2007-2008 Inductees:

Jack Sampson
     He was the man behind the scenes when KXOK became a national powerhouse.
     Jack Sampson had worked with Storz Broadcasting in Kansas City and Oklahoma City prior to his St. Louis assignment. From 1963 – 1975, Sampson was KXOK’s vice president and general manager. When he came to town, the station had begun to make a run in the ratings, but the business side needed a complete overhaul.
      Within a year the station was showing a profit, and more money was put into operations and promotion. He left St. Louis to get into station ownership.
     Sampson is a member of the Kansas Broadcasting Hall of Fame.

Dan Kelly
     Dan Kelly was 32 years old when he became the St. Louis Blues’ play-by-play voice. He’d already been broadcasting in Canada for 13 years.
     He spent the rest of his life in St. Louis broadcasting the Blues, Cardinal baseball, Cardinal football, MU football and hosting sports call-in shows. The powerful nighttime signal of KMOX spread his work all over the US and Canada, and his popularity was reflected in the work he did outside of the market.
     Kelly broadcast NFL football and NHL hockey for CBS, NHL hockey for USA Network, ESPN, CTV and the NHL Network. He was also the voice, through most of his career, of the NHL All-Star Game and the Stanley Cup Finals.

John Oelke
     John Oelke began his broadcast engineering career here when was hired as vacation relief in 1961 by the St. Louis Pulitzer broadcast operation.
      In 1974 he was promoted to manager of engineering for KSD Radio. When the station was sold two years later, he took on additional duties for sister station KSD-FM, essentially becoming the company’s chief engineer. He built new studios, then repeated that task for WRTH.
     In 1984 Oelke became KSHE’s chief engineer, where he designed and built the station’s studios, transmitting facility and offices.
     After his “retirement” in 1996, John Oelke became site manager for St. Louis’ community broadcasting tower, which was shared by 10 FM stations, a digital TV antenna and several low-power TV stations.