Turn on, tune in, dial up
It's like a rural radio trip, dude
Hey, good buddy. Got chur ears on?
Not since the fade of the CB radio craze has anything on the air been as fun, or as useful as KIMP Radio's 9:05 a.m. Swap Shop, opines daily listener Earl Don Sweeney. That's 960 on your AM dial.
"For horse traders riding the cutting edge of technology, there's nothing more immediate than live radio," he points out. "Besides selling, finding or trading stuff, callers get that fifteen seconds of fame." Hitching that notion to the fact that he's talking to a potential audience of thousands, Earl Don carefully scripts his calls.
"One of my favorites was the man who had for sale a riding mower used only by a Christian non-smoker," said Swap Shop Monday through Friday host Mike Glen.
That was Earl Don.
Swap Shop's down home as a grey tick in a hound's ear. Its audience, however, listens from a variety of perspectives.
"Swap Shop's high comedy," opines the urbane Prashant Patel, a marketing and business type partial to tailored slacks. "C'mon, three sheets of used tin? Three dollars? Mow a yard, man!"
That said, understand, every day Prashant strives to schedule driving errands for the 9 a.m. hour, sliding into the cockpit of whatever leather and wood grain European import he's driving that day, catching Swap Shop on the kind of ultra resonant sound system it doesn't need.
"It's daily, don't-miss entertainment," he said. "I've tried to get [Station Manager] Bud Kitchens to let me, just once, on the air to respond to callers."
There's a reason Bud Kitchens is in management.
Arriving in the Geezerplex in 1991, the East Texas Broadcasting VP (now pres) sold Mt. Pleasant Broadcasting's 100,000-watt FM signal, kept the struggling KIMP am band, and in the years since has bought out local competitor K-Lake, pulled together four stations in Paris, another in Sulphur Springs, consolidated sales, programming and news gathering functions, created a swath of advertiser options and built the region's premier web site.
Thus another Swap Shop function -- every day, it saves station management from over sophistication.
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Like everything aired on Swap Shop, those three sheets of tin were launched into cyber space, entered in the classified button at easttexasradio.com.
"I log everything," says the show's host. Typically fielding some 30 calls a morning, after feeding an electronic transcription to the web master, he uses his notes during subsequent shows to plug merchandise -- and requests -- from previous shows.
"I love it," he said. A San Antonio native, he left Texas to work as a studio camera man in CBS's Washington, D.C. affiliate, WUSA.
"TV's fun, but the instant reality of live radio makes it the ultimate media," Mike said. "There's that personal link you don't get with print media. It's more down to earth than the lights and sets and production complexities of television."
Teaming with Sulphur Springs sister-station disc jockey Robert Trammel, Mike is half the force behind a new Saturday morning program - The Home Team Sports Show. It's another live format. They've interviewed personalities ranging from retired school administrator and now local high school sports color commentator Willie Williams to Dallas Cowboy radio personality Dale Hansen.
Conservatives and guilt-ridden mental masochists make note: venerable 960 KIMP's studio, host to singers from Slim Whitman to Elvis in its prime, is changing with the times. Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura are now daily talk-show fare.
The Home Team Sports Show hosts got newly- crowned NCAA National Champ Baylor Lady Bear basketball coach Kim Mulky Robinson on local air.
"Her new national stature made that extraordinary," Mike said, but Dale Hansen is currently in the books for telling the best story.
It was the mid 80's, he said, the Cowboys and the Redskins at RFK stadium. As the new color man complementing Brad Sham's play by play, Hansen was the physical, if not-yet spiritual replacement for a newly retired Vern Lunquist.
"He didn't just give us a great story," Mike said. "He gave us a story he'd never told. That week, the Dallas game had been chosen for broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Network. As Hansen put it, every soldier on the ground, every pilot in the sky and every sailor at sea had the chance to tune in.
"It's the fourth quarter, Dallas trailing 14-7. Danny White drops back, sails what should have been a touchdown reception for Tony Hill. Hill drops the pass and they go to a commercial break.
"As quick as they hit the break, Sham throws down his headset and launches into a profane tirade. The producer goes nuts, trying to cut him off - Armed Forces Radio doesn't break for commercials so they were still live. Sham does a melt down, seeing his career go over the cliff -- he's just cussed for every soldier on the ground, every pilot in the sky and every sailor at sea. The producer ques him that they're 'back' from the break - Sham can't even respond. The producer ques him again and he doesn't say a word. A light clicks on for Hansen and he saves Sham - 'Hey, Brad! Did you hear that crazy guy coming down the hall cussing Tony Hill after that last play?' A working relationship -- and a friendship -- gelled on the spot."
Swap Shop has recently implemented ground rules, surmised at the coffee shop to have been triggered by the caller offering a fire arm with the provision that he felt duty bound to not sell it to a nut, a Republican or a red-headed woman. That was just before Mike began his tenure as host, but he understands.
"It's live, real time," he said, and each broadcast includes basic info now - no guns, ammunition, knives, fertilizer or chemicals.
"On the other hand, I've taken a call perfect for that niche buyer looking for a good, clean Toyota with power windows and air - just needed a motor," Mike said.
The interplay gets interesting.
The caller looking for a woman to drive him to California got a response from a woman.
"She just called in to say this was Swap Shop, not The Dating Game," said Mike, who works for the opportunity to host the show, to be a part of formatting his own sports program.
The career move from behind the CBS studio camera in Washington to an East Texas Broadcasting sound board has meant days starting at 5 a.m., working the board to pull Texas State Network News through the satellite, molding it into the regional news Clint Cooper gathers from local sources and the sister stations.
"As long as everything goes smooth, it's the kind of work nobody notices, but somebody has to do," Mike said. That's the deal that opens his Swap Shop door to a community.
"It's fast," he said. "It's fun -- there's a sense that I know something about callers I recognize by phone numbers."
Across the East Texas Broadcasting spectrum, it's the down-home end opposite that web site cyber space deal they've launched. Looks like they've covered the bases, good buddy. Come back?