With all due respect to Ian and Cam, what you're saying isn't taking into consideration the timeline I posted here regarding when Brian would have appeared on the show for the solo appearance, and as evidenced by the photo with Vosse by his side at that appearance. I thought I had laid it out pretty well with the printed evidence, but maybe not...
If the record appeared on KHJ surveys as a hitbound in the September 28 issue, and the "official" release was Monday October 10th, how are you suggesting a later date than that? The Billboard column *specifically* mentions KHJ-TV's "Boss City" being the first outlet to premiere the single on television versus the radio, and that was the crux of the story...a single going straight to TV before radio for its first airplay. If it was a KHJ hitbound on the air the week of September 28, the TV premiere would have had to be around that date too.
I apologize, I didn't see the Billboard article, where was that? That would be different, I was just noting that Vosse's account of when he started didn't square with the early dates.
It's in
Billboard dated 12/3/66:
BillboardSomething would seem to be a little off kilter in all of this, tho. It's very hard to believe that Capitol would have a record on TV OR radio TWO weeks before it's available for sale.
While there's the potential to build sales momentum, it could easily go the way of frustration and have buyers go elsewhere for other records?
So how to balance it all. ( I'm clueless)
It might be easier to see all of this backstory through the lens of Los Angeles radio's inner workings. The impression I got reading various accounts was that it was a highly competitive, cutthroat, take-no-prisoners market among the pop and "teen" AM stations especially KHJ (the new upstart) and KRLA (the established pro). The two stations would try to beat each other to get the "exclusive", premiere airings and therefore get the national attention. And that included theft of ideas and also outright attempts at sabotage.
KHJ and KRLA were both trendsetters nationwide for different reasons, and if doing something like taking a single straight to television for a premiere rather than radio would make waves in the industry nationwide and get press attention (as KHJ did with GV), it was an easy sell to Capitol: Give-and-take, you give us the premiere, we'll play the hell out of this record and talk it up. It was a win-win situation, and in the cycle of the charts at that time a few weeks of airplay pre-release was building momentum within the LA market which was being monitored across the country. If industry folks in LA heard the record being pushed heavily, they'd go back to their own territories ready to talk up the single in their own markets. And perhaps start pre-ordering for their local shops and jukeboxes so they had it for the official release.
I also have to factor in "The Monkees" tv show which was just getting started in September 1966. Yes, the "Last Train To Clarksville" single was released prior to the show's premiere, but as those first episodes aired I'm sure KHJ and others were getting requests for Monkees songs which had been heard only on that TV show...and perhaps someone like Ron Jacobs got the idea of doing the same thing - premiering a record on TV and creating a demand, even if the record wasn't available to buy. Those early Monkees episodes had songs which never appeared on a single or album, yet the demand was there from the TV audience.
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