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I first met
Lester Smith at an NAB conference. In the 60’s, 70s and 80’s
he co-owned and was president of a group of stations known
as Kaye-Smith. “Kaye” was Danny Kaye, the comedian. At one
time they had another partner by the name of Sinatra (yep,
THAT Sinatra).
The Kaye-Smith group had a big time reputation, and backed
it up with super ratings and revenue in the
Northwest…Seattle, Portland and Spokane. They also owned
stations in Cincinnati and Kansas City.
Lester, or Les as his friends called him, had the unusual
gift of hiring great…and I mean excellent…people. They were
smart, proud, and cared about their company, stations, and
market.
Les called my Atlanta consulting office in the mid-70’s and
asked if I could fly to Seattle to monitor KJR…his TOP 40
station. I was on the next plane and checked into the
Holiday Inn in Bellvue, a Seattle suburb. I listened to KJR
for 24 hours before Les knocked on my hotel room door. It
was right to business after a handshake. “What have you
heard” he asked. I responded “The formatics are better than
average, the on air people are excellent, as is the local
production, the on air promotion can be updated…but the
music itself is not so good”. He nodded and asked “I thought
so. Can you fix it?” I assured him that I could.
Les then told me that Shannon Sweatte, his general manager
was returning from a European vacation and was flying to the
NAB spring conference in Las Vegas. “Let’s meet Shannon
there.” He wanted to see if Shannon and I had chemistry. We
met. We did.
We all boarded a flight in Las Vegas to return to Seattle.
Shannon had a spare bedroom or two, and he insisted that I
stay with him (very nice 10 acres with a horse or two).
Since his wife was still in Europe I believe that Patti,
Shannon’s daughter, prepared dinner for us. We then talked
radio till 3 AM. The discussion was about how to revive
KJR’s ratings. He evidently liked what he heard.
The next morning at KJR we met with Steve West, the KJR
program director…a fine guy. I detailed what I had told
Shannon the night before, and Steve was on board. The rest
of the day I met the staff. I mean all of them from
receptionist to porter. It was clear that Shannon had the
same knack of hiring great people as Les.
At five that evening, Steve and I went to the music room.
Over the next 4 or 5 hours I discarded hundreds of
oldies…most of which should not have been played as hits in
the first place. The next morning KJR was clearly much more
commercial simply by compressing the oldie music list. But
we still had work to do. We tweaked in the next days, weeks,
and months and waited for the first (so to speak) rating
book.
Next week: The
ratings arrived.
e-mail Kent
kent@kentburkhart.com
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