Dan Jessop, operations director for KBZN ("The Breeze," FM-97.9) and KLO (AM-1430), celebrates his 40th year in Utah radio this month.
Jessop's radio career began at Ogden's KSVN on Jan. 14, 1968. His first duties included running the Sunday morning religion and public-affairs programming.
He said those duties didn't include much on-air time at first. In fact, the only times he opened a microphone in those first few weeks at KSVN was to say, "KSVN, Ogden," during ABC's news.
Jessop is one of Utah's premier radio veterans. He has the longest-running, continuous career in Salt Lake-area radios. He hopes he can make it to the 50-year mark.
"Hey, I love attention like anyone in radio, but it's no big deal ... it's not like I'm (Tom) Barberi or (Doug) Wright. I hope I'm consistently good and professional ... oh, and dependable," Jessop said when asked about his 40-year mark.
Among the Utah stations Jessop counts as workplaces are KVOG, KCPX, KUMT, KBLQ and "Magic 107.5."
"It's been lucky for me to be able to earn a living having fun all day on the job," Jessop said. "It's been an honor working with really talented people like Lynn Lehmann, Mick Mackay and so many others. Thanks to Wooly Waldron, my mentor, who was an incredibly talented program director and leader."
Jessop, who attended Weber State College, majored in sociology and journalism. "In my junior year, a really insightful professor asked me why I was pursuing social work when I sounded so great, and in my element, on KALL, her favorite station at the time. She was right," Jessop said.
Besides his current administrative/programming duties at KLO and KBZN, he is also an on-air host. He's a DJ on "The Breeze" from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. weekdays.
He's also done talk radio and even did some TV weathercasting on KSTU/Ch. 13 a few years ago.
• MORE ON KLO — A few weeks ago I investigated the meaning of the historic KLO (AM-1430) call letters. Here are still more possibilities to the meaning of the letters "LO":
The Ben Lomond Hotel was originally called the Bigelow Hotel from 1927-33. Just a year later, in 1934, the AM-1430 call letters switched from the original KFUR of 1924 to KLO. Note Bigelow has the letters "LO", as does Ben Lomond.
However, Dale Nelson, who worked at KLO from 1969-1976, said he has a history of KLO that was written in 1964. It says the call letters came from a "local Ogden" reference. He also said the claim that the LO call letters came from the phrase "love Ogden" isn't correct because "love Ogden" was part of a 1969 promotion by the station.
Furthermore, Nelson said KLO originally broadcasted from the Broom Hotel, on the northwest corner of 25th and Washington, and not the Ben Lomond or Bigelow Hotel.
• MORE SPONSOR TALK — KBYU (FM-89.1) has started airing what almost sounds like commercials. The station plays a block of classical music and then sometimes talk about sponsors in greater detail than I recall ever hearing in the past.
—Public radio accounts for 5 percent nationally of all radio listening. According to a recent report from Inside Radio, its audience has grown by 3 percent to almost 28 million listeners in an average week.
E-mail: lynn@desnews.com