Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 39

D4 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 201 1 BUSINESS THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC HTfTTHlM. 1970: Phoenix New Times is founded. 1972: The Chase Tower (formerly known as Valley Bank Center and Bank One Center) is built and is the tallest building in the state. 1973 1975: Phoenix Manufacturing Inc. begins making evaporative coolers and Cathy's Rum Cake opens.

1976: University of Phoenix moves to Arizona. 1977 1977: "Star Bullock's debuts in Scottsdale. 1978 1979: The first Price Club in the region opens in Mesa. 1980 1970 1971 1974 1975 1976 1979 1972 aii 1111 1972: Civic Plaza opens in Phoenix. 1973: Peter Piper Pizza starts serving slices.

1979: The Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurs in Pennsylvania. 1976: Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles is killed. 1974: Raul Castro becomes the first Hispanic governor of Arizona. President Nixon resigns. Parker and Sons Inc.

opens. 1971: Greyhound Bus Lines buys consumer-product giant Armour-Dial and moves to Phoenix from Chicago. 1978: Carlos O'Brien's opens on Bethany Home Road. "Putting a KDKB bumper sticker on your car meant something about you," station co-founder Eric Hauenstein says. "me a i yi VT, jUa It win' Radio Continued from D1 lyrics the artists wrote, (was) kind of a voice for the younger people in Arizona, who were not so conservative, who felt disenfranchised by the government and politics of Arizona," said Eric Hauenstein, who founded the station with his friend, Dwight Tindle.

Tindle died five years ago. "Arizona was an extremely conservative state," Hauenstein said. "The Vietnam War was rolling. Many of the young men in our audience were either being drafted or knew someone who was. There were many cultural issues as well.

I don't want to say our success was due to the popularity of marijuana. But there weren't any other (alternative) voices out there at the time." Hauenstein, from Ohio, and Tindle, from Philadelphia, were in their early 20s when they launched KDKB with trust-fund money left by Tindle's late father. The young men had met two years earlier through a mutual friend after they both bailed out early from Woodstock and met at Tin-die's apartment to clean up. They discussed starting their own radio station. Tindle moved to Cincinnati, where Hauenstein worked for the legendary rock station WEBN, and in time they were traveling the West looking for a station to buy when they found KMND in Mesa.

was a small trust fund," Hauenstein said. "We went to the trust officer in Philadelphia and made a presentation to him. We had to get suits on. You should have seen those suits." The two got $350,000 from the trust officer, only about $165,000 of which they needed to buy the station, with the rest used for operations, he said. Even if its current musical lineup seems solidly mainstream, KDKB used a risky, new format when it launched, setting itself apart from other stations.

When KDKB went on the air, two rival "rock" stations on the AM dial in the Phoenix area, KRIZ and KRUX, played Top-40 music. During daytime hours only, a fledgling station with the call letters KCAC played "album rock," or free-format music not based on that week's top Dwight Tindle (wearing black cowboy hat among station that helped him and Eric Hauenstein purchase a station in sellers at record stores. KDKB took much of KCAC's staff, including legendary Phoenix-area radio personality Bill Comp-ton, for whom an East Valley concert venue would later be named. Compton played a central role in KDKB before he left in 1976. He died in a car accident the next year.

It wasn't all rock and roll, though. At 6 p.m., KDKB hosted an hourlong newscast that won a Peabody award in 1975. The award was given for superior public-service programming, including news stories on geothermal energy, coping with death and consumer-oriented news. "It is hard for people who use digital resources these days to fully understand what radio stations and music represented for people in the '60s, 70s and even '80s," Hauenstein said. "It really symbolized a person's political philosophy or whatever.

It went beyond the value of the music. Putting a KDKB bumper sticker on your car meant something about you." Young people at the time were eager for something other than the mainstream, he said. "At a certain point you know the vast majority of young men and women identified with that life group," he said. "That is the reason we were successful. We saw the end of the Vietnam War, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and major changes in the direction of the country and the state." With its high-powered radio signal and a spot on the FM band, KDKB quickly overtook its AM Top 40 rivals.

It simulcast the same program on the AM station included in the station purchase because most radio sets produced in 1971 couldn't pick up FM. "In 1971, only 15 or 20 percent of the radio sets in the country even had the capability of receiving FM," Hauenstein said. "We were fortunate to have an AM station because we wanted to get the people that were listening to KCAC. Many listeners in the first years only listened on AM." The partners sold KDKB to its current owners, Sandusky Radio, in 1978 for $4 million, although with format changes in subsequent years, the station's value probably rose north of $50 million before falling along with other radio stations, he said. "Were there times later when I saw what radio station values would bring that I would regret we sold as early as we did? Yeah, there were," Hauenstein said.

"But the amount of prosperity we garnered from that enabled me to have personally a marvelous few years." The partners pursued careers in media. Tindle died of cancer, and Hauenstein retired recently from radio in Salt Lake City and moved to Denver, where his wife, Abby Jones, is a lawyer. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona law school. KDKB has gone through several format changes over time, but maintains rock music as its core. The station now plays familiar rock hits from the past few decades, including the Stone Temple Pilots, Aero-smith, Incubus and Def Leopard.

The format has maintained a loyal audience, with the station boasting two generations of listeners who were raised on KDKB. "Since the radio station signed on it has been a part of the fabric of the Valley," program director "Nean-der" Paul Marshall said. He said he most recently was reminded at how strongly some listeners are connected with their radio station following the U.S. military's killing of Osama bin Laden, when he spent several hours taking listener calls and requests related to the event. "We are the original social network," Marshall said.

"Before there was an Internet, radio is where people went. People don't listen to radio for music. They listen to feel connected to something. It's humbling to be a part of something like that." employees) used a trust fund Mesa that became KDKB. kdkb Copper i l-ij-i.

ft Go anywhere in the world and you'll likely find a connection with the products of our Sierrita Mine. The mine now part of Freeport-McMoRan's Sierrita Operations south of Tucson produces copper and molybdenum, which are at the core of modern living today. Sierrita began producing these metals in 1970, significantly expanding production capacity and efficiency of the then-existing mining operations in the area. Copper, the metal most closely tied to economic growth, is a critical element in new technology and is gaining prominence for its antimicrobial properties, which reduces the risk of spreading infections. Molybdenum is a key component in steel-making, adding strength, heat and corrosion resistance to steel products.

Our metals provide the foundation for today's higher standard of living. We're more than mining, we empower progress. TRENDS Land fraud: Scandals involving organized crime marked the decade. A group of businessmen formed the Phoenix 40 to fix the city's business problems and fight organized crime (in 1 993 this group changed its name to Greater Phoenix Leadership), and the Legislature created a statewide grand jury to investigate corruption. Ned Warren accused of grand theft in relation to a land sale near Seligman, turned himself in to authorities in 1976.

In 1978, The Arizona Republic reported that nearly 1 00 people had been indicted or convicted of land "swindles" in the past four years. Now open for business: High-tech businesses increasingly played a role in the state's diversifying economy. Honeywell purchased the Process Control Computer business from General Electric, which later became the Process Solutions Division of Honeywell in Phoenix, according to the Honeywell Retiree Club of Arizona. With the booming growth, not only did several new businesses launch in Arizona in the 1 970s, but so did community banks to serve them. Among the first was the Bank of Scottsdale in 1974.

Bank of Paradise Valley opened in 1978. Prevailing prices: Five dollars would get you into the Merle Haggard show at Phoenix Symphony Hall in 1 974. Appliance TV City stores across the city sold 25-inch color televisions, "the largest screen made, from $299. It cost $2.50 to get into Big Surf in Tempe. A two-bedroom cottage home in Palm Lakes Village in Phoenix cost $18,950.

A two-night stay at the Arizona Biltmore for two cost $67, and for $5.50 you could add unlimited golf, tennis or horseback riding. Booming growth: Arizona's population surged in the 1 970s by nearly 50 percent, with new housing communities sprouting up from Fountain Hills to Dobson Ranch. The 1970 population was about 1.78 million, and it reached 2.6 million by 1979. Quote from the times: "A vacuum of leadership has left major urban goals unfulfilled. A climate of apathy has invited the presence of underworld figures and vice lords.

And tolerance by a leaderless public has made the growing Valley area a haven for violence, political opportunism, and greed." Arizona Republic Publisher Eugene Pulliam writing on the formation of the Phoenix 40 in 1975. Visitwww.fcx.com to learn more freepcrt- r.icr.ionAN T'z i Pnnnrn Pni I 1.