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WRITING RADIO: Malcolm Hukriede is an author of "The History of Radio: In Springfield, MO," a book he co-wrote with longtime friend Dan O'Day.
WRITING RADIO: Malcolm Hukriede is an author of "The History of Radio: In Springfield, MO," a book he co-wrote with longtime friend Dan O'Day.

Telling Stories: Longtime friends team up to pen book about radio memories in Springfield

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With a combined 90 years of work in the radio industry, longtime friends and former co-workers Malcolm Hukriede and Dan O’Day figured they had a memory or two they could impart in a book about their field.

That’s not to say that the duo’s first book, “The History of Radio: In Springfield, MO,” is focused on the authors. They each take a chapter of the 266-page book to reminisce, but for the most part they choose to let others do the talking. Almost 50 contributors, including on-air announcers Summer Stevens and Art Hains, as well as behind-the-scenes employees and executives such as Don Louzader and Mark Spinabella, are included in the book, O’Day said.

“I was winding down my career in radio in 2017 and I thought, ‘You know, no one has ever written a book about the history of radio in Springfield.’ I just knew there was lots of stories out there,” Hukriede said.

Hukriede, whose work in radio started in 1976 after getting hired at KICK 1340 AM, spent most of his career – over 20 years – in sales for the Springfield operation of Madison, Wisconsin-based radio and marketing network Mid-West Family of Cos. It was with Mid-West Family where he and O’Day began working together in 1999. The two, who said they’d known each other more as acquaintances since the 1970s, became fast friends once they were co-workers.

One revelation O’Day shares in his chapter of the book is his real name is Clyde Williams. When he started work in 1966 at KGBX-FM, it was decided by O’Day and radio program director Jerry Higley, who hired him, that a name change was in order. O’Day said he eventually settled on this “air name” because it made him sound Irish, adding he’s stuck with it for over 50 years.

O’Day began his radio career in 1960 at 14 years old via the West Plains High School speech and debate team. From 1963-75, he was an on-air announcer but eventually focused more on sales. Except for his start in West Plains and a four-year period in Omaha, Nebraska, O’Day devoted most of his career to Springfield radio, such as KWTO, which broadcasts on FM and AM stations, and KTTS-FM. He retired from Mid-West Family in 2010 and moved in 2017 to North Carolina to be closer to his son and two grandchildren.

Finding focus
Prior to the move, O’Day said he was approached by Hukriede about the book idea and quickly agreed to participate. Both decided to self-fund the book for an undisclosed amount.

“We just tried to figure out what the book would be about,” Hukriede said, adding they initially had the idea of finding out details such as dates people signed on to work and who owned what station. “That was just too boring for me.”

But then he came across a book that featured a series of World War II stories, which inspired a similar concept. Hukriede began holding pizza parties in the conference room at Mid-West Family, inviting active and retired radio workers in order to share their book plan – a process he equated to “herding cats.”

One of those who bought into the idea immediately was John Sellars, who calls himself “a fringe guy” in the world of radio, where he’s worked off and on for roughly 50 years. Past experience includes KTTS and KWTO, and Sellars currently hosts “Sharing Stories of the Crossroads,” a local history program he started a year ago on KICK. It’s a fitting venue for Sellars, executive director emeritus of History Museum on the Square. He has been involved in volunteering and leadership at the museum since its founding in 1976, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

“Radio was always an adjunct for me. It was always something to do along with other things,” he said. “It was exciting and fun.”

Sellars, who has known both Hukriede and O’Day since the 1960s, said he was glad to be a small part of the storytelling.

“A wonderful thing about this book is it’s such a broad spectrum of people from on-air to sales to engineering to every facet of the business,” Sellars said. “It takes all of them to keep it on the air.”

In the book, Hukriede reflects briefly on his career in sales, including a memorable 2008 for Mid-West Family in Springfield. He said the 13-person sales team, including O’Day, billed roughly $5.04 million, just over the $5 million sales goal. It remains the highest sales year in the company’s history in Springfield, he said.

Both Hukriede and O’Day said the landscape of radio, with large companies owning multiple stations across the country, doesn’t look much like it did when they came on the scene decades ago.

“You have three or four stations with one general manager, one sales manager, a bunch of salespeople and one engineer,” Hukriede said. “You have consolidation and economics.”

O’Day said because so much of the industry is now automated and digital, the music is highly researched and sterile. In sales today, you must diversify, he said.

“You no longer just do radio. You get your clients involved now in all sorts of media – television, radio, podcasts,” he said.

While there’s plenty of other media to gain the attention of U.S. consumers, radio still leads the pack in monthly reach, according to an April 2022 audience insights report from media researcher Nielsen. The report notes radio has a monthly reach of 93% of U.S. adults, followed by television at 90% and smartphones at 86%. When considering audio as a whole, inclusive of AM/FM, streaming audio, satellite radio and podcasts, the universal monthly reach is 99%, according to the report. That remains ahead of total usage of television, incorporating live and time-shifted TV, DVDs, game consoles and streaming devices, which reaches 96% of adults.

On the journey
When starting the project in early 2017, the authors didn’t envision a journey that would take six years to complete.

“COVID just shut it down for about two years,” Hukriede said, adding the book was self-published last month and edited by Holly Atkinson, daughter of the late John Stephens, a longtime local on-air radio announcer.

The book is for sale as a paperback on Amazon and digitally on Kindle, and O’Day said they’ve sold roughly 35 copies online three weeks after its release. Locally, the History Museum is the current lone retail outlet.

“We haven’t had time to go to Barnes & Noble,” Hukriede said, adding the two authors have sold nearly all 100 books in its initial print and just ordered another 60 copies.

Hukriede said their investment is about double what they estimated when they started the book.

“We were flying blind, but we enjoyed what we were doing,” he said.

Through the process, the authors recognized there’s more stories to be told than they had room to fit in one book. A second volume is under consideration once financing is figured out, Hukriede said.

“It was so expensive that we aren’t going to do the second one without people donating,” he said with a laugh. “Let’s put it that way.”

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