Picture of the radio station, what it looks like today
At one time you could not go beyond the 1600 position on the AM dial. That was it, the tuner or dial would turn no more. A static-filled weak station at the end of the dial was KWOW. It was actually located off famous Route 66 in Pomona, but you could hear it in Los Angeles on a clear smogless day.
The station actually started out as KPMO, broadcasting from a trailer home in the middle of an orange grove. From this humble beginning came KWOW. In the early 1960's it played country music with a full news department. Songs like There's a Fool Born Every Minute (Skeeter Davis); Unicorn Song (Irish Rovers); Lord Mr. Ford (Jerry Reed); Happy Tracks (Kenny Price) and Walking On New Grass (Kenny Price) would be the staple of country KWOW. There was some evidence the people who owned country KIEV might have had some ownership of 1600 KWOW. Sometime in the late 1970s or 1980s the station changed its format and went oldies but goodies. The news department was no longer and it operated three in a row hits of 50's and 60's rock 'n' roll. A company song would come on with four or five singers singing in unison--"K-WOW!". At the top of the hour before the news you would hear an announcer say, "This is the Big 16- KWOW-Pomona!"
I used to hear this as a kid in Montclair Ca in the 60s. I built my own radio and this was the only station I could get.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was a DJ at KWOW in the early & mid 1960’s. Loved listening to him on the radio when I was a kid.
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