The one liners and practical jokes off the air among McLendon's DJs wasn't limited to the programming staff. There were on and off the air antics in the KILF newsroom such as the memorable two below.
News stories were written by the news reporter on the typewriter on individual pages that were 8 inches wide by about 10 inches long. The newsman was responsible for writing the 12-15 stories to be delivered during a 5 minute newscast, which included a sixty second commercial.
Newsmen at KLIF generally held the stories in their hands in a stack all together and had them organized by priority. As a newsman finished reading a story, he would take it off of the top of the papers he was holding together upright in a reading position, and begin the next story.
As this veteran newsman, who will be nameless was doing the news, and was into about the second story, another KILF newsman took out a cigarette lighter, walked over to him, and set the entire newscast he was holding on fire from the bottom as he held it on both sides. This was really news "hot off the press."
He didn't miss a beat. He turned his arm to the side in a sweeping motion and threw the flaming news copy across the room as he continued to deliver the news without missing a beat. He adlibbed the remaining ten or twelve burned up stories from memory without missing a single word or story. He became a KLIF legend.
In another KLIF News practical joke, one of the KLIF DJs hired a waitress from the Cellar, a nightclub right across the Street rom the KLIF Golden Triangle, to pay a visit on a KLIF Newsman as he delivered the news on the air at the top of the hour. She approached him as he was on the air as she began to remove her clothing and unbutton his clothing. He was unfazed, and did not even stutter as he finished the live news cast. An ultimate professional. Another KLIF legend was born.
These are a couple of things that made working for the McLendon stations so interesting.
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