“Runaway Radio” – a long-awaited film celebrating Houston’s KLOL debuts

We talk with the man behind a new documentary remembering the rise and fall of the iconic Houston music station.

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Longtime Houston area media blogger Mike McGuff grew up listening to radio in The Bayou City – mostly, to one station in particular: KLOL.

He loved the rock music he discovered in it, the disc jockeys who became beloved personalities, the station's audacious promotions – all of it. So much so, that since 2010, he's been working to turn his passion for KLOL into a finally completed and released documentary film, titled Runaway Radio: The Rise and Fall of KLOL FM.

In the audio above, McGuff tells us more about the iconic Houston station which built a huge following from 1970 to 2004, when technology (the Internet, streaming, file-sharing), which now offers the world many more choices to find and engage with new music, spurred the radio station's demise.

McGuff goes on to tell us that, while it's great for music fans to have so much access to such a wide range of music today, what some call "the monoculture" is gone, and shared experiences like he had with other Houstonians listening to KLOL and discovering popular music together are gone with it.