'The ZOO Wants You' adKZEW began the year by bringing live music to the ZOO listeners. First the ZOO brings you "The King Biscuit Flour Hour" every other Sunday night at 9pm. Then on Monday nights in cooperation with ABC television, the ZOO and WFAA channel 8 brings "In Concert" TV simulcasts (a Dallas-Ft.Worth first). On Saturday nights at 10pm is the ZOO Saturday night concert with a hour of recorded live music.

The Poor People's Concerts were at midnights after a local appearence of a nationally known act, later known as the Concert Replay.

The ZOO had the phone company hard wire twin (stereo) hi-fidelity lines to January Sound Studios and various venues including The Aragon Ballroom (later became The Electric Ballroom) and The Travis Street Electric Company. The ZOO would air live concerts from these venues for years to come.

KZEW's first print adTuesday, September 18th, 1973 at 6:00AM,
Ken Rundel keys his mike, "Welcome to the ZOO... ...you are listening to KZEW Dallas-Ft.Worth." The first song played was Simon and Garfunkel's "At the Zoo." Ira Lipson remembers, "There was a huge buzz in the air. We were ready to launch The ZOO. There was so much positive energy flowing through the station that we probably could have levitated if we wanted to. Ken Rundel launched us at 6 AM and we just kept soaring. Sure, there were a lot of little things that needed to be fixed, but the feeling was fabulous. We broadcast more than music that day --- we broadcast energy and confidence. The station was a gas to listen to. And the listener response was instantaneous. The ZOO was gonna be a monster." Gary Shaw also remembers that day, "The ZOO went on the air on my mom's birthday...so how could it fail?" Not only that, but the ZOO went on the air nine years to the day from when the Beatles played Dallas on their first U.S. tour. On the down side, the ZOO began on the third anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death.

In the summer of 1973, John Dew left W4 Detroit first to go to Dallas to talk about a position at Belo Broadcasting. John then calls Ira Lipson and asks him come to Dallas to talk to the Belo bigwigs. Ira leaves W4 and heads for Dallas, while Ken Rundel takes over as W4's Program Director. Reports state that John Dew and Ira Lipson originally came to Dallas to work for WFAA-AM and not FM, but the FM radio craze had just begun, even cars now had FM. John and Ira had already brought Detroit's W4 from number 12 to number 2 in two years, and this zookeeper believes someone saw opportunity. Dallas had an FM station, at the very center of the dial, in the 5th largest radio market in the country, that was not being fully utilized.

The KZEW story actually began in Detroit Michigan at one of the nation's first progressive rock radio stations, WWWW (W4) 106FM, where five original KZEW staff members had already teamed up to create the number two station in the Detroit market. Once a beautiful music station, in 1970, "W4" became an album oriented rock station and briefly styled itself "W4 Quad" during its brief use of quadraphonic transmission in the early 1970s. It is most remembered today as one of future shock jock Howard Stern's earliest radio jobs.

KZEW can trace it's roots all the way back to 1946 as Dallas' first FM radio station, the second in the state and 66th in the country. Belo Broadcasting's new FM station signed on October 5, 1946 as KERA-FM 94.3, only 6 weeks behind Houston's KTHT-FM. Call letters stood for a new "era" in broadcasting (not related to today's KERA).

ZOO collectors - got something in your collection that you would like to share with other ZOO Freaks? Something taped off the radio, captured from TV, or scanned from your collection? 98KZEW.com is embarking on recovering as many long-buried treasures as possible for our archives, and unfortunately that archive has holes. If you've got something we need, we would like to see it!

We're especially looking for:

* KZEW airchecks (any recorded ZOO audio)
* ZOO Tube, ZOO television commercials or any other ZOO related video.
* Buddy Magazines..especially during the ZOO sponsored era (Feb 76 - Apr 79)
* ZOO related articles, advertising, press clippings
* ZOO related photographs

Got something? Tell us about it. Give as many details as you can. Email us at zookeeper@kzew.fm