Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Kennedy and KSFA

Early in my career in commercial broadcasting, I landed a gig at KSFA in Nacogdoches, Texas.  
Bob Dunn, the owner of the station, was a pretty good engineer, but had been unable to pass the FCC's 1st Class Radiotelephone License exam in several tries.  He offered me an apartment on the side of the transmitter shack, and full time pay for part time work if I would hang my ticket at the station and sign off on the paperwork. One of the best benefits of the deal was that it allowed me to attend Stephen F. Austin where I met my wife.
Bob did a one hour local news and interview show at lunch time, and was talking to one of the leaders of local society when I interrupted him in mid-sentence to announce that John Kennedy had been shot. He was furious that I broke in. 
His politics were far right, even by East Texas standards, and it took all my powers of persuasion to convince him that we needed to suspend regular programming (and stop running commercials) to cover the story.  He was even going to play Happy Days are Here Again until I told him it was a Democratic Party campaign song.

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