Ron Estes Checks In (July 13, 2002)

Hi - My name is Ron Estes and I worked for 98.1 in 1958 when it was KDWD. This was before their call letter change and move to The El Patio building in downtown La Jolla.

I had just graduated from La Jolla High School and was very interested in a career in broadcasting. The studios were located in The La Jollan Hotel on La Jolla Boulevard. The transmitter was on Mount Soledad with an output power of about 3.4 KW.

The main competition in those days was KSON-FM, an automated station run by Fred and Dorothy Rebell. Their studios were in The Bank of America building in downtown San Diego with the antenna on top of the building.

KDWD lasted 6 months and 7 days and went off the air because of finance problems with the owners. After that I got a job with KGB AM and FM, 1360 & 101.5 MHz in San Diego recording tapes for their automation system and helping the chief engineer (Norm Duncan) with maintenance duties.

After three years with KGB I moved to KOGO AM/FM/TV where for the first two years I worked in radio. Later I "crossed the hall" and went into TV audio mixing for KOGO-TV, Channel 10.

In 1969 was offered a job at NBC television in Burbank as an audio mixer. I spent 21 years at NBC mixing audio and working on many shows and specials: The Flip Wilson Show, Laugh In, Dean Martin, Welcome Back Kotter, Bob Hope, 1975 Academy Awards, etc., etc., etc,

But the best job I had at NBC was as audio mixer for "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" which I worked on for about 15 years. I left NBC in 1990, about a year before Johnny announced his retirement. GE had bought NBC (RCA) and major changes were happening; not good ones. I now work as an audio mixer for KTLA-TV, Channel 5, Los Angeles.

But it all started with KDWD, 98.1, La Jolla.

Ron Estes Checks In Again (July 20, 2002)

Most of the day had music with "voice tracks" pre-recorded by the announcers. I played back these voice tracks and put in the music from the various discs.

About KSON-FM - The station I was referring to must have been KITT-FM , owned by the Rebells. I confused it with KSON who had a Jack Rebell in its operation. He was possibly a son of Fred and Dorothy of KITT. The KITT automation system used a tape deck for voice announcements but much of their music came from a "Seaburg" juke box player loaded with 45 rpm records. When the taped voice announcement stopped you could hear the needle touching down on the record searching for the groove . . .

The automation equipment at KGB was not purchased from any major equipment vendor at that time. An engineer (Wright Ellis) who worked for the Navy Electronics Lab in Point Loma designed a hybrid tube/transistor control system that used three tape decks. The main deck was for the voice announcements and sub-sonic tones that "triggered" the other two music decks. Tape speed was 7.5 ips and the 10 " reels each ran for about 1 hour Wright died about two years after installing the system and not much further development work was done on the system.

Other systems used "carousels" of tape cartridges for various commercials, time and other announcements. Today much of the music and announcements come from various satellite providers around the country that allow you to customize some of the programming for your location.

As far as KTLA, I have been with them 11 years starting with the first broadcasts of The KTLA Morning News. About two years ago one of our mixers who had been there for over forth years died and I took over the weekday Evening News shift which I do now. In addition to the Evening News I mixed many Dodger baseball games and until last year worked on the yearly Rose Parade on News Years day. After mixing many Rose Parades for NBC and KTLA I decided I would like to spend New Years eve without having to go to Pasadena at 2 AM New Years day and "passed the torch" on to someone else.