Beaker Street, which first aired on clear channel KAAY AM 1090 from 1966 through 1972, was the first underground music program broadcast regularly on a commercial AM radio station.
Soon after news spread about the Ford sighting, the Little Rock, Arkansas, radio station KAAY posted a $1,090 bounty on the creature.
KAAY's cult status was forged in the late 1960s, when, after 11:00 each evening, the station abandoned the standard Top 40 format for three hours of underground music with the program Beaker Street hosted by Clyde Clifford.
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Its nighttime signal extended well beyond Little Rock and Arkansas, covering much of the Great Plains, North Central, and mid-south regions of the United States, leading to its sobriquet "The Mighty Ten Ninety." KAAY could be heard clearly at night in Key West, Florida, and as far to the northwest as Jamestown, North Dakota.
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Aside from adult contemporary currents and some country music, no tunes released past 1977 were being played since the station was now targeting baby boomers.
KAAY, a radio station originally licensed to Hot Springs, Arkansas, United States
KAAY |
By the 1950s, and continuing through the mid-1970s, many of the most powerful North American "clear channel" stations such as KDKA, WLW, CKLW, CHUM, WABC, WJR, WLS, WKBW, KFI, KAAY, KSL and a host of border blasters from Mexico pumped out Top 40 music played by popular disc jockeys.