The central Iowa airwaves will be a little more somber Friday as Des Moines bids farewell to a rock 'n' roll radio pioneer.
Doug MacKinnon, 89, one of KIOA’s original “Good Guys,” died Monday at the Kavanaugh House in Des Moines. A celebration of life will be held at 1 p.m. Friday and streamed live on the Westover Funeral Home website. A private burial will take place at Iowa Veterans Cemetery.
MacKinnon was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, and moved to Iowa when he was 18 years old.
While serving in the Korean War, a gunshot shattered a bone in his leg and he spent more than a year in military hospitals. During his rehabilitation, MacKinnon learned radio and TV repair, which would land him is first job in radio as an engineer at KIOA in 1953.
KIOA was a farm station in the mid-1950s and losing badly to longtime powerhouse WOI-AM, according to Register archives. In 1957, the bosses decided to change programming and go with rock 'n' roll music.
"That was controversial," MacKinnon told former Des Moines Register reporter Daniel Finney in 2016. "I had neighbors who wouldn't speak to me because we were playing that rock 'n' roll."
MacKinnon eventually moved into the broadcast booth and became a hit with his late-night show.
"Doug took some liberties and had a very comical program that many a teen stayed up at night to hear,” Ray Dennis wrote on his website chronicling the history of Des Moines radio. “He did a number of voices and the element of the unexpected was always present on his shows.”
MacKinnon moved to mornings two years later and became one of the original “KIOA Good Guys,” the nickname for the station's on-air personalities.
He stayed at the station until 1964 before taking his show on the road with stops at stations in Omaha, Indianapolis and Denver, just to name a few. He eventually came back to Des Moines and worked at KSO and KIOA before taking a job selling ads for a free distribution magazine, which he eventually took it over and turned it into Iowa Scene Magazine.
MacKinnon retired in 1994 and began writing stories and occasional columns for the Des Moines Register, including a memorable one in 2012 in which he claimed he saw a UFO in 1959 while working at the KIOA transmitter in Swan.
He was was inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.
Charles Flesher covers K-12 education for the Register. He can be reached by email at cflesher@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8481. Follow him on Twitter @CharlesFlesher.
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Des Moines bids farewell to Doug MacKinnon, one of KIOA's original 'Good Guys' - Des Moines Register
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