A Bittersweet Broadcast Love Story: KIKO Radio signs off after serving the community for over 50 years

The closure of a small-town radio station may not come as a surprise to young generations or those living in large cities, but for a small community like Globe-Miami, the end of local radio station KIKO in recent months comes as a huge blow.

The community enjoyed what the station’s founder referred to as “little town radio” for more than six decades.

“I was sad that it closed,” former KIKO news anchor Liz Mata says. “But, change is inevitable… Social media and the internet have pretty much ‘dinosaured’ a lot of media.”

James Barter, more affectionately known by locals as “JB,” spent the last 20 years on air at KIKO radio.

“I used to think it was in the hundreds,” he says, referring to the number of local listeners. “But I think it was in the thousands.”

According to RadioInsight, a radio industry news outlet, KIKO was sold in July of last year by John Low’s 1TV.com in a package deal, along with a Phoenix-based station, to Orozco Broadcasting for $2.4 million.

After months of trying to find other means to broadcast, the station officially went off air in December of last year.

Spanning 60-plus years, KIKO served as a source of entertainment, information, and local connection. Of course, it was a go-to for listeners to catch country, pop, rock n’ roll, Larry King, sports, and broadcast news.

Yet, it also offered the stuff of small-town variety: the morning call-in show “Open Line,” “The Money Tree,” a sort of trivia contest where callers could win $20 or more, and the daily “Trading Post,” (long before the days of Craigslist or the Internet). Locals could tune into high school football and basketball games, community interviews, coverage of yard sales and church bake sales, or afternoon Apache programming geared toward the San Carlos Apache population.

“I’m having a hard time adjusting,” JB laments, reflecting back on it all.

Up to the station’s final days, JB had known the same routine: wake up every morning at 5 a.m., get to KIKO by 5:30, have a quick breakfast, put on the national news on air from 6 to 7, and then get on the air live.

His segment included a weather report, Mexican music, sports, old-time rock n’ roll, the Trading Post, oldies, and call-ins from around town.

“Now I’m unemployed, at 85, and looking for what to do today, so I’m having a good time, hah!” he laughs. “I’m just going to live the quiet life, I guess.”

The closure of the radio station puts an end to an era that began in 1958 with the work of Willard Shoecraft, a self-taught radio broadcaster, founder of KIKO, and eventual inductee of the Arizona Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

“He had a very unique broadcasting presence,” recalls Mata of Shoecraft. “People just loved him.”

Shoecraft moved to Globe in 1943, just four years after working a gig right out of high school at KGLU in Safford, and accepted a job at Globe radio station KWJB.

On June 13, 1958, Shoecraft took KIKO-AM 1340 on air for the first time. The station originally broadcast from the Copper Hills Hotel lobby, until Shoecraft acquired Inspiration Copper Co., where he built a mobile-home park and relocated KIKO headquarters.

With Shoecraft’s oversight, KIKO evolved into a full-fledged studio, what JB refers to as the “Taj Mahal of radio stations in America.”

“There’s not another one like it,” JB says proudly. “Every radio station I ever went in was like a closet. One room. This place had sales desks and rooms, and it had men’s and women’s bathrooms, it had an office for Lucy, an office for Willard, four production rooms, and an interview room in the front for anyone who came in to be on the air. It was just incredible. And the property is huge… It’s in perfect condition. It’s no doubt the best radio station in America.”

Just before KIKO’s debut in June 1958, The Arizona Daily Star published an article highlighting Shoecraft’s unwavering determination and work ethic, reporting that the entrepreneur joined a team of diggers to dig a ditch for an electric line for the new station. At that time, the 37-year-old was both owner and manager of the station. What reportedly left bystanders especially awestruck, however, was that Shoecraft carried out the task despite a handicap he’d had since a childhood accident – missing both legs.

He seemed to quickly gain the admiration and respect of the community. 

“He was just one hell of a guy,” JB says fondly. “There was nobody like Willard Shoecraft that I ever met in my life.”

“He went on to let nothing stop him from achieving success, and he was recognized by the industry, by the state of Arizona, as being one of the best people in radio, in the history of radio,” JB adds.

In 1979, Shoecraft launched KIKO-FM with what was reported as “the highest FM signal possible, carrying 80 miles into Phoenix.”

Aside from a brief break with the station when Shoecraft intended to retire –  according to the LA Times, he sold the stations in 1987 for $1.75 million and bought back the AM station in 1988 for $125,000 – he ran the station until his death in 2000. His family continued to run the business as Shoecraft Broadcasting, Inc. until the transfer of the stations’ licenses to 1TV.Com in 2008. The former trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable reported that the sale amounted to $1.025 million.

By this time, Shoecraft had molded the station into something that became deeply ingrained in the community. He created a gold standard for small-town radio – a torch that those like JB and Mata carried through the station’s last years, along with Lucy Rodriguez, the station manager.

“That woman has single-handedly run that station for years since [Shoecraft’s] passing,” Mata says of Rodriguez. “Managing the employees, keeping our affiliations with the Diamondbacks and Suns and the Cardinals… She’s done it on her own.”

Over the years, the station saw the talents of many who became household names in the community, including news anchor Ted Lake, and early morning radio host Gene Pearsall (who also managed the station). And, there was Pete Oviedo.

Thomas Torrez remembers watching his grandparents, Pete and Eliza “Leecha” Oviedo, put together content for KIKO’s Mexican music program “La Hora Mexicana,” as a kid growing up in Miami in the ‘60s. Sometimes they worked in KIKO’s recording studio, and sometimes they worked in the recording studio on the lower level of their home on Bailey Street, where Torrez’ grandfather had two walls nearly filled with shelves of 78 rpm LPs (vintage records).

“He and grandma would typically tape his Sunday program down there,” Torrez recalls. “They would go down there and have their equipment all powered up; they would make sure that [my brothers and I] understood we needed to be quiet.”

“There were times we were banished,” he laughs.

The rest of the week, his grandparents broadcast “La Hora Mexicana live,” directly from KIKO’s recording studio, which he remembers as a double-wide trailer at the time.

“Grandpa had poor vision,” he explains, “so grandma did a lot of the background, detail work. She would write huge notes on paper so grandpa had his script and his playlist.”

“There’s a lot of hours that they would put in outside the studio, outside the actual program, just to keep it going,” he adds. “But it was a living, they seemed to like it, and they were a good team.”

They would take a lot of song requests that Torrez’ grandmother would write down and later search for in her husband’s record collection. 

When it was time to play a song, Pete would signal Leecha, and she’d very gently lay the record needle on the correct part of the record to start a song.

The program opened with “La Marcha de Zacatecas,” a historic folk song, Torrez remembers. The show ran more than 40 years from the time Pete started it in Morenci through the time he brought it to Globe, up until his retirement from KIKO in 1979.

Later, Torrez’ father, Manuel Torrez, Sr., would follow in Oviedo’s footsteps, producing a KIKO program in the evenings called “Noches Alegres” for several years.

Meanwhile, JB’s interest in radio developed even before KIKO’s inception. It was something he had wanted to do since he was 17, when he walked into KWJB with a high school classmate.

“When I went in there and saw what was going on, why, I wanted to be a DJ,” he remembers.

After graduating from Globe High School in 1957, JB went to take radio and broadcast classes at ASU. Not long after, once he had his own show on the campus radio station, he was offered a DJ position in Squaw Valley. He dropped out of college and traveled there, only to find the spot had been given to someone else.

He didn’t pursue radio after that; instead, he spent the next 30 to 40 years in the food and beverage industry as a bartender and, later, a restaurant manager.

Eventually, he wound up back in Globe, or what he refers to as the “village of his youth,” as a restaurant manager at Jerry’s.

Every couple of weeks, he would write and record spots for KIKO radio to promote Jerry’s, which he gave to Rodriguez.

During that time, he also got to know Shoecraft.

“When I got through in the production room, I’d be walking down the hall, and I’d hear this, ‘hey you!’” JB recalls. “And so I’d go in and sit down with Willard, and we would chat for 10, or 15, or 20 minutes, and we’d trade stories like crazy.”

In 2002, shortly after JB decided to “call it a day” and left his position with Jerry’s, Rodriguez invited him to work at KIKO. JB jumped at the opportunity.

“So then I spent the next 20 years, not in food and beverage anymore, but back in radio!” he exclaims. “Oh my gosh!”

“I was there at 5:30 in the morning, every morning, without fail,” he adds, barring the one occasion the electricity went out at his house because of a snowstorm. “I loved the job.”

In more recent years, KIKO listeners also got to know the voice of Mata, originally from Miami, as she reported local news on KIKO until the summer of last year.

“I just always had a love and passion for [radio],” she says, adding that she was one of those kids who carried around a recorder with a mic. “I was always pretending that I was interviewing people.”

As an adult, she initially spent years working in the chip industry in Phoenix. Later, she returned home to Miami with a goal in mind.

“I’m going to love my job this time,” she remembers telling her husband.

So, in the late 80s, she applied to work at KIKO and was hired by Shoecraft. 

“Are you going to put a woman on the airwaves, ever?” she remembers asking Shoecraft.

He asked her if she was up to the task. She agreed to audition and read some scripts.

“You’re hired,” she remembers him saying.

“As destiny would have it, I ended up as a news broadcaster,” she says.

She learned the craft hands-on, trained by Shoecraft, and Lake, who acted as her mentor and had been with the station since KIKO’s beginnings.

“Working at the radio station with them, they kind of just took me on board and trained me,” she recalls.

She learned the ins and outs of news reporting and commercial production from them.

“I sincerely feel that I learned from the best,” Mata says of Shoecraft. “I always admired his sound, his presence. I was able to master my craft by taking what he taught me and applying it.”

Like JB, Mata started her days at 5 a.m. For the next couple of hours, she assembled and produced her daily news segment, conducting interviews, gathering recordings, talking to law enforcement, fire agencies, and local government.

Around 7, she would get down to the station with her manuscript and record my news. By 7:30, she had the morning news covered.

“And I never felt like I worked a day at KIKO,” she says. “I was a perfectionist about my audio production, and I would really have to discipline myself to be mindful of how many hours I was there, because time flies when you’re happy.”

She worked at KIKO full-time until the early to mid-90s, when her daughter left for college and Mata wanted to find higher-paying work to support her. She continued to work collaboratively with KIKO on a part-time basis.

Mata returned to KIKO full-time around 2018 to replace Roland Foster, who was preparing to retire.

“When I was in news, in broadcasting… I would always try to not sensationalize on the negative, speak the facts, and be considerate of people hearing what was being said.”

This approach was especially important during the COVID pandemic.

“My objective was to try to keep people out of panic, keep them just informed with the facts, staying away from all politicization of the circumstances,” she recalls. “There were times where there were so many deaths, I wouldn’t even do obits… It was very hard.”

Another memorable broadcast experience for Mata was when the Town of Miami flooded.

“I had someone call me and say, you know, there is water rooster-tailing off of the bridge that crosses the highway in Miami, and that water is coming on to the highway,” she remembers.  

“I drove down there to get a beat on that, and my gosh, by the time I drove close to the Pinto Valley turn-off, in Miami by the park, the water was two-foot deep there, and I remember standing there watching and going, ‘you stupid, Liz,’” she laughs. “I went to the radio station, got on the mic, and I advised people to please, find higher ground if they could.”

And, there was the Telegraph Fire in 2021. Mata was forced to evacuate her home, but she was still on the airwaves every day broadcasting from Mesa, providing updates on the acreage consumed and what the containment numbers were.

“Those were probably the most memorable events in broadcasting, were the fires, the floods, and COVID,” she concludes.

Carlton Cyrus Rahmani, a broadcast engineer who spent his childhood in Globe, has fond memories of KIKO, which he shared both on Facebook, alongside hundreds of others after the closure of the station, and directly with Globe Miami Times. 

“I was listening to KIKO since my family moved to Globe in late 1979,” he recalls. “KIKO radio was the first broadcaster whose call sign I remember. We called it ‘K-I-K-O’ AND ‘KEE-KOE.’ No one bickered over it, because either way it was catchy.”

Now Rahmani works for Louisiana’s oldest TV station, WDSU, in New Orleans, and credits the station with kindling a bit of his interest in broadcasting.

“If I had the money, I’d buy the station, transmitter, and license and just keep broadcasting, keeping it eclectic, like I remember it,” he says.

“It was America,” he concludes. “Small town, diverse, made for and by the community…KIKO will be missed.”