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Young Storz, who keeps tuned to his stations with a pocket-size transistor set and earpiece (see cut), promptly lopped off KOHW's "minority programs," e.g., classical and hillbilly music, closed down the station's unprofitable FM outlet. Aiming a barrage of popular music at "the average housewife," Storz soon concocted his first giveaway scheme. The station broadcast a street address at random, paid the occupant of the "Lucky House" up to $500 if he called the station within a minute. Storz copyrighted the idea, now earns $600 a week from other stations that he has licensed to use it. A similar Storz giveaway, in which the station selects prizewinning telephone numbers, had to be dropped by KOHW this month when the telephone company complained that hundreds of subscribers were being bombarded with idle calls from jackpot hunters.
Six months after Storz took over, KOHW was in the black. From seventh place among Omaha's seven stations, KOHW in two years went into first, last month claimed 48.8% of Omaha's total afternoon radio audience v. its nearest competitor's 20.4% Hooper rating. In 1953 Storz's Mid-Continent Co. paid $25,000 for WTIX, New Orleans' "good-music station." He substituted the Storz for mula for symphonies and sonatas, soon had other local stations imitating him. Encouraged by Storz to try out new "refinements," i.e., audience-boosting giveaways, WTIX recently assigned one of its six disk jockeys to throw away dollar bills from a downtown rooftop at rush hour. When the disk jockey was hauled off to jail for stopping traffic, 1,000 sympathetic listeners were persuaded by WTIX to go down and bail him out. WTIX fans also boosted the station from eleventh to first place in less than a year; advertisers' billings have soared 3,000%.
Traffic Tie-Up. Next stop for Storz was Kansas City. He snapped up WHB for $400,000 in 1954, in six months pushed the station's audience rating from fourth to first place, made giveaways the city's No. 1 all-weather sport; e.g., one Sunday last October a $2,000 WHB cross-town treasure hunt caused such confusion that Police Chief Bernard C. Brannon said the pastime should be banned. WHB is now Storz's biggest moneymaker, grosses $2,000,000 a year.
When the giveaway king bought WDGY in Minneapolis for $334,000 last January, rival stations sent scouts to spy out Storz's stunts in other cities, have since handed out $60,000 on competing giveaway programs. Nevertheless Storz has already jacked his station up from eighth to second place, trebled advertising volume.
On every station he has bought, Storz has raised salaries and cut staffs, says: "We'd rather pay one good man three times what we'd pay for three mediocre ones." He is shopping for two more stations, to raise his bag to seven, the legal limit. Storz professes to be uninterested in TV. Says he: "Our formula is good as long as radio is good—and we think radio is good forever."