Monday, January 26, 2015

Flashback: Fort Worth Top40 KXOL 1360 AM


The KXOL Memorial Page is perhaps the most complete history-of a local radio station has ever received, according to Pop Culture writer Robert Wilonsky at the Dallas Morning News.

In his weekly local radio article, Wilonsky notes KXOL 1360 AM (5kw)  was once the home George Carlin, CBS News Anchor Bob Schieffer and Jim Lowe, who went on the WNEW in NYC, and Rod Roddy, who eventually told Price Is Right contents to "Come on down!"

Wilonsky writes KXOL was the alternative Top40 back in the '60s and '70s competing with the likes of KFJZ in Fort Worth, and KLIF and KBOX in Dallas.  The website offers airchecks, a jock time-line, photos and more.

The station sign-on at 4 p.m. on April 2, 1947, and pulled the plug as KXOL at midnight November 23, 1985.

The 1360 frequency is now the home of Spanish KMNY.

In between it was Fort Worth’s not-quite-top Top of the Pops station.  “It ran good ratings but was hard to pick up in Dallas, much like KBOX couldn’t be heard in Fort Worth,” according to Joe Nick Patoski, the Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan biographer born and raised in Fort Worth.

In February ’71, the KXOL playlist included the likes of George Harrison, James Taylor, Glen Campbell, Santana, Elvis Presley, Ike and Tina Turner, Chicago, Gordon Lightfoot, the Jackson 5, Creedence Clearwater Revival … and Henry Mancini. Groovy?


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