Stations Found Price Was Right for Job : And Now Veteran S.D. Broadcaster Has Found a Niche That’s Right for Him

In the modern world of radio, Jim Price is an anachronism, a throwback to an era when radio executives were radio people, not salesmen. Price is also something of a legend in San Diego radio.

Certainly KSD0-AM (1130), which draws big ratings with its news-talk format, owes much of its success to Price. He helped install the format in the ‘60s, and returned 20 years later to become The Man Who Hired Roger Hedgecock--and the former mayor and convicted felon took KSDO to new ratings peaks.

Price is best known, though, for his work at KGB, where he spent 10 years transforming the FM station into a ratings monster, the dominant album-oriented rock (AOR) station in town. During his tenure, KGB developed three promotions--”Sky Shows,” the Homegrown albums and the still-famous KGB Chicken--all three of which Billboard Magazine once listed the most successful radio promotions of all-time.

Today Price, 53, is president and general manager for KYXY-FM (96.5), a smaller station with a smaller market niche than either KGB or KSDO. It is owned by locally based Parker Industries, a far cry from the large corporations that own KGB and KSDO. Price has a profit participation deal with KYXY, and he appears to be happy.

“These are the only owners I have ever known who actually talked to me about something besides the bottom line,” said Price, as he relaxed in his KYXY office. “I didn’t think any of those people still existed.”

Price’s office walls are cluttered with plaques and awards, but one stands out, positioned directly behind his chair. It is addressed to “Sunny Jim Price,” the guy who went from “copy boy to president.”

Unlike many radio executives who started in the business selling advertising time, Price’s roots are in broadcasting. When he feels like it, Price occasionally wanders into the KYXY production booth to do voiceovers for commercials, just like the old days when he was on the air. Current KSDO executive producer Gayle Falkenthal fondly remembers Price’s forays into the production areas of KSDO.

“You could tell he really enjoyed it and he really knew what was going on. He was really in tune,” she said. “Most executives are more comfortable and in tune with what’s happening in the sales cubicles.”

Price’s early career was spent spinning Top 40 and rock ‘n’ roll albums with such future radio stars as Gary Owens, Michael Jackson and Casey Kasem, in such places as Missouri, Iowa, San Francisco and Fresno.

The job of program director for the tiny KDEO in El Cajon was Price’s first stop in San Diego in 1965. He switched the station to an “oldies” format, the first of its kind in the area. It was a big hit.

“It (the format’s success) enabled owners to do what owners do--they sold it,” Price said.

The new owners of KDEO had their own programming ideas, so, for the first time in his career, Price switched to sales.

“I had a family to support, and I looked at the business and realized that being a disc jockey was a young man’s game,” Price said. “I was a good disc jockey, but I wasn’t a superstar.”

When he left KDEO in 1969 to go to KSDO for the first time, he was hired as sales manager. Twelve months later, he was named station manager. There he made his first real impact on the San Diego radio scene, switching the AM side of the station from “beautiful noise” to a news-talk format.

It worked, primarily because he was able to drive the station’s primary competition out of the market, a feat that would characterize his career in San Diego. But after 2 1/2 at KSDO, Price was looking for a new job, the victim of another management change.

“Usually when a station is sold, the first guy out the door is the general manager,” Price said, reciting a basic truth of the radio business. “In total, I have built up five stations for people to sell.”

He went to Bakersfield for two years, as president and general manager of KAFY, and left there when the station was sold. Price moved to KGB, inheriting a station that was making inroads into what was then a fledgling market, hard rock on the FM band. He wisely chose not to change the format. He also declared war on the station’s one real competitor at the time, KPRI-FM, aggressively pursuing advertisers and ratings. KPRI changed formats after a few years.

KGB’s extremely successful promotions were not necessarily Price’s ideas, but it was his station. He earned the glory of the successes, and he took the heat when one of them, The Chicken, became a promotional nightmare for the station.

The idea of putting a man in a chicken suit stemmed from a billboard campaign KGB was running to differentiate its AM station from its FM sister, and to bolster the “combo” ad sales--advertisers buying ads on both the AM and FM stations--that Price was pushing. A plain egg was on one side of a chicken with an egg painted psychedelic colors (representing the rock ‘n’ roll FM station) on the other side. The caption read, “non-identical twins.”

An intern at the station was stuffed into a chicken suit, but he soon tired of the job. Price went to a San Diego State University class and asked for a volunteer to replace him. Ted Giannoulas raised his hand and became the KGB Chicken.

The Chicken became wildly popular, especially at sporting events and concerts, where he would guzzle beer and lurch through the crowd grabbing at women and dancing in the aisles. KGB had a national phenomenon on its hands.

When Giannoulas went against orders and removed the KGB letters from his costume for a nationally televised NBA All-Star game, he was fired, Price said. The station and its chicken ended up in court when KGB attempted to stop Giannoulas from appearing in his new costume, which KGB claimed was really the same KGB-created character.

“The only reason it ever got to that point is (because) we had one man (Willet Brown of Brown Broadcasting, owners of KGB) who spent $450,000 to promote and advertise a chicken man, and he didn’t take kindly to that man using what he had promoted,” Price said.

To fans of The Chicken, KGB was the worst sort of villainous bully, and the publicity surrounding the court case and Giannoulas’ eventually victory turned the whole Chicken episode into a promotional disaster.

“We took our lumps,” Price said. “But The Chicken as a promotion was never a promotion that made people listen to the station that much. I learned never to get into a promotion when the promotion becomes bigger than the entity it is intended to promote.”

During his 10 years at KGB, the station never dipped below third in advertising billings among San Diego stations, Price said.

“The image of Price I have is of a fun-loving, creative guy who fostered an enjoyably productive atmosphere,” said current KGB promotions director Scott Chatfield, who joined KGB near the end of Price’s tenure.

But, in 1984, Price and Brown Broadcasting came to a “parting of the ways,” Price said, which is to say both sides agreed he should leave. Price said the split with KGB was “like the end of my life.”

“They wanted to produce more profits, so they could expand, and my plan was to put money back in to keep the product going,” Price said.

KGB continued to succeed after Price left, and, after a brief stint with the classical station KFSD, Price returned to KSDO, where his most notorious move was agreeing to hire Hedgecock.

“You can’t believe the heat he took,” said Nikki Symington, partner in the public relations firm of Grossman, Symington & Good, which has worked with KSDO for many years. “A lesser man would have backed off.”

“I knew I had a hit when the letters started running 40 to 1 against us,” Price said with a laugh.

But Price’s judgment isn’t faultless. He also made Ed (Super Fan) Bieler, a gruff and unpolished sports broadcaster, host an afternoon talk show, a move that was about as appealing to listeners as those tests of the emergency broadcast signal.

Chris Conway, KSDO’s current general manager, though, said Price deserves credit for much of KSDO’s success, including the hiring of program director Jack Merker. Ironically, Price replaced Conway when he joined KSDO, and Conway replaced Price when Price left two years later.

“He (Price) is real good with people,” Conway said. “People who work for him love him. If I owned a radio station, I would want Jim Price to run it.”

Price’s stay at KSDO was short-lived, but about average for radio. Sources close to the station say that Price made his budget, although it was always a struggle. Working for the media giant Gannett can be an intense experience, they said, and Price was under constant pressure.

“He likes people too much,” said one source, who asked to remain anonymous. “He takes his people too seriously. Gannett cares about the bottom line. He’s a great radio man, but he’s old-time radio.”

Price views his years working for Gannett as a “tremendous learning experience.”

“That’s the big time,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I wanted to build something slowly that would last, but a publicly owned company doesn’t have a lot of time for that. Even though Gannett was a pressure-packed job, I was handling it.”

Price left KSDO because he was “finally able to put together the type of deal you always hope for, a (profit) participation deal,” Price said.

The deal was to head the KYXY operation, and its “soft, relaxing favorites” format, for advertising man John Parker. Parker is something of a legend himself, for handling the first American ad campaigns for Datsun (now Nissan).

Parker’s relatively small but fruitful operations, ranging from furniture outlets to radio stations, is housed in a small restored Victorian house in Hillcrest. The operation is in marked contrast to the atmosphere at Gannett.

It’s the first time in a long time that Price is working for a station not among the top stations for ad sales in the county. But the station is finding its niche, primarily with its target audience of women 25-54. Under Price, KYXY has gone from a ranking of sixth or seventh with its target audience into the top three.

KYXY is not geared to be the dominant station in the market, and the battles for Price are a little less intense than in the past. He and his wife of 29 years, Brande, find time to travel. They recently returned from a three-week vacation in Europe.

“It was the first time,” Price said, “that I’ve ever taken a vacation without doing some work.”