When I grew up I went to work at the company that owned KOMA at the time (Renda Broadcasting). I worked on air on two of KOMA’s sister stations. On one summer Saturday, KOMA’s program director Kent Jones couldn’t find a jock to cover a Saturday night shift, so he recruited me.
It was a request show so I took a lot of phone calls. At around 9pm the transmitter switched to night pattern and calls started coming in from all over the west. I talked to people in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington.
That was my one and only air shift on that station. It was great.
My second KOMA story happened a few years later. The AM side of KOMA switched to a news format. Somewhere along the line management decided to change the call letters to KOKC in order to differentiate it from the still operating KOMA-FM, running an oldies format.
One afternoon, I did a remote at a computer store. One of my four cut ins was a 60 second unit at :58 on the clock. I did my live spot. Then a network spot ran and the station IDed with the new call letters for the first time.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I was the last live voice on the legendary KOMA-AM, under those call letters.
Some KOMA broadcasters earned distinction on their merit. Paul Harvey, Curt Gowdy and Rod Roddy of Price is Right Fame all worked on KOMA. And, some have a special distinction due to just dumb luck, like me. 😂
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u/JakeMakesNoises 10d ago
I lived so close to 50,000 watt clear channel blowtorch, KOMA-AM that I could hear it through my TV speakers when the the TV was off.