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...Storz newscasts, which ignore the U.N. for other international bodies, e.g., Anita Ekberg, are aired five minutes before every hour, so that they can catch listeners who switch off other stations' on the-hour announcements. Last week Storz was warming the mikes in Omaha and Minneapolis for "the biggest one-shot giveaway of all time on either radio or TV." The prize: two bank drafts for $105,000, each hidden within a ten-mile radius of Storz's Stations KOHW and WGDY. which will start broadcasting clues next week. (The insurance group underwriting the prize estimates that there...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: SHOW BUSINESS: King of Giveaway | 6/4/1956 | See Source »

...Turn the Set Off." Todd Storz first got interested in radio as a ham operator. After a three-year stint in the Army, he passed up the family brewery to take a whirl at being a disk jockey. He lasted only a short while after advising a woman who had written in to complain about his record selections: "Ma'am, on your radio you will find a switch which will easily turn the set off." In 1949, after working for another station as a salesman, Storz heard that Omaha's pioneer KOHW was on the block...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: SHOW BUSINESS: King of Giveaway | 6/4/1956 | See Source »

...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...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: SHOW BUSINESS: King of Giveaway | 6/4/1956 | See Source »

...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...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: SHOW BUSINESS: King of Giveaway | 6/4/1956 | See Source »

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...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: SHOW BUSINESS: King of Giveaway | 6/4/1956 | See Source »

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