K-HIT radio of Walla Walla was the radio station your father would listen to. If you lived in Walla Walla during the 60s or early 70s, you could tune it in at 1320 on the radio dial. Most radios did not of FM or if you had it, chances are you did not use it. K-HIT played such artists as Dean Martin, Perry Como and Ray Coniff literally from sun up to sun down because it only had a daytime license. It also had a machine playing the music--it was automated. It had musical jingles as buffer between the musical selections and the commercials. At the hour and the half hour it had news read by the droning voice of the owner.
Why would I write about such a square radio station? The call letters KHIT were pronounced Kay-Hit, this was an era when top 40 radio was very much in vogue. With such distinguished call letters, you would think that a large market station would pay millions for them.
In the early 70s, KHIT was sold to a group of investors from Oregon, led by Carl Tyler, they modernized the station to a degree and even added a rock FM station, XT97. It too was automated but gave younger Walla Wallans more choices of what to listen to. Carl Tyler would later sell his interest in the station and enter politics, eventually becoming Walla Walla's mayor. The KHIT call letters were acquired by a Seattle radio station which soon folded.
