Liberty Broadcasting System McLendon, who nicknamed himself "The Old Scotchman", is also noted in radio history as the founder of the
Liberty Radio Network (noted for its daily national broadcasts of
Major League Baseball) in the 1940s. Liberty was the second largest radio network in the U.S. at the time with over 458 affiliated stations. Most of Liberty's MLB broadcasts were re-creations of games, utilizing McLendon himself and future sportscasting stars such as
Lindsey Nelson and
Jerry Doggett on play-by-play. It was a live, not recreated game that provided McLendon and Liberty with their greatest career moment. The Old Scotchman himself was behind the Liberty microphone at the
Polo Grounds in New York for the October 3, 1951, finale of the three-game
National League play-off series between the
New York Giants and
Brooklyn Dodgers.
Bobby Thomson of the Giants swung at Dodger
Ralph Branca's 0–1 pitch in the last of the ninth with two runners aboard, and McLendon barked: :''Bobby swings, there's a long one out there out to left! Going, going, GONE and the Giants win the pennant!'' Gordon then went silent and let the crowd's roar speak for itself. With radio still the more popular nationwide medium then, and with
Russ Hodges' famous radio call limited to
WMCA and its Giants' network, McLendon's call is how most Americans heard the NL clincher.
Offshore Pirate radio For a time, he owned a converted fishing boat in the North Sea, which beamed into Sweden and other European countries. In 1960, McLendon and his close friend,
Clint Murchison, owned
Radio Nord, which broadcast from an offshore facility that was called a
pirate radio station by the Swedish government because it was located on board a radio ship and outside of their legal jurisdiction. When that venture came to an end, the vessel was brought back to
Galveston, Texas, where the ship remained for a year until it was leased to a British operation. The new 1964 station was called
Radio Atlanta (after McLendon's home town). Unfortunately, due to blunders in keeping the project secret, these plans were shared with
Jocelyn Stevens, editor of
Queen magazine in London, who was a financial supporter of another station,
Radio Caroline. Later, in 1964, McLendon shared his experience at offshore broadcasting with
Don Pierson of
Eastland, Texas, who created a mirror of McLendon's
KLIF radio station in
Dallas. That new incarnation was to have been called Radio KLIF London but, when it came on air, it was identified as
Radio London.
U.S. radio stations McLendon and his father founded radio station
KLIF (The Mighty 1190) in
Oak Cliff,
Dallas, Texas in 1947, and introduced the Top 40 format there in the early 1950s to great success. KLIF enjoyed a long run at the top of the Dallas radio ratings in the 1950s and 1960s, but its standing in the market fell in the early 1970s thanks to growing competition from FM radio. One of the FM stations most instrumental in the downfall of KLIF was its former sister station KNUS (now
KSPF), of which McLendon retained ownership after selling KLIF and revamped as a rock-oriented Top 40. The McLendon family built a communications empire that included radio stations across the United States. In addition to KLIF, McLendon owned KNUS–FM in Dallas,
KOST in Los Angeles, WYNR (later WNUS) & WNUS-FM in Chicago, WWWW–FM in Detroit,
KEEL in Shreveport,
WAKY in Louisville, KABL in Oakland, KABL–FM in San Francisco,
KILT in Houston,
KTSA in San Antonio (that he briefly renamed KAKI due to the military bases in the city), and
KELP in El Paso. McLendon introduced the all-news format to Southern California through
XETRA in
Tijuana. McLendon was one of the originators of the "
beautiful music" format on his
KABL in
Oakland, California, in 1959; and as the founder of the first
all-news radio station (
WNUS in Chicago) in the 1960s. He is credited by most broadcast historians with having established the first mobile news units in American radio, the first traffic reports, the first jingles, the first all-news radio station, and the first "easy-listening" programming. He also was among the first broadcasters in the United States to editorialize. McLendon especially attracted attention for his stern denunciations of French president
Charles De Gaulle, whom he described as "an ungrateful four-flusher" who could "go straight to hell." The McLendon family sold KLIF in 1971 to Fairchild Industries of Germantown, Maryland, for $10.5 million, then a record price for a radio station. By 1979 the family had sold all of its broadcasting properties, including fourteen radio and two television stations, worth approximately $100 million. By 1985
Forbes magazine estimated McLendon's net worth at $200 million.
Television In 1954, McLendon considered acquiring a share of Oklahoma City UHF station
KMPT, but opted against it, finding the struggling station "too far gone" (it closed a year later). McLendon was also the last owner of ABC affiliate
KCND-TV in
Pembina, North Dakota. In 1975, he sold that station to
Winnipeg executive
Izzy Asper, who moved the station to Winnipeg and used it to start up
CKND-TV, which would become the genesis of the present-day
Canwest media empire and the modern-day
Global Television Network. ==Movies and theatres==