Douglas Street Mysteries...

So, no more stories of heroism.  Someone actually responded to my last entry and ask about the Douglas Street mysteries. 

It was a contest we ran several times at KEYN and it was pretty fun.  I'm trying to remember if we gave away the Porsche during that contest.  Anyway, the Douglas Street mysteries were a series of whodunits and listeners had to identify how the crime was solved and they won a prize.  It was taught for me because we had to determine while on the air with the listener if they were close enough to be the winner.  I wanted everyone to win.  Part of my OCD I suppose.

We did lots of contests in Wichita.  We gave away trips and cars and cash and all kinds of stuff.  My favorite contest was the Great Moped giveaway with Pizza Hut.  This contest was designed by a guy with an incredible sense of humor and lack of respect for the safety of the disc jockies, Lin Harris. 

The jocks would ride one of these death traps to a designated Pizza Hut and do a remote broadcast inviting listeners to come by and sign up.  I only rode them once and refused after that.  Cars where honking at me, and not in the friendly "Hi Tim" way.  It was more like, "move your fat ass off the road before I make a DJ pancake out of you" honk.

The last giveaway I did at KEYN before being asked to leave was the Rolls Royce giveaway.  I knew it would be my last as the new program director had the afternoon guy host the giveaway.  The listeners won the chance on the air to get a chance to win the Rolls.  They won a night on the town chauffeured in the Rolls, which frequently broke down and once had to be driven in reverse all the way back to the station.  All the qualifiers gathered at the pre-determined location and selected a bottle of champagne and pour it out into a big glass thing on the stage.  The first one to pour pink champagne won the Rolls.  Her name was Miniskirt Sue and when she won she got very excited and reached up to hug someone on the stage revealing her complete lack of underwear.  It really cracked me up!

Jim Long believed that radio should be entertaining,  from the commercials to the contests to the music and jocks.  KEYN was all that.  KEYN was so big and popular that we actually caused the phone company to change all request lines in the city to their own prefix, 436-XXXX.  KEYN was giving away Styx concert tickets and completely blew out the circuit.  They said it takes 22,000 simultaneous attempts to do that.  Radio was so fun back then, especially when your listeners don't wear underwear!