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KTAO-FM was a free-form radio station in Los
Gatos, California, that existed from March, 1969, through June,
1974. Operating at 95.3 FM, it was run essentially as a "benevolent
dictatorship" by Lorenzo W. Milam, a founder of
KRAB
in Seattle and KDNA in St. Louis, who had purchased radio station KLGS
(soon to be renamed KTAO), along with veteran literary editor
William Harvey "Bill" Ryan III. By
1970, Milam had purchased Ryan's share, and turned the station into a
freewheeling pastiche of ethnic, folk, Baroque, jazz, and freeform
music, hosted by a
number of disparate personalities
that controlled their own playlists, said pretty much what they wanted
to say, and in doing so, created a vibe that was essentially controlled
anarchy in radio. Although operating in the commercial band at 95.3 FM,
Milam cared more about producing quality freeform radio that in
gathering advertisers. Many of the advertisements created by the KTAO
staff were as entertaining as the programming, such as the "Bertolt
Brecht for Ford" commercial, cobbled together by combining Ford's canned
radio ad tape and the famed playwright's testimony before the House
Un-American Activities Committee (it's a safe bet Ford never heard the
ad). The station never made money, even with two attempts to achieve
some degree of financial viability. One of these attempts consisted of
selling the station's AM hours to a religious broadcaster, an experiment
that died after several months, and caused a bemused enmity between the
station's freeform programmers (who were eventually banned from being at
the station during the "religious hours") and the religious
broadcasters.
KTAO was famous for 72 hour
Flamenco and Indian music marathons, live avant-garde jazz shows,
lengthy audio collage mixes, and festivals of Bulgarian music, but
anything and everything was programmable, as long as it was
non-commercial in nature, and "made good radio." Milam routinely bought
entire catalogues of companies making ethnic records from around the
world, which were immediately catalogued and played on the air. Lorenzo
hated programming anything overtly commercial, refused to let anyone on
the air that had gone to broadcasting school, and eschewed opera (he
famously said that "You could fit all great opera on the head of a
pin").
Milam's weekly program guides included
insightful, nonsensical, and shocking essays, wrapped around the week's
programming. Program guide covers had nothing to do with the
programming, and many of the most compelling were created by artist
Peter Blind. The first 100 program guides were printed in 8 1/2 x 5 1/2
format, and the remainder (estimated at 32) were printed in 17 1/4 x 11
1/4 size. Sizeable but incomplete collections of these guides are
archived at the
Prelinger Library
and
History San Jose,
the latter of which is in the process of compiling a KTAO collection,
which will include program guides, ephemera, and air checks.
Lorenzo Milam was a contentious interviewer,
who loved tweaking local institutions such as the San Jose Mercury News
(which never gave the station publicity), and the town of Los Gatos,
never at ease with KTAO's programming and personnel, which clashed with
the "brand" being promulgated by the leaders of this conservative,
boutique-conscious hillside town. In protest, Milam and three other KTAO
staffers ran for public office on what they called "The Clean Slate,"
aiming among other things, to put a lid on the noisy Highway 17 running
through the town, and extending the narrow gauge steam Billy Jones loop
railroad to become part of BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). While KTAO
lasted barely 5 years, it set a standard for freeform radio that was
never equaled and will never be replicated in the politically-correct
world of today. Nothing at KTAO was politically correct. Several
offshoot projects were associated with KTAO, including the
Fessenden Review publication, and the avant-garde musical group
The Roots of Madness.
In 1973, Milam sold the station to commercial broadcasters, and sent the
remarkable KTAO record collection to another noncommercial station.
Perhaps the final legacy of KTAO was Milam's
'Sex and Broadcasting: a Handbook on Starting a Radio Station for the
Community,' published in 1975. In the book, much of the frivolity of
KTAO is described, providing living proof that Milam's theories on what
constituted interesting, important radio could indeed be put into
practice. Milam's opinionated, tongue-in-cheek, and often politically
incorrect writing was an essential part of the station's character. His
liner notes
for the Roots of Madness' LP 'The Girl in the Chair,' which he funded,
are a classic. Milam went on to write a controversial and fascinating
book on physical disabilities The Cripple Liberation Front Marching
Band Blues, discussed in a
wonderful interview with Barry Corbet
of New Mobility magazine.
We are in the process of putting together a
history of the radio station, in what will be a series of anecdotes
(there could never be a straight-line history of the station, because
there wasn't a straight line in the place). We're beginning with a
roster of
those that had radio programs at KTAO, because we're attempting to find
anyone that had a program there. If you did, check the list. If your
name isn't on it, send me an
email
with an anecdote about your time on the station, and we'll add your name
to the list. |
I'm
currently working on a manuscript detailing the history and influence of radio station KTAO-FM. 
