KVIL-FM
Encyclopedia
KVIL is a radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

 broadcasting in the Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

/Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...

 market in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

. The station has featured a very popular adult contemporary music format for nearly forty years. Since 2009
2009 in radio
The following events occurred in radio in 2009.- Events :* January 1: Kurdish TV starts broadcasting in Turkey.* January: Michael Smerconish, morning host at talk radio WPHT Philadelphia, begins syndication of his morning show to WHFS in Washington and WOR in New York City.* January 17: Two well...

, Dallas/Fort Worth is the largest market in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 with only one adult contemporary station, although DFW is the 5th-largest radio market in the United States.

History

The original location of the studios was in the Highland Park Village shopping center at 4152 Mockingbird Lane (at Preston Road), overlooking the Dallas Country Club golf course. In 1962 the owner/manager was John Coyle with the program director
Program director
In service industries, such as education, a program director or programme director researches, plans, develops and implements one or more of the firm's professional services...

 being Dillard Carerra. At that time the station was an FM powerhouse breakthrough at 119,000 watts in full stereo.

The remarkable engineering of the audio was routed through a huge audio mixer with slider controls utilizing German silver rheostats. Audio phasing was a problem at that time. Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...

, for instance, used a reverse-phasing that prevented anything recorded by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 to be played, unless it was monaural
Monaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...

. The reverse phasing simply blanked out the audio tracks to a distorted muffle.

"The singing time clock" was one of the first digital breakthroughs – actually a marriage of digital and analog technology. The clock audio was recorded on 1/4" tape in stereo played on AMPEX recorders in individual segments, by the jingle singers at PAM's in Dallas. The project was huge, involving musicians, singers, and recording engineers who taped every minute on the 24-hour clock in at least two versions, to be played by the station at the appropriate minute. The sequential clock was synchronized to the individual tape segments. When the DJ pushed the button, the audience heard "It's nine forty-three on the Kayville Clock, K-V-I-L" or any imaginable variation of such limerick – and in stereo. The pronunciation of "KVIL" as "Kayville" is probably the best-known example of a station's call letters actually being sung or spoken as a word.

The KVIL logo was one of sophistication – the picture of a feminine hand with a bracelet. That logo was plastered all over Dallas on billboards, matchbooks, and most any imaginable media.

KVIL was the first station in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to broadcast Top 40 on FM and in stereo. The initial attempt in April 1967 was bold, offering good personalities and some interesting programming including the first Dallas broadcast of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...

album, played in its entirety on the evening of its release.

The 1967 to 1969 attempt to take on (the then very popular) KLIF
KLIF
KLIF is a commercial radio station licensed to serve Dallas, Texas, USA. The station is owned by Cumulus Media. KLIF broadcasts a conservative-leaning news/talk radio format to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.-Call sign history:...

 failed because FM was still a relatively new format and only a small percentage of people owned FM radios. FM was not even a "standard" feature in original equipment car radios until the late-1970s even though it had been an option since the early-1960s. Additionally, KVIL's AM broadcast was only operating during daylight hours when the evenings were critical to a top-40 station's survival in the ratings. The failing station suffered in several ways, including employees running off with the records (possibly in place of the pay they were likely not receiving).

Owner of KVIL from 1968 through 1973 was Highland Park socialite James B. Francis. In early 1969, KVIL starting broadcasting under the new management and spent several weeks broadcasting only music, no commercials except brief announcements by Ron Chapman, telling listeners what was in store. And this time it happened as planned. Ron's expertise in broadcasting and his popularity, along with the increasing popularity of FM stereo, brought the station to prominence. In 1973, KVIL was sold to Fairbanks Broadcasting and Chapman stayed on as morning DJ for many years after. KVIL hired Mike Selden from KLIF and installed Bill Gardner and Jack Schell in middays. This dynamic lineup along with programming insights from consultant George Johns and upper management direction from Jim Hilliard and Chapman's panache for marketing and promotion started KVIL's steady climb in the ratings.
For many years during the 1970s and 1980s, it was the top station in the market. It even put 90 minutes of its morning show on KXTX-TV for a week in May every year, to show extravagant stunts such as a camel race in the African desert. During the 1990s, it spent several years as the flagship station for the Dallas Cowboys
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise which plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League . They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas...

.

KVIL's programming was simulcast on both the FM (103.7) and AM (1150) signals. KVIL-AM signed on as a daytime-only station in 1960, and KVIL-FM was added a year later. Yet, despite an attempt to take on the legendary KLIF with a Top 40 music format in 1967, neither AM nor FM attracted a very large portion of the listening audience until 1969, when the station hired Chapman (better known to KLIF listeners as "Irving Harrigan") to do the morning show. At the same time, KVIL instituted a music format that was unique for its time, a cross between Top 40 and MOR which would later be termed "Adult Contemporary." The station was meant to appeal to adult listeners who had grown up with KLIF by projecting the same type of "showmanship" typical of Top 40 stations. KVIL first finished in Dallas/Fort Worth's top 10 Arbitron ratings in 1974 (the year after Arbitron combined Dallas and Fort Worth into a single market) and topped the ratings list for the first time in 1976.

AM 1150 adopted the calls KVIX and programmed a separate AC format from KVIL-FM for a short time in the mid-1980s. The station now operates at AM 1160 as conservative
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...

 talk
Talk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...

 station KVCE
KVCE
KVCE is a radio station in Highland Park, Texas that services the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The station is currently owned by Dallas Broadcasting, LLC....

, while KVIL continues with its AC format on 103.7 FM.

Today's programming features husband & wife team Gene & Julie hosting the morning show, and the syndicated Delilah
Delilah Rene
Delilah Rene Luke , almost always known mononymously as Delilah, is an American radio personality, author, and songwriter, best known as the host of a nationally syndicated nightly U.S...

 nighttime lovesongs program.

Every year in the middle of November, KVIL flips to an all-Christmas
Christmas music
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music normally performed or heard around the Christmas season, which tends to begin in the months leading up the actual holiday and end in the weeks shortly thereafter.-Early:...

 format that runs through Christmas Day.

The "Sunday Jazz Brunch" hosted by Tempie Lindsey (formerly of KOAI "107.5 The Oasis") was dropped from its programming as of September 27, 2009, and replaced with regular programming.

KVIL HD-2

When KVIL began broadcasting a second channel in HD Radio
HD Radio
HD Radio, which originally stood for "Hybrid Digital", is the trademark for iBiquity's in-band on-channel digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data via a digital signal in conjunction with their analog signals...

, KVIL launched "Chick Rock" (Rock for Women) on 103.7 HD-2. The HD-2 channel now broadcasts Christian rock
Christian rock
Christian rock is a form of rock music played by individuals and bands whose members are Christians and who often focus the lyrics on matters concerned with the Christian faith. The extent to which their lyrics are explicitly Christian varies between bands...

/adult alternative
Adult alternative
Adult alternative may refer to:*Adult album alternative, a radio format*Modern adult contemporary, a radio format*Smooth jazz, a radio format...

music as "Rise". It also broadcasts Christmas music from November 1st to the middle of November. From that time on, it switches to KVIL's AC programming when the main KVIL station broadcasts Christmas music from mid-November to December 25 every year.

External links


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