KWOW AM:
THE BIG 16

At one time you could not go beyond the 1600 position on the AM dial. That was it, the tuner or dial would turn no more. A static-filled weak station at the end of the dial was KWOW. It was actually located off famous Route 66 in Pomona, but you could hear it in Los Angeles on a clear smogless day.

The station actually started out as KPMO, broadcasting from a trailer home in the middle of an orange grove. From this humble beginning came KWOW. In the early 1960's it played country music with a full news department. Songs like There's a Fool Born Every Minute (Skeeter Davis); Unicorn Song (Irish Rovers); Lord Mr. Ford (Jerry Reed); Happy Tracks (Kenny Price) and Walking On New Grass (Kenny Price) would be the staple of country KWOW. There was some evidence the people who owned country KIEV might have had some ownership of 1600 KWOW.

Sometime in the late 1970s or 1980s the station changed its format and went oldies but goodies. The news department was no longer and it operated three in a row hits of 50's and 60's rock 'n' roll.

A company song would come on with four or five singers singing in unison--"K-WOW!". At the top of the hour before the news you would hear an announcer say, "This is the Big 16- KWOW-Pomona!"

Where most stations in crowded Southern California used directional antennas, 5,000 KWOW was something of an oddity in that it was non- directional. As best as I can recall it was 5,000 watts 24/7. I don't recall there was any static and, in fact, KWOW had a better night signal than 50,000 watt KNX at the time.

A marketing scheme employed by KWOW used any song that had "sixteen" in the title. "Sixteen" was a main referral slogan for "The Big 16" on the radio dial. Some songs were Sixteen Candles (The Crests); Sixteen Tons (Tennessee Ernie Ford); Only 16 (Sam Cooke) and especially Sixteen Reasons by Connie Stevens.

Toward the end of KWOW, they played several songs over and over on a loop tape urging listeners to tune over to 99.9 FM KOLA radio if they wanted to hear the best in Oldies. One of the last songs on the loop tape that was played was "Lazy Days".

Around the late 1980s KWOW was sold and reemerged as KMNY "Money Radio", a financial and news station about real estate and the stock market.

Some of the radio hosts on KWOW Pomona-Los Angeles were Bob Bosche, Warren Deacon and Larry Grannis. Some of the songs played on "Oldies KWOW" were Willow Weep for Me (Chad and Jeremy); Secret Agent Man (Johnny Rivers); Summer Song (Chad and Jeremy); Summer Wine (Nancy Sinatra/ Lee Hazelwood); Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey), and many others.

KMNY and KWOW were listed in the L.A. radio page of the Daily News of the San Fernando Valley. KMNY is still listed today as a Los Angeles station.