A FREEWHEELING TALKFEST : NIGHT OWL McCOY PERCHES AT KIEV
“Good morning! Welcome to the midnight affair, here on KIEV. I’m Ron McCoy and I’m gonna be around till 6 o’clock this morning.”
Despite the late hour, Ron McCoy, the talk jockey at KIEV radio (870), is full of pep and enthusiasm. Much of his euphoria is due to the fact that he’s finally able to converse about sex, drugs, politics and anything else the airwaves can handle.
The veteran talk-radio host, who celebrates 25 years on Los Angeles radio this year, was not always allowed to be so freewheeling.
McCoy established his talk credentials at KFI, where he began broadcasting in 1961. He was with the powerful, clear-channel station for 17 years, seven of which he spent on the late-night program, “The Night Owl Show.”
But the talk show format was in its infancy then and KFI management kept strict regulations over what could and could not be said over the air.
“We couldn’t talk about racism, sex, violence, religion--all those things,” McCoy said. “Joey Adams, a comedian, once appeared on the show and at that time Ronald Reagan was running for governor. A listener called in and asked, ‘Do you think actors should go into politics?’ Adams said, ‘Why not? Most politicians are clowns anyways.’ “After that I was banned from having visitors on the show for two months. KFI thought I was incompetent and couldn’t handle my guests,” McCoy said.
Nowadays, his biggest problem is keeping regular call-in fans from making repeat calls on controversial subjects.
McCoy says he has accumulated a handful of regular listeners over the last two years and has to limit their calls to twice a week. He gives everyone a chance to voice opinions on any topic, but he also exercises the privilege of cutting off the intoxicated and the rambling.
While most people are about to drop off to dreamland, McCoy’s audience is tuning in his “Night Owl” show at the beginning of the new day. Tuesday through Friday, from midnight to 6 a.m., McCoy discusses anything and everything: from health to politics, from celebrities to education--”anything,” he said, “that relates to people.”
Glendale’s 24-hour talk station has been his radio home for about two years, but McCoy has been involved with radio since he was 12.
He began his broadcast career half a century ago as a child actor on a Denver radio station. Radio was the “big thing” at the time, because it was so new, he said.
“There was no television in those days, so entertainment was found in radio,” he said.
From child actor on radio serials, McCoy worked his way up to programming director when he was in college. He earned a bachelor of arts degree at the University of Denver before coming to Los Angeles to work as a disc jockey for KLAC.
In 1961 he moved to KFI, where he took over late-night talk show duties from the late Ben Hunter, the acknowledged pioneer of the radio graveyard shift as talkfest.
“There was a time when I was the youngest talk show host in radio,” said McCoy, now a gray-haired and white-bearded 52 years young. “There was a job available and I got it. That’s how I got into talk show hosting. There wasn’t anything too mysterious about it.”
McCoy’s work as KFI’s “Night Owl” was during the ‘60s, a politically unstable period that was rich with heated topics. Unfortunately, he said, he was restricted from talking about most current events because of station policy.
According to McCoy, KFI wanted to be one big, happy family with its listeners. The station used to arrange trips to such places as Arizona, Hawaii and the Orient for McCoy and his listeners.
“That’s why it was so important not to offend anyone,” he said.
“KFI had a different type of show,” he summarized. “You could only talk about general stuff, but I knew what I was in for when I took the job. If you accept the money, you have to accept the policies.”
After leaving KFI in 1978, McCoy did voice-overs and free-lance work for stations such as KPRZ (now KIIS-AM) and KGIL before finally settling down with KIEV, a family business run by Fred and Ron Beaton.