Riding into the sunset, unemployed

October 14, 1973 — Victor Stredicke

Even in the quick-and-dead world that air personalities live in, there is some compassion when a disk jockey must be fired.
Unionized stations live up to the letter of the contract in severance pay, and even nonunion stations offer a token two-week’s pay to the dispatched jock and count up accrued vacation.
During the KOL bloodbath the station manager (since fired himself) dipped into the merchandise storeroom for a horde of departing disk jockeys. Bobby Simon, for instance, rode off into the sunset on an unissued Incredible Contest Kawasaki.

Burl Barer, loyalist, lasted longer than the other talent at KOL, but one day his call came.
“Burl, can you come in and talk to (Bob) Reilly?” But Bev Barer pleaded, ” . . . I don’t even know how to ride a motorcycle. . . .”
Barer, incidentally, holds he is not unemployed — just not on the air. He is concentrating on his side-line activities, making commercials for other radio stations, and his religious activities.

Twisting the dial
Not only has Zodiac Lady survived the format change at KOL-AM. Stevie Ager reports that the daily astrological feature produced in Seattle is now heard on Walla Walla, Longview, Spokane and Everett stations . . . Art Lind, from Memphis, has joined the staff at KMO. Tacoma, as afternoon disk jockey . . . Jack Bear, smooth-talking disk jockey from New York, by way of Pittsburgh, is the afternoon drive-time disk jockey at KBES, Bellevue . . . It’s hard to believe that Wayne Cody is only the new sales manager at KTW; his voice is heard all over the station in commercials, public-service announcements, station I.D.s, and as a very competent fill-in on almost all of the marathon-length talk-show segments . . . Dave Olson has been promoted to station manager at KBIQ, Edmonds. Olson has been sales manager . . . He was a personality at KYA and KIRO-AM . . . George Pettingell is the new manager of KGDN, Edmonds; he had been operations manager of the station for the past 1½ years. Peltingell plans a review and upgrading of Christian programming, making it “more responsive to the listening needs” of the public.