Brian Johnson writes in a message to Jostein Mork
 BJ> Once in a great while I am able to pick up WCCO radio from 
 BJ> the Twin Cities. When I attended high school in Minneapolis 
 BJ> back in the 1960s, my favorite program on CC'CCO was Franklin 
 BJ> Hobbs doing his program Hobb's House. Radio has changed a whole 
 BJ> lot since then. I also remember Bill Diehl on WDGY. I'm showing 
 BJ> my age here. Happy Monitoring...Brian.
I have worked with both of those gentelmen.  (Bill on only a couple of 
occasions.  He probably wouldn't remember me.)  But Hobbs got me into trouble 
by presenting requests for projects involving the expendature of significant 
funds as having been cleared by management.  They hadn't been - and I really 
should have checked!    Oh well.
  
Bill is still alive and well and doing car remotes on WCCO on Saturday 
mornings.  he had been on KSTP-AM for a few weeks, but that fell through.
  
Franklin Hobbs finished his days on KLBB - 1400 KHz, 1KW St. Paul, MN - and 
died about a year and a half ago.  I think he was still working when he died.
  
It was truly the end of an era.  Hobbs used to do his weekend show on WCCO-AM 
as a "remote" from his lake place about 150 miles north of Minneapolis.  The 
station had a full broadcast telco circuit installed just so he could do 
that.  Now that's "pull!"
  
WDGY is now KFAN.  You say that you heard it in California?  It has a 9 tower 
array that points just a tad east of north.  It looks like the pattern from a 
shotgun microphone - very directional at night.  You might have actually 
heard the signal coming around to you from the south after bouncing all of 
the way around!  They are also broadcasting form a site about 20 miles south 
of where they used to be - the city grew out south of them and people just a 
couple of miles south of them couldn't hear them at night.  And all of those 
acres in Bloomington are now condos or apartments.  The land sale paid for 
the new array.
  
I am no longer in the broadcast business because of the kinds of changes that 
you mention.  Management no longer respects good engineering - as well as the 
cheapening of the talent end of the business.
 
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