Chickenman-WKLO exclusive?

[Max]

Just curious...I remember hearing Chickenman (He's everywhere! He's everywhere)...the greatest crimefighter the world has ever known, when I was a kid growing up. Since my near perfect memory of my childhood has a few swiss cheese gaps, I could have sworn I heard him on local station WQXE in Elizabethtown. Was he exclusively on the Big 1080 and THIS is what I'm remembering or was he actually syndicated and my memory serves me correctly?

Guys? Help!

[John Quincy]

It was syndicated.

It was produced by D i c k Orkin, who was in the production department at WCFL in Chicago. D i c k has gone on to a wildly successful career producing and voicing radio spots. (See www.radio-ranch.com/.)

You can still license Chickenman episodes to run on the radio:

www.sandyorkin-crs.com/cmtf.html

...or buy the whole series on CD for personal enjoyment:

danoday.com/chickenman/chickenman.shtml

[Travis]

Using the name, Travis Warner (Hey... it sounded good at the time) I was running Chickenman on WQXE (Quicksie) in Elizabethtown. That was the summer, or possibly fall, of 1974. Like the show said, "He's everywhere! He's everywhere!"

[bruiser]

I have several of the Chickenman vignettes. I found them in the newsgroups a couple of years ago.

[Max]

Travis! Are you joshing me? I had no idea you worked at Quicksie! That was my first job as a 16 year old in December of 1979. I left summer of 1980 and returned in the spring of 1981. So obviously you knew Bill Evans. Did you know Rich Upton (PD), Greg Mather (DJ) or Doug Simmons (Newsman)? I guess you worked when they were at the old shack near Glendale. I started there after they moved downtown across from KU. They moved 2 doors down a couple of years ago in the then vacant parking lot between the old A&P and PNC Bank (then it was probably First Hardin National Bank). Around that time did you know Bo Brady (Tad Murray) who later turned up on WKLO worked at WSAC in Fort Knox?

Small world indeed!

[John Quincy]

Former WKLO jock Jim Rivers (Hazeltine) writes:

Sorry I didn't post this on the AKY/KLO site -- somehow I've misplaced my registration/log-in. But for the real trivia freaks out there, here's additional stuff on Chickenman, about whom a short discussion appears on the WKLO Message Board.

Yes, Chickenman was the invention of thingy Orkin during his stint as production director at WCFL. And yes, he later set up his own shop called Radio Ranch in Los Angeles. One can still hear some of his work as spots for a local bank in Chicago.

Through one of those coincidences that can happen but once a lifetime, I once worked with Orkin -- in, of all places, Lancaster, PA. thingy was news/operations director of WLAN-AM, working for peanuts but repeatedly winning state-wide AP News awards for the excellent quality of his work in the station's one-man newsroom. A native of Sunbury, PA, he stayed at WLAN for years. And a Yale Drama School graduate, he enjoyed Lancaster, appearing often in plays at the local Green Room Theater run by Franklin and Marshall College. thingy was/is probably one of the most talented voices ever to grace a microphone, and had a truly remarkable set of pipes.

He received a steady flow of job offers during his multi-year tenure at WLAN, including a news gig at WFIL. But, given his dramatic flair, he really didn't want to do news, even though he was terrific at it.

The break he sought came in 1966. He was offered a job as Production Director of KYW, Cleveland, a clear-channel powerhouse owned by Westinghouse. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that NBC had violated anti-trust law years earlier by forcing Westinghouse Broadcasting to swap its Philadelphia facility (called WRCV under NBC ownership) for an outlet in Cleveland, and ordered that the swap be reversed. So KYW moved back to Philly, under Westinghouse, and became the all-news monster that it remains today. The Cleveland staff, now homeless, moved en mass to Chicago (Jim Runyon, Larry Lujack, Barney Pipp, et al), and became the only real competition that WLS faced in its entire CHR history. At WCFL, Orkin produced Chickenman.

But the real birthplace of Chickenman was Lancaster. Each Christmas, thingy put together an exceptionally well-produced mini-drama called "The Adventures of Henry Humble," a take-off on thingyens' "A Christmas Carol," for a local heating-oil distributor named Schwanger Brothers. Henry Humble bore a remarkable resemblance to the creature that later became Chickenman. Needless to say, the "Henry Humble" vignettes exceeded substantially the sixty-second FCC commercial limit, but they were so good, who cared?

During Chickenman's hay-day, Orkin graciously acknowledged the origins of his creation by granting WLAN a gratis subscription to the series.

-- Jim Hazeltine