Bob Posin, holding his initialed briefcase, wondered if he had been recognized as a salesman, which in fact he was. He put cut his hand, saying, “I’m Bob Posin. From radio station KOIF. Station manager.” He was now at Looney Luke’s Used Car Lot, trying to sell air time.
“Yeah,” Sharpstein said, picking his teeth with a silver toothpick. He wore gray slacks and a lemon yellow shirt. Like all the West Coast used car dealers, his skin was baked red and dry, flaky, around his nose. “We were wondering when we’d hear from you.”
They meandered among the cars.
“Nice-looking cars you have here,” Posin said.
“All clean,” Sharpstein said. “Every one a clean car.”
“Are you Luke?”
“Yeah, I’m Luke.”
“You thinking of doing anything over the air?” That was the big question.
Rubbing his cheekbone, Sharpstein said, “What sort of coverage your station got?”
He gave an estimate twice the actual size; in these times he was willing to say anything. Television was getting the accounts, and nothing was left now but Regal Pale beer and L & M filter cigarettes. The independent AM stations were in a bad fix.
“We’ve been having a few spots on TV,” Sharpstein said. “Works out pretty good, but they sure cost.”
“And why pay for coverage of the whole Northern California area when your customers are right here in San Francisco?” He had a talking point there. Station KOIF with its thousand watts of operating power reached as many people in San Francisco as did the network AM and TV stations, and at a fraction of the cost.
They strolled to the car lot office. At the desk Posin scratched figures on a pad of paper.
“Sounds good to me,” Sharpstein said, his arms behind his head, his foot up on the desk. “Now tell me something. I have to admit I never got around to hearing your station. You got some kind of schedule I can see?”
KOIF went on the air at five forty-five A.M. with news and weather and Sons of the Pioneers records.
“Yup,” Sharpstein said.
Then five hours of popular music. Then noon news. Then two hours of popular music from records and transcriptions. Then ‘Club 17,’ the kids’ rock-and-roll show, until five. Then an hour of Spanish-language light opera and talk and accordion music. Then dinner music from six until eight. Then—
“In other words,” Sharpstein said, “the usual stuff.”
“Balanced programming.” Music, news, sports, and religious. Plus spot plugs. That was what kept the station alive.
“What about this?” Sharpstein said. “How about a plug every half hour between eight A.M. and eleven P.M.? Thirty oneminute spots a day, seven days a week.”
Posin’s mouth fell open. Jesus Christ!
“I’m serious,” Sharpstein said.
Sweat fell from Posin’s arms into his nylon shirt. “Let’s see what that would run.” He wrote figures. What a bundle. Sweat stung his eyes.
Sharpstein examined the figures. “Looks okay. It’ll be tentative, of course. We’ll try it a month and see what kind of response there is. We haven’t been satisfied with the Examiner ads.”
“Nobody reads that,” Posin said hoarsely. Wait, he thought, until Ted Haynes, the owner of KOIF, was informed. “I’ll do your material myself. I’ll handle the material personally.”
“You mean write it?”
“Yes,” he said. Anything, everything.
Sharpstein said, “We’ll supply the material. It comes from Kansas City, from the big boys. We’re part of a chain. You just put it on the air.”
Radio station KOIF was located on narrow, steep Geary Street, in downtown San Francisco, on the top floor of the McLaughlen Building. The McLaughlen Building was a drafty, antiquated wooden office building, with a couch in the lobby. There was an elevator, an iron cage, but the station employees usually went up by the stairs.
The door from the stairs opened onto a hallway. To the left was the front office of KOIF, with one desk, a mimeograph machine, typewriter, telephone, and two wooden chairs. To the right was the glass window of the control room. The wide-board floor, was unpainted. The ceilings, high above, were yellowed plaster, cobwebbed. Several offices were used as storerooms. Toward the back, away from the traffic noises, were the studios; the smaller of the two was the recording studio and the other, with more adequate soundproof doors and walls, was for broadcasting. In the broadcast studio was a grand piano. A corridor divided the station into two sections. The corridor cut off, from the main offices, a large room in which was an oak table on which were piles of folded and unfolded mail-outs, envelopes, cartons, like the workroom of a campaign headquarters. And, next to that, the room in which the transmitter controls were located, the board itself, a swinging mike, two Presto turntables upright record cabinets, a supply cabinet on the door of which was tacked a photograph of Eartha Kilt. And, of course, there was a bathroom, and a carpeted lounge for visitors. And a closet in which to hang coats or hats, and to store brooms.
A door at the back of the studio corridor opened onto the roof. A catwalk led past chimneys and skylights, to a flight of shaky wooden stairs that connected with the fire escape. The roof door was unlocked. Occasionally station employees stepped out onto the catwalk for a smoke.
The time was one-thirty in the afternoon, and KOIF was transmitting songs by the Crewcuts. Bob Posin had brought in the signed contract with Looney Luke Automotive Sales and had gone out again. At her desk in the front office, Patricia Gray typed bills from the accounts receivable file. In the control room Frank Hubble, one of the station announcers, leaned back in his chair and talked on the telephone. The music of the Crewcuts, from the PM speaker boxed in the upper corner of the wall, filled the office.
The stairs door opened, and another announcer entered: a tall, thin, rather worried-looking man wearing a loose-fitting coat. Under his arm was a load of records.
“Hi,” he said.
Patricia stopped typing and said, “Have you been listening to the station?”
“No.” Preoccupied, Jim Briskin searched for a place to put down his records. “Some Looney Luke material arrived. Hubble and Flannery have been giving it off and on. Some of it’s recorded and some isn’t.”
A slow smile spread across his face. He had a long, horselike face, and the overgrown jaw that many announcers seem to have. His eyes were pale, mild; his hair was brownish gray and beginning to recede. “What’s that?”
“The used car lot up on Van Ness.”
His mind was on the afternoon programming. He was planning out ‘Club 17,’ his program, his three hours of tunes and talk for the kids. “How is it?” he said.
“It’s just awful.” She put a page of material before him. Balancing his records against his hip, he read the typed pages. “Will you call Haynes and read this stuff to him? Bob called him and slurred over, he just talked about the income.”
“Be quiet,” he said, reading.
1A: The car you buy TODAY from Looney Luke will be a CLEAN cart And it will STAY CLEAN! Looney Luke GUARANTEES IT!
2A (Echo): CLEAN! CLEAN! CLEAN!
1A: A CLEAN car . . . CLEAN upholstering . . . a CLEAN DEAL from Looney Luke, the volume car dealer who OUTSELLS in big-volume sales ALL OTHER car dealers in the Bay Area.
2A (Echo): SELLS! SELLS! SELLS!
Instructions on the script called for the announcer to record the echo parts in advance; the counterpoint was his own voice, knocking against itself—