean it every day to keep the arc from going around the armature. Otherwise, it would burn itself out. We’d clean it. So, this brick wall, cement, and dust fell all over the generator.

I had just left the station for home, four to five blocks away, when the earthquake hit. I was eating dinner. I rushed back to the station. Of course, everything was dark. The power was off. I looked in and said “My God!” I thought the transmitter was caved in. Records were all over the place. Everything was in a shambles. I said to one of the guys (a staff announcer for KFOX), “If you want to go up and help me, fine. I’m going to get all those bricks off of there. Let’s see if we can get this generator uncovered and see if anything’s wrong with it.”  We cleaned all the bricks off and used a flashlight to blow the dust out of the generator. I was one of the owners now and I felt we’d better get this thing back on again. Got it cleaned off and turned it by hand. Then, I was just hoping the tubes in the transmitter weren’t damaged. I looked inside, and the tubes were all right. They were water-cooled and I had spare tubes in the back where the generator was. But I hadn’t looked to see if they were all right. They were mounted on a cupboard. It looked clean; nothing on top of the high-voltage condenser that I could see. One of the announcers showed up then, and I said, “I don’t think we can broadcast from the studio. You take a look and see.” So, we took a microphone cord and broadcast from down the alley. I said, “You’re out on the roof. You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to.” About 10:00 p.m., the juice (electricity) came back on! So I said, okay, I’m going to turn it on easy and see what happens with the generators. You know, high-voltage generators, they have a lot of dust around them, and if they start to arc, that’s the end of it! And I didn’t want that. Because if that happens, I thought we’re stuck for a long time. I guess I cleaned it pretty good. It didn’t arc. I hit the switch on the transmitter for the power to come on. And the antenna meter read where it belonged, the tubes all lit and all the rest of the meters. We had fifteen meters on the transmitter that had to be logged every half-hour! They all looked like where they belonged and I said I guess we’re in business.

So, I got the announcer down below to talk. KFOX, back on the air again! We didn’t have any commercials anyway, since business was so bad. I don’t think we had half-a-dozen accounts on. We had a few that paid permanently. Business was so bad (during the Depression) that before the quake, I spoke with Hal (Nichols). I took care of the money. He was still a musician. He liked to announce and play his violin and be in the various plays. I told him, “We have a few thousand dollars in the bank. I think you’d better call everybody in and suggest we have everyone take a 25% cut in pay.” He said, “I’m willing, if you’re willing.” I said, “You and I probably won’t take home any pay for at least six months.”  The station owed it to us, but we didn’t take it, so we could pay the rest of the staff. So we told everyone, “You know what business is like.” Everybody took the 25% pay cut and nobody quit.

Back to the earthquake. There was no radio communication in police cars at that time, for the most part. So, we mainly turned the station over to let fire and police dispatch whatever was necessary for the earthquake emergency. We didn’t have one word of commercials for three days. They had declared martial law in Long Beach. Armed guards stayed at the front and back of the station. They camped there in the parking lot and didn’t let anyone near it, since KFOX was the only communication anyone had, besides ham radio.

(Editor’s note: Going back into history, the newspaper files of the Long Beach Press-Telegram show that the city’s other radio station, KGER, at 435 Pine Avenue, was also on the air during the emergency. Source: March 13, 1933 Press-Telegram news story titled, “Radio Stations Aid In Locating Persons Missing In Disaster.” KGER had been off the air for only 9 minutes, and little damage was done to its studios at the Dobyn’s Shoe Store building. Chief Engineer Jay Tapp told the paper that when the station came back on, listeners were given a report on quake damage along Pine Ave. In contrast, the story confirms Mr. McDowell’s memories of the event. The wall of the KFOX building did indeed fall on the room where generators and batteries were stored. The studio was so badly damaged, broadcasting had to be done from the roof and then the alley.  Also, KFOX owner/manager Hal G. Nichols was hurt when bricks crashed through the roof of his car, just as he was driving into the alley near the building where the studio was located. His injuries were not serious. By Sunday, March 12th, floors of the KFOX studio and transmitting room were propped up with timbers to enable the staff to carry on. Both KFOX and KGER it seems, did a great job keeping telephone lines open with extra staff to establish contact between friends and relatives and give news of those killed and injured in the earthquake. Information was also given to the public regarding relief stations for the injured, along with food and wood supplies. KFOX also maintained radio communications with broadcast station KREG in Santa Ana, where three people were killed in the earthquake. Both stations shared information with each other regarding the disaster. While KGER did a great public service, broadcasting history books seem to give KFOX the credit for being “famous” for its coverage of the 1933 quake. In one book, “Golden Throats and Silver Tongues-The Radio Announcers”, it states that KFOX announcer Ted Bliss remained at the microphone for 52 hours before getting any sleep, after coverage of the disaster. In both cases, many people at both stations helped in the efforts to tell Southern California and beyond the news of the quake. And it is noted here, that KGER radio also did its part in serving Long Beach well throughout the disaster. The reader may be interested in the fact that KGER was also known for its daily broadcasts of the Long Beach Municipal Band, for many years. Some radio schedules from the late-‘20s list both KFOX and KGER broadcasting the band at the same time! KGER, 1390-AM, reportedly went on the air December 12, 1926.  The F.C.C. history cards for KGER indicate the station was licensed January 7, 1927.  After the original owner C. Merwin Dobyns died, KGER was sold and aired religious programming for several decades. In June 1997, the call letters of KGER were changed to KLTX, known as “K-Light”.  The station first aired mainly religious and conservative talk shows, but it now airs a Spanish Christian format.)

(Reports about the emergency broadcasts made by KFOX and KGER were also covered in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Broadcasting magazine.)

L:  So, we broadcast a lot of dispatches for fire and ambulances. Somebody had a warning there was going to be a tidal wave, but I didn’t announce it. I wanted to hear more than just some rumor. I guess somebody announced it, because some people took off for Signal Hill. We had one telephone line into the building and we opened an office down in the garage. The telephone company building was a shambles, it was a wreck, but they managed to hook us up with a line to city hall. I put a test circuit on it and it was good. We had several hundred pairs going into our station, so we had a lot of spare telephone lines. So, I sent an amplifier down to broadcast from city hall, because that was where all the action was. We had other news items that were broadcast from the studio.

At the end of three days, things had quieted down pretty good. (Editor’s note: The March 13, 1933 story in the Press-Telegram confirms this. It said, “When there was no news of the quake to report, regular station programs of KFOX were sandwiched in.”)  I came on the air and I said, “Well, the earthquake is pretty well under control. We’re now going to start taking some commercial advertising for our station. Our office is a shambles and we can’t use the phone. But our office staff and salesmen are down in the garage. If anyone wants to buy advertising time, just come around or we’ll send a salesman around to see you.” Pretty soon, we were amazed to see a line of people waiting to buy advertising. Major department stores, Goodyear, and others, all waiting in line to buy time. We sold something like, oh I don’t know, $10,000 worth of advertising in two days! So, we got back in business again.

Wrap Up-Some Final Questions

J:  In the 1920s, DXing, or listening to distant radio stations was a big fad. Did you get a lot of letters from distant listeners to KFON and KFOX?

L:  Well, in the early days, we only had 500-watts. But even when we only had 100-watts (from March 1924 until November 1925), for some reason or another, we got listeners and letters regularly from the tip of South America. Right down on the Straits of Magellan, there was a little fishing village down there. And they’d write to us, “We listen to you all the time. You come in as good as any station in the United States. You don’t fade.” (Laughter) Well, I looked on the map and said it must be a skip, maybe a couple of jumps, I don’t know. And our signal landed on this little fishing village, nothing further south. But we got a few other things too (letters and reception reports), but that’s the one I remember, because it was so unusual.  (Editor’s note: A radio station signal on the AM band can skip out at night for hundreds or thousands of miles, under the right conditions. In some years, those conditions were enhanced by the sunspot cycle. The Long Beach Press reported that KFON received letters of reception from Virginia and Oregon during its test broadcasts in late-February of 1924. By 1927, the station was heard often in Australia and New Zealand! This was partly due to fewer stations crowding the Broadcast Band then; only a few hundred compared to more than 4,500 AM stations in the U.S. today. Also, there was much less man-made noise to interfere with AM reception, such as television sets, computers, light dimmer switches, fluorescent lights, etc.)

J:  Did you guys send out Ekko Stamps?

L:  No, we never got into that at all.

(Editor’s note: Ekko Stamps were special radio stamps collected by radio hobbyists in the 1920s and ‘30s. They were made by the Ekko Stamp Company of Chicago. They also sold a scrapbook with the call letters of all the radio stations in North America. Stations usually sent out the stamp with their call letters on them for 5 or 10 cents, in return for a correct report of reception of that station. The hobbyist would then place the stamp in his scrapbook in the space designated for that radio station. Larry McDowell apparently rarely answered the letters from distant listeners to KFON and KFOX, or didn’t remember much about the Ekko stamps. I have some copies of letters sent out by the station. Each one was signed by station manager and owner, Hal G. Nichols. A KFOX QSL verification card sent to a DX listener in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1930s signed by Nichols did indeed have an Ekko stamp on the card. The radio hobby magazine RADEX in the ‘30s also listed KFOX as a station which sent out Ekko stamps. Finally, I found a letter from 1944 sent to a person in Berkeley, CA who heard the KFOX signal. This letter was signed by L.W. McDowell, but there was no Ekko Stamp on it).

J:  What about Clarence Crary and Frank Goss?

L:  Yeah, Clarence Crary was a singer, piano player and a salesman. He even worked for us when we were in the Jergins Trust Building. He played the piano and took phone calls for numbers people wanted him to play. And between times, he’d go out and sell for us. (Editor’s Note: In the August 4, 1928 issue of Radio Doings magazine, Clarence Crary’s picture is shown with the KFON program schedule. He’s listed as an announcer. He also did a Friday night program at 9 p.m., called “Ye Olde Song Album”, described as an hour of old-time music. He also did a show with a woman on KFON titled “Doris and Clarence”.

L:  Frank Goss was the city editor for the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

(Editor’s note: The paper in 1924 listed Goss as Sunday editor. He later became the paper’s radio column editor and writer.  Frank P. Goss worked for the Long Beach Press-Telegram from 1923 until his retirement in 1952.  Mr. Goss was named City Editor of the Press-Telegram in 1928.  His 1973 obituary says that Goss was the voice of KFON/KFOX news from 1924 until 1942, and that the newscasts were sponsored by the Press-Telegram for those 18 years.)

When we first started putting news on at 4:00 p.m., Goss would pick up all the stuff off the press (news wire services) and get in his car and come down to the station at the Markwell Building, and come up in the control room and broadcast the news for 15 minutes. Later on, when I found out about how to hook up a remote telephone line, we let him stay in his office to do it.

(Editor’s note: Frank P. Goss must’ve enjoyed radio broadcasting. In a June 28, 1925 schedule of KFON, he is listed as the station’s Program Arranger and Studio Director. The Press-Telegram radiocast of news and sports was initially on the air on from 5:30-6:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday. By 1928, Frank Goss did the morning news at 11:30 a.m. and an afternoon newscast was on at 4:00 p.m.  His radio work at KFON/KFOX must have been part-time, while he continued his employment at the newspaper.)

L:  Goss was our news announcer for a long time. He liked to do it and being the city editor helped too. Later on, we had our own teletype in the station. Most stations relied on newspapers at first. As long as we dealt with the newspaper, we were all right (legally). Later on, we subscribed to United Press and Associated Press. But before that, we dealt with our local paper, so it was fine to get news that way. To us though, we couldn’t sell the news in those early years. You couldn’t give it away! Now, there’s news every 15 minutes. We never did sell the news.

(Editor’s note: Frank P. Goss (1879-1973), who was City Editor of the Long Beach Press-Telegram and was the KFOX Press-Telegram newscaster from 1924 until 1942, was not the same person as Frank Goss (1911-1962) who was an award-winning newscaster for 22 years at KNX and the CBS Radio Pacific Network).

I stayed with KFOX 30 years. Hal died, Earl died. I was the last one left. Warinner died. (Editor’s note: W.H. Warinner was Hal Nichol’s partner and formed Nichols and Warinner, Inc., the owners and licensee of radio station KFON and KFOX for many years.) And, Mrs. Nichols, she didn’t want the station anymore. So, they were going to sell it to someone, so I sold my share of it.

J:  Who was Warinner?

L: He was the guy with the money. He came out from Denver and knew Hal there. He had an automobile agency and had all the money and financed the station.

END OF INTERVIEW

Post Interview

In addition to his duties as chief engineer, Larry McDowell was later vice-president of KFOX radio. In the late-‘30s and 1940s, he was also the station’s advertising and sales manager. In the 1950 United States Census, McDowell listed his occupation as radio station Manager.  He left KFOX in 1954. He went on to become director of the Long Beach Marine Department until his retirement.

As of 2022, the license for KFON/KFOX (KFRN 1280 today) is 98-years-old.  We stated earlier in this interview that KFON changed call letters at midnight on December 30, 1928 and became KFOX. The station was on several frequencies from 1924 until November 11, 1928. That’s when the Federal Radio Commission assigned the station to 1250 kilocycles. On March 29, 1941, the FCC shifted KFOX to 1280 kilocycles. In the late-1940s, KFOX owners applied to the FCC to raise the station’s transmitting power to 5,000 watts. However, this request was denied. Later, when television forced radio stations to change the way they entertained Americans, KFOX settled on a format of playing Country music from 1959 until 1977. The 1,000-watt station on 1280-AM from Long Beach was sold again and this time it was the end of an era. The historic KFOX call letters, which had served Long Beach for nearly 50 years were dropped. The station was purchased by the Christian broadcasting group, Family Radio Network. On November 23, 1977, the KFOX call letters were changed to KFRN (the initials of the licensee and owner of the radio station).  KFRN, 1280-AM, continues to broadcast from Long Beach as a 1,000-watt non-commercial radio station with a religious format.   


Jim Hilliker
Monterey, California
September 1998
(Edited again December 2022)