BRAD MESSER
life
and so-called career in radio 1960-2007

A CHRONOLOGY... which doesn't begin with me being born, but mercifully skips right up to where I escape from highschool

  
         
   

Brad Messer 1957After as much highschool as I could stand in Harlingen, Texas, I spent a year at what's now the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California and became an interpreter and translator for the Army Security Agency in the Far East (Chinese language).

  
         
   

Returned to Texas after Army service and got into radio at KILE in Galveston. When the newsman became “incapacitated” I was called on to read the news. My entire radio career is based on ol’ Larry getting drunk.

Bill Jay, the News Director of KNUZ in Houston called and said he'd heard me on the radio in Galveston and asked if I had much experience as a newsman. Yes, a lot, I blatantly lied. He hired me.

I was so green in radio that I didn't know there was a real difference between Galveston and Houston except that he had offered me more money. I later learned that Galveston was a tiny market, and having my second radio job be in a Top 10 market was a flukey and wonderful miracle. The bigger the market the more bucks.

  
 


 

  
 
In my 20s news director at Gordon McLendon's legendary station
 
       
    KILT #1 in Houston ... with Bill Weaver, Dickie Rosenfeld, Bill Young, Alex Bennett, Chuck Dunaway, Catfish, Mac Hudson, Jim Pruett, Richard Dobbyn, Mark Stevens, Beau Weaver, Jim Carola, Rob McLeod  
   

Brad Messer KILT Houston 1960s

 
     
   
    At age 21, covering Hurricane Carla for KNUZ / Houston in 1961 in the vicinity of Freeport. It was the strongest hurricane to ever hit Texas.
     
 

As Carla's storm surge rose, small animals kept heading for higher ground, until just about the only places left were the tops of levees and raised roadbeds.

Rattlesnakes were so concentrated on this levee that there might be, oh, 3 per square yard. Great nightmare material. I needed to get to the end of the levee to survey damage on the coast, so I had to get past the snakes. The way to do that was to shoot 'em dead. I got so I could make a head shot from eight feet away. I was very young and very stupid to be where I was.

That's my KNUZ "Big Mike" mobile unit on a damaged roadbed after the storm.

       
 
and still in my 20s news director at McLendon's legendary
 
       
   

KLIF #1 in Dallas ...with Don Keyes, Ken Dowe, Al Lurie, Bill Stewart, Jim O'Brian, Deano Day, Jimmy Rabbitt, Russ "Weird Beard" Knight, Edd Routt, Charlie Van Dyke (Steinle), Michael O'Shea, Dave Ambrose, Dick Mock, Don Barrett, Ron McAlister (Jenkins), Mike Hiott, Bob Knowlton, Bruce Hughes, Barry Kaye, Jack Woods, Mike Selden, Hal Martin (Michael Spears), Cousin Lenny, Paxton Mills, Frank Haley, Dick Glancey, B. William Johnson, Jimmy Rabbit...

I feel bad about what happened to my friend and news colleague Ron Jenkins. One day, out of the blue, he was told by management (me) that his name would henceforth be Ron McAllister, with the Mc intended to play on McLendon. In an instant, Ron lost his name and all the history of his career as Ron Jenkins. It wasn't fair. I'm sorry it happened. (KLIF was famous for mobile news coverage. One promo line was "Sam Pate knows EVERY street in Dallas! Ron McAllister knows every alley!")		  
   

 

    
     
   
     
 
In my 30s news director of market-dominant stations in California
 
           
    KYA #1 in San Francisco ... with Manager Howard Kester, PD Dick Starr, Bwana Johnny, Tom Campbell, Tony Tremayne, Bill Holley, Bob Knowlton, Chris Edwards, Gary Schaffer, Pete McNeal  
    San Francisco view
Bay Area Radio Museum audio link:
KYA Radio 1260
The Top 40 Collection
TEXT & AUDIO
 
           
   
In a chopper on Alcatraz during the Native American occupation of the island in 1969. KYA donated food and supplies which we ran out to the island at night by boat to support the American Indian Movement's demonstration.  
   
KYA's Gary Schaffer looked Indian, so we quietly planted him on Alcatraz to feed us inside info... 		 
           

California Radio
Historical Society
 

Daytime news reporting run out to The Rock

     
   

The daily KYA Entertainment Billboard feature usually included a review of last night's concert or other music performance, from the small blues clubs of North Beach and Berkeley, to the Fillmore and Family Dog, to the high-end venues such as the Fairmont hotel. How I could stay up 'til 1 or 2 in the morning listening to music and putting together a review, and then anchor morning shift news, I have no idea. Here's a non-review Entertainment Billboard from 1970:

Someday I may get around to writing up a report on the time I spent in San Francisco disguised as a black person, expecting to learn about life from another point of view. Hard to explain: I instead ended up learning a lot about my own preconceptions.

Some incomplete notes on my Black experience, with a few photos, here

 

 

 

One terrific thing that happened in San Francisco was meeting the wonderful woman who, a few years later, became my wife. Yay Carole! ( The photo is "later" in San Diego )
         
still in my 30s news director of
         
   

KGB #1 in San Diego... with Ron Jacobs, Brent Seltzer, Bob Coburn, George Wilson, Bill Hergonson, Wizard Lou Rogers, Jim McInnes, Shotgun Tom Kelly, Kevin McKeown, Bobby Ocean

 

 

1972
This little section is for my fellow radio junkies...
An exerpt from Ron Jacobs' story of how an in-the-gutter rock station was transformed into a legendary AOR winner (the whole article is HERE at reelradio.com)

"Environmental consciousness had begun to stir by then as people were becoming aware of such things, so I got the idea to "recycle" the entire radio station. All over town we posted notices made to look official and cold, which read:

PUBLIC NOTICE:
Radio Station K.G.B. will be recycled
on April 2, 1972.

We ran these as small ads in the newspaper legal announcements. And on KGB's air, we ran a track with only that same wording between every few records. We spent very little money, but most people in town knew by April 2 that something would be happening at 1360 on the AM dial.

...and for two days and nights, nonstop, the Recycle Documentary ran endlessly, the ending blending into the beginning. Talk about a station creating a buzz...

There's a link HERE to an MP3 of the legendary 1972 KGB Recycle Documentary courtesy of Ron Jacobs, and "Uncle Ricky" Irwin of reelradio.com.

 
   

On occasion, the mid-day "Brad & Brent News and Comment" was the highest rated slot in San Diego radio
     
   

KGB was the home of the world's first Charity Ball, first Homegrown album of local music, and birthplace of the KGB Chicken-- now known as the San Diego Chicken. The creative force at KGB was the legendary Ron Jacobs, co-creator of American Top 40— the programming and promotion genius who had taken KHJ to #1 in L.A. with his Boss Jocks
(March 2009: Jacobs is still active, has written the book Obamaland, has made waves in new-media radio.)

My pal Brent Seltzer and I migrated up Interstate 5 to Los Angeles, partly for the money, and partly because our egos had raised the question of whether we were “good enough” to make it in L.A.
     
         
and still in my 30s news director of
         
 

KMET in Los Angeles... with my bud Brent Seltzer, “the Beamer” B. Mitchel *Reed, Raechel “Miz Rae” Donahue, Billy Juggs, “the Burner” Mary Turner, L. David Moorhead, Sam Bellamy, Jim Ladd, Ace Young, Jeff Gonzer and Michael Harrison, who pioneered the news-based Talk format on his weekend show on KMET. Dr. Demento had a weekend show on the Mighty Met.

*with one L. That is how the Beamer spelled it.

KMET was across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits on Wilshire Boulevard until summer of 1976, when we moved to the Metromedia complex "high above the Hollywood Freeway" (and we were, much of the time)

Wikipedia KMET

Los Angeles area satellite view

   

 

Carole and I lived in Studio City on a fine hillside street named Sunshine Terrace. I rode to work thru the Hollywood Hills on my 750 Triumph.

On the day Carole and I were married, in the mountains above Palm Springs at Idylwild, snow fell in bright sunlight!

 
 
in my 40s, 50s and 60s
it was Texas radio again, plus syndicated radio, and finally 16 years of News Talk hosting in San Antonio.
 
 

Along the way I wrote a journalism column for the industry bible Radio & Records for 13 years.

Carole and I published the daily PREP sheet for radio people from 1988 thru 2000, featuring basics such as trivia questions, celebrity birthdays, today in history and such.

 

We returned to Texas



My House

I was with KTSA / San Antonio on and off from 1980 to 2007. One of the offs was when Carole and I moved to the Blue Ridge mountains and lived on a play farm for several years while I was doing syndicated radio for Westwood One. At its peak, the daily "Brad Messer's Daybook" show was carried by 600+ stations.

 

KTSA made me a talk host in 1991. I entered retirement in July of 2007, wrapping up 16 years of Talk and 47 years in radio.

 
   
 
  I was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame of Texas in 2002 (in the first group of inductees) in the News category, with Eddie Barker, Alex Burton, Walter Cronkite, Joe Holstead, Robert B. McEntire, Porter Randall and Bob Schieffer.
 
Radio Hall of Fame dinner in 2002. Left to right, Herb Humphries, his escort, me, and wife Carole. Herb was inducted in 2004. Herb was the newsman who most influenced me. He was my boss at KNOW/Austin in 1963. He starred at all-news WINS/New York City, then went to Los Angeles in 1968 to format KFWB as an all-news station ("You give us 20 minutes, we'll give you the world!") Herb died Aug. 24, 2003.
   
 

TALKERS magazine listed me among "the Heavy Hundred" for seven consecutive years. The proper designation is The 100 most important radio talk hosts in America. I withdrew my name from consideration in 2003, to make room for some new folks.

 

That said, it should be noted that, in the manner of the Scarecrow who received a Certificate of Achievement from the Wizard of Oz himself, I do have validation on paper!

 

Brad Messer

email
   
         
       
2008: retired guy not too tense
       

 

Carole, Blondie the golden retriever, and I moved to Oregon in December of 2008 to live out our retirement among mountains, forests and rivers. The first week in our new home featured what the media all called "The Arctic Blast" with 15 inches of snow (in about ten days) at our house and temps in the low teens. We were often snowed in, and ventured from home only twice in two weeks.
       

 


Our car 12/15/08


and then on 12/22/08