$85,000 Goes Into
KQV's Street Level
Studios On Corner
Passers-by in 7th Avenue Can See
Operations of Radio Station
By Fred Remington

   Any day now Pittsburghers will be getting their first look at the new KQV studios, built at a cost of $85,000 and unique in American radio stations.

   Behind the wooden fence at the Smithfield and Seventh corner of the Chamber of Commerce building, workmen are installing the gold and blue aluminum facing of that portion of the building.  Already in are the huge double windows through which passers-by can watch the KQV disc jockeys and newscasters at work.  The station's broadcasts will be piped out to the sidewalk, softly so as not to bemuse passing traffic with music and commercials.

   A special blazer-type jacket is being designed for KQV's on-the-air personnel, since they shortly will be performing in front of the live audiences passing on Seventh Avenue.

   Inside, it is hard to recall that the chic, coolly modern offices and studios once were a drug store.  The studios you'll see from Seventh Avenue are suspended from above and real gingerly on rubber treads to eliminate vibration from the street.

   All in all, KQV has changed it's physical appearance as completely as it has changed from it's old network format to it's present Top Forty programming.

   "When we moved down from the 14th floor." said Ralph Beaudin, the youthful general manager who has made such sweeping changes in Pittsburgh's second oldest radio outlet, "we left everything up there except seven typewriters."

Street Crowds applaud KQV Staff
By Fred Remington

   At KQV, Pittsburgh's most visual radio station; announcers and disc jockeys are pretty well over the nervousness they experienced at working in view of Seventh Avenue traffic.  There's not a minute of the day or night that someone isn't looking in on KQV's shows through the big double glass, ground floor windows.

   On day three staffers were recording a commercial in one of the fish-bowl studios.  The sound was audible in the street where a throng was watching the proceedings.

  The three who were doing the 30 second spot, Chuck Doherty, Alan Boal and Roy Elwell couldn't get it down to suit them, and did it over and over.  At length Doherty held up his hand, thumb and forefinger, forming a ring of satisfaction.  The crowd burst into a cheer.

   "We've timed the crowds." said Ralph Beaudin, KQV's general manager.  "The average person watches for 2 1/2 records or for one 5 minute newscast."

   The KQV disc jockeys and newsmen are forbidden to make reference on the air to crowds outside on the street, the theory being it would give the radio audience a sense of being left out of something.

KQV Light Panel Draws Questions
By Fred Remington

   KQV gets around 20 phone calls a week and as many as a dozen persons dropping into the station seeking an explanation of it's "light panel." The panel is in the station's ground floor studios in the Chamber of Commerce building, visible to passers-by on the Seventh Avenue side.

   It has dozens of small red, green, amber and white lights which flash in varying patterns. Meanwhile the station's music is softly piped to the outside of the building.
   "If you listen to the music and watch the lights you quickly see the rhythm of the music in the pattern of the flashing lights/" says Ralph Beaudin, KQV's manager. "Different frequencies or pitches activate different circuits. A full orchestra will light up the whole board."
   For all it's value as a conversation piece, the panel has never been given a name.