| Modern
radio promotions are anemic affairs. They give away trips and piles
of cash, but that's about it. No flash. No excitement. No balls.
The lawyers and standards-and-practices
people have long since had their way with the flamboyant radio
promoters of the 1950s and '60s. There was nothing anemic about
that bunch, who sent their disk jockeys to shower money on crowded
downtown intersections from atop buildings and conspired to sabotage
the competition.
Duncan Mounsey was one of the
most colorful of the lot. Gordon McLendon was another, holding
court in Dallas. Todd Storz directed his Storz Group from Minneapolis.
Some say McLendon invented the Top 40 (rock) format, while others
insist Storz did. Crowell-Collier ran a small chain of noisy rockers
in LA, San Francisco and Minneapolis that were influential beyond
their number.
Duncan Mounsey drew Albany-Schenectady-Troy,
New York State's Tri-Cities. He made the most of it. Having cut
his show business teeth as stage manager for the Rockettes and
listening to the programs of the fabled New York disk jockey Alan
Freed, Mounsey found his way to the powerhouse radio station WPTR.
Always with a cigarette in his
hand, a gleam in his eye and a smile that was one part sneer and
one part elf, Mounsey was as hard-swearing as he was creative.
Those who worked with him learned to filter the profanity;
that was Duncan. But when an uninitiated woman was present, invariably
aghast, Duncan would pause, mid-sentence, and address her: "I'm
sorry. You'll have to excuse me"--then unleash enough
expletives to scorch the walls. |
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Duncan
Mounsey was unquestionably an iconoclast, not given to convention.
He had put the station on the map with Barnum-like promotions
and brass-knuckle alley fights with the competition.
 It
was natural for him to smear scantily clad models with gold paint,
call them "The Golden Girls," and send them into downtown
Albany with live, adult lions to thrust promotional trinkets on
the citizens. He
had also directed a massive treasure hunt that tied up traffic
all over the Tri-Cities. He staged a "Tower of Talent"
featuring the top rock acts of the day for 40,000 screaming
fans. It was unheard of at the time. That and other publicity
stunts helped catapult the station to Number One.
The Tri-Cities media had never
seen anything like it, and they eagerly bought into Duncan's
antics.
But
Duncan needed a hit. His archrival, WTRY, over in Troy, had
bloodied him and taken the ratings lead, partly because of a
humiliating promotion for a new WTRY "mystery" air
personality, Ed Riley. The station had secretly bought advertising
everywhere--on billboards, in newspapers, and on Duncan Mounsey's
own WPTR. The radio spots were "teasers" that said,
"Ed Riley is coming. Watch for Ed Riley." (The promotion
led directly to the banning of such commercials. Now, all must
clearly identify the sponsor.)
Still smoldering from that
embarrassing scam, Mounsey plotted revenge. Enter a young disk jockey, who'd
been using the air name "Tommy Gunn" at WING in
Dayton, Ohio. Mounsey hired him and began to scheme.
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