KRTH TAKES SHOW TO THE ROAD

Just before dawn, as the KRTH-FM (101.1) morning crew began setting up to broadcast from a billboard on the Sunset Strip, an amateur stunt man began cartwheeling across the street.

At daybreak, a “lady of the night,” as KRTH deejay Dean Goss called her, closed out her last sale of the evening across the street. Ladies of the day, meanwhile, passed the billboard, giggling as they scurried west toward La Cienega Boulevard.

This, Goss told his listeners between records, was what live morning radio should be.

“This is the first time I’ve taken my morning show on location,” said Goss, a three-year veteran at KRTH (5:30-10 a.m.), after his Friday-morning experiment in live location broadcasting.

It is an especially frenetic, serendipitous brand of broadcasting that can be very exciting or excruciatingly boring. Nevertheless, unscripted luck-of-the-draw location broadcasting seems matched to Southern California.

But live radio rarely happens anymore. Drive-time deejays present canned comedy and homogenized patter from the dull safety of high-security studios in high-rise Hollywood office buildings.

“And I really don’t know why,” said Goss, a 35-year-old ex-San Diego deejay. “It’s really so damn much fun. Dr. Don Rose (a San Francisco deejay) used to broadcast live from the Golden Gate Bridge all the time, and it was great.”

Using a mobile broadcast unit that KRTH has shared with sister station KHJ-AM (930) over the last year, Goss took his crew to the billboard at Sunset and Sweetzer on Friday for a grand experiment. There, four out-of-work actors are living as part of a continuing publicity stunt sponsored by a San Francisco toy manufacturer.

On this, the 74th day of their vigil, Goss shared breakfast conversation with them, discussing everything from bodily functions (under publicity-stunt rules, the actors are allowed to leave the billboard a couple of times a day for a few merciful minutes) to sleeping arrangements. There were originally a dozen, but now only three actors--each named Jeff--and an actress named Sherry remain.

They live in makeshift cubicles they call “condos” on the edge of the 52x4-foot billboard platform. Under the rules, the last to leave wins a car and a screen test.

For the last two months, Goss has called the marathon men and woman at 8:40 a.m. sharp, every day. At first, he abandoned the dull daily chore of asking the National Weather Service for the day’s weather prediction and sought the actors’ best guess instead.

“Who knows better whether it’s going to rain or not than a bunch of people living on a billboard on Sunset?” Goss reasoned. “After we started that, they started writing poems about themselves and reading them over the air.”

When one of the original 12 ate a sandwich containing bad turkey and had to go to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Goss landed an exclusive post-turkey interview. Goss contacted Las Vegas oddsmakers to fix a line on which of the final four stood the best chance of outlasting the others.

His morning drive-time show became so bound up in the billboard stunt that he became an unofficial spokesman, though he says there is no official sponsoring link between KRTH and the marathon.

Perhaps he just identifies with the star-struck show-biz marathoners. Someday, Goss confided, he hopes to move from radio to TV, achieving a long-held dream of becoming a game-show host.

When the actors invited him to do his show from atop the billboard, Goss pleaded his case with KRTH program director Bob Hamilton and station manager Allan Chlowitz, who were somewhat reluctant to let Goss leave the high-security, barbed-wire enclosure at 5901 Venice Blvd., where the KRTH studios are located.

He finally convinced them that foul-ups and foul words would not reach the airwaves, even though the show would be live.

“In our case, it’s probably a management decision not to do more location shows, but I think this may convince them (to allow more live programs),” Goss said.

With the sun fully up, Goss began telling his morning audience about the tribute he was receiving from passers-by:

--A Fats Domino fan in a ’61 Cadillac pulled up in front of the “living” billboard just long enough to drop off a 45-rpm demo of his own rendering of Domino’s “I Hear You Knockin’.” He asked Goss to play it on Fats’ birthday.

--A 6 1/2-foot, 265-pound ringer for Mean Joe Greene mounted the billboard, handed Goss a composite resume and told him that he wanted to be in the movies.

Even Goss’ own loyal but fun-loving crew gave him a live radio surprise: a cupful of white goo, dumped from atop the billboard onto Goss’ head. Through at least one three-record set, engineer Elaine Hernandez and producer Kenny Wolin had Goss convinced that he’d been clobbered by a mammoth pigeon.

“I love it. I just love it,” Goss said with a laugh, despite the practical jokes. Daubing at the crown of his head where the “pigeon” goo had just about dried, he said, “I have a feeling we’re going to do a lot more live location broadcasts.”