Don Clark, air personality, publicity hound

Don Clark was an aggressive, entertaining, disk jockey at KOL in the early 1970s. Clark said among his previous experience included writing segments for NBC’s emerging series “Saturday Night Live” with his wife. Clark was singularly inventive. As afternoon disk jockey, he cajoled listeners to rat on who stole the Carnation Cows from a display at University Village, talked the grateful company into rewarding all KOL listeners with free ice cream. “KOL, Keep on Licking” Clark said to listeners who lined up at the Harbor Island radio station. He made a big deal of the buzzards in Hinkley, Ohio. He made phone calls to Arthur Prysock, he cajoled touring musicians, including superstars like Aretha Franklin to add unscheduled concerts for prisoners at McNeil Island. Clark continued activism as nighttime disk jockey at KIRO AM, noting that gold had climbed to new levels so he lined up busses and equipment for gold-panning trips. Clark clipped media coverage of his station activities, splayed them in front of his station manager and asked him to budget money for listener promotions, Clark: “Here’s the press coverage I’ve generated for six months — now I’m going to stop and see how much coverage KIRO could get on its own.” (Cricket sounds here, if you please.) Then Clark learned that management was budgeting promotional money to build up its lackluster morning man, Clark quit and returned to California. A couple of years later he submitted an application for an opening at KVI. He would have been a perfect fit for the promotionally minded Hardwick, Morton and French. His aircheck was an hilarious two-hour phone interview with the hot comedian Don Rickles. KVI dumped the application because no where did Clark mention Seattle, or Mount Rainier, or rain, or any KVI turf. –Clark returned to Seattle radio…this time middays KOL in 1970. Clark resigned from KOL in June 1972 after the format was tightened to more music, less talent.