KONP marks 70th year

Formats come and go, but dedication to community remain solid for 7 decades

By Patricia Coate • February 11, 2015 5:47 pm
General manager and co-owner of KONP Todd Ortloff poses in the all-digital control room.
General manager and co-owner of KONP Todd Ortloff poses in the all-digital control room.

 

by PATRICIA MORRISON COATE

Sequim Gazette

In the winter of 1945, across the country, including the Olympic Peninsula, food, sugar, clothes and shoes, coffee, gas, fuel oil and tires were rationed due to World War II. Amid the deprivations, however, there was something the 10,000 residents of Port

Angeles could get excited about — their own community radio station.

On Feb. 3, 1945, at 6:30 a.m. KONP 1450 AM began its first broadcast day with a live “piano and chatter program” with Al Smith of CJVI in Victoria and music provided by the Port Angeles Concert Orchestra. The second day was devoted to congratulations from other Northwest stations and the airing of church services. At 250 watts, the amount allowable under its license, KONP wasn’t a beacon in the Northwest, but a source of civic pride nonetheless. On-air time was 5:30 a.m.-11 p.m.

“Charles Webster, owner of the Port Angeles Evening News, pursued getting a license in the 1930s and it was a big deal,” said Todd Ortloff, who has co-owned the station with Brown M. Maloney since 2002. “It took a lot of time because licensing new radio stations was held up during World War II.”

Ortloff said the call letters were partly federally regulated — all stations west of the Mississippi River had to start with a “K” — and partly a salute by Webster to Olympic National Park, which had been designated as a national park in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“It was a great moniker to hang on but KONP was never associated with the park,” Ortloff said.

Having worked in several capacities at the station since the 1990s, the 47-year-old Ortloff, now general manager, chats easily about the station’s history.

“The station was next door to where the Peninsula Daily News is, before it was built, and the building was on piers next to tide flats. From 1945 into the 1960s, the antenna was a 180-foot Douglas-fir with wires running the length of it. We broadcast from the original building until 2008 and from the metal lattice antenna until 2012, which was dismantled in 2013. Now our antenna is on Melody Lane, up Golf Course Road,” Ortloff said.

“In the old days, there were programs like remotes from Bernie’s Restaurant and Lounge and over the organist, listeners would hear banter back and forth between the customers. The format was all over the place: chatter programs, kitchen chatter, interviews with visitors coming off the ferry and always the music of the day,” Ortloff said. “A lot of kitschy things!”

The 1940s were the Big Band/Swing era and in the 1950s-1960s, KONP played the Top 40s. Ortloff said there was a tremendously popular program called “Tunes for Teens” that high school students helped produce. In 1951, when Scooter Chapman was a junior at Roosevelt High School, he began a 64-year affiliation with KONP which continues to this day. At 80, he’s been the station’s sports director since 1961.

“He’s still going strong and he’s probably the closest thing we have to a celebrity,” Ortloff said.

In the mid-1980s, the station increased its power to 1,000 watts, where it remains today.

The 1990s brought several modernizing changes — being the first in the state to use a computer-based on-air system for commercials instead of tapes in 1991 and changing its on-air moniker to “Newsradio 1450 KONP” and format to an all news and talk format. In 2008, KONP added an FM translator, now airing around the clock on 101.7 FM.

“Through the years, we’ve always been a community station. Local news is what we’re about,  local sports is what we’re about,” Ortloff said. “It’s amazing how important radio is to people. They want to know what’s going on. After all these years, we’re still in the community’s heart. That’s why I love radio. Even with all the technology — the entire station is interfaced with computers for satellite feeds and audio sources — it still has charm to it.”

Ortloff said KONP will celebrate its 70th year by having several listener-type contests throughout 2015 and stressed he appreciates the station’s family like environment.

“Onward and upward to the next 70 years,” Ortloff enthused. “We’re always looking for ways to serve the community and better the business every day.”

Visit the station’s website at www.konp.com for the full breadth of its services in central and eastern Clallam County.