April 1952 Tacoma News Tribune Radio & Television Guide
7 thoughts on “April 1952 Tacoma News Tribune Radio & Television Guide”
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Well, the Trib did have greater circulation in the South Sound and KGY reception was good in Tacoma. Usually, KING 1090 was on the grid. That is unusual to see KJR listed. In most years, KJR was not part of the grid and KING was.
KJR was still the ABC affiliate and KING was independent, so I can see why they would have made that decision.
Great answer, makes perfect sense.
I find it interesting that 250-watt KGY earned a spot in the radio grid while 50 kW KING did not. I guess the TNT had enough circulation in Olympia to make this worthwhile? Can’t imagine many people in Tacoma listening when they could get the same Mutual programs loud and clear over KVI.
I see that KTAC radio is listed here as having been an “LBS” affiliate. Apparently that stood for Liberty Broadcasting System. Here is some information I found on Wikipedia about that network, which at one time was the second-largest in the nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Broadcasting_System
The founder of that network, Gordon McClendon… wow, what a fascinating person who pioneered many radio formats, including top-40 and all-news, and who was eventually married to actress and TV host Susan Stafford. Here is more information on him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_McLendon
Second only to Mutual, that’s huge. Mutual seemed to have an affiliate in every market and covered the smaller markets out there in the weeds.
It was Tom Read who used both the Liberty and Mutual Networks for branding his Eastern Washington stations KTRW (Spokane/Spokane Valley), KSPO (Dishman/Spokane), KTAC (Moses Lake, Ephrata, Othello), etc. Read still owns 6 stations currently.
And it looks like KTAC made use of Liberty for Sports Scoreboard which covered 2-3 hours of their daily schedule. Early sports-talk radio? There had to be some play-by-play games in that schedule. KTAC also fed broadcasts to the network — https://qzvx.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/KTAC-feeds-Liberty-Network-The-Daffodil-Parade-The_Tacoma_News_Tribune_Fri__Apr_4__1952_-scaled.jpg (April 4, 1952)