KQV
Q and A with
Bob Wilson
May 28, 2003
1. What radio personality influenced you into getting into radio?
A: By the time I was hired at KQV I was 31 years old so my entrance to radio at age 14 was not very recent. It came via the encouragement of a long-time Hollywood announcer Tom Cafferty.  He did a C&W show in the mornings at KXLA under the name Cactus Tom and then ran across Los Angeles and performed on KFAC the only classical music station of the time, as Thomas Cafferty. In those days it was common for announcers to buy the air time, provide the sponsor and produce the programs. Tom's country show aired just before Ernie Fords program who was at that time a staff announcer.  Later, he would add the "Tennessee".  I would sit in the announce booth with Tom and marvel at how wonderful was SHO BIZ!

2. Which KQV contest or promotion was your favorite?
A: I do remember KQV Kawasock's It To You...where we gave away a Kawasaki each hour for something like 114 hours. The mail bags of postcard entries filled our reception room.  We were also the cause of all the phones in the Golden Triangle going down when the systems were overloaded by responses to one of our phone contests.  The
phone company had to threaten us with loosing our phone cababilities if we did not stop the contest.  Then they were forced to give all the stations a special phone number prefix that would not bleed over into the entire system.

3. What moment was the highlight of your time at KQV?
A: Now my personal highlight at KQV wasn't as Morning Drive... it was in production.  I had originated some commercials for a local appearance of the Broadway show Hair and the people who owned the show liked them so much that for the next 5 years I continued to create commercials for them all across America and Canada.  Our studio engineers, Steve Conti and Ken Nixon presided over the production and dubbing and it wasn't long before we were turning out about a hundred dubs a week for Hair, Godspell and others. Later I was hired to produce and voice spots for Liza, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, Beatlemania, Superstar and many other Broadway shows.  I was fortunate to have a very healthy free-lance career while at KQV and we all had a warm feeling whenever one of my spots was aired on the competition. During my tenure at KQV I had upwards of sixty-two freelance clients in
Pittsburgh including five car dealers who each knew about the others and told me that for whatever reason my voice sold their automobiles! Obrien and Gary on WTAE would often pull five or six of my spots and run them back to back...much to my dismay!  We won a few national awards for our commercials too.

4. Of all the personalities you worked with at KQV, which one(s) were your favorite(s) to listen to?
A: We had so many great announcers on staff during my tenure that it would be difficult to select any single person as a favorite to listen to. Fred Winston, whom I had worked with in Omaha years earlier is one.  Kris Erik Stevens, also a friend from Omaha (he worked KQV as one of a long line of Johnny Mitchel's), is another.  Chuck Brinkman knew how to move the younger listeners and did so with style. Jim Quinn brought an excitment to Pittsburgh's nighttime radio. Perry Marshall was smooth and confident and had great pipes. It's a disservice to not list just about every jock who worked KQV between 1967 and 1973.  We just flat-out, did it all with panache!

5. If you had to pick one hit song you played at KQV, which one did you really hate?
A: It's impossible for me to include a single song that I disliked or liked...there were so many on both sides of the ledger.  "Shout" was masterful. I still have a special attraction to Windy as it was popular when I signed on in '67 and whenever I hear it I have fond memories of my first months on the air same for Light My Fire and Bridge Over Troubled Water.