August 1989 – August 1990
KLRA-FM 96.5 was my second radio job, working as a country music DJ during my senior year of high school. It was a relatively professionally run station that gave me the opportunity to continue getting better on the air. Unlike my previous job at KBBA-AM 690, I was paid every penny I earned. It was also nice being on the FM band at a station with considerably more listeners.
Michael Hibblen on the air in the control room of KLRA-AM/FM in 1990. Photo: Tim Edens
KLRA’s call letters stood for Little Rock, Arkansas, even though the station was actually located in England, Arkansas, a small town of about 3,000 people, 30 miles southeast of Little Rock. The station was born out of the death of the original KLRA-AM 1010 in Little Rock, which had been a well-known, long time country music station.
When the original station changed call letters in the late 1980s to KBIS as part of a format change to business talk, KELC-AM 1530 in England, which had gotten approval to sign on an FM sister station, very wisely snatched up the call letters to capitalize on the notoriety. Sadly, within a few years, the old 1010 would completely disappear from the radio dial in Little Rock. It was bought by the company that owned WINS-AM 1010 in New York just so it could be put off the air to avoid causing nighttime interference.
My station called itself “The All-New KLRA” and was presented almost as a continuation of the original station. The air staff did their best to pitch it as a Little Rock station, though the 3,000-watt FM signal just barely reached the capital city. It was simulcast with AM 1530, though the 250-watt AM signal was daytime-only, signing on at sunrise and signing off at sunset.
A flyer for Brother Hal’s program.
The station also hired the original KLRA’s longtime morning man “Brother Hal” Webber, who had retired, but agreed to do the show if he could tape it from home. He would record about a half-hour of stories and old-style southern humor for each morning, which live co-host Vic Hart would mix together with music, weather, news and commercials between 6:30 and 10 a.m. Surprisingly, it worked pretty well. Brother Hal would seemingly talk to Vic on the tape or throw it to him, and with Vic’s interactions, it really sounded like the two of them were in the studio together.
Because I happened to live less than a mile from Brother Hal, I would stop by his house on weekends to pick up a stack of seven-inch reel-to-reel tapes for the next week’s programs. After the shows aired on KLRA, the tapes would be mailed and broadcast by two other Arkansas radio stations also owned by Diamond State Broadcasting, KCCL-AM/FM in Paris and KDEW-AM/FM in Dewitt. The shows would be a week or two older by the time they aired in those towns, so when Brother Hal talked about recent events, he was careful about wording things so they wouldn’t sound too dated. Those stations also had local hosts running the program go by the air name “Vic” so that Brother Hal could converse using that name.
AUDIO: An episode of KLRA’s The Brother Hal Show, Nov. 7, 1989. This is from one of the raw tapes, without the live components that would be added by Vic Hart when it was aired, filling up a whole air shift.
I was hired at KLRA in August 1989 by Program Director Keith Dodd, a radio veteran who had worked at several large stations. He was quite a character and a shrewd, smart radio programmer who very effectively conveyed to the staff how he wanted the station to sound. Dodd had a great voice and did incredible commercial and promo production, especially considering the antiquated equipment we had in the production room. His afternoon drive air shift was equally professional.
The building that had housed KLRA in England, as seen in 2004. Photo: Michael Hibblen
The station was housed in a small metal building in an area that was flat and swampy. During the summer months, especially at night, the building would be covered with thousands of frogs. They would gather on the outsides of windows so densely that I couldn’t see out. And when I’d walk out to the transmitter shack behind the building to take meter readings every couple of hours, they would cover the entire path. It was almost surreal. With each step I’d take, swarms of frogs would jump away from me. I guess people who lived in the area didn’t give it a second thought, but for me it was quite strange.
Initially, I worked several times a week running a locally-produced overnight program called The Midnight Special, which was geared toward truckers. But a few things didn’t make sense about it. Because of KLRA’s low power, it had a rather small coverage area that could only be heard for a short time by someone driving through. Back then, overnight trucker shows were typically broadcast by powerful AM stations that could be heard throughout entire regions of the country so that truckers could listen for long stretches without touching the dial.
A coverage map of the KLRA-FM 96.5 broadcast signal in 1989.
Another problem was the content of the program. KLRA General Manager Gene Williams hosted it, but wasn’t live. He wanted the show to be done in the same half-recorded format as The Brother Hal Show, but didn’t record new content. I would run the same generic recorded introductions by Williams night after night. We also included short interviews with truckers, taped by our midday DJ Brenda Clark at truck stops, but she would only record maybe a dozen interviews every few weeks. So those same segments would also air repeatedly.
If anyone listened to the show with any regularity, I’m sure they would have realized it was canned. I was the only live part. About once or twice an hour I’d hit a cart in which Williams would introduce me by saying I had taken a request from a trucker. I would then make up the name of a driver and say he was making a long haul to some destination, then play his supposed request. I always had to make that up because I never had a single trucker call, despite the request line being frequently given. Pretty much the only people who would call during the overnight were employees of England’s 24-hour convenience store, and I’m glad someone was listening.
The whole concept of the show was so that Williams could be on the air, but not have to go through the hassle of actually pulling an air shift. I think it was more to feed his ego, and since he was the general manager, the program director couldn’t question it. Or maybe it was conceived with the idea of eventually syndicating it or pitching it to a bigger station. I don’t know.
AUDIO: A segment of The Midnight Special from August 25, 1989. I was the only live element here, putting recorded introductions by Gene Williams with trucker interviews and music.
Gene Williams could be a difficult person to work for. Keith Dodd eventually put me on the air doing regular shifts on weekends, and I would periodically get calls from Williams on his car phone. He would have some woman with him who he was trying to impress and would demand I play whatever song she wanted to hear as the next song. And he would be a real asshole in how he did this — threatening to fire me if it was the next song — proving that he was clearly the boss and in command. And he would instruct me to say who the song was for, even though we weren’t supposed to do dedications, and every time it was a different woman. The entire staff grew to dread his calls.
Despite my negative encounters with him, I think Gene Williams might have been what was keeping the station afloat. He was a bit of a huckster and knew how to market the station and twist arms to get what was needed. It was at a time when a significant percentage of radio stations were losing money, and just a few years before the federal government began deregulating the industry to adapt.
Williams worked hard to give the perception that KLRA was a full-fledged Little Rock radio station. We weren’t able to get a radio station prefix for our request phone number, which all stations in Little Rock had, which was 433 and four numbers that were typically some variation of the station’s frequency. Calling KLRA from Little Rock was long distance, so, since Williams lived in Sherwood, he simply got an extra phone line for his house and had all calls forwarded to the KLRA studios. It worked well, except for occasional phone calls when DJs talked with someone too long, running up a big phone bill. Williams had that number listed on company stationary as KLRA’s “Little Rock office.”
I really wanted to like Gene Williams. He had a storied history as a DJ and television host decades earlier. He grew up in Dyess, Arkansas, the same small town where Johnny Cash was raised, and claimed to have known him well. But he was such a jerk to work for. I remember during a 1989 staff Christmas party at his house, he looked at me at one point after several drinks and said “Michael Hibblen, you ain’t shit.” I don’t know what I did to warrant that.
The majority owner of the station, whose wife Lucille Harris was mainly in charge, eventually fired Williams or forced him to resign. I don’t know what the circumstances were, though there were rumors of all kinds of impropriety. One allegation was that some of the ads we were airing were actually trade deals, in which Williams got merchandise that he then sold, pocketing the cash for himself. The Midnight Special, thankfully, came to an end. We also stopped calling the station “The All-New KLRA,” which had gotten kind of annoying after a couple of years. But the deal with “Brother Hal” also ended with the departure of Williams. The entire identity of the station had been centered around the morning program. Even the stationary, at the bottom, said “Home of Brother Hal.” It was almost like starting from scratch. We also suddenly had a lot fewer on the air and less money was coming in.
Keith Dodd would become general manager, while retaining his programming duties. He was a very conscientious programmer who worked with me and the other staffers, making suggestions for how we could improve. He also held periodic staff meetings to make sure we were all delivering a consistent image to our listeners. And he wrote great memos that were Indicative of his programming philosophy and his personality. The station ended up being rebranded as “Country 96.5, KLRA.”
Michael Hibblen showing KLRA’s music library in 1990 as the station was slowly expanding the number of CDs being played on the air, along with 45s, LPs and songs recorded on carts. Photo: Tim Edens
KLRA was the last station I worked for that primarily aired music from records. All of our current hits were on 7-inch 45s that we received from record companies. In the photo, currents are on the top in red sleeves in boxes. There was a card for each song, which we would rotate to the back of the box after each was played. There were a couple of categories of oldies, with the box closest to the camera labeled as “red dot oldies.” Those were the songs that got the heaviest rotation. The shelf below it shows all the oldies that were on 45s in yellow numbered sleeves. We also had some oldies on carts, some on full-length albums, and we were just starting to grow our collection of CDs.
I’m kind of nostalgic for what it was like playing records on the air. Yeah, they would crackle and pop as they became worn out and scratched, but there was something really fun about cuing up records. We had two old turntables that we alternated. While one was playing, DJs would take the next record, put the needle into the grove, find exactly where the song began, then spin the record back a half-spin. It was a process I would do maybe a hundred times over the course of one shift. Music stations I worked for after that played all music from CDs.
AUDIO: On the air on KLRA from December 27, 1989. This includes commercials, IDs, jingles and promos.
Looking at the Associated Press newswire shortly after KLRA became a subscriber. Photo: Tim Edens
Before the start of the 1990 horse racing season at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, the station subscribed to the Associated Press so that we could get quick race results to read on the air. That was a key source of revenue, enabling us to sell sponsorships for race reports. We were instructed to keep a close eye on the printer on race days and get race results on the air as quickly as possible. At the end of a song, we would hit a cart with a trumpet playing the “Call to the Post” fanfare, say we had the results in for whatever race number it was, play the sponsor’s commercial, then come back to announce the top three horses and what the pay was.
Having the newswire also enabled us to begin airing Arkansas newscasts in mornings and afternoons. I enjoyed anchoring newscasts, which furthered my interest in news, as opposed to being a DJ. Off the air, I greatly appreciated having access to the latest stories and news summaries. This was a few years before the internet became widely available.
I made several good friends at KLRA. Ruthie May, who was the evening DJ when I started, gave me lots of great encouragement. Andra Allbright, who hosted middays while also keeping paperwork flowing around the building, would visit me during my shifts. I also met my future college roommate Tim Edens there. A decade later in 2000, he would serve as a groomsman in my wedding, then helped with the technical work of launching this website up in 2002. Toward the summer of 1990 I was offered the evening slot at KLRA, working 6 p.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday, which I did for several months before quitting in August to start college at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
Posing alongside a sign in KLRA’s lobby noting its sports coverage. We primarily aired Razorback football games. Photo: Tim Edens
I regretted leaving the station, but it turned out to be a good time to go. KLRA would soon become automated and the entire air staff was let go. A few years later, I ran into Keith Dodd when he was working at a Radio Shack store in North Little Rock’s McCain Mall. He also worked on the air in the 1990s at Little Rock station KURB-FM, B-98.5.
KLRA’s FM signal was eventually approved for a power increase by the FCC and it became a full-fledged Little Rock station. The call letters would be dropped while the signal has changed ownership multiple times in the decades since.
The KLRA call letters would later be picked up by a Spanish-language television station in Little Rock. The Univision affiliate was owned by Equity Media at the time, which seemed to have made it a practice to pick up the call letters of old, well-known Little Rock radio stations for its TV operations. It also used the call letters KKYK, which for decades was a huge top 40 station, and KBBL, a sports station, for other TV stations in Little Rock.
