Jim Cates talks the talk, walks the walk (July 2005)

It all started out innocently enough. The Kansas Koyotes, Topeka’s professional indoor football team, was undefeated last year. Nevertheless, Jim Cates, the host of KMAJ-AM 1440’s “The Jim Cates Show,” suggested that the team’s kicking game wasn’t quite up to snuff.

Cates made the suggestion while interviewing the team’s owner, Ralph Adams, who replied, “If you think you can do better, why don’t you sign a contract.”

The Koyotes feature a Media Kick and Pass Contest at halftime in conjunction with Father’s Day. Cates, who had been secretly coached by a Koyote kicker on how to kick the pigskin through the uprights, won the contest in 2003 and 2004, beating out much younger members of the media, believed he was up to the challenge.

“I signed a contract and for one game I was the legitimate kicker for the Kansas Koyotes,” Cates said. “It was quite an experience. The other team really felt insulted that anyone would hire a 57-year-old kicker, and they had a bull’s-eye on my chest. They were out to get me. Sure enough, they did during the second play of the game that I was in. The Koyotes then came to my defense and a full-scale brawl broke out on the field.”

Cates said he was able to get in a few punches of his own, but didn’t do quite as well with his kicks.

“I won’t be resigned,” Cates said with a laugh.

The stint as a professional football kicker wasn’t the first time Cates found himself doing something a man in his 50s doesn’t normally do. Three years ago, Cates was talked into jumping out of a perfectly good airplane in first (and last) try at skydiving.

Cates in 2003 even posed “nude” for a calendar when the Topeka Civic Theatre & Academy launched its “Much Ado About Nothing” fundraising event. Inspired by a similar calendar done by the McLaughlin Foundation, a garden club in Maine, the calendar included 12 months’ worth of local celebrities posing with strategically placed props to cover private areas. The calendar led one local columnist to quip, “And if you thought Jim Cates had a face for radio….”

While Cates has been called the dean of Topeka talk shows, he has spent a relatively short period of his life behind the mike. Raised in Liberty, Mo., Cates didn’t leave that area until 1972, when he left his job with the Missouri Credit Union Association for a position in Wichita with the National Credit Union Association (NCUA). The NCUA moved Cates to Topeka three years later, where he has been ever since.

“I’ve had an opportunity or two to leave Topeka, but I really have no desire to go,” Cates said. “This is a good community and I love Kansas. I’m here to stay.”

While working for the NCUA, Cates served six months of an unexpired term in the Kansas Senate. A few years later he was elected and re-elected to serve the citizens of the 52nd District (southwest Topeka) in the Kansas House of Representatives.

“I was very ineffective,” Cates said about his years as a legislator, “possibly one of the least effective legislators who’s ever graced the Capitol. I’m not sure if I accomplished anything.”

Out of a sense of frustration, Representative Cates began appearing on talk shows in the Kansas City area, Wichita, Salina, and Topeka to promote his issues.

“I discovered that I liked talk radio,” Cates said. “I also discovered the power of talk radio. Phone calls started coming into Topeka. Listeners started calling their legislators, asking, ‘Why aren’t you supporting this guy on what he is saying?’”

Those listening to Cates on the radio included at least one executive at a Topeka radio station.

“I got a call out of the blue about eight and a half years ago from WIBW 580, asking if I wanted to host a morning show for three hours,” Cates explained. “I had been with NCUA for 25 years, and that guaranteed a small pension and paid health insurance for the next 10 years. It was a sizable pay cut to go from NCUA to hosting a talk show in Topeka, but financially I was able to do it.”

About four years ago, Cates left WIBW to host the 8:00-11:00 a.m. slot on KMAJ-AM 1440.

Cates credits KMAJ management for giving him the freedom to talk about whatever he wants to talk about. He also believes it’s the variety of the topics he discusses with his audience that makes his show work. According to Cates, his core audience is 45 and older.

“We might spend an hour talking about state politics, the next hour might be about local politics, and the next hour we might have a celebrity in the studio,” Cates explained. “If we have a nostalgia show, I’m always looking for the television, movie, and recording artists from the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. That’s something a 25-year-old kid can’t identify with. He has no clue who Bobby Vee is. That 55-year-old or 65-year-old listener certainly knows who Bobby Vee is. It’s a lot of fun having that type of celebrity on the show.”

Cates also has a lot of fun collecting the works of recording artists from the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. While he collects records in general, Cates has a special fondness for 45 rpm records, those seven-inch discs of vinyl first introduced by RCA Victor in 1948.

While Cates tells listeners that most 45 rpm records might be worth a dime, his listeners have helped him discover a few gems. Just last month Cates found that one listener had a 45 worth $200, while another listener had one worth $150. But there’s one rare record that has eluded Cates and his record-collecting friends.

“We’ve put out an appeal over the air for a 45 record by Shameless McCool,” Cates said. “’American Dream’ is the song. It charted in the early 80s and peaked at number 80 on Billboard. Obviously, to make it to Billboard’s Top 100 there were a lot of copies of this record sold somewhere. A friend of mine who is a collector is trying to collect everything that has ever charted. He’s missing Shamus McCool, as is another friend of his. We put out the appeal six months ago, offering to buy the record for $1,500. The price is now up to $2,500.”

After discussing record collecting, politics, and a wide variety of other topics for nearly nine years, Cates has created a radius of trust amongst both his listeners and advertisers. That trust, in turn, has created a special bond between Cates and his audience.

“Talk radio really becomes an extended family,” Cates said. “We have our regular callers. If we don’t hear from a regular caller for a couple or three weeks, then I start getting calls off the air. They ask, ‘Whatever happened to so and so? Are they okay?’”

Cates does four live remote broadcasts a month, which gives regular listeners, callers, and advertisers a chance to meet each other.

And when Cates isn’t with his regular “family,” he occasionally finds himself being interviewed by other talk show hosts. For example, Cates, a former chairman of the Kansas Lottery Commission, in May appeared on Erskine Overnight to share gambling secrets the casinos don’t want you to know. Erkine Overnight is a weekend call-in program aired nationwide in over 60 markets.

For more information about The Jim Cates Show, the show has a new web site available at www.jimcates.com.