XeROK 80 Composite, The Live Years (1977-1980) (18:57)

. . . The International Favorite . . .

Featured: Phillips & Wall, The Mad Mexican, Bruce Miller Earle, Chris Michaels, Stan Main, Keith Morgan, Bill O'Brian and Cosmos, plus IDs and jingles.

By Keith Morgan September 1, 1977 XEROK was ALIVE and with LIVE jocks. Up until this time, the X was tape delay, and as history shows, John Long did the very best he could at getting the Mexican Operator/Engineers to play the right tape for that hour, and Mr. Long's ratings were proof that teamwork is a winning concept.

I had no idea of what I was about to endure, having arrived in El Paso the week earlier. Chris Michaels, acting PD at the time, hired me to do weekends and swing shifts.

Stan Main gave me directions from the Cielo Vista Bank building where we had our Management and Production studios. Back in 1977, the Cielo Vista Mall was just about the end of east El Paso on 1-10. It was around 20 miles to Zaragoza, where the transmitter and studio were housed and that 20 miles was in the middle of nothing - desert... Following Stan's directions I proceeded towards the Border.

Zaragoza is a small dot on the map about 20 miles South East of Mexico's fourth largest city, Juarez. The XeROK 80 tower stands just under 400 feet and is lit up like a typical European AM antenna. A tandem set of amber tower lights marked every 20 feet, making it look bigger than life.

There were two old adobe buildings. The bigger building enclosed the Engineer's office, work room and the 1972 Continental Electronics 150b, medium wave flame-thrower. A smaller building about fifty feet from the main building housed a very simple studio. Autogram IC-lO board, two ITC triple decks, two Shure SM 5-B microphones, one Collins R-390A receiver, (for reception of Sunday nights Mexican National Hour (from XEW in Mexico City)), a hybrid tri-band audio processor and an old Ampex 351 . (We had no shortage of reel-to-reel machines on both sides of the border.)

Even with several layers of RF screening around the studio building the X still had a real problem keeping RF out of places like the telephone and recorder heads.

You could feel the power in the air as you walked around the site, not to mention the pressure one would feel on and through ones body when you stand in front of the beast on full power.

Being live, on the air at XeROK was such a privilege. I knew fiom the very first day that this wasn't your everyday radio station. My first night on the air, (11p-3a) I received phone calls from listeners in Melbourne, FL , Davenport, IA , Pocatello, ID and assorted calls from all of the Western states.

We would receive letters of Reception and DX reports from all over Western Canada, Western and Central North America, all of Mexico, Central and South America. We also had listeners writing from Eastern Australia and the Pacific Asian Rim.

I remember driving to work one night — They call it a highway, there's room for maybe two cars. The last mile before the station I noticed the highway lights flickering and going dim, then bright, all in synch with the modulation of the transmitter. Every Sunday night we would go off for maintenance and cleaning. When we came back on we would run audio tones for alignment. The highway lights hated those tones - they would dim to nothing and in an instant would be so bright, its a wonder how they would not explode.

The transmission feed was 'open line'. 150,000 watts would flow and hum across the cables connection the antenna to the transmitter. Birds would land on the line and in a flash they would be vaporized - only a handful of feathers would float to the ground. On a wet, rainy day, RF would flow down the tower support lines which made the insulators turn orange-red and a loud gun like 'bang' could be heard for several yards.

As I said, there was nothing 'normal' about XeROK.

When the President of Mexico wanted to speak to his people, all Radio and Television Stations would stop normal programming and carry him live. Some of our commercials were in Spanish. Mexican electricity is not as consistent as ours here in the States, so some of the cart and tape machines would have speed variations from time to time.

And of course, this was Mexico, 1977. All of us Jocks always had in the back of our minds the threat of some underworld terrorist group marching in with guns drawn to commandeer our facility for their own wants and demands. (Maybe we all were watching too many movies.)

Then there was the time some 'needy neighbors' came one night and stole the brand new copper ground radials that Bruce Earle and the Mexican Engineers had just laid the day earlier. How they did not get fried is still a wonder to us.

On the way home there were always the US customs agents as I crossed the Border for three years. I knew them and their names and they knew my name, yet several times each month it was my turn in the barrel.

The FCC hated us... You know it's strange, I remember like yesterday, Bruce Earle telling me he only wished the FCC Inspectors would come over and see, first hand what we were doing. XeROK 800 is licensed for 150,000 Watts, non directional. International Clear Channel. We ran 142 KWs at high-power, and on low power we ran 52KWs. The transmitter building was clean, no, spotless... You could eat off the floor (I wouldn't.) The transmitter was cleaned and maintained weekly, without fail. Mr. Earle would check tolerances and tweak the transmitter daily. The FCC would have been proud of our installation, and XeROK had a killer signal to test the new AM Stereo on. Even the Inspectors from the Mexican FCC, The SCT (Secretary of Communications and Transports), inspected the main transmitter room, but they preferred lengthy visits in the engineers office where they would check out the logs and paperwork, say everything is ok, and leave.

Crazy Years It was a wild and crazy time--those years in radio. Radio wasn't work. It was some kind of game played by extremely creative people who were bright beyond meaning or comprehension. It was a time when gray-haired old men with degrees galore hung around young kids to find out what was going on. It was a time when getting noticed and known was not enough...only becoming famous would do. And money was merely a byproduct that came with success and as easily lost as gained, but with vast indifference, as a rule, whether rich or poor. Everyone I knew was interesting. And their lives and the things they did fascinating! No more so than the evening we dined on steaks carved from bulls that had probably lost a battle in a nearby bullring that day, steaks basted in hot sauce that built a fire in your gut which only Tecate could cool. Armed with more Tecate, we went out to the XEROK transmitter in the hard dark of night and Bruce Earle showed me bootprints literally engraved in solid concrete and told me the story of the old engineer who'd come out to the transmitter on the night of a storm to turn back on the transmitter just as a bolt of lightning hit the antenna. Those bootprints were valid proof that the business of radio could sometimes be as dangerous as it was exciting. That night, we took neon tubes and danced and yelled in their macabre light out under the antenna, no batteries necessary, and that was valid proof to me that, in spite of everything, radio was almost the most exciting thing on earth or anywhere. It's strange that I remember these things after all these years and countless wonderful experiences in radio. But remember them I do and I will never forget...could never forget...the amazing men and women I've met and grown to love with a terrible intensity and range of emotions in the wonderful world of radio. God was, indeed, good to me. -- Claude Hall, September 2000

We ran our own boat. At that time in history, were the ONLY Mexican Radio Station that allowed Americans to talk, touch the equipment and produce our shows live on location! During the same time English Border Blasters in the California Baja were being fed via 7.5 Khz phone lines from Stateside studios. The X was one of a kind.

I was 20 years old. I only wish I knew then what I know now... One of my most treasured moments at the X was one Summer's night, I was doing my show, around 11PM, Bruce Earle walked into the studio and behind him was this middle-aged man with super thick glasses — I will never forget those thick lens in his glasses. Bruce said "Morgan, I want you to meet one of my very dearest and oldest friends, Claude Hall", and Bruce then pushed me aside and went into a hour on-air live interview with Claude. They talked about other high-power U.S. stations. I remember Mr. Hall saying "if we were to mention other stations and their calls on-the-air, like we were doing, it could get us in big trouble with the FCC, but I guess we don't need to worry about that"...

Claude Hall said - "God has been good to me" - hearing that from the Radio Editor of Billboard Magazine, and looking back I feel God was good to all of us. The X was indeed one-of-a-kind, and I thank God every day for the opportunity to be a part of Radio History.

The Mighty XeROK 80 will live forever in the hearts of those of us that had the privilege of playing Rock-n-roll and speaking English, live, on the most powerful AM radio station of North America, in its day...

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KINT El Paso TX, Composite, 1977 (12:51)

. . . write it down, 98 times . . .

Featured: Robert Scott, Sonny Rio, Jhani Kaye, Jerry Wilson, and lots of promos and jingles!

Jhani Kaye and Jim Taber made KINT hotter than a firecracker. They were unstoppable.

Jhani hired me to do weekends and swing when I first came to town. That same afternoon while surfing around the AM band, I stumbled onto XROK 80. Now, I used to listen to this Mighty X station that came in so well on the California Coast that I thought it was one of the Baja Border Blasters. The next day I approached Chris Michaels and he also hired me for weekends/swing. Now what do I do? KINT and XEROK wanted me. Little did I know at the time, KINT was the most listened to station in El Paso.

I went back to Jhani and told him I was going to take the position with X-ROK. He said, "They're not even live", (though they had just gone live a week earlier.) "If you want to be with a number one station, you'll stay with us". I had other plans. The last thing Jhani said to me was, "OK - see you in the book." In the long run, he was right.

KINT would give away five cars a year, money every hour, concert tickets — hell, Kaye and Taber gave away the world... We at the X had very little to give away, the only thing we really had was a HUGE amount of RF power. I recorded this composite one summer night while nursing a bottle of tequila with a radio friend from southern California who was visiting.

The KINT studio was housed in their transmitter building on the south side of town. Old equipment and a dumpy old building - but damn did they sound great...

The voice on the 'Super Star - Super Car' Promos was Jhani's old friend Rod Roddy of The Price is Right fame. Taber was one of the KLIF jocks in the late sixties. Like the top of the hour liner, "The McLendon Stations", Jim did the same with the liner at KINT. And the McLendon Editorials — KINT also ran Taber's Editorial of the day.

KINT was a class act. Jim Taber and Jhani Kaye OWNED El Paso in the late seventies.

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