Gordon McLendon
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Gordon Barton McLendon (born June 8, 1921 in Paris, Texas; died September 14, 1986) is widely credited for perfecting, with great commercial success, the Top 40 radio format during the 1950s and 1960s which was first invented by Todd Storz.
Brief biography
McLendon, nicknamed "The Old Scotchman", is also noted in radio history as the founder of the Liberty Radio Network (noted for its daily national broadcasts of Major League Baseball) in the 1940s; as one of the originators of the "beautiful music" format on his KABL in Oakland, California in 1959; and as the founder of the first all-news radio station (WNUS in Chicago) in the 1960s.McLendon was also the last owner of ABC affiliate KCND in Pembina, North Dakota. In 1975, he sold that station to Winnipeg executive Izzy Asper, who moved the station to Winnipeg and used it to start up CKND, which would become the genesis of the present-day Global.
McLendon and his father founded radio station KLIF in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas in 1947, and introduced the Top 40 format there in the early 1950s to great success. KLIF enjoyed a long run at the top of the Dallas radio ratings in the 1950s and 1960s, but its standing in the market fell in the early 1970s thanks to growing competition from FM radio. One of the FM stations most instrumental in the downfall of KLIF was its former sister station KNUS (now KLUV), of which McLendon retained ownership after selling KLIF and revamped as a rock-oriented Top 40.
Jack Ruby was both a listener and admirer of McLendon and known to the staff of the station. One reason Ruby gained access to Lee Harvey Oswald was that Ruby had begun to imply that he was reporting for KLIF. (See Warren Report.) There was little difference in his move to point a gun or a microphone at Oswald.
McLendon, a conservative Democrat, lost the primary election against incumbent US Senator Ralph Yarborough in 1964. He entered the primary for the 1968 Texas gubernatorial election, but withdrew from both the election and the Democratic Party, citing President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War policies.
McLendon was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1994.
See also
- Todd Storz
- PAMS jingles
External links
Conspiracy theorists Warren Hinckle and William Turner (in their book Deadly Secrets) and Peter Dale Scott have alleged that McLendon played a peripheral role in the John F. Kennedy assassination. See: [link] [link] [link]
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