KRLA and the Beat history
KRLA personalities
KRLA specialties
Good news
And throughout this time of upheaval, KRLA breathed nary a word to its listenership. John Barrett (pictured with news director Cecil Tuck on the left left in front of the KRLA studios at the Huntington Hotel Carriage House studio) probably preferred it that way.
Readers of the Los Angeles Times or Pasadena Star-News might have run across stories about the station's woes, but music fans had no idea what was happening behind the scenes. What they knew was what they heard. All during its licensing upheavals KRLA trod a steady path, adding new on-air talent, such as deejays Bob Hudson, Reb Foster, Dave Hull, and Dick Biondi (John Barrett's old pal from WKBW, late of WLS-AM in Chicago but now between gigs).
KRLA's newsroom also experienced a robust period of growth during this time. Cecil Tuck, a deejay and newsman from Texas radio, was hired as news director for the station; his brother Michael Tuck was also active in news in the Los Angeles market and his byline appears occasionally in the KRLA Beat. KRLA expanded its news force from eight to fourteen from 1965 through 1968. And it was Cecil Tuck who acted as publisher and editor of the KRLA Beat and its sister publication the KYA Beat, which covered music events in San Francisco, where KYA was based.
Billboard Magazine noted in an article on November 7, 1965 that while many radio stations were publishing newsletters or newspapers, the KRLA Beat was the only one to run "into the black" while other stations had to give away their publications. Mel Hall, then program director for KRLA, said of Tuck that he was the motivating force behind the Beat: "He's the boy that made it work."
KRLA's news was standard for the time on Top Forty radio stations, with a five-minute top of the hour broadcast, usually including headlines, sports, weather, and surf conditions, but it had a larger than usual news staff. If you listen to KRLA airchecks on this website you'll occasionally hear newsmen such as Richard Beebe and Jim Steck pressed into service in other KRLA promotions as well. In August 1964 Steck famously accompanied Dave Hull on a flight with the Beatles. Unticketed, Steck and Hull accidentally ended up flying with the Fabs to Denver, their next concert venue. Ever the professionals, both Hull and Steck got some nice interviews in flight, which were later released on Vee Jay Records, and had to get Cecil Tuck to sweet-talk the airline into returning them back to Los Angeles.
Unusually for a pop music radio station, in 1964 KRLA won two prestigious Golden Mike awards for best radio documentary and a special Golden Mike created to honor the station's historical series on the American revolution. In 1966 KRLA news producer Lew Irwin won two more Golden Mikes for KRLA documentaries on drugs and "suggestive lyrics of today's music."