WKBR was a gutsy move for its founders. They were attempting to establish a third station in a market of less than 85,000 people that was already heavily influenced by stations 50 miles south in Boston.

Barkley was executive vice president of Collins Radio Company and had access to--and inside knowledge of--the complete line of state-of-the-art studio and transmission equipment.

Killgore and Rust had met during World War II while both were Navy lieutenants working on top secret radar development.

Central to the plan was a conscious decision to program the new 250 watt station locally while WMUR (now WGIR) and WFEA--both 5,000 watt stations--were heavily obligated to NBC and CBS programming, respectively. As much as possible, WKBR relied on local talent for entertainment, while taking minimal news and public affairs programming from Mutual and the New England regional Yankee Network.