It began way early for Phil Richardson. He was a kid growing up in Illinois, the son of a coal miner, when he heard his first radio broadcast.
An uncle had built a rudimentary radio, “the kind that Marconi built,” said Richardson, referring to the Italian engineer and inventor who was one of the early inventors of radio.
It was the early 1930s and the country and the world were struggling to emerge from the global economic collapse. What drew families together was the radio. Families would gather around a radio, sitting on the floor or a chair, to listen to serial programs, news reports, sporting events.
And when radios began to appear on store shelves or in the old Sears Roebuck catalog, “We lobbied our father to get a new one, a Zenith,” said Richardson, who then asked me: “Do you remember Zenith?”
The radio bug had bitten the young Richardson, who tinkered with radios, taking them apart and putting them back together and repairing them. He thought he would follow an older brother who went to college, earned a degree in engineering and ended up on a military base.
Instead, Richardson volunteered for the Army and celebrated his 18th birthday in the Philippines — the day the Japanese surrendered to end World War II.
As he approaches his 91st birthday, Richardson remains enamored with radio. On his small, hand-held radio sitting on his kitchen table in his northwest-side home, classical music plays when he turns it on. In another room is his amateur radio, which he uses to communicate with fellow ham operators around the globe.
Open up his veins and radio frequencies are sure to flow. Get him to talk about his life in radio and a marathon talk session will ensue. Understandably, because there is a lot to talk about from the years Richardson spent working in radio in Tucson, first with the rockin’ and rollin’ KTKT in the 1960s, and in the 1970s with country king KCUB, which one year earned national kudos.
“This was the apex of my life,” said Richardson, who nowadays dabbles as a writer. He has two self-published books of fiction and is writing about his life.
His radio days in Tucson began in 1960. Richardson, who was working at a Phoenix radio station, was lured to become KTKT’s general manager about the time the station went 24/7. The station’s studio and office were located in the downtown basement of the Arizona Land Title Building at Stone and Alameda. And one of his first decisions was not to change anything.
KTKT, with DJ sensation Frank Kalil holding down the 3 p.m. time slot, was king of Tucson radio with its “Color Radio” format, when radio shed its all-white play list and incorporated R&B music by black artists.
Richardson knew better than to tinker with a good thing. “It was a cannon, already loaded. I just lit the fuse,” he said.
As general manager, Richardson oversaw the station’s decade-long dominance in Tucson with its Top-40 hits format and local news reporting by radio personalities — Kalil, Jerry Stowe, Ray Lindstrom, Tom Madison and Dick Nelson, among others, and news reporters John C. Scott and Gene Adelstein, to name a couple.
By the early ’70s, when the Beatles and Marvin Gaye had replaced early ’60s favorites Percy Faith and the Everly Brothers, Richardson did opt for change. In 1971 he moved to KCUB to be the sales manager, where he teamed up with general manager and part owner Jim Slone.
KCUB occupied the bottom of the ratings rungs, but by 1976 was not only Tucson’s top radio station, but named by Billboard magazine as the Grand International Station of the Year.
In addition to his sales duties, Richardson reported the news and read editorials on KCUB. This led him to become more politically involved in Tucson. Richardson was already fully engaged in civic life, serving on various boards and commissions, but in the mid-’70s he helped lead a move to recall Tucson City Council members because of their decision to raise water rates.
Richardson would eventually have a slice of the ownership in KCUB, but after 10 years he moved over to KVOA, Channel 4, as editorial director in 1982.
He would end his years in the broadcast business when he led a group to apply for a radio license for Spanish-language station KQTL. He sold his interest in KQTL before it went on the air in 1985.
“One thing for certain, though,” wrote David Hatfield, the Arizona Daily Star’s radio/television columnist, in 1982, “A lot of people in Tucson know Phil.”
Commercial radio has radically changed since Richardson’s early hard-charging days. Radio stations are in the hands of out-of-town corporate entities, programming is decided with algorithms, and radio personalities have been drowned out by social media chatter.
Richardson has more to say about Tucson and radio. Here’s hoping he’ll finish his book.
