Brownfield's First Day

It was January 2, 1973. In a memo to the nine affiliate radio stations we said:

"The essence of our existence is to provide solid, high-quality, information to the farmers of Missouri and at the same time provide an opportunity for each member station to realize a good profit because of increased listenership and added sales.  Or, in a few words: good--not fancy."

There was no opening theme or billboard. We called ourselves "The Missourinet" which reflects the smallness of our thinking. It wasn't long before we outgrew Missouri AND we'd added news programming in an additional network using "Missourinet". 

On that January 2nd, we fed eleven programs a day to nine affiliates: Boonville, Brookfield, Cameron, Lexington, Marshall, Moberly, Sedalia, Trenton and Warrensburg. Our studios were on West Dunklin Street in Jefferson City; unfortunately we haven't located a picture. There were just two of us: Derry and me. I operated the equipment and Derry talked. 

The air-check below --from KTTN, Trenton-- runs about 10 minutes and features our 6:40 am market report on January 23, 1973. It will give you an idea of how we sounded on a local station. While the first two commercial positions are for the network, we obviously hadn't sold them.

Today the Brownfield Network continues with the same mission articulated in 1972. And, candidly, the information today sounds very similar: "good, not fancy." Except we feed over 30 programs each day to 258 radio station affiliates across America's farm belt. 

Download MP3

--clyde

Comments

[John Perkins]

Great stuff Clyde...it's very interesting to hear how things started out. Good not fancy is a great way of putting what we try to do.

[Bud Fisher]

Clyde,

I thought I'd start at the beginning .. thanks for telling about what you are doing .. it will be a great read down memory lane.

I'll send you some more comments as I pass thru the years ..

bud