{"id":10160,"date":"2020-05-07T18:51:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T00:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=10160"},"modified":"2020-05-07T18:51:47","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T00:51:47","slug":"salt-lakes-best-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/07\/salt-lakes-best-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Salt Lake&#8217;s Best Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oh my hell&#8230;\u00a0 in the previous entry, I mentioned remembering a TV ad for a Salt Lake radio station that used the opening drums from Zeppelin&#8217;s &#8220;Rock and Roll,&#8221; right? So guess what I just just ran across on YouTube? The stuff you can find out there on the interwebz never fails to amaze me&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"725\" height=\"544\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kGl6IGf--kc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, if you&#8217;re interested, I also found this brief <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oldradio.com\/archives\/stations\/slc-hist.htm\">history<\/a> of the station as I was wandering cyberspace trying to confirm my fading memory, written by a dude named Paul Wilson in 2005:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>CITADEL \u2013 KBEE-FM<\/p>\n<p>In 1947, Salt Lake City had only two commercial FM stations\u2026at 100.3 (Bonneville\u2019s KSL-FM) and 98.7 (what is now KBEE-FM).\u00a0 In the early 1970s, KCPX-FM (at 98.7) was known as \u201cStereo X\u201d and was the home of a wide-ranging free-form album rock format\u2026but under the direction of KCPX Program Director Gary Waldron, by the end of the 70\u2019s the station had evolved into \u201cReal Rock 99 FM\u201d.\u00a0 The playlist was short (only a couple hundred songs) and it quickly became the market\u2019s top-rated station, combining the laid-back presentation of album rock with tight top 40 rotations a decade before Pirate Radio spawned the term \u201cRock 40\u201d.\u00a0 As the 80\u2019s began, the station hired a full staff of announcers and \u201c99FM\u201d continued to dominate the market.\u00a0 I was fortunate enough to hold the 7-midnight shift for nearly four years, until the musical pendulum swung back toward pop music and the station evolved again.\u00a0 By 1984 there was a new crew of jocks, the format was CHR and \u201cHitradio 99\u201d again dominated the market.\u00a0 Screen Gems\/Columbia Pictures had owned the KCPX stations (AM, FM and TV) for a number of years but sold the TV station in the mid 70s.\u00a0 In the mid 80s they sold the radio stations to John Price, a Salt Lake based contractor best known for building massive shopping malls.\u00a0 Under Price, the station evolved into \u201cPower 99\u201d and finally to AC as KVRY (Variety 98.7).\u00a0 The historic KCPX letters were parked on a small AM station in Centerville for about twenty years (more on that later).\u00a0 Price eventually sold the stations to Citadel; the format remained AC but the call letters were changed to KBEE (B98.7), which is how the station is known today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Incidentally, it&#8217;s been 15 years since that was written, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.b987.com\/\">KBEE B98.7<\/a> is still around, now owned by Cumulus Media and playing an adult contemporary format, i.e., mainstream soft rock. I rarely listen to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh my hell&#8230;\u00a0 in the previous entry, I mentioned remembering a TV ad for a Salt Lake radio station that used the opening drums from Zeppelin&#8217;s &#8220;Rock and Roll,&#8221; right? So guess what I just just ran across on YouTube? The stuff you can find out there on the interwebz never fails to amaze me&#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-music-and-pop-culture","category-reminiscing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}