The Contest
If you were in Southern California in the late 1970s and early 1980s, you probably remember The Mighty 690, the teen and young adult-oriented top-40 powerhouse that stands as one of the last great AM hit music stations.
Based out of Tijuana, Mexico but sending most of its 50,000 watts North, the station could be heard throughout the area, pretty much like a local during the day all the way up to Santa Barbara. At night it could be heard in multiple states.
The story of The Mighty 690 itself is one I will be telling here shortly, as soon as I sit down with one of its creators, Ted Ziegenbusch, who you probably know as the longtime KOST (103.5 FM) personality. Like me you probably didn’t know he was even connected with 690, but that will be covered on a future day.
Today I am going to concentrate on one Summer … one contest in that Summer, in fact, due to a book being released this week called “The Mighty Six-Ninety (690).” Written by Alexander Hamilton Cherin, it is a novel, as the title page says, “inspired by actual events.
The contest is simple, and a concept that dates back long before The Mighty 690 existed. Some sort of prize is hidden in the station’s coverage area, clues are given over the air, listeners decipher the clues, and the winner walks off with, in this case, $50,000.
Cherin tells the story of the final contestants who used the clues to figure out where the treasure was buried, where they went to dig, and who became the ultimate winner.
The four potential winners included a single mother at risk of being caught embezzling funds from her employer, a young school kid, an older Holocaust survivor, and a daredevil car racer. All four arrived at the same time on the last day of the contest to dig in the dirt at Dodger Stadium; the winner walking off with the cash. It was the culmination of a contest that lasted the Summer of 1981, a fun diversion for listeners even if they were unable to make it to the final dig.
It is a fast, intriguing read, filled with vibrant imagery that helps the reader fully identify not only with the four primary characters, it also helps you understand the radio landscape of the era … an era in which The Mighty 690 broke the rules and set the top-40 world on fire … on AM, when so many listeners were moving to FM.
And yet … it’s not true.
I suspected as much when reading some seemingly odd details. The mention of competing popular FM stations “KRUZ and KLAA.” — KRUZ is licensed to Santa Barbara, not Los Angeles, and KLAA is a Los Angeles AM station on 830 AM that didn’t exist in 1981. A line about the company “that had just launched The Mighty 690” in 1981 — the station launched in 1978. The description of Los Angeles port town of Wilmington as “a small pocket of single-family homes and old Croatian American eateries” — that would better describe neighboring San Pedro.
So I asked Cherin about it, and he fessed up immediately. The book was inspired by actual events, but those events “are what my mind remembers, listening to the station as an eleven-year-old kid,” he explained. He calls it a fictionalized version of events.
The contest did run, of course. The clues were indeed given over the air. But the “treasure” was not a metal box filled with cash buried somewhere inside Dodger Stadium as he writes in the book and “what my young mind remembered,” he says, but a piece of paper found behind the rear license plate of a car in the Redondo Beach Pier parking lot. Said piece of paper brought to the station, of course, in exchange for a check.
What about the characters described in the book? “Based upon people I knew in my life,” Cherin says. Not part of the contest at all.
But why? Why not just tell the story as it happened? Part of it has to do with wanting to tell the story of the memory that he held so dear. And in some ways, I suppose he couldn’t give actual details. I can imagine it being close to impossible to find the contestants involved. But a stronger part was a desire to tell a story of the power of radio. At that he succeeds.
That was a very special time and place for me and many others,” Cherin explained. “One that doesn’t exist any more. Radio, back then, was special. It appealed to everyone … it was our social network, especially for those of us coming of age.” I can relate to that.
But the digging? “For whatever reason, I have vivid memories of the contest culminating with finalists digging in Dodger Stadium. Probably what my imagination created in my mind,” he admits, adding that as an adult he realizes it is absurd to think that the Dodgers would let anyone dig up their field … especially in the middle of baseball season.
In spite of the reality that the details are not necessarily real, Cherin does an amazing job of putting the reader in the middle of the contest, in such a way that you feel you actually know everyone involved in the story. And he does indeed capture the excitement of “a” contest, even if it isn’t “the” contest. It’s engaging even if it’s not accurate.
In the end, I think it’s definitely a worthwhile read. Just remember it’s fiction and don’t use it as a historical reference …
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