Radio Station Still Gets Some Static Over Slogan’s Math Glitch

“You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world” is the slogan of all-news station KFWB-AM (980), and there’s something about the mathematics of that statement that has always bothered me. I mean, if the news is delivered in three cycles per hour....

Well, it turns out that some station hands were also befuddled when the 22-minute line was adopted more than 30 years ago.

“Twenty-two minutes?” ex-KFWB newsman Don Herbert remembers recalling. “That would give us a 66-minute hour. How could that be, especially if we, as newscasters, were supposed to be accurate?”

The answer, he found out, was that the marketing research people believed the number 22 “would be remembered more easily than 20 minutes or 25 minutes or 30 minutes.” And if they say three times 22 is 60, so be it.

Herbert, by the way, says that “two days after we started using that slogan, a postcard ... came from a man who said, ‘I gave you 22 minutes. You gave me the world. I didn’t like it. I want my 22 minutes back.’ ”

Wacky weather woes: Herbert’s above reminiscences are from his new book, “We’ll Have More Music, Right After the News,” which is a rich compendium of on-air bloopers committed by anchors and reporters. Some of the meteorological forecasts must have prompted tourists to wonder if Southern California has the strangest weather on Earth.

A few examples:

* Herbert once told listeners “temperatures will be cooler and we should have a frog-free day tomorrow.”

* Vince Campagna said, “We are due for some low clouds and drivel.”

* On another occasion, Michael Schoen made no mention of frogs but warned of low “cows” and fog.

* Beach Rogers made this observation: “KFWB newstime: 55 degrees. And the temperature is cloudy.”

* Miriam Bjerre forecast “hazy overnight sunshine.”

* Stan Bohrman pronounced the winds “westerly and gusterly.”

* And, finally, Ken Jeffries implied that a rainstorm had damaged the sanitation system, announcing there had been a “flush” flood warning.

Who cares about frogs and cows? Marion Meyer of Laguna Beach points out that the local real estate bubble hasn’t popped -- not when a one-story wooden shack goes for almost $5 million (see accompanying). Of course, it does have a big pool in the frontyard.

Getting in shape for the summer: In health-conscious California, Janet Schwartz of Cayucos observed, even automobiles are obsessed with their figures (see accompanying).

No one said marriage was easy: Linda Shepard of Westminster admires any couple that stuck together for half a century, even if a few years were rocky (see accompanying).

miscelLAny: The title of Herbert’s book refers to one of radio’s urban legends. KFWB, formerly a top 40 music station, went all-news on March 11, 1968. The story goes that when the late disc jockey Gene Weed signed off at midnight just before the switch, he said, “We’ll have more music right after the news.”

He never said it, though. The story’s just some coastal drivel.