This is the KFI History section of
The Broadcast Archive

Maintained by: Barry Mishkind - The Eclectic Engineer

KFI - Los Angeles, CA
640 kHz - 50 kW

A Pictorial Tour of KFI

Earle C. Anthony Drives KFI to Fame

by Barry Mishkind

January 10, 1996
PIONEER PROFILES

TUCSON, Arizona - It was summer 1970 when I was hired on as a vacation relief engineer at KFI. It did not take long for me to realize this was more than "just another radio station."

One quick example: the KFI intercom system was a series of telegraph keys in the control rooms. For many years, a criterion of who was qualified to work at this powerhouse had been whether they understood and could tap out Morse Code messages as the program sources moved from studio to studio.

It was not merely the five studios, nor just the large amount of custom equipment, built by the station's engineers over the years, nor a master control room filled with racks of patchbays and relays. Everything in the station was capable of being instantly replaced just by "patching around" it, from the microphones to pre-amps to key switchs. There was "history" everywhere!

Then there were the 25 names on the engineering staff list. The eye-popper was the date of hire on the right side. The two co-chief engineers started in 1924, over 45 years before, just two years after Earle C. Anthony had put his first 50 watt transmitter on the air. Several more had over 40 years of service. The whole station seemed to "reek" of history.

It was anything but history, however, that moved Earle C. Anthony to construct KFI in 1922. Anthony been a keen technologist from youth. At 17, he built a working electic car. Then a motion picture camera. With his father, he developed a car dealership and invented the "filling station," opening the first two in California. His symbol was the Chevron, which he sold to Standard Oil a few years later. He even influenced the building of the Golden Gate Bridge and started what would be the Greyhound Corp.

However, the reason we are talking about Earle C. Anthony today is yet another innovation that he grabbed hold of: radio. An article in The Saturday Evening Post sparked his interest in a potential way to communicate between his dealerships as well as an interesting hobby. He built a transmitter literally on a breadboard on his kitchen table, and began broadcasting on April 16, 1922.

True to his entrepenurial background, Anthony immediately saw the value of the radio station was more than for internal communication; it could be of value in bringing in new customers to his car business. Arranging with the

LA Herald and Examiner newspapers for news reporting, regular programs began to go out everyday. And lest you wonder who was responsible for it all, the station ID at the top of the hour would be "This is KFI, the Radio Central Superstation of Earle C. Anthony, Incorporated, California Packard Distributors."

Another early method of advertising the station was the mounting of signs emblazoned with "K F I - P A C K A R D" on the KFI towers up on the roof of the auto dealership. Even the dashboard plaques placed in his cars mentioned KFI. Through the years, Anthony worked hard to promote KFI and KECA (which he bought in 1929 only to be forced by the FCC to sell in 1944). Once he offered to give a crate of California oranges to every listener writing in.

However even Anthony had failed to comprehend exactly how popular was this new medium, and got so many cards he was forced to find the smallest possible oranges so he could ship three in a miniature "crate" to each listener. A distinctive QSL stamp was also produced to send to listeners, incorporating the KFI towers, orange groves, mountains, and of course, a Packard radiator. (Fig. 1)

Over the years, in order to maintain its place as a "Clear Channel" and a showpiece facility, KFI kept increasing power until in 1931 it became the first in Southern California to be run a full 50,000 watts.

Billed as the "country's most powerful station" (based on the combination 50 kW at 640 kHz), KFI certainly proved to have a long "reach." Heard throughout the west, KFI was at least as important a station as any of the Clears in the East and Midwest. NBC tried several times to purchase KFI, but Anthony was steadfast in refusing any offers. He told NBC "I wouldn't sell my wife. Why would I sell KFI?"

Of course, being such a successful radio operator permitted Anthony to be properly eccentric. Typical of the stories told in the KFI hallways was one about the time Anthony was in his personal train car, on the way to the Midwest. It was not uncommon for him to call in requests for his favorite records, but upon occasion he would also instruct the staff to "turn it up louder so I can hear it better out here."

Another time late at night, tired of "cowboy songs," Anthony wrote "the ultimate cowboy song," had a singer brought to his mansion where they recorded it, and then immediately took it to the KFI studios to be put on the air. It was reported 20 people called in wanting to buy the new song!

KFI also pioneered in FM and TV operations, but these did not turn out to be as successful or profitable as the AM station and were sold off.

Even when the Packard dealership began to wane in the 1950s, Earle C. Anthony took comfort in his KFI. "Every morning before I get up, I kiss a microphone" he told his chief engineer.

I was not privileged to have been able to spend time with any of the gentlemen who built the station. Earle C. Anthony died in 1961. When I arrived in 1970, the station was being sold and the chief engineers were going into retirement. Today, I can only recognize and sigh over the loss of opportunity that is now gone.

Nevertheless, during the time I worked at KFI, I was able to wander the halls, spend time in each studio, and even if I do not have photographs to remind me, I still have strong memories of a station built for broadcasting. Later, when the movie "Lady Sings the Blues" came out, I was pleased to see they used the old Studio A auditorium as a set.

A grand old lady, turning 74 this year, KFI continues to cover the western states from LA as a talk station.

My thanks to Marvin Collins, CE of KFI, for his help in supplying some of the materials on Earle C. Anthony. Unfortunately, I couldn't talk him out of the original transmitter that sat in the lobby for many years!

Barry Mishkind, aka "The Eclectic Engineer," can be reached at520-296-3797, or  via the Internet. You can find his home page at "http://www.broadcast.net/~barry/"

Copyright 1996, Barry Mishkind ... Reproduction prohibited without permission.