Originally published on May 27, 2005

Ron Chapman

KLUV-FM/Dallas
Legendary Air Personality

After an unprecedented 45-year career in Dallas

For most people in North Texas, there has never been a time when Ron Chapman wasn't on the air. After an unprecedented 45-year career in Dallas, Chapman recently announced that he will be retiring at the end of June. His audience will surely miss his wonderful voice and the way he made them feel better every time they listened to him.

 

Getting into radio: "The year was 1951, in Haverhill, MA. My friend Dave Campbell and I were going to a DeMolai meeting - it's like the Masons for young people. He played a little piano, and we sang harmony together. We were on a bus, and the Masonic lodge was on the same street as WHAV. We were listening to a portable radio and heard that the station was having a radiothon for the March of Dimes. Various talents were on the air, and if you were good, people would call in and pledge $5 to have you do another song.

 

"We skipped the meeting and went to the station. We went in and sang a song, and the PD said, 'How would you like to have your own show?' We were sophomores in high school, and he gave us 10 minutes, from 5:05 to 5:15, on Tuesdays. The day I graduated from high school, June 2, 1953, they offered me a full-time job as a disc jockey. I worked a nine- or 10-hour shift and did all kinds of different shows for four or five years. Pretty soon they made me the morning man."

 

His career in radio: "When I was 19 I did two years in the military. When I came out I went to New Haven, CT because my sister lived there. I got a job on WNHC/New Haven and stayed there for almost a year. I sent tapes everywhere, including KLIF/Dallas, back when Gordon McClendon's 'Mighty 1190 Top Forty' was in full bloom. Don Keys, who's still here in Dallas, heard one of my tapes and called me. I was making $82.50 a week in New Haven, and he offered me $175 a week in Dallas.

 

"I was coming into town as Ralph Chapman, and I heard on KLIF an advertising campaign for Irving Harrigan. It said, 'Vote for Irving Harrigan. His record is beyond reproach.' I got to the station and walked in and said, 'Hello, I'm Ralph Chapman,' and they said, 'Hello, you are Irving Harrigan.' I went on in middays. They dropped me back to 6-9pm, then 10pm-midnight, and then they put me on the midnight shift. I knew my next step was out the door.

 

"I was the first person in the history of KLIF to go to a sales meeting and ask how much it cost to buy the all-night show. I got a price and went out and sold the show to restaurants, bowling alleys and car dealerships. After several different assignments a friend and I put together a team show called Charlie & Harrigan. Then WFAA-TV/Dallas said they had an idea for a contemporary music show, and Ron Chapman was born. It lasted about two years. In the third year the novelty died, and so did the show."

 

Joining KVIL/Dallas: "A man called a couple of times about a station in Dallas called KVIL. The first time I told him I wasn't interested. He called again, and by then I was ready to listen. I went to work on KVIL as PD/MD/Promotion Director/morning man. I wrote copy, made sales calls - everything. I signed on Jan. 2 of 1969. The rest, as they say, is history. I stayed there for 31 1/2 years."

 

Moving to KLUV/Dallas: "That was only five years ago. The research was saying that, in order to survive with the 25-54 demos, you had to keep going younger to bring in the 25s. I attracted the 54s real good, but I wasn't getting the ones on the younger end. Mel Karmazin had purchased KLUV, the Oldies station, and I started thinking that I probably belonged over there. I also knew they were looking for a morning presence."

 

Why he decided to retire: "I will be 70 in January, and, getting up at 4:10am, my bones are beginning to tell me that doing what I do at the pace at which I do it is not supportable forever. When you hit the ground at that hour you're not casually strolling around, you're hitting the ground and taking care of business. You're on a fast track, and your adrenaline is pumping. I have begun to realize that, though I don't look tired, I don't sound it, and I don't think it, maybe this is the time. Oh, and another thing: All the research says Oldies is also over."

 

What he will miss most: "The interplay with the audience and the interplay with the team. I've always had a group of people around me, and I'm going to miss that a lot. I also troll the telephones all morning long. I must answer 200 phone calls a morning while the songs and commercials are playing. I'm just going, 'Call, call, call, call, call, call, whoops, that one was funny. Let's mark that, and we'll go back to it.'"

 

State of radio: "When your company becomes so large that you are listed on the big board, your success or failure is judged not by how good you sound on the air or your sales curve or your local ratings; your success or failure is judged by the price of your stock on Wall Street. When that happens you tend to start making decisions for the wrong reasons. If a company has a slump in its stock, the quickest way to get the stock to come back up is to close divisions and lay off people. Then Wall Street says you're lean and mean, and the price goes up.

 

"Some consolidation is good, and some of it has hamstrung radio, because it is now a slave to Wall Street. You must keep that stock price up, and sometimes keeping the price up has nothing to do with how good the radio station sounds. I'm no fool; I recognize that I'm a dinosaur and that we'll never go back to the days of Mom and Pop owning a radio station."

 

Something about him that might surprise our readers: "It's something that surprises me as I say it: When I leave radio, I am not going to miss it. I've got a $5,000 bet with a broadcaster here in town who says I'll have another show within a year. I said, 'Nope, I don't think I will.' I've done everything I've ever wanted to do about six times and then some. It's time to go on and get another life."

 

Career disappointment: "Everything that has happened in my life has pretty much happened at about the right time. There's been an interesting synergy to things. There's been a nice rhythm, and nothing has come along that has upset the apple cart dramatically."

 

Career highlight: "A women called one day and said goodbye, and there was something in the way she said it that made it different. She had checked into a motel and was ready to take her life. I made her promise to call me the following morning. Halfway through the following morning I said, 'I've got to go on the air. Will you come with me?' She said OK. I eased her on to the radio, introduced her and told her story. People started calling to say, 'I went through the same thing. Here's what she's got to do.'

 

"We found out which motel she was in, and people started going by and bringing her gifts and books, and she had contact with people. On the fourth day she called and said, 'Thank you. You've helped me a great deal.'

 

"Years later, when I was on a remote, she showed up and introduced herself. She was fine. She was moving to the hill country and was going to paint. A doctor who had been recently divorced saw her story in the paper, went to see her and married her, and she's living happily ever after."

 

Most influential individual: "Gordon McClendon allowed me the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do. I have to give him credit. He was not necessarily into how many songs per hour you played, he was into what you did between them. I learned to think out of the box before that term was invented. There was also Jim Hilliard, when he owned KVIL, and Mel Karmazin, who was equally wide open in his thinking."

 

Favorite radio format: "Talk."

 

Favorite television show: "Jay Leno's monologue is mandatory. I like Letterman's show too. Desperate Housewives and all the reality shows."

 

Favorite song: "'Angel of the Morning' by Merrilee Rush, 'Longer' by Dan Fogelberg and 'I Will' by The Beatles."

 

Favorite movie: "Sleepless in Seattle."

 

Favorite book: "Marketing Warfare by Trout and Reis."

 

Favorite restaurant: "Del Frisco's in Dallas."

 

Beverage of choice: "Vodka and tonic with a lime."

 

Hobbies: "I love the ocean. I scuba some and snorkel. I love sailing. It is enormous happiness for me to be on a boat that is going across beautiful water in beautiful weather. That is as close to religion as you can get, in my opinion."

 

E-mail address: "ronchapman@kluv.com."

 

Advice for broadcasters: "I am called regularly by people who say, 'Everyone tells me I have a good voice and that I should be in radio.' My advice to them is, 'Congratulations on having a good voice. Now ask yourself if you have anything to say.' I was born in the Depression, so I started listening to radio back in the days of Fibber McGee & Molly, Amos & Andy and old variety stars like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Therefore I'm more into a presentation mode than a shut-up-and-play-the-music mode.

 

"We now have generations of young people who have been told to shut up and play the music, and that's fine as far as it goes. But every once in a while a Howard Stern or a Don Imus or a Ron Chapman - if I may - comes along who will say something in between the songs or around the breaks that makes it more interesting than just the songs. I got the ultimate advice from George Johns, and that was to never go in to anything that you don't know how you're getting out of. In radio, that means that if you are going to open your mouth and say something, before you say the first word, know what your last word is going to be."