My first KMOX experience was as an intern. I was Jim White’s assistant. Jim White was a long-term fixture at KMOX and most of the time he did a nighttime talk show.

He was a nice guy and he was good to me. I think he was happy then. I remember him say once that he was 32. He was aware that he had one of the best jobs in radio.

I would sit in the control room with the producer. The producer was usually a part timer. They might be teachers or something like that by day, but would come in at 9P to screen the phones and take care of the guests for Jim White. I would do things like go downstairs in the elevator and bring the guests up. If a listener called and wanted to know how much the Arch weighed, I would call the National Parks guy at the Arch and ask him. (I forget how much it weighs. It was more than a 100 pounds.)

Some of my radio buddies will laugh when they hear about the state-of-the-art communication system we used with the air talent. In our room, there were of course, the phones. I think that there might have been 10 or 12 lines. I could be wrong about that. The various square plastic buttons would light up and we would say; “KMOX, what is your question or comment for Jim White?” The caller would say something like; “I just want to ask Jim if he knows anything about the flying saucer landing strip that is supposed to be down in Piedmont.”

There was a piece of cardboard with numbers on it that corresponded to the phone lines. We would write  something like “flying saucer” on a label. If the flying saucer guy was on line six, we stuck the label on the board next to the number six. Then we placed the board in front of a black and white video camera.  Jim White had a little black and white monitor in his studio so that he could see what the various callers wanted to talk about. We could talk to him over an intercom and he would push a little button at the base of his mic and he could talk to us.

The bane of every talk radio station is the regulars. Some will call every show, every day, and want to talk about every topic. You get to know them and you have to tell them only one call a day or something like that.  Another type to avoid would be drunks and people who sounded like they were on medication. You would gently try to discourage them but sometimes they never got the hint. You would write, “Skip” or “Drunk” on their labels.

The biggest taboo in those days was; “What happened to Harry Caray?” Harry had been the beloved announcer for the Cardinals and had gotten fired. The big rumor was that he had an affair with Gussie Busch’s wife, but I never knew anything about it. The main thing was that Mr. Hyland didn’t want any of those calls on the air.

Next to us was the engineer, who ran the control board. Behind him was a rack of tape recorders.  One served as the delay system. It was quite simple.  A reel-to-reel tape recorder was set up with a 7 second distance between the record head and playback head. Everything was recorded on the tape deck but not played back until it reached the playback head 7 seconds later.

They always had CBS Network news at the top of the hour. Then the KMOX news guy would come on with local news, sports and weather.  Coming out of that, they would always play a standard recorded ID that was seven seconds long. At the same time they would hit the delay system, cue Jim White and his voice came out on the air exactly 7 seconds later.

At this juncture, I should point out the unique format for their talk shows. KMOX was a pioneer in talk radio with the introduction of “At Your Service”.  KMOX had the traditional shows like “Arthur Godfrey” and sports broadcasts. They had exercise shows with Doc Eberhart.  They had news and weather. Bob Hyland decided to let people call the radio station and ask questions of the news staff.

The callers never gave their names. Their calls were limited to a question or comment. They were not usually allowed to converse with the host.  I can distinctly recall Jim White holding his hand up as if it were on the knob of the control board signaling to the engineer when he wanted to turn the caller down. He was a master at jumping in at just the right moment to make it seem like the caller had finished.  Meanwhile I could still hear the caller in the control room. They could go on for some time before they realized that they weren’t on the air anymore.

Since the original hosts of At Your Service came out of the newsroom, they tried not to actually give opinions or take sides but after a while you could figure out how many of them stood on some issues. This of course, is in direct contrast to modern talk show policy. While this might seem dull to some, KMOX was unparalleled in being able to dispense valuable information and maintaining the loyalty and respect of all the audience. They went out of their way not to show a bias.

In our studio, there was an odometer hooked up to the thick phone line. It counted calls that didn’t make it through when the lines were all busy. Every time it counted an overcall it would click. Many times it wouldn’t click at all.  There was one guy who could make it click like a pinball machine.

His name was David Hoy. He was a physic. People went nuts when he was on. Was he real? I can tell you this: I remember a call from a woman who lost her wedding ring.  He told her that she lost it when she was cleaning. It had fallen behind the torn fabric of some sort of chest. I heard her gasp as she ran to look for it and they went to another caller.  I heard her come back on the phone in the control room and she screamed that she found it. She had been cleaning her attic that morning. I know that she wasn’t faking or was a plant.

One time I was bringing him up in the elevator with his son. They had gone to the Cardinal’s game before the show.  He told me that he predicted that his son would catch a ball and laughed because he had been wrong. One time told me that I was going to be getting a job that I was really wanting and he was right.  Not long after that I got on the air at KADI.

I was pretty good at research. Somebody would call and ask a question and I would put him on hold and go find the answer.  I would call some people or find an expert that they could put on the air. I think this impressed them enough to offer me a weekend newswriting job. It had to be something like that because I was only 20 years old and still somewhat of a dufus. I was not really KMOX material and that will become more evident if you care to read some of my other KMOX stories.