Broadcasting (Apr - June 1960)

OUR RESPECTS TO . . . Charles Fredric Rabell Fm is becoming a third air advertising medium, with astute advertisers setting up special fm budgets, distinct from and in addition to the sums allocated for advertising on am radio and television, according to Fred Rabell, president of the National Assn, of Fm Broadcasters. "Fm may be a minority medium for a number of years yet, in the sense of competing for mass audience with am or tv," he says, “but it is already gaining recognition as an unduplicated medium whose high qualitative audience and low cost-per-thousand entitle it to a wider acceptance by buyers than it has received to date. “For a long time, fm stood for ‘frustrated medium.’ Now fm can mean ‘for money’ to the station operator. More than half of the NAFMB member stations — and we’ve over 100 members — are operating in the black today.’’ Fm Formula ■ One of those prospering fm properties is KITT (FM) San Diego, co-owned by Fred and his wife Dorothy. The Rabells operate KITT with a small staff, handling much of the sales and programming themselves, even to working regular stints at the microphone. The result is a net income larger than when they operated an am station as well, Fred says. “Now we don’t have to maintain a big staff of salesmen, nor an extensive — and expensive— news operation. And with the type of advertiser who is acceptable to us — and vice versa — we’ve practically eliminated credit losses.” The secret of KITT’s success is twofold, Fred explains. One part is stated by the station’s slogan: “Fm means familiar music.” The other comes from a slide-rule analysis of the San Diego population that enables KITT to program enough of their own kind of familiar music to attract listeners from each ethnic group, yet not so much as to drive away other listeners with a different kind of familiar music in their backgrounds. “We offer an escape for our listeners,” Fred explains. “They’re escaping from what they don’t like on am and tv and we try to give them what they do like on fm. This policy has paid off. We get listed along with am stations, and ahead of a number of them, in the regular Pulse and Hooper surveys of San Diego listening. We’re sold out in the evening, when time is sold in 10-minute segments, and we’re doing all right in the daytime when we sell spots.” In and out ■ A pioneer in fm, perhaps the first to start multiplexing home programming with a background music service, Fred Rabell was also one of the first to make a profit from fm. That was in 1951. He did it by selling his station to the city of San Diego, which ran a highway through the place where the transmitting tower had been. Three years later, when the hi-fi craze hit Southern California, the Rabells again went into fm and, in 1957 when they sold their am station, KSON, they kept KSON-FM, changing the call to KITT. It is now completely automated and is completely converted to multiplexing, although the Rabells have sold the background music service, “putting us back full-time into broadcasting, where we belong.” It was more than 30 years ago that Charles Fredric Rabell first found that he belonged in broadcasting. A native New Yorker (born Feb. 14, 1909), he was assistant advertising manager of a Wall Street brokerage firm and in line of duty he prepared and broadcast an investment counsellor program. The program was shortlived, but his romance with radio had just begun. When he met John H. Perry Sr., who was trying to match his string of southern newspapers with radio stations, Fred needed no urging to go along. Starting at WCOA Pensacola, Fla., he moved to Panama City, Fla., where he put WDLP on the air, and then to WJHP Jacksonville, Fla. He might be there yet, if World War II hadn’t come along and turned him into Lt. (j.g) Rabell, USN. As flight NAFMB's Rabell Fm means 'for money' deck officer of the U.S.S. Santee he participated in the ETO invasions from Africa on up; as commander of a unit of LSTs he island-hopped in the Pacific. He was in Tokyo for the Japanese surrender and three days later was on his way home, discharged with the rank of lieutenant commander. Carolina to California ■ A group of businessmen in Asheville, N. C., where Fred had a summer home, had a permit for a radio station, third in the market, but needed a manager. Fred bought an interest, took the job, put in a formula of half local, half network (ABC) programming (“which I got from L. B. Wilson”) and was so successful that the group sold the station (WNCA) a year later. Dr. John Ward Studebaker, then U.S. commissioner of education, had a grant for San Diego and, like the Asheville group, needed someone with experience to get it going. Again Fred was the man and in July 1947 KSON went on the air with 250 watts and a music and news format. Fred had a minority interest. So had Dorothy (nee Ferguson), who had sold her newspaper holdings joining KSON as office and promotion manager. By 1951, when Fred and Dorothy were married and had bought out Dr. Studebaker to become full owners of KSON, it was one of the country’s three 250-watters with top ratings in their markets. High-powered competition eventually altered this happy situation and in 1957 they sold KSON, taking KXOC Chico, Calif., as part payment. They kept KSON-FM, which had gone on the air in 1954, and Fred commuted between San Diego and Chico for six months before deciding to sell KXOC and concentrate on building the fm property. Today he’s sure it’s the wisest decision he ever made. The Rabells live in a modern,. mostly glass house on Point Loma, overlooking the Pacific, with their animal kingdom: two cats (an aristocratic Siamese and a Mexican alley cat), an African parrot, a French poodle and a baby dachshund. Flying is their major hobby. They are both pilots and think nothing of running up to San Francisco for an evening of theatre or down to Mexico for a day of tropical sunshine. They also own a cabin cruiser, which could easily get to be another major hobby, but “who’d run the station?” Fred has two sons by a previous marriage: Jack Howard Rabell, who is chief engineer at KSON (AM) and Richard Watson Rabell, an engineer at Convair. In addition to being president of NAFMB, he is a member of the fm committee of NAB and of the Fm Broadcasters Assn, of Southern California. He also belongs to the Symphony Assn., Opera Guild and Fine Arts Society, all of San Diego. BROADCASTING, May 30, 1960 91