LA Radio Waves - SoundSage

Radio:September 8, 2023

Trends are funny. Funny in aninteresting way, and often caused by forces not necessarily obvious.

Such an example is top-40 radio,represented locally by KIIS (102.7 FM). The station that almost single-handedlybrought the format back from its death in the early 1980s while hitting recordhigh ratings for an FM station, is on hard times now. The July Nielsens had thestation tied for 8th place with a 3.7 share of the audience … a far cry fromthe 10+ shares of the 1980s.

But I am not here to bash KIIS. Iam merely using it as an example of some trends that have come together, andperhaps help find a way out.

First and foremost, the appeal ofoldies cannot be denied. Out of the top-10 stations, fully six are either fullyoldies-based or rely heavily on them in the music mix. KRTH (101.1 FM) KTWV(94.7 FM), My FM (KBIG, 104.3), KOST (103.5 FM) Jack (KCBS-FM, 93.1) and KLOS(95.5 FM) all predominantly play songs not released in the last year.

KIIS is definitely not alone.Top-40, or Contemporary Hit Radio as it is called today. has taken a hitnationwide. As the format tends to attract younger listeners, the fact thatmany younger listeners are getting their music from streaming services and appslike TikTok, it seems to be the natural progression.

Indeed, InsideMusicMedia’s JerryDel Colliano has extensively covered the migration to and influence ofstreaming; a recent Billboard.com story spoke of TikTok’s appeal to younglisteners; top-40 stations across the country have added more “gold” to theirplaylists; and the idea of playing music that is old but “new to you” has takenhold as an easy way to attract listeners.

But it doesn’t work to attractyounger listeners, thus top-40 as a format suffers.

Yet the answer lies in the appealof the very things that are supposedly killing radio. TikTok is exposing kidsto music, new and old, from multiple genres. Streaming services use curators tofind music that listeners may like, based upon the songs they play — and thosethey skip.

Add in Sean Ross, who writes inRadioInsight.com that most people fondly remember their own top-40 listeningdays from “when top-40 played it all,” and you have the answer: play it all.

Top-40 has always thrived when itplayed it all, and has always stagnated when it limited itself. You saw ithappen with too much “bubblegum,” too much disco, too much country, too much of“the Miami sound,” too much grunge, and too much Hip-Hop. All of those eras hadtemporarily success, but ultimately led to ratings declines as listeners leftfor other stations.

Yet when “they played it all,” suchas the 1960s where you could hear The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Jefferson Airplaneand Cream all on the same station, it just worked. Same for when Prince, TheRolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and Foreigner all shared space on the samestation. Today KRTH is leading the ratings doing nothing more than playing themusic that once played on KIIS … Naked Eyes, Wham, Soft Cell, Tears for Fears,Madonna, Depeche Mode and Outfield.

That variety of music makes thingsinteresting, and today’s teens especially are, according to research, morewilling to listen to different genres right now than any other generation.

Inside Music Media’s Del Collianosuggests that perhaps it is time to hire curators — locally, of course, so youcan better match the audience — to find new music and present it. “Youngaudiences are more eclectic than baby boomers, Gen X or even older millennials- they mix genres,” he explains. They are “spellbound” when they find it, opento fresh musical styles, “and amazingly curious.”

Radio is losing young people, hesays in part because, aside from the commercial overload, “radio no longerbreaks new music and acts.” Fix it by doing so, and become the influencers youused to be, Del Colliano advises programmers, instead of letting social mediado it.

Ross takes it a step further andblames, in part, the record companies for not even trying to promote newmusical styles and acts to hit radio stations.

I agree fully with all of theabove, which you already know if you’ve read this column very long. Yourresponses to me tell me that you agree as well. And like the dark days of hittop-40 radio before, all it takes is a KHJ, a Ten-Q, a KIIS-FM, or the like totake up the cause and do it right.

Top-40 is not dead, it’s justdormant. And the time is ripe for a comeback. Hopefully sooner than later.

Rumor Mill

Is Saul Levine ready to testall-digital AM on his K-Mozart (1260 AM)? I’ve been told “maybe.” I hope ithappens … I’d love to see how far an all-digital AM signal can carry bothduring the day and night, and if it helps reduce the interference between stations.If it happens, you’ll be the first to know.

///

Radio:September 15, 2023

Overthe air television broadcasts are about to undergo another transition similarto the original transition to digital transmissions over a decade ago. Digitaltelevision broadcasts launched a few years prior, but in 2009 most analogtelevision broadcasts were shut down, and digital, using what is called theATSC 1.0 standard, was the default over-the-air standard.

Morerecently a new technology called ATSC 3.0 has been developed, offeringmore efficient signal use, better and easier reception, improved picturequality, and even streaming and on-demand services. One additional benefit: thesystem would allow for 50 — or more — full-fidelity radio stations to be sentalong in the space of just one channel. That is if the industry decides todevelop the concept.

Accordingto an article at TechRadar.com, the idea was developed by Fraunhofer, “thecompany behind the original MP3 audio compression standard that ultimately ledto the development of the best MP3 players and paved the way for music andinternet radio streaming as well.

(fullarticle at https://www.techradar.com/news/if-atsc-30-broadcasts-pack-50-radio-stations-in-one-tv-channel-im-all-ears)

“Fraunhoferis seeking to have its highly efficient xHE-AAC audio codec, which allows forhigh-quality voice transmission at a mere seven kilobits per second and stereomusic at bit rates from 24 kilobits per second and up, ‘brought into the ATSCfor standardization.’ Doing so would let ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV stations delivera package of local and national radio services using just a small fraction oftheir spectrum bandwidth.”

Whatthis means is that, if the standards committees agree, we could have anadditional way to send and receive radio broadcasts over the air, receivable incars and homes, … and if done right could be a true competitor to current AMand FM stations dominated by a mere three owners.

Isuggest the proposal include limits to ownership, such that only a smallhandful of stations could be owned and operated by any one company. This wouldavoid the mess we have now with stale formats and commercial overloads thatpush people away to other entertainment sources. I’d push for no more than twostations in one market and only seven nationwide … basically the same limitsradio had back when it was a super-power listener and ad-wise.

YouTube’s“Antenna Man” has a little video on the concept at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDUotDRS1hs… check it out if you are interested.

ReceptionQuestions

Welive in San Juan Capistrano and enjoy listening to 91X. We have radios inthe master bath and garage.

“Thesignal from 91X is highly variable. On some days the reception is great, onothers the station barely registers. Any insight into why that’s the case?Thanks!” — Eric Carlson

FMreception can be tricky for two reasons … under certain (usually bad weather)conditions, the signal just doesn’t travel as far, and it always has troublewith hills, since it travels in a straight line. Ironically, the othercondition is when it’s REALLY clear, and the signal gets interrupted byneighboring stations on or near the frequency. HD signals make it worse becausethey add to the sideband interference. In some cases, stations once heard justdisappear!

Ahouse FM/TV antenna, if you can connect one, will usually make a hugedifference. Just make sure it is designed for the FM band, which is between theold analog television Channel 6 and 7.

Ofcourse the other solution is to use a smart speaker or smartphone app.

“Forthe past week I have been grumbling over my poor AM reception as I have beendriving around the northern part of the San Fernando Valley in my 2006 GMCtruck with my factory installed 31-inch stick antenna projecting from my frontfender.

“Itis nearly impossible to hear clearly 710, 790, and 1020AM broadcasting. Theinterference and screeching is horrendous. As a result, I thought of you andwriting you an email when your column appeared today. Thus, I look to you for asolution. What do I do to receive reception? Do I need to replace my antenna?If so, what do I replace it with? What is the solution? I would appreciate anyadvice and recommendations.” — The Reverend Greg Frost, Granada Hills

AMis a different animal reception-wise from FM. While FM is relativelystatice-free (reference: Steely Dan’s hit song “FM”), AM can pick upinterference from almost anything: cheap electrical transformers, ungroundedelectric supply wires, light dimmers, cable boxes, LED traffic lights and muchmore. In fact, it is the response by radio manufacturers in reducinginterference that caused AM to get a reputation as a terrible-soundingbroadcast system.

AMis actually capable of excellent fidelity. Many radios manufactured before the1980s sounded good; many in the 1960s were excellent. The AM stereos of the1980s and ‘90s often were superb. But too many are awful, and there isdefinitely a price to be paid with so much extra interference around us today.

Addto this the fact that too many station owners gave up their prime broadcasttowers or allowed building in and around the transmitter site, and you haveanother problem - far weaker signals than ever before for many stations.

Inthis specific case, in order to trace it out, it is important to know - did itcome on suddenly? Is the antenna tight? Is there ay corrosion on the mastmount? Is the antenna grounded? Does the interference happen only when thetruck is running, or all the time?

Oftencar radio interference can be traced to a bad ground wire, a loose batteryconnection, or in one case of my own years ago, a car phone charger that madeAM reception almost impossible whenever it was plugged in.

I’dlook for corrosion and grounds first, then move on from there.

Radio: September 22, 2023

TheAugust Nielsen ratings were released last week for Los Angeles, and while Iwill not be covering the entire list — I leave that for quarterly reports so asto not bore you too much — there was definitely a station worth mentioning: KFI(640 AM)

Thereason it’s worth mentioning has as much to do with the success the station hasenjoyed as it does the dire predictions many made when programmer RobinBertolucci adjusted the programming and moved a few hosts around in earlyJanuary.

“They’redoomed,” cried some. No one will listen to John and Ken — who moved from theirlongtime afternoon drive slot to take on the 1 to 3 p.m. hours — thatearly. Tim Conway will not attract an audience in afternoons like he had atnight. Etcetera, etcetera …

And‘Mo Kelly? Who’s he?

Ieven had people write in talking about the steep ratings drop KFI had due tothe changes. There was only one problem: it never really happened, in astatistical sense. I looked it up … for most of the last few years, KFI rangedfrom the mid-high 3s to the low-mid 4s with a few periods even higher. So thisyear, ranging from 4.1 to 4.3 was normal.

Butthe ratings for August had KFI at a recent high: 4.8, good for third place overall. Done with little promotion, no marketing (why is that, by the way?) … andall those changes that “killed” it.

Whyis KFI so successful? Isn’t conservative talk dead? Yes, it is … and it’s beendecades since KFI was considered “conservative talk” even when it wasn’t. Therehave always been a balance of viewpoints on the station; as it moved away frompolitically-centered topics to more general topics, it matched the mood oflisteners who wanted to be entertained more than they wanted to be angry.

Thus,the idea of shortening the shifts to keep shows fresh and fast-moving, keepingall of the current hosts while allowing for afternoon exposure of the amazingwit on the Conway Show, and the introduction, or perhaps re-introduction ofgeneral talk in the evenings with the addition of ‘Mo Kelly every eveningat 7:00 … worked out perfectly.

Andhaving a stellar news department helps as well.

“Iam super-proud of the KFI team,” said programmer Bertolucci. “In addition tobeing #3 overall — and the top-rated news or talk station — we are so happy tobe the most streamed station on the iHeart app.”

Shesaid that on-demand and podcasts are doing great as well.

“KFIis THE live and local station for Southern California, and I think the key isall the ways people can hear us. From streaming in your car to listening onyour smart speaker at home, we’ve got you covered.”

Iasked her what she thought was the secret to the success of the station.Consistency? Fun? Yes, she said, to both. “Our hope is that any time you tunein, you are not only informed, but you are also entertained,” she said adding,“Thank you to all our wonderful listeners for their support!”

1110AM Gets Religion

KRDC(1110 AM) was finally transferred to its new owner on September 8th. On thatday it became KWVE, the AM simulcast of Calvary Chapel’s KWVE-FM (107.9). Theformat is Christian talk, which has been running on the FM signal for manyyears.

Withthat strong FM signal, why did the church buy the one-time top-40 powerhouse?Better coverage in the northern and western parts of the city, I am told, andan extended signal reach up and down the coast. Obviously Calvary Chapelbelieves in AM broadcasting …

Andjust to show that some things go full circle, 1110 AM, even though the stationis not longer using the KRLA call letters it once had, is competing once moreagainst KHJ (930 AM), which now airs Catholic talk programming.

Restingin Radio Peace

DonBarrett announced his cancer diagnosis in mid August; last week the news camethat he had passed.

Iwon’t write a new obituary here; the column honoring him that ran on August25th will suffice. But I wanted to mention an interview — a rare one, sinceBarrett even to the end rarely did interviews — done by my podcast partner MikeStark. It includes some wonderful memories of radio past and present, showsBarrett’s philosophy of always looking to the positive, and even includes someclassic airchecks I had not heard before that Barrett critiques. It’s a greatlisten and can be found at youtube.com/watch?v=SJ6BjY2cwYc.

Inan ordinary instant, Don, you will be missed. God bless you.

RichardWagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in SouthernCalifornia. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com

///

View Details

Radio Waves: September 1, 2023

Antenna Mania

I recently had a chance to try out a really cool looking — at least in the opinion of some — antenna for my truck. The brand itself doesn’t matter much as these are all similar in design: flexible rubber with some sort of spiral wire inside to, as the description says, optimize reception for both AM and FM bands.

Most modern cars and trucks have special antennas that barely stick out of the body, and rely on signal amplifiers to get good reception. And most do quite well, including the one on my son’s Chevy Cruze … that radio gets better reception than almost any car radio I’ve ever used.

But my truck is a 1999 Silverado, with the old school antenna. The factory original sticking up 31 inches from the fender, it is optimized for FM frequencies but does quite well with AM too, including picking up the HD digital stream of KBRT (740 AM) from San Pedro. and occasionally getting the identification from KMZT (1260 AM) even though I can’t get the actual HD sound until I get closer. FM is similarly solid everywhere I drive.

But I couldn’t help wondering if the mini flex antenna — a “new generation” with a carbon-fiber base covering, built-in copper wire, and “optimized AM/FM reception by nearly 40%,” whatever that actually means — could live up to the hype and at least match or even beat my factory install.

Turns out, it couldn’t, and I realized that the 40% optimized reception means the reception is about 40% of what I used to receive with my original.

Most people may not have noticed the difference in FM performance, but I have an HD radio head unit, and it likes a good clear signal. FM stations generally did come in well with little interference similar to the original, though a few stations were just missing, such as KFBG (100.7 FM) and KGB (101.1 FM), which usually come in decently due to the signal shooting straight up the coast from San Diego to San Pedro … at least on a clear day.

But the HDs were hit and miss, with more reception problems than ever. Even Go Country (105.1 FM) had trouble locking in the HD stream, and that is usually one of the most reliable where I like.

AM on the other hand, was an entirely disappointing experience. Static everywhere, even over flamethrower 50,000 watt powerhouse KFI (640 AM). KMZT could not even be heard, and mid-signal stations such as KLAC (570 AM), KABC (790 AM), and KHJ (930 AM) were essentially unlistenable.

To prove it wasn’t just weather or atmospheric conditions on the test day, I put my factory antenna back on and all the reception problems cleared up. Immediately.

I bring this up not to bash the manufacturer of the antenna I evaluated. Instead I want to highlight the fact that antenna design, including length and other aspects, is exceedingly important to good reception. AM likes an antenna as long as possible, FM seems to work well with — on a car at least — that 31 inches preciously mentioned. Something to do with wavelength as I recall — engineers, feel free to confirm or correct me.

Newer cars usually use special small antennas are just that: antennas designed to work with the car’s construction and electronics to optimize reception.

Home radios and stereos can suffer from the same issues, and reception there can often be improved for AM by rotating the radio or moving it away from other electronics to cancel out interference. For FM, if you can connect it to a house antenna just like most televisions used to be, you’ll hear stations from greater distances than ever before.

Of course all of this is moot if you listen via apps. But that’s another column …

Sound Science

Another new toy I recently evaluated is a special little box that turns my normal iPhone’s Car Play wired system into wireless. Not an amazing must-have, mind you, but really a nice thing if you do have it. When I start up the truck, the phone connects automatically and starts playing whatever I was listening to last.

Yesterday I was driving my dog Snoopy back from a check-up at the vet’s office, and Alt 98.7 FM came on. I really wasn’t paying attention, but it turned out it was playing through CarPlay via the iHeart app. How does it compare with the over-the-air signal?

I checked. While it does sound good on the app, over the air is vastly superior on a direct comparison. More open, more dynamic … just better.

This is not an indictment of apps, by the way. Some stations, including both over-the air simulcasts and internet-only stations sound absolutely phenomenal on apps. And Alt does sound fine. But the difference in quality was noticeable, and probably related to reducing bandwidth on the internet stream to allow more connections as well as cut streaming costs. Just a guess … again, engineers can feel free to confirm or correct me.

Where the apps excel, though, are areas of weak reception. As long as the internet signal is good, apps can work where AM and FM cannot.

And while I am on the subject of Alt 98.7 … I mean this with love … The Foo Fighters and Maneskin both made more than one song each … just sayin’.

///

Radio: August 25, 2023

Don Barrett is one of the radio’s biggest supporters. Not only was he in radio — among other accomplishments, he launched KIQQ (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM) in the early 1970s — he is and has been a friend even to those radio personalities he never met.

His book, “Los Angeles Radio People,” set out to highlight every radio personality who was ever on the local airwaves between the years of 1957 to 1994 (First Edition) and 1957 to 1997 (Second Edition). As much as possible, many behind the microphone were also featured. There was supposed to be a Third Edition, but a tragic hard drive crash and the lack of suitable backup caused the update to be abandoned.

In order to publicize the book, Barrett created the Los Angeles Radio People website, at laradio.com. At first it was just information about the book, but it soon grew in to a news and information site that quickly became a must-read daily gathering of radio people and radio fans alike. In time the site eclipsed the book in importance, with daily updates of the industry including what people were up to, the state of the industry, and even a call for help for those down on their luck. Kind of the gathering place at the company cooler.

Barrett always made sure that both in his books and the site, he was always positive. Rare was the case when he wasn’t presenting only positive vibes. Even after he decided to retire from the daily updates, he still maintained contact with his thousands of radio friends, updating the “Where Are They Now” listings, and continuing to act as radio’s cheerleader with re-posts of past columns highlighting various achievements, awards, and more.

Last week, Barrett posted something more serious.

“I discovered the writings of Joan Didion late in life,” he wrote. “She coined the phrase, ‘ordinary instant.’ Perhaps the phrase leaped off the page because death comes in such a rushing finality. She wrote: ‘Life changes fast/Life changes in the instant/You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.’ Joan’s husband was robbed of 3,500 days. In an ordinary instant.

“For the past two months, I have been in constant pain. Doctors, hospitals and ERs. Yesterday I was in the San Luis Obispo ER for more tests. And there it was in an ordinary instant – advanced stages of liver cancer that had spread.

“The doctor was sorry to pass on the news and couldn’t hold back tears. Cherie and I looked at each other, burst into tears and almost simultaneously said, ‘I think this is my ordinary instant.’

“I have been blessed with two great loves in my life. I struggled with relationships for the first 70 years. In 2012 the most amazing woman entered my life. Cherie taught me about unconditional love. She is the greatest blessing ever. It is never too late to start over. My three children embraced her from the beginning.

“My second love has been radio. Thank you for supporting my love affair for over a quarter of a century. I will be shutting down LARadio in the coming days.”

I asked Don if it was OK to share the news, and he told me that he keeps no secrets … and immediately thanked me for all I’ve done … typical Don … looking toward the positive. His positivity over time helped me to become more positive in life, a better person overall, and certainly a better supporter of the radio community. I have truly appreciated our friendship.

Barrett supported others as well, writing in that same post, “Another blessing, after 42 years of being clean and sober, I have been so privileged to share my experience, strength and hope with younger men on the path to sobriety.

“If we're lucky we get 28,000 days. Cherish them and don't waste one of them. God bless!”

The site’s front page is still up as I write this, but no content is available except for a mention of the shut down: “In an ordinary instant - cancer has taken LARadio.com”

Don - may your remaining time on earth be without pain and as positive as you deserve. Be with your family. And remember, you will forever and always be radio’s historian.

Condensed Access

AllAccess.Com founder Joel Denver announced in July that mid August would be its shutdown; early August bright some good news, with the following post on line … “The outpouring from the radio and music communities, our clients and partners since our ALL ACCESS closure announcement set for August 15th has been unbelievable. Thank you, so much. Your feedback gave us pause to review what could still be possible despite the financial headwinds we have been facing.

“ALL ACCESS has heard you loud and clear, so beginning AUGUST 16th, a modified/abbreviated ALLACCESS.COM site will be available with some basic services still intact.”

The daily Net News updates have been discontinued, as have much of the original content. But various elements will live on even if just archival form. Of course I hold out hope that over the course of time, more original content will return. For now … it’s good news regardless.

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in Southern California. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com.

///

Radio Waves: September 1, 2023

Antenna Mania

Turns out, it couldn’t, and I realized that the 40% optimized reception means the reception is about 40% of what I used to receive with my original.

But the HDs were hit and miss, with more reception problems than ever. Even Go Country (105.1 FM) had trouble locking in the HD stream, and that is usually one of the most reliable where I like.

To prove it wasn’t just weather or atmospheric conditions on the test day, I put my factory antenna back on and all the reception problems cleared up. Immediately.

Newer cars usually use special small antennas are just that: antennas designed to work with the car’s construction and electronics to optimize reception.

Of course all of this is moot if you listen via apps. But that’s another column …

Sound Science

I checked. While it does sound good on the app, over the air is vastly superior on a direct comparison. More open, more dynamic … just better.

Where the apps excel, though, are areas of weak reception. As long as the internet signal is good, apps can work where AM and FM cannot.

And while I am on the subject of Alt 98.7 … I mean this with love … The Foo Fighters and Maneskin both made more than one song each … just sayin’.

///

View Details

Radio: August 11

Hearing Taylor Swift 24/7 wasn’t enough for you? You needed more?

On the heals of Taylor 105.1 HD3, in which one of the HD radio streams tied to Go Country 105 plays nothing but Taylor Swift (you need a special HD radio to hear it; new cars often have them) came word that KIIS-FM joined the trend.

Scheduled for August 3-9 — so depending on when you read this it may already be over — KIIS-FM became “SWFT-FM,” playing at least four Swift songs an hour. Last weekend included classic Taylor hits, Monday was Merch-Monday in which listeners could win official Swift memorabilia, Tuesday was Taylor TWOsday — back to back Swift songs — and much more.

Even morning man Ryan Seacrest got into the act giving way a pair of tickets for the final show on August 9th.

Not to be outdone, Alt 98.7 was doing an “anything but Swift” promotion. Different strokes.

Stunting

While 105.1 HD3 continues to play all Swift through the end of the month, rumors are circulating on what will happen when the stunt is done. I originally assumed that the format would revert to the Adult Standards format that focussed on Frank Sinatra and friends, but there is word on the street that something new night be coming. And you know what happens when one assumes.

HD radio signals are a tough sell, as the reach is limited compared with regular FM signals, due to a far lower number of HD radios in the hands of consumers as well as reception problems — dropouts — when the signal isn’t pristine. That can often be made up by the use of smartphone apps and smart speakers … unfortunately adding more costs, such as music streaming license fees and costs associated with computers. As most HD signals have few to no commercials or sponsorships, it is most definitely a labor of love for owners who truly try to make a go of it.

Could the right format combined with the right promotion make an HD stream at least break even, if not profitable? That’s your question of the week: If you could program an HD stream, such as 105.1 HD3, what would you put on it and why? For extra credit, how might you promote the station to not only attract listeners, but advertisers?

In the meantime, I’ll keep an ear to the ground to see if a new format will indeed be replacing All-Taylor.

Not Quite

“In a significant change for Los Angeles radio listeners, KNX has stopped simulcasting its broadcasts on 1070 AM, a frequency it had occupied for over a century,” read the story posted at newsbreak.com. “The shift comes about a year and a half after KNX moved its main broadcast to 97.1 FM.” The story — no longer available on line — went on to state that listeners were shocked when they tuned in to 1070 AM and didn’t hear the normal news format.

A reader of this very column sent me the posting; at first I just assumed that management made a decision that was, um, questionable. Most people I know still tune to KNX on the AM band due to its significantly stronger signal, even if the fidelity on most radios is not quite as good. “Stupid,” I responded.

But then I tuned in to hear it for myself. Same news as always, an exact simulcast as has been happening for the past year. That’s odd…

Soon KNX management responded directly to the story: “Hi there, Alex Silverman here, Director of News & Programming at KNX News,” said the social media post. “Just want to clarify: we have not ended the simulcast. KNX News is still on both 97.1 FM and 1070 AM in all hours except weekend mornings (Sat 6-11a and Sun 6-8a), when 1070 AM airs some paid and specialty programming.

“This has been the case for more than a year, and there has been no change recently. During those hours the news is available on 97.1 FM as well as the Audacy app and by asking your smart speaker to 'play KNX News.’”

So what happened? AI, or artificial intelligence that can be used to wrote stories. According to sources close to the subject, it was a story written primarily by artificial intelligence, and I will go out on a limb and state that the AI system involved probably just picked up a discussion by people related to the weekend morning paid programming. In the beginning of the simulcast, I am sure there were listeners surprised/shocked/etc. to hear something other than news in those time blocks. But weekend mornings does not translate to all the time.

Luckily for you, we don’t use AI here. In fact, I try to avoid all intelligence, not just artificial. Just ask my editor - he’ll agree completely.

Future Series

I am planning to start a feature in stations that don’t exist any more. But not just the big boys, or even the big-boys’ big formats. Stations like the original KDAY when it played top-40 and rock. Magic Oldies Radio K-WOW. KBLA. Stations you loved, but were not necessarily the stations that made it big.

I can use your help on this … if you have ideas for stations — and the personalities involved — to cover, send them my way.

Radio: August 4, 2023

If you tuned in lately to digital HD Radio station 105.1 HD3 to hear Frank Sinatra and friends, you might have been shocked to find … Taylor Swift!

In a nod to the format stunts of the past, station owner Saul Levine has changed the format of Unforgettable LA to Unforgettable Taylor Swift. I would have called it K-SWIFT, but I digress. In addition to the digital stream that requires a special HD tuner to receive, if you live in San Fernando, you can listen on a regular FM radio via the local low-powered transmitter that simulcasts the format.

Originally scheduled to begin July 29th — my wife Jean’s birthday, by the way — it started two days early and is planned to run for 30 days.

Says Levine: “Due to the extreme interest in the coming tour of Taylor Swift, we are playing “All Taylor All the Time.” He added that the KKGO HD signals (there are four) have a potential reach of 12 million people, and that many new cars include HD radios as standard or optional equipment, depending on the manufacturer.

Discovering Radio

Something wrong with the software or a module in my wife’s car causes her radio to “forget” four of the preset pages, which also leads to the radio tuning in the last AM or FM station heard no matter what other setting you had. For example, you might have been tuned into SiriusXM’s Coffeehouse when you were driving … next time you start up, you’re back listening to the radio.

I don’t think it’s a feature pushed by broadcasters in order to get people listening to traditional radio. But it is working … Jean has spent the last month listening to Alt 98.7 and KRTH 101. “It’s too much trouble to switch back,” she says, adding that she’s enjoyed the music.

AM for All

Though automaker Ford agreed to keep AM radio in its cars for at least one more model year, there are others that already removed it from the dashboard and the threat is there regardless. So work continues in the legislative arena.

Last week the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation passed the “AM for Every Vehicle Act,” sending it to the full Senate for debate.

According to industry newspaper Radio World (radioworld.com), The act “would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to issue a rule requiring automakers to maintain AM broadcast radio in their vehicles without a separate or additional payment, fee or surcharge. It says AM should be clearly visible on the vehicle’s dashboard; and until the new standard would take effect, cars lacking AM radio receivers would have to be labeled as such for buyers.”

Interestingly, the act was opposed by Senate Democrat Gary Peters (Michigan), who stated that the act is not only unnecessary, but that “Congress has never mandated radio features in vehicles ever before.”

Ah, but while Congress may not have, the FCC required something similar in the 1960s when it mandated all televisions include UHF tuners (covering channels 14-83) in the days when most homes watched VHF (channels 2-13). So it’s not exactly unprecedented. In fact, had the FCC mandated AM stereo or selected a single stereo system for the band, we may not be in the position we are in right now.

Some observers are concerned, however, that mandating AM without minimum quality standards for reception may make things worse.

Radio Waves: July 28, 2023 Ken and Dave talk radio! If you have not already subscribed to Ken Levine’s podcast — available on multiple sources including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible, or even links at his blog page, kenlevine.blogspot.com — you owe it to yourself to start listening. Right now.

Go ahead … I’ll wait.

Levine is a multi-talented man, having worked in radio (aka Beaver Cleaver on Ten-Q and B-100 among others), written for television and movies, written books and cartoons, and even written plays. His intelligence, humor, and humble attitude shine through his writings, and his “Hollywood and Levine” podcast is superb.

Recently he interviewed former programmer of The Sound, Dave Beasing —now a podcast creator and developer himself, regarding all things radio: programming, music, competition, commercials and more. I won’t give away the content, but suffice to say that he talks about much of what is discussed right here … or when he guests on my own podcast I co-cost with Mike Stark (Radio Waves, also available on numerous platforms). Great minds think alike, apparently.

Beasing, or for that matter Levine, Stark, and myself, is a huge fan of radio and the potential it has still. Not that he would want to necessarily be directly involved in day to day programming right now. But his insight and knowledge of radio and podcasting is tremendous. Look for episodes 333 and 334.

Career-Spanning Interviews Speaking of Stark and myself – over the years we have done numerous career-spanning interviews with people both in front of and behind the radio microphone who made huge contributions to our favorite medium.

The series actually goes back many years and includes some greats, including:

Los Angeles and surrounding city air personalities: Ace Young (KMET), Jeff Gonzer (KMET), Cynthia Fox (KMET), Dr. Demento (KMET), Elliot Mintz (KABC), Mo Kelly (KFI), Geno Michellini,(KLOS) , Shotgun Tom Kelly (KRTH), Dave “Hullabalooer” Hull, (KRLA), JJ Johnson (KDAY), Ken Levine (KTNQ, KABC), Poorman (KROQ), Thrasher (KNAC), Phil Hulett (KFWB), the “Insane” Darrell Wayne (KROQ), Lee Marshall (KHJ, KABC) and a tribute to newswoman Liz Fulton (KIIS-FM).

Program Directors: Chuck Martin (KHJ) and Dave Beasing (The Sound).

Radio executives: Jeff Smulyan and Rick Cummings (Emmis Communications)

Radio historian: Don Barrett (LARadio.com)

Listen day or night – 24/7 on TuneIn at: https://tunein.com/radio/LA-Radio-Studio-s196975/ or tell your smart device to “Play LA Radio Studio”.

The shows will run continuously — and randomly — through mid-August, and will be a regular part of the stream’s programming after that.

We definitely need to do some more of them as well!

Where’s Kaplan Where is Leon Kaplan, the longtime “Motorman” as heard weekends on KABC (790 AM) for, well, seemingly forever?

Retired, says KPFK (90.7 FM) “The Car Show” host Dave Kunz. Kunz posted on social media, “Congratulations to my friend Leon ‘Motorman’ Kaplan, retiring after an incredible 43 years on the air at ONE radio station.

No word on if it was his decision or not, but with new management coming in, perhaps he just decided to hang it up.

State of the Industry The news broke with an announcement on its own website July 14th: radio and music industry news site AllAccess.Com will be shutting down.

“It is with much sadness that we announce that in our 28th year of operation, ALLACCESS.COM will cease publishing at the close of business at 6p (PT), TUESDAY, AUGUST 15th, 2023 due to a marked decrease in revenues that makes moving forward impossible. The site will remain online for an undetermined amount of time.

“This was not a decision that was reached lightly nor without earnest tries to find a path forward. It comes on the heels of major changes in the music industry announced in JANUARY of this year. These strong financial headwinds also extend to our non-music partners as well. Both downturns have greatly affected how ALL ACCESS operates. The dollars are just not there to support our operation and staff any longer. “

The changes in the music industry mentioned reflect changes in promotions … and the budgets spent on said promotions, which are in decline. With the radio industry itself already having done that years ago, I can see why publisher and site founder Joel Denver is pulling the plug.

But it is a huge loss for both music and radio fans … All Access has been a source of information and research since its founding in 1995. And a class act the entire time. I will miss it a lot.

///

View Details

Radio July 21, 2023

Billboard Magazine announced last week that — with her song “Karma” making it to #1 on the Pop Airplay chart — Taylor Swift has tied the record for the most number one songs by an artist in the history of the chart.

“Karma” is her 11th #1 hit, and that record puts her in good company, tying with Maroon 5, Katy Perry, and Rihanna who all also had 11 Number 1s. Right below them is Justin Bieber with ten Number 1s. No other artists are in the double digits.

Now, you may be asking how can that be? What about The Beatles? The Bee Gees? Michael Jackson? Elvis? Well, it’s not really a technicality, but it has to do with what the list actually measures and how old the list goes back. In this case it is a measure not of sales, but how many times the song has been played by major stations across the country … and it only goes back as far as October, 1992.

If you investigate the actual number of times an artist hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, the leader in indeed The Beatles, with 20 Number 1 hits; Mariah Carey is second on that list with 19. Where’s Elvis? Third, with 18.

Small Town Radio

Brian Winnekins is the owner of WRDN/Durand Wisconsin, one of the handful of AM AM stations across the country still utilizing the Motorola C-Quam stereo system, which means that most current radios can’t decode the stereo signal, but many from the 1980s and ‘90s still can. With the improvements and investments in equipment he (and those in similar situations) have made, his stations sounds remarkable on any decent radio — stereo or not.

Durand is a small farming town, with a population of only about 1900 residents in the 2020 Census. But unlike some small town stations, Winnekins doesn’t take the easy way out by just putting on syndicated programming or political talk. Instead he takes his community service roll seriously, and presents extensive agricultural news and information, local high school athletic games, local news, local events, and local weather. Oh, and country music.

Note the word local. Back to that soon.

Recently, Winnekins posted information on Facebook regarding the station’s Summer programming special: “Doing the community service thing from our first fair of season,” he wrote. “Yes we do live video streams of livestock shows. Don't laugh, we have 17 sponsors.”

Seventeen sponsors, in a town of fewer than 2000 residents, not counting the cattle. On a station that is on the band that some say is dead. How can that be?

Back to the word “local.” It is so key to connecting with your audience — and advertisers. That focus on the local audience is what makes the difference. An active audience that can then be reached by local advertisers who have no other easy way to reach their target customers.

But certainly you could not do that in Southern California. Really? Why not? There used to be local stations … in fact all the stations used to be local in some sense. But the move to become “bigger” can hurt when you can’t compete against the big boys with, for example, a limited signal. Or even just a limited budget. The solution? Program local.

The original setup of many stations was designed to be locally-focussed. As some stations grew, they became dominant, of course. But there was still room for stations serving a local audience. KGIL (now KMZT, 1260 AM) was designed and originally programmed for the San Fernando Valley. KEZY (now KGBN, 1190 AM) was for Anaheim. KFOX (now KDAY, 93.1 FM) was for Redondo Beach. How about a station actually programming to the local community, whatever that community may be? San Pedro … Wilmington … Huntington Park … Hermosa Beach… Fountain Valley… You get the idea.

If I was a local business owner, I could probably never afford to buy advertising time on KIIS-FM (102.7), and it would probably not be worth it even if I could. But if I could advertise on a station targeting my local community, it might be the best marketing investment I could make.

So as we continue the talk of helping improve radio, programmers must remember that local trumps all, even for the larger stations. KHJ (930 AM) wasn’t the most influential station of its time when it played top-40 because it syndicated its programming or used out of town DJs… it was so because it was Los Angeles… there were stations similar, but there was only on KHJ. Only one KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM). Only one KROQ (106.7 FM).

Be the best you can be, program locally, and there is no stopping you.

Wheel of Reaction

Not everyone was happy with the news that KIIS morning man Ryan Seacrest was chosen as the replacement host for “Wheel of Fortune” when Pat Sajak retires. Posts on social media were not all positive, and letters from you were not necessarily supportive either

…

“Seacrest sucks! He's going to drive that show off a cliff faster than Dick Clark in a van getting away from Michael Moore in ‘Bowling for Columbine.’” says reader Eric Peterson.

In case you don’t know the reference, as explained on documentarychannel.tumblr.com, in the movie “the former American Bandstand host is ambushed outside his production office and made to look insensitive because he shuts a minivan door in the filmmaker’s face.”

I’m still reserving judgement. You never know who will make a good host … I thought Snoop Dogg was going to be awful on the relaunch of television game show “Joker’s Wild.” Instead he proved to be quite good at it. Who knew?

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in Southern California. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com.

///

RadioWaves: July 14, 2023 McIntyre’s Musings “About 15-years ago, I did one air shift at KFI (640 AM) radio, wrote (former) longtime KABC (790 AM) morning talker Doug McIntyre on a social media post. “I so impressed management that, after only a decade and a half, they have invited me back. I will be filling in for John & Ken on Thursday, June 29th and Friday, June 30th from 1-4pm. Nobody is more surprised than me.”

He did fill in, and it most certainly did not go unnoticed by you … I received numerous emails asking if, just perhaps, McIntyre might come back permanently to radio via KFI. So I asked; his response will disappoint somewhat. But there is some good news too.

“I’m just happy to have had the opportunity to fill-in for John and Ken, McIntyre explained, adding, “I am not looking for work. They called and asked if I’d do it and the timing was good, especially with my book coming out July 18th, so I said yes.

“It was a ton of fun, but after 4-1/2 years off the air, I was as nervous as I was the first time I ever hosted a show. I’d be happy to do more fill-in work if they ask. I have a lot of old friends in the building.”

Any possibility of a permanent position? Not interested.

But the book? What’s up with that? I have not read it, have not seen an advanced copy, nor do I have any real information as to its content. But I do know it is being released (as stated) on July 18th. And it is his first full-length novel, entitled “Frank’s Shadow.”

You can read the synopsis by searching out the title, but this part of the description jumped out when I read it on various bookseller sites: “Frank’s Shadow is a deeply (sometimes darkly) human story wrapped in the trappings of a delightfully gritty love letter to New York City’s less glamorous neighborhoods.” Sounds intriguing!

McIntyre will be out promoting the book in person Tuesday July 18th from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at The Grove at Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles; July 22nd from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Gatsby’s in Long Beach; and July 26th from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Pages: A Book Store in Manhattan Beach. More signing events will be held in August as well … you can see a calendar of events for the book and other aspects of his life at dougmcintyre.com/upcoming-appearances.

More Oldies … on Hit Radio? Well, I guess it figured to happen. Considering that even the supposed new music stations like Alt 98.7 FM and KROQ (106.7 FM) are essentially alternative oldies stations, perhaps it was just a matter of time before top-40 stations became oldies stations as well.

I mean, why attract young people to radio when you can play the same songs you played 20 years ago? Simple. Easy. Mindless. Lazy.

I am referring to a trend highlighted in a recent RadioInsight.Com report by Lance Venta, who writes that “WKFS Milford/Cincinnati Ohio has joined the growing number of CHR stations shifting to a gold-heavy presentation.

“WKFS is still playing 3-4 currents per hour, but has removed all of its re-currents and recent golds replacing them with golds mostly from 2000 to 2010,” he says.

To translate that into normal-speak, what they have done is limited new releases — within the past year or so — to three or four songs per hour, cut back on music over a year old (re-currents) along with those just slightly older (recent golds). In their place are what we used to call oldies – songs over ten years old. Note that the station is not going back too far, though it is the modern equivalent of when stations like KHJ (930 AM) or K-WEST (now KPWR, 105.9 FM) would drop back into the 1960s era when they played top-40 in the 1980s … or when KHJ played songs from the ‘50s in the 1960s and ‘70s.

The difference, though, is that stations like KHJ and K-WEST maintained playing a LOT of new music, and the oldies added spice to the mix, maybe twice an hour at most. And they were carefully selected to make you go “wow – I haven’t heard that in years.” Usually the songs were part of a flashback specially highlighted as “Yesterday,” “Number One then…” or the “time machine.”

The modern version, by contrast, places the oldies at the top-tier. Which would be OK if the stations sold themselves as the oldies stations that they are, much like KRTH (101.1 FM) did in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Perhaps it will work, and radio can continue to shun younger listeners, forcing them to other entertainment sources. But I find the entire movement kind of sad when formats that are supposed to play new music … don’t. If this continues, the only people who will listen to radio will be older than me.

Sure it could bring in some listeners from other stations. But it won’t bring in new listeners to radio, and it is basically the easy way to temporarily make a buck. Like other make-a-buck schemes of the past — satellite formats, “Jack” formats, cloned stations in every market, little promotion, nationwide contests, one DJ for multiple stations — it will do nothing to make radio competitive long term against the industry’s numerous competitors, from streaming services to TikTok.

Sometimes it really does seem that the radio industry wants to fail.

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in Southern California. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com.

Radio Waves: July 7, 2023 Seacrest Takes the Wheel Radio has a long history of sending many of its top personalities to host television game shows. Among the most famous include Wink Martindale, Jim Lange, Bob Eubanks, Gene Rayburn, and Pat Sajak, among many more.

To that list, add KIIS (102.7 FM) morning man Ryan Seacrest, who will replace Sajak on “Wheel of Fortune” at the end of the 2024 season. When Sajak leaves, he will end more than four decades with the show, after taking over for original host Chuck Woolery who left the show in a salary dispute in December, 1981.

Seacrest got his start in Los Angeles radio in 2004 at Star 98.7 FM (now known as Alt 98.7, KYSR). But he was only 16 when started in the profession by winning an internship at his hometown radio station WSTR/Atlanta where he learned all aspects of radio … including filling in for ill or vacationing air personalities and eventually getting a regular weekend shift … while still in high school.

His show on Star was during afternoon drive, and he was definitely a “star” (pardon the pun) on the station paired with Lisa Fox. He left for San Francisco’s K-101 in 2003, returning to Los Angeles less than a year later to replace Rick Dees in February, 2004, a position he still holds and has held all the while taking on numerous other radio and television gigs including hosting syndicated radio program “American Top 40” and television shows such as “American Idol,” “Live with Kelly and Ryan,” and the legendary “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” which he inherited from another radio personality, Dick Clark.

Many have compared Seacrest with Clark, primarily due to his boyish looks and on-air charm. He has always been able to engage his audiences, and Seacrest has often said that he idolized Clark growing up.

Interestingly and somewhat humorously, there was some pushback on the internet boards over the announcement of the Wheel replacement. One comment on twitter asked “how many jobs do you need?” with another pleading him to reconsider, writing “We don’t want you! Go away lol! You’re just going to ruin this amazing show.”

“Wheel” producers obviously feel differently, and are paying Seacrest a reported $28 million per season, $13 million more than Sajak reportedly earned from the show. Sajak, by the way, will stay on as a consultant for three years. For historical reference, Woolery was let go when he was asking $500,000 per season.

Salary issues aside, I do think Seacrest will be a good host. His radio duties including hosting KIIS mornings will continue at least through 2025, the end of his current contract. My hunch is that he will remain at KIIS far longer. Radio stations often benefit from television exposure of their personalities, and you can’t get much more exposure than Seacrest.

Cardinal Rule A wise programmer and consultant once told me that a general interest morning show should shun discussion or presentation of political viewpoints in order to avoid ticking off half of your potential audience.

Which is why I was so surprised when I tuned in to KROQ’s (106.7 FM) morning Klein and Ally show last Friday. During a segment that was presented as news, co-host Ally Johnson launched into a short rant condemning a recent Supreme Court decision and lamenting how bad the country has become.

Remember, this was supposedly news, though the segment also devolved to include conjecture as to how couples can “hook up” behind the rows of port-a-potties at festival concerts. KROQ does not run editorials.

Personally, I don’t care what her opinion is, on any subject. She can think whatever she wants. But if I was the program director of KROQ, trying to build an audience for a dying station against competition that has been killing the morning show in the ratings for years? I’d be livid.

If I were in management for the ownership, Audacy, which just instituted a reverse 1-for-30 stock split in order to try to shore up finances … I’d be questioning my choice of program director. There’s just too much at stake.

View Details

Radio Waves: June 30, 2023

Remembering John Felz John Felz began his radio career in 1971, working in the mail room of KMPC (now KSPN, 710 AM). In the small-world department, one of his colleagues in the mail room was future KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) newscaster and personality Pat “Paraquat” Kelley, whose father Bob Kelley was the play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Rams.

After a time, Felz was moved to the newsroom as an assistant, supporting the newsroom staff by sorting and compiling stories that came across the teletype machines from the various news services of the time, including the Associated Press and United Press International. His duties also included writing sports and weather reports for the news anchors and station personalities such as Dick Whittinghill, Ira Cook, Johnny Grant, Gary Owens, Geoff Edwards, Johnny Magnus, Wink Martindale and Robert W. Morgan.

Eventually he expanded into more programming elements both within the station and as part of the Golden West Broadcasters Radio Network — Golden West owned KMPC and the station was its flagship — which carried games for the California Angels, the Rams, and UCLA football and basketball. Felz was in charge of producing in-studio and in-stadium broadcasts for the network affiliates.

He moved on — and up — to hold positions in management, including Operations Director, Assistant Programmer, and producer for the morning show.

He left KMPC in 1995 and worked at a few stations, notably KRTH (101.1 FM), KIEV (now KRLA, 870 AM), and the Music of Your Life Radio Network.

Felz passed away on June 11th at the age of 78; no details on the cause of his death were released but friends say he had been having a series of health complications that most likely played a role. Friends and family will gather for a remembrance of his life on July 1st in Sherman Oaks.

Bebop Deluxe No, not the band. After a year of preparations, KKJZ (88.1 FM) has launched a full-time bebop jazz sub-station, which can be heard online (look for the special button at jazzandblues.org) or on a digital HD radio tuner on 88.1 HD2.

While I am certainly not an expert, I do know that bebop is a style of jazz music that is generally fast-tempo, uses many chord changes and even key changes … and a lot of improvisation. This came about due to a younger generation of jazz musicians pushing the creative boundaries of the genre in the early to mid 1940s. Unlike much of the music of the time, bebop was not intended as being danceable; instead it was to be heard. Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis are among the influential bebop artists and composers.

Station consultant Saul Levine says that the music is being compiled by the KKJZ staff, directed by Jose Rizo. “We are fulfilling a need for jazz lovers, and we thank the California State University, Long Beach — owner of the station — for its support of our efforts.”

“We are doing this in honor if Chuck Miles and the great bebop music of the past.” he said.

Hayes Out The rumors proved to be true … I had heard rumors from absolutely reliable sources that KABC (790 AM) programmer and market manager Drew Hayes had parted ways with the station and owner Cumulus Media, but I could not get confirmation from any of the players involved.

Turns out the rumors were true. AllAccess.Com confirmed that Hayes left the station in earlier June after many years with the station … this being his second stint.

Hayes has extensive experience in the format and in radio, having worked at WLS/Chicago, ESPN Radio, and KABC itself the last ten years in addition to his first time at the helm back in the late 1990s.

Where this takes the station is unknown. It has been years since KABC has been any type of force in the market, and conditions have gotten worse as owner Cumulus continues to shed costs .. and stations. I cannot even remember the last time I saw an ad for KABC … the last one I can remember featured Ken (Minyard) and Bob (Arthur) … meaning it was decades ago.

With all the choices for stations and non-radio entertainment, a marketing plan is imperative. KABC has had none, and the results speak for themselves.

And rumors continue to swirl regarding Cumulus simply selling the station, so perhaps Hayes dodged a proverbial bullet.

Radio Waves: June 23, 2023Where’s My Oldies?I received more than a few emails regarding the loss of the LA Oldies (aka K-SURF) stream. While the station can still be heard over the airwaves if you have an HD radio and are able to clearly tune in 105.1 HD4, many listeners used the internet or smartphone apps to listen, and that’s what had been turned off due to the costs involved. The financial burden for streaming rights has been an issue for many stations, especially in smaller markets and niche formats.

Station owner Saul Levine knew that people liked the station and listened through the stream, but he didn’t realize just how many. And it caught him somewhat off guard when he started receiving calls and emails from around the world asking what happened.

“I was amazed at the response and the size of the audience,” he told me in early June. “We are reviewing the potential to bring it back, especially if we can cover the costs to stream it.”

Then, last week, the good news: “K-SURF is making its way back on the air,” Levine told me. “The outpouring of excitement for the format surprised me. K-SURF is truly America’s Oldies station.”

It is taking time to get things going, but it will be back, he says, with an even better experience on the apps. That’s music to many ears.

Legend SoldThe original KRLA (now KRDC, 1110 AM) has been sold. Unfortunately not to anyone who will play top-40 or oldies as I would have done. Perhaps bring back some of the magic that once propelled the station to the top of the ratings in the 1960s or even as HitRadio 11 in the 1970s.

Disney sold its last remaining radio property to Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa for $5 million. Calvary also owns KWVE/San Clemente (107.9 FM) … Southern California’s other Wave (K-Wave), not to be confused with KTWV (94.7 FM – The Wave).

Not that I expect anyone to confuse K-Wave with The Wave, but it is interesting that both stations serve much of the same area.

I am a little surprised that Calvary bought KRDC as they already own a very powerful FM station, while KRDC’s signal is hampered with an odd transmitting pattern that seems to send much of the signal over the ocean. Perhaps they have plans to put some money into refurbishing the transmitter site.

Nominating Class of ’23The Museum of Broadcast Communications — part of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago — received over 2500 suggestions for new inductees into the Radio Hall of Fame. In the end they whittled the list down to 24 candidates.

Among the nominees is our own John and Ken (currently heard 1-4 p.m. on KFI 640 AM), former local talk host Larry Elder, and Shadoe Stevens (KRLA, KMET, KROQ). You may also remember Stevens as Fred Rated, the “spokesman” for the now defunct Federated Group, and the voice of also defunct University Stereo among his popular voiceover work.

The full list, in alphabetical order by first name — for whatever reason — as presented on the website radiohalloffame.com/2023-nominees:

Bert Weiss, Bob Rivers, Charles Laquidara, Dyana Williams, Gerry House, Jaime Jarrin, John & Ken, John DeBella, Johnny Magic, Kevin Matthews, Kid Leo (Lawrence Travagliante), Larry Elder, Laurie DeYoung, Lee Harris, Rev. Louise Williams Bishop, Mark Simone, Mary McCoy, Matt Siegel, Mojo in the Morning, Monica May, Nina Totenberg, Pat St. John, Shadoe Stevens, and Shelley “The Playboy” Stewart.

Voting among 800 specially selected industry insiders will run through the end of the month; this year’s inductees will be announced on July 24th.

PlaybackJust a few comments from recent columns …

“I read your column this morning and I sure agree with you regarding KABC. The station could be so much, but it has just become plain awful lately. The presentation is just terrible.

“I would hate to see one of the last stations to leave talk radio. I disagree with you in that it should be converted to music. Don’t we have enough music stations already?” — Mike Skibba

Not on AM … and that is a concern for me. Some owners are turning in licenses because the land they sit on is worth more than the station itself. Not enough listeners (and those that do listen are old like me or older, so advertisers don’t want them) because there is too much political talk, sports, etc. … there needs ti be something that attracts younger listeners before the band disappears completely, perhaps as soon as one more generation.

“I used to listen to KABC all day but not anymore. It is all politics and especially LA politics and I live in the OC. I would LOVE to find an oldies station (50’s 60’s 70’s) and see John Phillips on TV or on another stronger station. He is the only one I listen to now. — Lin Akins

///

Radio Waves: June 16, 2023Goodbye, Jeff BaughThese are getting difficult to write: we lost another good one last week.

Jeff Baugh, who reported on traffic conditions and major news stories from the air for almost 40 years, passed away June 6th due to lung cancer. He was 81.

Baugh was with only three stations his entire Los Angeles radio career: KFWB (980 AM) starting in 1986, followed by KNX (1070 AM … the FM simulcast did not exist at the time) in 2008, and KFI from 2017 until his death. His approach to traffic reporting was listener-driven – he didn’t believe it was enough to report on an incident, he understood the importance of making the reports relevant and useful by explaining, whenever possible, how to get around the problem.

LARadio.Com’s Don Barrett was a friend of Baugh’s; he says that Baugh’s smile was contagious … one “that you would never forget – a smile that would light up the dreariest of skies.”

Born in Brooklyn on November 15, 1942, Baugh was a Marine who served two tours in Vietnam. After the war he eventually found himself in Los Angeles where he became a DJ at Carlos and Charlie’s on the Sunset Strip until he landed at KFWB. As an airborne reporter, he was the recipient of numerous awards including multiple Golden Mikes, the award of awards for local news reporting.

Back LiveLive 105 (KITS/San Francisco) was the Bay Area’s alternative music source for over 30 years before first switching its name to “Alt 105.3” in 2017 and then changing its name and format to the soul-less adult hits Jack-FM clone called “Dave FM” just under two years ago.

Well, that didn’t work, so Live 105 is back. The switch happened on June 2nd and included a fairly creative pre-recorded promo announcing the change, including a short portion of the classic Cheech and Chong routine stating that “Dave’s not here!”

The change back has caused quite a buzz throughout the area, including coverage from local newspapers and television stations, as well as posts all over social media and studies from industry observers. Headlines such as “Listeners rejoice as Live 105 returns to the airwaves” are common.

Currently the station is running jockless; DJs are expected on the air in the coming weeks. As I tuned in on the internet stream, though, one thing stuck out … in its current form — like our own KROQ (106.7 FM) — it is basically an oldies station. I listened for an hour earlier in the day before writing this and heard only a few songs released in the pasts three years.

Perhaps it is by design; Live 105 and KROQ are both owned by the same company — Audacy — so perhaps copying KROQ is policy. Or it could be that the play list was still filled by many of the former Dave-FM songs … as so many semi-alternative songs can also be found on Jack-FM right here … also owned by Audacy.

My hope, though, is that new songs will become more prevalent and help make the format a success, which may help spread the idea to here.

Overall, I’d say this is a tremendously positive move. Now we just need to get the big 610 KFRC back on the air … Live trivia: Alt 98.7’s “The Woody Show” originated at Live 105 and was heard there until it was removed from the air for reasons that still are not totally clear. Their loss is our gain, of course.

Changes at KABCHost Leo Terrell and programmer Drew Hayes are both out at KABC (790 AM). It appears that Hayes was let go and that Terrell left on his own terms in response. Left unsaid is what will happen with the rest of the station. For now, no one is talking.

But something does need to be done. It has been decades since KABC was truly relevant; too many syndicated programs and a woeful lack of promotion left the station so low in the ratings that many industry watchers were wondering when, not if, a change would come.

Personally, if I owned the station, I’d switch it to music. Perhaps a full service format backed by the oldies — or mellow rock — that you no longer hear on the radio.

But if management wants to keep it talk, start with the strengths, primarily mid-day son John Phillips. Phillips has a way of making politics and local issues entertaining and informative without preaching to the choir, and is definitely, by far, the best show on the station.

Once the hosts are chosen, it is imperative to clean up the on-air presentation. Too many programs sound like a bad college or high-school station, with volume levels uneven, unclear sound, music played too loud over the host making it difficult to hear, and an overall sound that screams low-budget. Additionally, promotional announcements sound too much like they are talking at listeners not to listeners.

Strange that the station that launched full-time talk in Los Angeles does it so badly today.

It could work, though. Once mostly live and local hosts are in place — you can keep a few of the syndicated podcast shows — then it’s time to clean up the sound by dumping all pre-recorded promos and make them all read by the hosts themselves. I don’t need to hear the deep-voice guy say “Dan – Bon – Gino” exactly the same way multiple times each day, every day.

Just a thought, anyway. Let me ask you this – what would you do with KABC?

///

Radio Waves: June 9, 2023No Surf?For a station with little exposure, LA Oldies — also known as K-SURF — has quite a following. At one time available on the AM band at 1260 kHZ, it moved off the band to make way for K-Mozart, relegating it to the HD4 digital radio stream tied to KKGO (105.1 FM) but still available world-wide on the internet, smart phone apps and smart speakers.

No longer. Station owner Saul Levine confirmed that the station stoped streaming as of May 22nd, a victim of increased streaming and licensing costs.

It’s not necessarily gone forever, and is still available on the HD stream if you own an HD Radio-capable receiver. Many cars have them as standard or available equipment, and aftermarket radios often include HD standard as well.

Keep in mind, Levine is a radio guy at heart and indicated that if he could figure out a way to at least cover the costs — via a new marketing plan, for example — it could very well return. In that vein, if you or someone you know wants to become an LA Oldies sponsor, you might consider contacting him. Just sayin’ …

But that doesn’t help now … where can former LA Oldies listeners find the music they like? Luckily, there are some alternatives that might not be exactly like the old K-Surf, but are quite good in their own approach. Some initial suggestions:

• Big 8 Radio, a tribute to CKLW, which still broadcasts from Windsor/Ontario but basically serves The Motor City Detroit. The broadcast station runs talk now, but was a Boss Radio station in the 1960s, and that is the focus of this tribute. You can tune in on various apps (I recommend StreamS HiFi Audio and MyTunerRadio) or at the website big8radio.com. It’s the Detroit version of Boss Radio, and noncommercial as well.

The station plays primarily hits of the 1960s but dips into the ‘50s and ‘70s as well. As I write this, they are presenting a Million Dollar Weekend, which fans of RKO top-40 and Boss Radio stations (KHJ, KGB, KFRC, CKLW, and more) will remember well.

• The Eagle, playing non-stop ‘70s music. I wouldn’t call it a station tribute; more like an era-tribute, but remarkably well-produced. The Eagle, like Big 8 Radio, has stunning sound quality (especially using StreamS) and has a format that runs the full decade of 1970-1979 (or is it 1971-1980?) give or take a year or so. Find it on the apps as well as TheEagle.FM

• Top 40 Hit Clock, which plays clusters of songs by year, and covers the 1950s through the ‘70s. It’s a tough find and doesn’t always show on the app searches; the best way to hear it is to use the online stream link, which is https://la2.indexcom.com/player/6. Fidelity of this is also remarkably good, and can be configured on the apps … I just can’t remember how. It definitely took some experimentation.

You can also find a ton of streaming internet-only as well as broadcast stations using the apps; just search by genre and decade. The good news for LA Oldies fans? Levine told me that he was “amazed at the national response and national audience.” He has been receiving emails from fans around the country. As we speak, he is reviewing ways to make it work.

Feedback Loop“The main thing I don’t like about local radio is there are just too many commercials. Once when I was in my car, all the radio stations I had on my presets had commercials … at the same time! The other issue I have is the repetition of the music that is being played, especially on the classic hits and classic rock stations I listen to.

“The main thing I really enjoy about local radio is the DJs I listen to. It is so good to actually hear a live voice talking to you. I like DJs that announce the songs, tell you the time, and the weather. I also enjoy hearing people winning contests on the radio and the voice of the DJs showing how happy they are for the listener who won. You just don’t get that same feeling when you listen to a radio station that is automated, with no one there. The best part is you are truly never really alone, it is like having a dear friend over to your place to visit with you. — Russ, Glendale

“I usually find your takes spot on, but as a former Woody listener, I am now back on KROQ (106.7 FM) with Kline and Ally. Show is so much more So Cal, and actually find myself laughing a lot more without all the old sounding ‘radio bits.’

“I get an authentic early Stern vibe but with modern humor from Kline. Ally has grown on me a lot. I hear a lot of people talking about that ‘morning show on KROQ’ and talking about what they heard. I always think good radio (and TV) does that. Make people think and tell others. I think they are doing it better than most right now.” — Troy Grasso

You definitely hit the nail … word of mouth and a positive “vibe” are definitely the ways to go. Definitely.

View Details

Radio:June 2, 2023

Whether it was the threat oflegislative action that would require it, or just a reaction to simple lobbyingby government officials, listeners and buyers alike, Ford announced that it hasreversed its decision to remove AM radio capabilities from some gas-poweredvehicles in 2024 and through a software update will add the ability to receiveAM in its 2023 electric vehicles.

One of the arguments formaintaining the ability to receive AM signals has to do with safety - theEmergency Alert System often relies on AM stations to spread news andinformation in the case of an emergency — KFI (640 AM) is the key link locally,for example — and the long-distance reception that AM transmissions offer canget news to distant rural areas with ease.

It is honestly a compellingargument; while cell-phone notifications can also be used in emergencies, thecellular network relies on cell towers and internet connections, which are notnearly as universal or robust as AM transmissions.

The notice was made by Ford CEO JimFarley via social media posts, writing in Twitter, “After speaking with policyleaders about the importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergencyalert system, we've decided to include it on all 2024 Ford &LincolnMotorCo vehicles. For any owners of FordEVs without AM broadcast capability, we’ll offer a software update.”

Notice the year: 2024. Nothing isstated on any year further ahead, so the battle may not necessarily be over.And obviously Ford’s decision doesn’t affect the operations of other companieswith what I consider bad engineering departments — those that can’t figure outhow to eliminate interference from their electric vehicles even though itdoesn’t seem to be an issue with the likes of General Motors, Toyota, and now,of course Ford. Yes, BMW, Volvo, Volkswagen, Tesla, Rivian and Mazda — all ofwhich have already or plan to remove AM from the dashboard — I just outedyour lack of basic engineering expertise. Convince me otherwise.

So the legislative action continuesand may indeed require AM reception in all vehicles in the future,similar to how television sets were required to offer UHF tuners starting inthe 1960s.

Yet I can’t shake the feeling thatif more AM stations offered compelling programming and maintained their signalsbetter, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all. But you already know myposition on that. Perhaps the renewed focus on AM will help start someprogramming momentum.

Cheers and Jeers

More on your radio loves andtune-outs:

“My wife and I enjoy listening tothe radio during the day. What we dislike is hearing the same five songs(on every channel) over and over every day and usually at the exact same times,when there is such a wealth of good oldies music available from the 50's, 60s,and 70s. Thank you for asking” — Tony Elia, Mission Viejo

“My comment on news radio stations,particularly morning KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM), is that they read the news toofast and don't use proper nouns much. They usually say the proper noun of acity or person at the beginning of the story but from then on it's just: cityor he or she. Sometimes I miss the proper name and don't know the location orwho the story is referring to. Also, an introductory phrase between storieswould help - sometimes I'm still trying to digest a story when they quicklyread the next one without warning.

“What I like: the three minutes ofCBS news on the hour on KNX as well as the in-depth reporting, the JerrySharell show on KJAZZ (88.1 FM), and Rich on Tech on KFI (640 AM).” — CliveSoden

“I love the Kevin and Sluggo Showon KLOS (95.5 FM) 3-7 PM. There are different daily segments like a funny orweird current news event, including audio, usually a human fail story. Theyhave listeners call in with their responses to the daily topic; ie what is atattoo you regret getting? There is a daily top ten list such as top-10 Eastercandy sold. Then Kevin tries to guess at least five correctly and if he does,Sluggo gives him a dollar. It is very funny & entertaining for theafternoon commute.” — Cee Cee Curti

“I love K-SURF (105.1 HD4) oldies.I hate the fact that when I listen to it on my car’s HD radio setting it isconstantly cutting on and off all the time. Where I live, reception isalways spotty. Would I tune in to a different station? Absolutely, if onlythey would play the 60s rock like K-SURF. There are plenty of us oldboomers still around who would love to hear the 60 music being played on theradio.

“Why cant one of the regularFM oldies stations play the stuff from the 60? At least with the regular FMstations I don’t have any reception issues and they all come in nice andclear. I have the KKGO app on my cell phone but really who wants to listento music on their cell phone while driving. It sounds so much better onthe car radio than on your cell phone.” — Dan Schary

(The trick is to get your phoneconnected to your car stereo!)

“I love KFI. I listen to Garyand Shannon, John and Ken, and Tim Conway. I was crushed when John andKen changed their time from 1-4, because I liked to listen to them afterwork. Dislikes? The monotonous KARS-FOR-KIDS jingle. I will slamthe OFF button the second I hear it start. How about they just SAY thatyou can donate your car to them. FACT: I NEVER will!

“I also love The Patriot (KEIB,1150 AM), especially the Joe Escalante show on Sundays, country and classicrock stations, and Sirius Satellite Radio.” — Bonnie Hoy

Still more to come …

Radio: May 26, 2023

Youprobably already heard that longtime UCLA Bruins men’s football, basketball,and baseball announcer Chris Roberts passed away May 12th at the age of 74 dueto complications from Parkinson’s Disease.

Thispaper had one of the best looks back on his career that I’ve seen, focussingnot only on his work with the Bruins but also his radio career beginnings startin Victorville, as well as his stops in San Bernardino where he worked withJhani Kaye among others … I mention Kaye because the two would work togetheragain from 1981 - 1992 at KFI (640 AM) and KOST (103.5 FM) when Kaye was theprogram director of the stations.

Duringthe KFI/KOST days, Roberts eventually became sports director, but it didn’tstart that way, exactly. He was actually first working the overnight shift onKOST, and would prepare a sports report for the KFI morning show. You mayremember the tagline: every sportscast ended with “Chris Roberts, AthleticBriefs.”

Ifirst heard of Roberts’ death from a Facebook post by Kaye. “My best friend inbroadcasting, Chris Roberts, Passed away this morning,” Kaye wrote. “He was mypal. I admired him for the way he rose to become one of the most respectedvoices of UCLA sports broadcasters.” I have never heard an unkind word aboutRoberts; this is a huge loss to both the radio industry and the sportsworld.

Likesand Dislikes

Itactually started as a response to a column by InsideMusicMedia.Com’s Jerry DelColliano, who wrote of Top Listener Gripes on April 28th. I still haven’twritten of his gripes because I wanted to hear of yours first. But I alsowanted to know what you live about radio as well. Here’s what you think,positive and negative, in no particular order … Jerry can wait.

“Ilisten to Mottek On Money from KABC.com as a podcast. I don’t know if thiswould fall under your question, but hey interject commercial ads mid-sentenceduring the podcast. I find this very annoying … I don’t know if this is aMottek or Cumulus thing. No other podcasts I listen to does thismid-sentence advertising. — Steve Lui

“Themorning DJs turn me off. It’s the same format almost everywhere youturn. I like some introductions but not the stupid banter now. But, Iam not in their market group being 58 as of a short time ago.” — Erik Hassold

(Programnote: Happy birthday!)

“Ihate the annoying ‘this has been previously recorded’ preamble before an ad fora radio show, as if the general listener isn’t smart enough to realize it’s anad. I’m sure it’s an FCC thing, but annoying nonetheless.” — Cody Lyons

“Theplaylists are all the same songs OVER AND OVER AND OVER. There's no creativityor imagination. And it doesn't matter if the station is ‘alt’ or ‘oldies’ ...it's all the same stuff. It's actually dumb that 98.7 and 106.7 categorizethemselves as alternative. Those stations don't know what that means anymore.What do I enjoy? Klein and Ally in the morning on KROQ; very talented andunderrated show that deserves more listeners. I was a huge Kevin and Bean fanfor years and this show is different, but equally as entertaining. “ —Marc Levine

“BAD:Same songs over and over. Ok, so your research says it's best to stick tothe superstars - I get it. But Journey, Elton John, Rolling Stones, Heartetc. have more than a half dozen hits in their catalog. By just doublingthe number of songs played by the popular artists the stations would increasetheir interest from me.

“Ifyou're a political-leaning talk show, fine. If you're not, please don'tsay anything political. I have even heard political issues discussed onlocal 88.5 fm - disguised as songwriting information from local artists.

“GOOD:Variety. Stations can stick to their format and still have morevariety. Like my point above, include more songs from the favoredartists. Include more artists, and that doesn't mean they have to gamblewith ‘lesser’ names - there are enough established artists in each category toexpand. And what about including some live tracks of the hits? Ilove when stations do that.

“Discjockeys. There's a place for music-only stations with no DJs, but a fewmore DJ-led stations would provide more personal connection to uslisteners. And it doesn't have to include long comedy segments orlistener calls - just some connection.

“Don'tknow how to title this - DJ emotions. This might seem hokey. Thesedays it seems like most DJs and their interaction with listeners is eitherdistant or factual. In my day — I’m your age — they seemed a lot moreemotional - you know, like hey it's Friday - school's out - party time (cutdirectly to party anthem song) or "hump day" ... Contrived? Maybe … maybe not. But they and the music helped steerour emotions, usually for the better. They talked to us and with us andtook our thoughts away from everyday life. I don't think life's just a party,but I think radio - like sports, entertainment, the movies - are to help ustemporarily escape from things like work and other responsibilities. — Darren

Tobe continued …

Radio: May 19, 2023

Ifyou were a listener to KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) during the station’s earlierdays and rise to dominance in the 1970s, you remember “The Burner” Mary Turner,one of the early female pioneers of progressive and album rock radio. On theKMET airwaves from June of 1972 until August of 1982, she in many waysrepresented exactly what KMET was to its listeners: intelligent, passionate …and human.

Detailsare unusually lacking, but Turner passed away May 9th. The news was announcedby Turner’s KMET colleague Ace Young, who posted the news and a tribute onsocial media.

Speakingto LARadio.Com’s Don Barrett years agoregarding her career and the early days of progressive rock radio, Turnerreflected on the times."It was an exciting time back then, because youdidn't operate under any rules. You could play anything you wanted, sayanything you wanted and who cared? FM at that time was a joke, especially toTop 40 people. We were the hippies, and they were the stars.”

Didthe fact that she was a woman in an industry dominated, especially back then,by men? Turner told Barrett,”I think being a woman helped more than anythingelse. The time was right for it, and I happened to be in the right place at theright time.”

Justa short time after her arrival at KMET, the station hired a female programdirector, Sam Bellamy, who also spoke with Barrett, saying “When Iarrived at KMET in 1974, Mary was already there paving the way forwomen in radio. We became fast friends and partners in crime, based a loton our shared sense of humor and intense desire to succeed.

“Ilearned very quickly that Mary would set the bar high for aspiring airpersonalities and radio executives alike, especially in the highly competitiveL.A. market. Before Oprah and others started preaching it, Mary was livingthe purpose-driven life. Back in the early 70's, Mary had set goals forherself and she kept building on, and and reaching for, those goals -always mindful of inspiring and teaching others along the way.”

Sheproduced short interview and music information segments for KMET that evolvedinto nationally syndicated special programs called Off the Record; thesespecials reached an estimated 25 million listeners and are highly respected tothis day. She was among the first to ever interview a young Bruce Springsteenfor her regular evening air shift.

Afterleaving KMET, she continued with Off the Record, did a daily show for ArmedForces Radio, did a stint for a Canadian broadcast group, and even worked on“Music in the Air,” an entertainment service used on the now defunct TWAAirlines. She returned to the local airwaves on KLSX (now KNX-FM, 97.1) for atime in 1993.

Morerecently she was the chairwoman of the Betty Ford Center at Eisenhower Hospitalin Rancho Mirage … the first chair to not be a member of the Ford family sincethe Center’s inception. Her expertise in this area came from her own life anddetermination to overcome her problems - in the early 1990s, she fought back asubstance abuse problem, went on to become a UCLA-certified drug and alcoholcounselor, and then earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

Turneris preceded in death by her husband Norm Pattiz, who she met through her radioshows. Pattiz, founder and former chairman of Westwood One radio networks,passed away just this past December.

Asif to prove the importance of Turner and her career, The Paley Center for Mediain New York City includes in its collection recordings of her last show onKMET, dated August 6, 1982. The collection also includes a portion of JimLadd’s program that followed immediately after, which on this night became atribute show to Turner’s career.

HearTurner’s interview with Springsteen from July 4th of 1978 at bit.ly/TurnerSpringsteen. Find otherairchecks by searching YouTube and others for Mary Turner KMET.

Thepassing of turner hit many hard … as Ace Young said in his Facebook post, ithit him “like a ton of bricks

“Mary& I worked together for many years at KMET, Young wrote. “In fact, ourfriendship dates back to San Francisco. We both came to the Mighty Met in theSpring of 1972. Mary was the best. So much can be said of her career; hersuccess; her life with husband, and recently passed, Norm Pattiz. I’ll, for themoment, leave that for others.

“Iam grief stricken!” he concludes.

RichardWagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in SouthernCalifornia. Emailrwagoner@socalradiowaves.com.

///

View Details

Guest: Dave Beasing

Radio Waves: May 12, 2023Who do you love?Last week I spoke of an article from Inside Music Media’s JerryDel Colliano in which he made a list of easily-fixed programming elements thatturn listeners off. In case you missed it and want to take part, I am askingfor your “things” … what would cause you to tune to another station or eventurn off the radio completely.

Before I follow up, though, I wanted to put together a list ofthings I like about radio. Scratch that – things I love. What keepsme going back to the radio every day? You can join in this as well.

Without further ado:

I love The Woody Show. Airing on Alt 98.7 FMweekday mornings from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. (kind of … they definitely repeatsegments), the program has been a huge hit for the station … and for goodreason.

Starring Jeff “Woody” Fife, (Renae) Ravey, Sebastian “SeaBass”Davis, Greg Gory, Jason “Menace” McMurry, and Sammi Moreno, the show billsitself as “insensitivity training for a politically correct world.” I’d call itmore of a gathering place to hang out with friends.

Yes, at times, they get a little raunchy. Butusually it’s good clean fun. They make fun of bad behavior, call people ontheir stupidity, and in general bring listeners in on their party everymorning.

I appreciate that, unlike some shows of the past, they are professionalbroadcasters as well, intelligent, quick-witted and extraordinary funny andentertaining. Ravey’s laugh is infectious. Bits and contests are well-designed,and include DUIQ, wherein listeners try to guess if a drunk partier can answera simple trivia question, stories on stupid criminals, “redneck” news andoccasional interviews. I include The Woody Show in the list of all-time bestmorning shows; the program has aired locally since April 21, 2014.

I love Booker and Stryker, also on Alt 98.7 FM. Chris Booker and Ted Stryker gottogether just over a year ago — February, 2022 — but the flow of the show andthe chemistry between the two makes it seem like they have been togetherforever. Like Woody mornings, they quickly become your friends and make theafternoon drive pass much faster … to the point where you don’t even want toget out of the car. Or leave work. Or whatever. As long as the show is on theair, I don’t care what I am doing; I even listen on my bike ride home fromwork.

The two wouldn’t hurt a fly; this is one program where all agescan listen.

I love Go Country 105 FM. Country music puristswill disagree, but I really like modern country music … it reminds me of top-40music of the past – songs you can sing along with in which the artists (or thecountry version of The Wrecking Crew, if one exists) still play realinstruments. DJs are good, the commercial load is not ridiculous, and thestation is locally owned by a guy who loves dogs and helps facilitate petadoptions. What more do you want in a music station?

I love KFI (640 AM). I don’t necessarily listento every show, but they tend to be entertaining with a variety of topics. Butwhat I really like is the news department – KFI news has always been top-notch,and the long history of good reporting continues today. Without question, KFIproduces the best local newscast heard on the local commercial airwaves. Yes,better than KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM).

I love the stations that go the extra mile toproduce content for niche audiences. For example, you do have to use streamingor an HD radio, but the fact that Saul Levine uses Go Country’s signal todigitally send out classical music, 50s, ‘60s and ‘70s oldies, and adultstandards focussing on Frank Sinatra and his friends — commercial-free, no less— does not go unnoticed. He does it because he wants to serve an audience thatothers ignore, and knows that it will never bring in much in the form ofrevenue. Levine just loves the art of radio. Local ownership at its best.

And finally, I love that so many stations bothlocally and nationally stream their programming on apps I can use with my smartspeakers phones. Being able to tune stations far and wide wherever I am is muchappreciated by me and so many others. I’d mention the distant stations I like,but the focus of this column is local, so I won’t.

So now you have a choice … you can still let me know what bugsyou, but besides that … what do you love? Let me know!

///

Radio Waves: May 5, 2023March Nielsens show some changesWhat’s happening with KIIS-FM(102.7)? Since December, the hit music station has been on an upward trajectoryin the Nielsen ratings; the March results released in late April have thestation at second place overall with a 5.0 share of the audience … a full 2points higher than it earned in December. If memory serves right, this is thehighest finish KIIS has had in years … is pop music on the radio making acomeback?

Perhaps. But it was oldies thatwon the day, with KRTH (101.1 FM) taking the top spot overall, beating KIIS byalmost a full point at 5.8. That’s an increase of just over a point sinceDecember, when it had a 4.7 share, and is the highest rating the station hashad this year. Oddly, KRTH’s online stream, which led all streams before, wasnot present in the ratings list this month

The big — and truly surprising —drop came from KOST (103.5 FM), which found itself out of the first placeposition it has held for much of the past year … tied with KFI (640 AM) andKLVE (107.5 FM) at 5th at a 4.1 share. What makes this surprising is that KOSTtruly has led for most of the past year.

Another surprising drop came fromGo Country 105 (KKGO, 105.1 FM), coming in with a 1.8 share of the audiencecompared with 2.1 in February and 2.5 back in December. I doubt this is along-term trend, though … perhaps the excitement of the Stagecoach festivalheld last week will help out. Or perhaps it’s one of those anomalies thathappen when the ratings meters are distributed to new listeners.

KFI led the talk wars as perusual, it’s 5th place tie dominating the rest, including KRLA (870 AM)’s 0.7and KEIB’s (1150 AM) 0.6. Where’s KABC? Nowhere to be found, but it doesn’tmean they have no listeners. I confirmed that the area’s talk format originatorno longer subscribes to Nielsen and thus does not show in the ratings list. Ialso noticed that KSPN (710 AM) isn’t on the Nielsen list either, for the samereason. My hunch is that many stations will begin to consider such a move dueprimarily to monetary savings; I’ll have a story on that in an upcoming column.

More interesting items from theratings list: Alt (98.7 FM) beat KROQ (106.7 FM), but the two remain fairlyclose: 2.4 vs. 2.1. KKJZ (88.1 FM) was the top-rated public station with a 2.3share. Regional Mexican music station KFWB (980 AM) has been moving up, almostdoubling its 0.9 December rating with a March finish of 1.6. And the stream forMega 96.3 (KXOL -FM) came from nowhere to earn a 0.9 share in March. Added tothe station’s regular signal 2.6 share, the station would total 3.5 … and wouldhave placed 8th overall in the city!

Overall, two companies havealmost half of all listeners tuned into their stations. iHeart has a combined25.1 rating for its roster that includes KIIS-FM, KOST, Alt, and KFI, amongothers, while Audacy has a 19.0 total for its stations including KRTH, The Wave(KTWV 94.7 FM), KROQ, and KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM).

The full story: Each rating is anestimate of the percentage of listeners aged six and over tuned to a stationbetween the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight.

KRTH (5.8) 2. KIIS-FM (5.0) 3.KBIG (4.5) 4. KTWV (4.4) 5. KFI, KLVE, KOST (4.1) 8. KBUE (4.0) 9. KRRL (3.4)10. KNX (3.3)
KCBS-FM “Jack” (3.2) 12. KRCD(3.0) 13. KLOS, KXOL (2.6) 15. KLAX, KYSR “Alt” (2.4) 17. KKJZ (2.3) 18. KLYY,KPCC (2.2) 20. KROQ (2.1)
KUSC (2.0) 22. KDAY, KKGO,KLLI, KPWR “Power” (1.8) 26. KSCA (1.7) 27. KFWB, KJLH (1.6) 29. KCRW (1.3) 30.KLAC (1.0)
KXOL Stream (0.9) 32. KDLD,KFSH (0.8) 34. KCSN, KRLA (0.7) 36. KEIB (0.6) 37. KKLA (0.3) 38. KWKW (0.2)39. KHJ, KNX Stream, KROQ HD2, KROQ Stream, KTNQ (0.1)

Listener GripesYou already know my opinion ofwhat makes for good radio. Inside Music Media’s Jerry Del Colliano recently puttogether a list of easily-fixed programming elements that turn listeners off.Before I report on his research, I’d like to hear from you. But I want toexpand the list to not just what turns you off, but what turns you on. What isit you cannot stand about the radio you hear, and what is it you you trulyenjoy?

Send your thoughts to me and I’llstart compiling our own list to be presented later. it will be interesting tosee how your “bad” list compares with Del Colliano’s, and it will be fun torecognize the great things about local radio.

///

View Details

All Day, Every Day: American Top 40I’ve never been a fan of the iHeart Radio app you can download to yoursmartphone. I always thought it too cumbersome to use compared to alternatives,and I don’t like the way iHeart restricts its own stations to its own apprather than allowing them to be available on other apps as well. If iHeartreally believed in the app, why do they not let it compete on an even playingfield?

But I broke down and started using it recently. Keep in mind I still don’tactually like it, but there is a reason to use it … American Top 40.

Yes, the very same AT40 you can find on SiriusXM channels 7 — for the 1970sversion — Saturdays at 3 a.m. and 9 a.m., Sundays at 6 a.m.; or our ownsemi-local KOLA (99.9 FM) which airs the ‘80s version Saturdays at 5 a.m. andSundays at 7 p.m.

But what if you want to totally live in the past and listen to nothingbut AT40, the countdown show hosted by former original KRLA (now KRDC,1110 AM) personality Casey Kasem, launched on July 4th, 1970 on but a handfulof stations, and eventually heard on stations around the globe as the mostpopular countdown show … ever? If that’s you, the iHeart Radio app — oriHeart.com on a computer — has you covered.

A special channel called Classic American Top 40 plays old AT40 countdownscontinuously. The ‘70s followed by the ‘80s followed by the ‘70s, etc. 24 hoursa day, seven days a week. As I write this they are just starting a replay from1983 after the completion of a week from 1973. Audio heaven, for those who grew uplistening to the classic program … and a major reason to use the iHeart app.

Ryan Seacrest, by the way, hosts the current version of AT40 heard locallyon KIIS-FM (102.7), starting at 6 a.m. Saturdays, 8 a.m. Sundays.

Billboard ControversyWas the top song for at least one week of mid-July, 1978 not really the topsong? Was there behind the scenes shenanigans? It wasn’t a problem with AT40directly, but what AT40 used as the basis for the countdown list: BillboardMagazine. I read about this first on (I believe) the AT40 fan page of Facebook.

The story goes that Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street shouldhave been the number one song on the Billboard charts in the second half ofJuly, 1978, but that pressure to keep Andy Gibb’s Shadow Dancing atthe top spot won out. Here’s what I found at https://djrobblog.com/archives/6222:

“Among the many tales of “Baker Street’s” undying legacy is the oneinvolving a bit of chart shenanigans that may have robbed Rafferty of ascendingto that coveted No. 1 spot.

“As reported in several publications since, legend has it that in one of itsfinal weeks at No. 2 in July 1978, Billboard had actually calculated “BakerStreet” to be No. 1. At thetime, Billboard’s charts were based on phoned-in radio station lists and recordstore reports, which staffers or computers would then compile, before theadvent of more modern and accurate airplay and sales tracking technology in theearly 1990s.

Apparently, Gibb threatened to back out of a show being sponsored byBillboard if his song didn’t remain number one, said show being the pet projectof then-chart manager Bill Wardlow. “It was alleged that Wardlow had a changeof heart about the No. 1 position after having dined with Andy Gibb’smanagement on the night the chart was compiled. The story goes that Wardlowcasually mentioned over dinner that Gibb’s tune had been displaced byRafferty’s – much to RSO Records’ displeasure.”

So Billboard issued a “correction,” apparently forcing American Top-40 tore-record the ending of the how, without the new number one song. BakerStreet remained stalled at the number two slot on Billboard, thoughother sources did indeed put it at the top, such as including Cash Box whichhad it there on July 15, 1978.

It is said that Baker Street is one of the all-time mostbeloved number two hits; the incident proves the power that top-40 radio onceheld over American culture. And as former newsman Paul Harvey used to say, nowyou know … the restof the story.

No Static HereThis is an old story, but but comes from former KHJ (930 AM) ProductionDirector (among other stations) Douglas Brown. When FM by Steely Dan wasreleased in 1978, may top-40 stations were still on the AM band, including inLos Angeles area, KHJ, Ten Q (KTNQ, 1020 AM), KFI (640 AM), and KEZY (1190AM).

Many of the stations across the country didn’t want to play a song thathyped the FM band, so a few figured out that the “A’ in Steely Dan’s Ajamatched the note well, and simply changed the song so that it played as “A-M,no static at all.” Which, of course, is somewhat absurd.

The more powerful and influential stations, such as KHJ, convinced themusical band’s record company at the time to produce a special version of thesong, one in which the the radio band is not mentioned at all. The resultingsong simply refrains “no static at all.”

A testament to the power that AM radio once held over American culture.

Letters for April 28 Radio

Someemail reaction from recent column topics …

“WABChas come back from the radio graveyard twice: first when Rick Sklarcreated the legendary MusicRadio77 and now. In ratings released today thestation is #9 with a 3.7, the first AM rated in NYC. They gotta be doingsomething right!” — Steve Moravec

“Toparaphrase a movie line: If you play it (great local content) they will listen.

“Local: News. Weather. SPORTS (high school and college). Talk with and by localleaders and personalities. City and county government. One station doingthis and while still learning is doing it well is KYCA-AM in Prescott, AZ.

“AMwill not die in spite of Detroit.” — Dusty Baker

“Iagree w/ every word u wrote. Hate Google, and all this ‘new’ approach to radio… for auto manufacturers to go along with this travesty is unconscionable. Keepup the good work and clear writing on this subject. — Beverly Riggs, La Habra(who describes herself as “a devoted sincere Radio junkie for 40+ years” andsays that “radio has always been my ‘preferred passenger’ since I first learnedhow to drive”

“Iwanted you to know how much I enjoy your articles about radio in the SanGabriel Valley Tribune … always informative, interesting and your passion forradio come thru loud & clear.

“Yes,my wife & I are with you…keep AM radio in our autos!

“Igrew up in the ‘40s and ‘50s with radio; we listened to music and live shows inthe evening on a Farnsworth that become mine at about 8 years old when wefinally got a TV and Pop setup he own ‘stereo’ system in the living room. But Istill used my home made crystal set with a surplus store military ear-phone.

Iremember driving Van Nuys Blvd between Bob’s Big-Boy and A&W Rootbeer with my radio blazing away was a real treat. Work/home/yard/shop, theradio was always on – and still is much of the time, albeit much lower andslower music these days. In the car, my wife is addicted to AM talk-show radio.

“Again,thank you for sharing your passion about a media that was most impactful duringmost of the 20th century — Drexel Smith

View Details

Radio: April 21, 2023

InsideMusicMedia.Com’sJerry Del Colliano posted a column on March 31 that — like many of his columns— could have been written by me. Great minds think alike, you know. EntitledThe AM Station That Defies Failure, it tells the story of WABC/New York and thesuccess it has had since being bought by a local owner from Cumulus.

WABC ismuch like numerous AM stations across the country. Powerhouse top-40 formatleaders in the 1960s and ‘70s, they lost their way when large corporate ownerscouldn’t figure out what to do with them. They dropped music, sometimes foundtemporary success with political talk, and then floundered once programmersfocused more on their FMs.

Weirdhow a neglected station would lose listeners.

Anyway,for all intents and purposes, WABC was a failure in 2019 when Cumulus Media,owner of KABC (790 AM) here in Los Angeles, sold the station to a 74-year-oldNew York businessman named John Catsimatidis, Jr. — a guy with no radioexperience other than being a radio fan.

Catsimatidisthen did what some think is impossible: brought a dead radio station back tolife. How? He made it local. He served his local audience. He wasn’t afraid toembrace older listeners, and he started super-serving those willing to tune in.

Andtune in they did. The station has been above a 3.0 share for at least the lastsix months, and has had a 3.9 share the last two months. It is the top-rated AMstation in New York. Under previous ownership, it had fallen to the mid toupper 1s. Could other stations learn from the recent success?

Yes …more than that: the entire industry could learn from its success. The formulais so simple, it’s almost as if stations of the past could help with thelesson. In fact, that’s pretty much all Catsimatidis did … look at what madeprevious stations “tick,” and applied it to his new toy.

WABCfound an audience that was being underserved, then designed a format that wouldappeal to that audience, in this case an eclectic mix of talk, news, and music.Yes, music … on AM. Weird.

CousinBrucie, a legendary WABC disc jockey, plays oldies on weekends. The stationruns its old iconic jingles. News coverage focusses on the local area. The talkhosts are mostly local, including former mayor Rudy Giuliani, former RushLimbaugh producer Bo Snerdley, and a founding member of the Guardian Angels,Curtis Sliwa.

Catsimatidiseven has his own show, hosted by himself and local broadcaster Rita Cosby.

Whileit is impressive that Catsimatidis took a failing station and made itsuccessful, he is not alone. I’ve written about the success of stations such asWION/Ionia, Michigan and WRDN/Durand, Wisconsin. What all three and others likethem have in common is local owners who care enough to program to their localaudience and not rely on cheap syndicated programming.

Thisapproach benefits not only the stations and listeners, but local businessesthat can advertise to reach an audience otherwise hard to find. ThatCatsimatidis does it in New York City, arguably one of the toughest markets inthe United States, makes it even more impressive …. and in my opinion, frankly,embarrassing to owners like Audacy that has gone so far as to just shut downsome of its AM stations.

Thislesson isn’t just for AM, though. FM stations definitely can use more localcontent , and in the cases in which the local audience is super-served, theresults are impressive. Local content is the one thing that Spotify, AppleMusic, or any other streaming service simply can’t match.

Fightfor the Dashboard

On theheal of the news that engineers at Ford are as lazy or incompetent as those atBMW, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen and Volvo due to the decisionto remove AM radio from their future automobile offerings — because unlikeevery other company they are unable to deal with interference — comes news thatGM has decided to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support from future EVs.

While Ihate that AM is being dropped, and I believe it to be a bad decision, at leastyou can — usually, at least — use apps to replace the tuner and in some wayshave better reception and better sound.

Butdropping CarPlay? That’s a non-starter for me. My family, starting with mygrandfather, my father and now me, has owned GM almost exclusively since 1926.If CarPlay is not offered, I will not buy one.

I wantthe choice to use the mapping software I want to use. I want the ability to usethe apps I want to use, for example StreamsHiFi Audio and MyTuner Radio foronline radio streams. I can connect myphone to any of my current car stereos and have all of my apps and preferencesready to go; without CarPlay I’d have to set all my preferences individually inevery car.

And Icertainly don’t want my life controlled by Google, which GM plans to use as thebasis for its dashboard infotainment system. I am not a Google fan by any means,and I certainly don’t want their intrusive anti-privacy ad-based system in mycar.

In myopinion, GM is making a tremendously bad decision in dropping CarPlay andAndroid Auto. In doing so, though, you can now understand what is in store forthe future … the ability to charge for being part of and using the dash. It isanti-competitive and anti-consumer.

I hopethat the move is met with consumer resistance similar to my own - as I said, Iwill never buy a car without CarPlay ability. Even if I have to keep my currenttruck forever.

///

Radio Waves: April 14, 2023

KIQQ entertainment reporter Francesca Capucci passes

I was a huge fan of KIQQ (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM) during thestation’s new-wave top-40 days of the early 1980s. It wasn’t necessarily themost polished station; indeed, the station could at times sound verylow-budget. But it had a playlist that overlapped the best of KROQ (106.7 FM)and was often the first station in town to break new music and new bands withan emphasis on British acts along with homegrown artists.

Often KIQQ was so far ahead of its competition, primarilyKIIS-FM (102.7), that it seemed like a song was at the top of the chartsforever. The reality was that KIQQ would break the song and then it would laterhit the charts and other stations. KIQQ was where I first heard Eddie Grant,The Style Council, Rick Springfield and more. I don’t think I ever heard thewonderful “She Means Nothing to Me” by Phil Everly and Cliff Richard on anyother station, with the one exception of UCLA’s student station KLA … because Iplayed it there.

Personalities included Bruce Chandler, Tony Saint James, GWMcCoy, and a few others who stayed with the station until it gave up on theformat and went light rock in mid-1985. One personality left early and wentright to television, to become KABC-TV Channel 7’s entertainment reporter. Thatwas Francesca Capucci, who started at KIQQ in the public affairs department,later moving up to report entertainment and celebrity gossip news, as well asfeatures on and interviews with many of the bands and artists played on thestation.

For a time, in addition to her other duties, she worked withJay Coffee in morning drive, but her best-known work was her features. If youwere a faithful listeners as I was, you may remember her extended sign-off:“I’m Francesca Capucci on K ……….I ………..Q ………………………………….Q.”

I never knew why they had — or allowed — her to do that; itwas actually kind of cheesy. I was told later that it was designed to make hersound a bit sexy. True or not, she was definitely distinctive, and her featuresadded a lot to the station’s on-air presence.

After leaving KIQQ in 1984, she moved over to Channel 7,reporting on entertainment news for ten years. Other television work includedacting on such shows as Columbo, 7th Heaven, The Practice, and Charmed, usuallyplaying, of course, a reporter.

Last week, I got the bad news from KPFK (90.7 FM) Car Show host (and column reader) David Kunzthat Capucci had passed away; she died at the age of 64 due to cancer.

If her name sounds familiar, it may also be because it wasused in the recent movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There is no connectionbetween her and the character in the movie; I am told that Quentin Tarantinojust liked the name.

Her friend Kim Fitzgerald Kelly wrote on Capucci’s Facebookpage on March 30, “It is with profoundsadness that I share the passing of Francesca Cappucci. As those of you on thispage know, Francesca was a force of nature, a source of true joy, a devotedmother to sons Ian and Will, and a great lover of music.

“Francesca’s name was itself a melody and it playedthroughout Los Angeles radio and TV stations for decades beginning in the early80s. A celebration of life, love, and music is currently being planned anddetails will be announced. Until then, every time you hear a song by FooFighters or Crowded House, let it remind you of this beautiful icon.”

You can read tributes on that same page:facebook.com/francesca.cappucci

Commercial Breaks

For years, I have felt that it was a huge mistake forstations to run large blocks of commercial-free music. I am referring to thehour or two — sometimes longer — periods of nothing but music. The problem, ofcourse, is that it shifts the commercials that have to be run to other hoursand makes the commercial breaks longer during those hours, as well as makingeach advertisement of less value to the advertiser.

Seems like a lose-lose to me — the station earns less peradvertisement because they are worth less as a longer block than they wouldotherwise be, the advertiser loses potential exposure due to listener tune-out,and listeners have to endure up to ten minutes of commercials when the breaksdo come.

But I recently found out why they do this, from an expert onthe industry. It seems the stations sell the advertisements based upon theentire shift a DJ is on. For example, perhaps 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. If the stationcan get a ton of listeners by playing no commercials the first two hours, itdoesn’t care what happens during the rest of the show. The station can stillsell the ad based upon the average rating over the entire four hours.

No wonder radio is suffering…

Nothing is Sacred

Ford announced it is removing AM radio reception not onlyfrom future EVs, it is also removing it from future gas-powered vehicles. Onthe heals of that news came General Motors announcement that it is removingApple CarPlay and Android Auto on its future EVs.

The reason? GM wants subscription income from the dashboard.

I don’t know about you, but I love CarPlay. I won’t buy acar without it. Seems like a bad idea to me … what are your thoughts? More onthis topic next week.

///

Damion Passes

He maybe retired, but it was Don Barrett of LARadio.Com who broke the news: Damion —last name: Bragdon, though he rarely used his last name on the air — formerlyheard on KLOS (95.5 FM), KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) and KLSX (now KNX-FM, 97.1)has passed away from complications related to cancer.

Immediatelyprior to landing in Los Angeles to be part of the KLOS air staff in 1971,Damion was at WDAI/Chicago as the station evolved from its “free-form” progressiverock format to the more traditional album-oriented “Rock ’n Stereo” … inessence repeating exactly what he did in Chicago here in Los Angeles.

Thosechanges were not coincidence … the two stations were both owned by ABC, and in1971 ABC decided to have all of its owned and operated FM stations nationwidetake on the same format, as well as take on new call letters to distinguish theFMs from the co-owned AMs.

In thecase of KLOS, Damion joined Jeff Gonzer, J.J. Jackson, Jim Ladd, and programmerTom Yates to launch the new format here. By the late 1970s, he would work up tothe position of station programmer himself, a position he would give up when heleft to work at then-competitor KMET.

In1986, he found himself at brand-new classic rocker KLSX, where he stayedthrough 1994. After that he moved on to satellite-delivered formats withUnistar and Westwood One/Dial Global, between times doing a stint in Hawaiiincluding programming an AM/FM combo. He finally retired in 2008 but kept busyproducing a one-hour program called Rock and Roll Cowboy — modern country musicmixed with classic rock — that aired on a few stations across the country.

In aninterview with Barrett back in 1994, Damion spoke of some of the highlights ofhis career, which included partnering with Ladd to produce early “InnerView”programs; interviewing Led Zeppelin, being part of the California Jam in 1973,and more.

“Theend was terrible,” his wife Joy Hall told Barrett in an email. He was put onlife support against his directive, and as they took him off some of hismedications, he suffered multiple strokes. He passed away March 26th at the ageof 79.

Friendsand colleagues always spoke highly of Damion, describing him using such wordsas kind, sweet, friendly, and considerate. “He was truly one o’ the good guys —a sweet man with virtually no ego,” wrote Michael Benner in an email toBarrett, as but one example.

All ofthat was something you heard over the airwaves as he did his shows, no matterwhat station he was on. His delivery was always - always - smooth: the perfectalbum-rock DJ, and someone who like many of his contemporaries loved the musiche played.

You canhear airchecks for yourself searching YouTube.com for Damion KLOS and KMET.

FebruaryRatings

The FebruaryNielsens showed a narrowing of the gap between 1st place KOST (103.5 FM) and2nd place KRTH (101.1 FM), with only 0.1 separating the two: 5.5 to 5.4. Therest of the top-10 included KTWV (4.6), KBIG (4.5), KFI (4.1), KLVE (4.1),KIIS-FM (3.9), KRRL (3.9), KBUE (3.2) and KCBS-FM (3.1)

ThatReal 92.3 tied with KIIS-FM would in the past be a wake-up call to KIIS-FM …but now that both stations are owned by the same company, in this case thebeleaguered iHeart Media, it won’t be. Just shy of the top-10 tied with KRCD at11th was KNX … still no better than it was as a standalone AM station. Nowusing both the 1070 AM and 97.1 FM frequencies, it earned a 2.9.

Cuttingthe B.S.

BoSnerdley was conservative talker Rush Limbaugh’s longtime producer; he helpedline up guests, screened calls, and most importantly helped put together theday’s news for Limbaugh to expound upon.

SinceLimbaugh’s death, Snerdley stayed busy producing shows for the replacementhosts, produced the Limbaugh Letter, started a podcast, and launched his ownprogram on WABC/New York entitled Bo Snerdley’s Rush Hour.

He alsoproduces a twice-daily conservative-leaning news headline email called BoSnerdley’s Daily BS - Bo Cuts Through It. If you’re interested, subscribe athttp://eepurl.com/hKLLg9

Snerdley’son-air name was inspired by Bo Jackson; his given name is James Golden. Hespent 30 years working with Limbaugh, right until the very end.

///

View Details

SPECIAL Podcast: We are re-publishing our career spanning interview with the multi-talented Ken Levine - who is featured in Richard's column this week.

The Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters/Hollywood Media Professionals played host to a special “Coffee With …” interview as Master of Ceremonies and interviewer Chuck Street spent two hours talking with Ken Levine.

You may not know the name Ken Levine when it comes to radio, though he did use his real name on KFI (640 AM) in the 1980s. But he was a young, up-and-coming top-40 radio star known as Beaver Cleaver on Ten Q (KTNQ, 1020 AM) here in Los Angeles and on the great B-100 (KFMB-FM — now KFBG, 100.7 FM) in San Diego, among other stations.

Why Beaver Cleaver, the name of the character on the old “Leave It to Beaver” TV series? It was catchy and helped him stand out much more than the name he used previously, Ken Stevens.

Outside of radio, Levine is a highly-respected writer, producer, and director in the television and film industries, an accomplished playwright, and even a play-by-play announcer for Major League Baseball. His numerous credits include television programs “MAS*H,” “Cheers,” “Frasier,” “Wings,” “The Simpsons,” “Almost Perfect,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and more; he has co-written feature films, and more recently has written and produced short plays acted live over Zoom.

His baseball work includes stints with the Baltimore Orioles, the Seattle Mariners, and the San Diego Padres, and he spent a few years as co-host of Dodger Talk, the call-in program that followed every Dodger Game on the radio.

And just to show that he can do just about anything, he is also an accomplished cartoonist, with his work appearing in the prestigious New Yorker magazine. In his spare time(?), he writes a blog and produces a thoroughly entertaining podcast … go to kenlevine.blogspot.com and hollywoodandlevine.libsyn.com/

Honestly, I have no idea how he manages to find time for all of his interests, let alone all the differing careers all the while being a loyal husband and family man. But the two-hour coffee interview just wasn’t enough … as many in the audience could attest, it was among the fastest two hours on record.

Levine tends to downplay his accomplishments in radio, stating that his voice is “too squeaky” compared to his many heroes and contemporaries. I disagree, but regardless, he more than made up for any perceived personal deficiency with a quick wit, biting sarcasm, creative double entendres, and much more.

This all came out anew during his interview, with such radio-related stories as:

• Trying to get fired at KMEN/San Bernardino (now KKDD, 1290 AM).

Management wanted him back in the overnight shift; he asked to be fired instead. They refused, so he stopped by the record store to buy a special album to play.

“Radio stations were getting hip and playing album cuts more and more, so this idea was perfect.” The album he purchased to play in its entirety? “Fiddler on the Roof,” he said. “In Yiddish … I was fired before ‘Anatevka’ finished playing.”

• Convincing the General Manager of WLS/Chicago — at the time one of the most popular radio stations in the country — to put him on the air during the overnight shift leading into Thanksgiving Day.

Who was the GM? His father. “My Dad,” Levine explains, “left a memo stating that ‘My son will be doing the all-night show.’ No word on who I was or my experience on the air.”

The guy on the air immediately before Levine’s shift had no idea who he was, so Levine pretended to be entirely clueless. “Wow, what are all these buttons,” he remembers asking the other DJ. By the time his shift was up, the other DJ was convinced this was going to be bad and was scared to leave the station in the hands of an amateur. “He was just freaking out,” Levine says.

Finally, when the time came, the DJ watched as Levine leaned into the microphone, played the top-of-the-hour jingle, and opened his show with “This is Ken Levine; I’ve been on the air in Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, Bakersfield, San Bernardino … but never at the same time! This is W-L-S!”

When Levine shut off the microphone, he remembers, “The DJ says, ‘You’ve done this before!’ I said, ‘Yes, of course; my father’s not going to put someone on the air at a 50,000-watt clear channel station in Chicago who’s never done it before!’”

• The time that a program director at K-100 (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM) worried they might get sued over his on-air name.

Levine told the program director not to worry: “If we get sued, we’ll get a ton of free publicity, and the worst that will happen is they’ll make me change my name.”

The program director called the station co-owner for direction, and Levine describes the response this way: “What’s the problem?” Levine says was the response. “The worst that would happen is that we’d get some free publicity and they’d make him change his name.”

You can hear recordings of some of Levine’s on-air work by searching YouTube.Com using the keywords Beaver Cleaver, Ken Levine, Ten-Q and B-100. Mike Stark and I did a full career-spanning interview with Levine, which can be found at http://la-radiowaves.blogspot.com/2020/08/radio-waves-extra-ken-levine.html

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com

View Details

Radio: March 24, 2023

It is time to admit: executives of the major radio corporations - Audacy, iHeart, and Cumulus, primarily - have no faith in the future of the industry they control.

There is no fighting from them against automakers who are removing AM from the dashboard of new cars, and the potential future removal of FM. There is no marketing plan to attract listeners to their stations, and hasn’t been for years. And they don’t even pretend to try to attract younger listeners, the lifeblood of the future.

You need proof? Remember KROQ (106.7 FM)? You know, the station that knocked KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) totally out of the album rock format by beating it to the punch playing new bands and new artists, just as KMET had done years before … before they got too successful and, one might argue, lazy.

KROQ became the “Roq of the ‘80s,” and earned a reputation of being the place to go for new music. That was a long time ago, though. Now KROQ is basically an oldies outlet playing music primarily from decades back.

Need proof? Here are two sample hours taken from the 3-5 p.m. shift on a random day about a week ago. Now remember, this is afternoon drive, which is one of the dayparts that would in the past have been programmed to young people just getting out of high school or college classes for the day, not the mid-day hours where more oldies might be found:

3-4 p.m.: Toxicity (System of a Down), from 2001; Bad Dreams (Cannons), 2001; Basket Case (Green Day), 1994; Somebody Told Me (Killers), 2004; Time to Pretend (MGMT), 2007; Welcome to the Black Parade (My Chemical Romance), 2006; Landslide (Smashing Pumpkins); 2001; Bones (Imagine Dragons), 2022; Kryptonite (3 Doors Down), 2000; Africa (Weezer), 2018

4-5 p.m.: Tighten Up (Black Keys), 2010; Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode), 1989; Uprising (Muse), 2009; Clint Eastwood (Gorillaz), 2001; The Boys of Summer (The Ataris), 2022; Black Summer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), 2022; Friday I’m in Love (The Cure), 1992; Sex, Drugs, Etc. (Beach Weather), re-released but originally from 2016; In Bloom (Nirvana ); 1992, Jumper (Third Eye Blind), 1997

There was a time that KROQ would not even go back more than a year or two, all music being new and current. In fact, most stations popular with young adults did so, including KHJ (930 AM) when they played top-40, KIIS-FM (102.7) of the 1980s, and even, yes, KMET. That in two hours, KROQ only played five songs released or re-released in the past two-three years is, frankly, surprising even to me. But there it is.

There’s hope, though, right? LA’s New Alternative (using that slogan for the past decade at least) Alt 98.7 must be playing new music, right? Think again. Another recent afternoon:

3-4 p.m.: Fat Lip (Sum 41), 2001; Dissolve (Absofacto), 2017; Wake Me Up When September Ends (Green Day), 2004; Lovefool (The Cardigans), 1996; Just Like Heaven (The Cure), 1987; The Kill (Thirty Seconds to Mars), 2005

4-5 p.m. Lost (Linkin Park), re-released but originally from 2003; Doin’ Time (Lana Del Rey), 2019; Dreams (The Cranberries), 1993; I write Sins Not Tragedies (Panic! At the Disco), 2005; Friday I’m in Love (The Cure), 1992; Bad Dreams (Cannons), 2021; Come as You Are (Nirvana), 1991.

That’s two songs from the past three years or so. Any wonder why young people use Spotify for “radio” and in fact call it “radio?” That’s where they find new music.

Now keep in mind that I am most definitely not commenting on the music itself, most of which I personally like. That’s not my point. My point is that if you can’t rely on KROQ or Alt to play new music, what station can you count on? KRTH (101.1 FM)? I didn’t check, but I’d bet they aren’t that much different year-wise … and at least they admit it! What to do?

Legend has it that FM progressive rock radio got its start when Tom Donahue made telephone calls to local stations. Those that had disconnected phones due to non-payment — remember that everyone listened to AM at the time, and few people even owned FM radios — got pitched his new format. As the new format caught on and spread, people started buying FM radios. Eventually the band took over to the point that roughly 75% of radio listening is on FM.

Which brings me back to my broken-record point: if you want to attract young listeners back to radio - real radio - you have to play what they want to hear. And I argue that it doesn’t matter if it’s on AM or FM, weak signal or strong.

I see kids listening to music on their phones or via cheap bluetooth speakers all the time … hardly the epitome of high fidelity. AM stations playing modern rock/pop/progressive/whatever would compete just fine. … certainly better than with political talk or sports. And they have less to lose … it is likely the stations are already losing money, just like the stations contacted by Donahue over fifty years ago.

It is long past the time to do this. It can be done. It will take effort, time, and marketing, but the rewards will be great … I have faith in radio. But if the industry wants to let Spotify take over as the “radio”of choice, it won’t happen … unless a small company wants to take a chance.

What are your thoughts?

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com

Radio: March 17

KLOS (95.5 FM) broke a fundraising record - its own - by raising more than $1.27 million in just 26 broadcast hours last month during the 6th annual KLOS St. Jude Rocks radiothon. That beat the stations previous recored of $1.24 million earned in a previous year.

During the event, listeners making donations became eligible to go on adventures with station personalities in addition to receiving specially-designed attire … mainly t-shirts commemorating the drive: The T-Shirt that Saves Lives.

KLOS programmer Keith Cunningham was ecstatic over the results off the drive, telling me how proud he is of both his staff and loyal listeners and humbly stating that “it is very rewarding to be able to help.”

“For many of us, it is the most rewarding two days of the year,” he said.

The money raised benefited St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and will help kids at St. Jude to fight cancer. Also supporting the drive were station sponsors and artists. In a press release, KLOS owner Meruelo Media’s Otto Padron said “(this) is a fierce reminder that live and local radio compels, and deeply connects with the community to make a positive difference.”

Emmis Podcast

My podcast partner Michael Stark and I recently sat down and spoke with Emmis Chairman/CEO Jeff Smulyan and President of Radio Programming Rick Cummings for an open discussion of Emmis, radio in general, marketing, and more. It was supposed to last about a half hour but ended up going almost 60 minutes … and in reality, there is so much more to talk about we hope to have them back at a future date.

Emmis is the former owner of Power 106, which was known as Magic 106 at the timethey bought it; later creating Power and for a time dominating local radio. The company is what I consider one of the “good ones” in radio, running their stations like they actually like radio. In fact, the love of radio oozes out from both Smulyan and Cummings as they speak.

I realized in speaking with them that my own ideas on how to save radio - especially AM - evolved form my time interning at Magic and Power. Apparently their corporate structure stuck in my head without me realizing it.

Hear the interview and subscribe to the podcast at https://apple.co/3T8g1ny.

New Morning Show

Speaking of Power 106 - now owned by Meruelo Media and thus a sister to KLOS, by the way - the station has a new morning show.

Called the Brown Bag Morning Show, it airs from 6 to 10 a.m. and is a former podcast of a similar name hosted by Letty Paniche with co-hosts Rosecrans Vic and DoKnow.

You may remember Paniche as “Rikki Martinez” when she worked with Big Boy on Power mornings from 2011 to 2014; she left to work at KRRL and returned to Power in 2021.

The Brown Bag Podcast also debuted in 2021; the show moved to the Power airwaves on February 16. I’ll have a full review in a future column; in the meantime if you have heard it, let me know your thoughts

Top-10

In the past I covered ratings quarterly, primarily because that is when the full “books” were released. But it’s been years since Nielsen (formerly Arbitron) moved to a new system allowing monthly results to be released, perhaps it is time to update may thinking.

I’ll still do a more in-depth look quarterly, but give the top-10 monthly. This way we are all current without getting too predictable. Here’s the first top-10 of the year for the month of January, recognizing listeners aged 6 and over tuned to a station between 6 a.m. and 12 midnight:

KOST (6.8) 2. KRTH (4.9) 3. KTWV (4.7) 4. KBIG (4.6) 5. KLVE (4.3) 6. KFI (4.1) 7. KIIS-FM (3.6) 8. KCBS Jack-FM (2.9) 9. KLAX, KLOS, KNX, KRRL (2.8)

I’m a little late covering the January ratings, released by Nielsen at the end of February; the February ratings will be out in just a couple weeks.

///

View Details

A VERY SPECIAL "Radio Waves": Join Richard and Mike for an interview with two of Emmis Communications' top execs - CEO and founder Jeff Smulyan and President of Programming Rick Cummings. In the full podcast, we discuss a variety of "radio" topics, Jeff's new book titled "Never Ride A Roller Coaster Upside Down: The Ups, Downs and Reinvention of an Entrepreneur" and they give us their thoughts on the future of the radio business.

Radio Waves: March 10, 2023

Austin’s SXSW Radio Day Concert on The SoCal Sound

There is a huge music, film and television festival happening March 10 through the 19th in Austin, Texas: SXSW 2023. Festival organizers describe it as “an essential destination for global professionals,” featuring “conference sessions, film and TV festival screenings, music festival showcases … and much more.”

Music festivals are held with various themes Monday through Saturday; Thursday March 16th is dedicated as Radio Day, and our own “So Cal Sound” (88.5 FM) will carry that day’s concerts live beginning at 10 a.m.

Each artist will perform for an hour, beginning with Bailen at 10:00, followed by Blondshell, Sunny War, Ron Gallo, Girl Scout, and Katie Toupin.

Can’t get the station clearly on your radio? It’s on smart speakers, all the smartphone apps as well as online, at thesocalsound.org.

Fighting Back

Radio in the dashboard of cars has become a battle ground between auto manufacturers and radio station owners. Not just for AM, which is being pushed out due supposedly to interference from electric car internal electronics, but potentially FM as well as carmakers look to push subscription services that allow radio apps receiving stations over the internet rather than the traditional airwaves. The thinking is that if AM can easily be pushed out and replaced by apps, then by extension FM can be removed easily as the same apps can receive FM station streams as easily as they receive AM streams.

The problem for radio stations is two-fold: people may not bother getting the apps, especially if they are difficult to use or the access to use them costs extra, and there are extra costs to stations running streams, including music licensing fees.

So some station owners are beginning to fight back. A recent article in industry engineering newspaper Radio World highlighted the perspectives of Tom King, of Kintronics Labs — an expert on AM transmission and noise interference, Saul Levine, owner of K-Mozart (1260 AM) and Go Country (105.1 FM), Don Elliot, owner of Schwab Multimedia.

Essentially the consensus among the three is that interference concerns are overblown, that there are easy fixes including special antenna setups, and that many electric cars do indeed have reliable AM radio reception without issue. Who benefits from the removal of AM from cars, Elliot asks? Certainly not listeners.

In a related move, broadcaster Neal Ardman has announced an initiative to force electric vehicle manufacturers to stop causing interference to the AM band, a problem I eluded to in a previous column. In a nutshell, if EVs cause enough interference to cause in-car reception problems, they are potentially creating interference outside the car as well … which is illegal.

Broadcasting stations, including radio and television, is a protected medium in part because of its use in emergency situations. And AM stations in particular are often the hub of the emergency alert system. And that brings up an important issue, as Ardman stated in a press release announcing his initiative: “EVs don’t just cause noise to the radios built into the EV they also cause harmful interference to the cars that are nearby.”

Adrian told Radio World that he hopes to work out an agreement without going to court, but that if a lawsuit is needed to protect the AM band from this interference, “we will do just that.”

Mail Bag

“I liked your article today where you mention ‘The Woody Show.’

“Another fun morning show is on KRTH 101 with Gary Bryan, Lisa Stanley and

Brandon. They have listeners call in for various things and is so fun to hear. I’ve even called in a few times and have been on the radio with Gary Bryan! They do such a fun show and crack me up a lot!

“Always enjoy your column – especially when you talk about old-time radio from the 60s and 70s – my fun era of radio!” — Michele

Absolutely! There are actually a few who still take advantage of phones when allowed, including those and afternoon drive hosts such as Kevin and Sluggo on KLOS (95.5 FM) and Booker and Stryker on Alt 98.7. It seems that some stations have finally rediscovered that entertainment between the records is often what makes a station win.

“I look forward to your Friday columns in the Daily Breeze and today’s was a good one. I’m a longtime listener of KPFK and enjoy The Car Show while running errands on Saturdays.

“If I wake up and don’t want to get out of bed I listen to the radio with headphones and check in to The Woody Show. It’s so much better than the (competition)” — Richard Graling, Redondo Beach

Here’s a little trivia regarding The Car Show … did you know that host Mark Vaughn graduated from San Pedro High? Yes, he is a local boy!

Radio Waves: March 3, 2023

Car Show celebrates a half century on the air

My first car — and the car I learned to drive in — was a 1974 Chevrolet Vega GT Hatchback, bought new by my sister’s college roommate, Roxanne. Roxanne taught me to drive it when I was 12, in the back parking lot of Food King in San Pedro. In 1979, she gave it to me, and it became my cherished first car to drive in high school, while my Dad and I worked on rebuilding his 1967 Camaro RS that would eventually be my second car.

The Vega got passed over to my Mom, sold to my friend, then another friend. Eventually I saw it in one of one of junkyards where you pull parts off of cars yourself … it still had the back window sticker I had put on it years before. I have to admit, it was a bit sad seeing my old car there… I learned a lot about cars from it and had fond memories of it.

I use that story for perspective … the Vega would have been 49 years old now, and it long ago bit the dust. (The Camaro was stolen, so keep an eye out for it). On the other hand, a radio program about cars the year before is still on the air: KPFK’s (90.7 FM) The Car Show just celebrated its 50th birthday in February.

It all started in the Fall of 1972 when John Retsek and Jack Kirkpatrick were asked to talk about cars on KPFK’s Helpful Hints consumer-oriented program. The two had so much fun with their occasional appearances that then-station programmer Ruth Hirschmann proposed that Retsek host a car-oriented show weekly. So, in February of 1973, The Car Show was born.

Much has changed since then … Hirschmann became Ruth Seymour, moving on to become general manager of KCRW (89.9 FM) in 1978 and creating one of the most prestigious public radio stations in the country. Carburetors became obsolete, replaced by fuel injection of various forms. Steel belted radials replaced bias ply tires. Unleaded gas became the norm. FM radios started showing up more and more, as did in-dash tape players, then CDs, then smart phone connections and bluetooth. Fuel mileage increased. Maintenance needs decreased. Safety and cost went way up.

But the Car Show has held on, and is now the longest-running automotive program in history, predating National Public Radio’s Car Talk by four years “and obviously outlasting it,” says current co-host Dave Kunz. Now, in addition to hearing it live over the KPFK airwaves Saturdays from 1-2 p.m., you can also find it in podcast form on various apps and sites including Spotify and TuneIn.

Described as “everything about the automotive world including listener call-ins, event calender, industry news, racing news, new products, vehicle road tests, classic and collector vehicles, in-studio and call-in guests on all automotive and related subjects,” the program is now hosted by Kunz and Autoweek magazine journalist Mark Vaughn.

Explains Kunz: “The show has been through numerous hosts over the years. Retsek was at the helm until 2010, when he retired. Art Gould took over with me moving from fill-in to regular co-host. When Gould passed away in 2019, I sort of inherited the program, and that is when I was joined by Vaughn.”

Through the years the program has remained true to its purpose: talking about cars, the technology involved , new and exciting trends in the industry … and fun. That translates to some long time listeners, according to Kunz. “I have heard from listeners who’ve been fans for decades,” he says. “One listener recently called to tell he he’s been listening since the beginning!” That’s dedication.

So raise a glass to the show that originated on a station that, when the show first debuted, couldn’t even be heard in most of the cars on the road due to the then-dominance of AM radio. Happy birthday, The Car Show!

Old Tech

As I was driving into work this week — due to the rain I couldn’t ride my bike — and listening to Alt 98.7’s The Woody Show as I usually do, it struck me: Here is a show that embraces old technology, at least to an extent. Many of the contests, bits, and listener participation segments on the popular program involved listeners calling in on the telephone.

Yes, the telephone, something that so many seem to have forgotten exists in the era of text messaging and Instagram posts. Yet that banter with listeners is one of thew things that makes The Woody Show so entertaining.

It also creates a conduit for personalization, as callers who participate and win contests can be promoted on the air, unlike generic “text this number to win” contests that not only don’t really do anything to drive listenership, they don’t give the rest of us a chance to hear someone else win.

Something to think about … maybe Woody proves the past is the future. Perhaps these are the Days of Future Passed. Or like sand through an hourglass, these are the Days of Our Lives. Showing my age again …

Radio Waves: February 24, 2023

Riding the Emmis rollercoaster

Never ride a roller coaster upside down. Good advice, and also the title of a new book by Emmis Broadcasting founder and CEO Jeff Smulyan. The subtitle perhaps better describes the technical content: “the ups, downs and reinvention of an entrepreneur,” but the roller coaster imagery is fitting, as I am sure many entrepreneurs will attest.

It’s certainly not always smooth sailing.

This is not a radio book in the traditional sense, nor is it a book on broadcasting. It definitely stays true to its title and focusses on the trials and tribulations experienced by Smulyan as he built his radio empire, branched into professional athletics team ownership, and in many ways tried to help keep an industry he loves on track and profitable … unfortunately to no avail.

In its pages, the book explores all aspects of his multi-faceted career, and at times is brutally honest toward himself and others. He gives accolades when appropriate; derision when necessary. And while it is not a tough read, it is a long read solely due to the details presented and the passion behind his words.

Not that I always agree fully with him … As you know, I have long held that AM station owners and programmers pushed listeners to FM through bad programming — and other — decisions. Yes, FM can sound better, but doesn’t have to, and had programmers presented something people value, they would have stayed with the band. Smulyan actually proves my point with the initial failure of WFAN — a formerly successful country music station before he changed it to all-sports, which took years to catch on and like conservative talk radio became a popular format to present — if not listen —on the AM band … to the band’s ultimate demise.

Also demonstrated by Smulyan, the current decline of FM is due to the same type of forces … content not appealing to listeners, and a commercial load approaching 25 minutes per hour on some stations. But I digress.

In reading the book you get a feeling that you are there. In. My case, in one example, I was there … I was an intern at Magic 106 (now Power 106, 105.9 FM), working with on-air personalities such as Sonny Melendrez, Brian Roberts, Laurie Allen, and the great Robert W. Morgan. Emmis had spent a lot of money on Magic, but it was never the force they had hoped for … mainly due, in my opinion (and something I sensed even as a college intern) … a music mix that was too limiting. Magic never wanted to break songs, and instead relied on KIIS-FM (102.7) to do so … to its ultimate decline.

Smulyan and his executives including Rick Cummings, who I believe at the time oversaw programming for the entire company, let me listen in and even take part on some of their evening strategy meetings, which was a tremendous opportunity for a radio nut like me. I never forgot the experience, and it helped me not only understand the inner workings of radio, but develop a periphery understanding of Emmis itself. Indeed, my experience with Emmis matches what Smulyan describes as the corporate attitude within the company – a company that values people; they treated me — unpaid intern radio nut — as a valuable employee. No wonder the same executives I sat with in the mid 1980s are for the most part still with the company.

So I was there when the decision to drop the adult contemporary music and move to a rhythmic top-40/dance format was announced. At the time I remember thinking that it would be a tough move; KIIS-FM was firmly entrenched as the top-rated music station in the United States, setting records for listenership and revenues. Emmis executives came up with a format designed to appeal to young, hip listeners cutting across cultural barriers (sound familiar? Chuck Martin did the same at KHJ 930 AM). Ultimately, Power was the only station ever able to knock unstoppable KIIS-FM out of the top spot, at least for a while.

Smulyan later describes the purchase of the Seattle Mariners … what went right and what went terribly wrong, including a reflective analysis of how he totally misread the market for professional baseball in Seattle. That chapter in the book may change a few opinions on Smulyan being a “terrible owner” of the team, even though that is not the intent.

He speaks of his competitors both good and bad, talks about initiatives he was part of that may have indeed helped extend the reach of radio, and discusses the problems — including in particular one short-sighted competitor — that led to Emmis ultimately becoming less of a “radio” company and more of a media company … a move that you correctly sense makes him somewhat sad. Smulyan is, indeed, a radio guy, and it is his first love.

As I mentioned, one thing I found interesting in reading the book was that the attitude of Smulyan and the corporate culture he claims to have encouraged at Emmis matches that of my limited experience way back in my intern days, which were only a few years after Emmis was founded. Over time I watched the company’s successes and declines, and was impressed when — unlike so many other companies — Emmis actually worked to pay down debt by selling stations, including one that Smulyan loved, Power 106.

As I said, it’s not truly a radio book, but well worth the read for both radio fans as well as anyone interested in starting a business. Smulyan imparts knowledge that successful business owners learn by experience; perhaps his experience will help others avoid mistakes … or at least help others understand what entrepreneurs often go through …

View Details

Radio: February 17, 2023

Last October, Adult Album rocker 88-5 … aka The SoCal Sound (KCSN/KSBR, 88.5 FM) … ruffled a few feathers by moving specialty programming out of “prime” hours, described as Monday through Friday 6 a.m. to 7p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

General Manager Patrick Osburn stated emphatically at the time that all hosts were offered new slots and no shows were outright canceled, but that not everyone wanted to make the move and some hosts decoded to hang it up.

This prompted numerous emails and letters at the time, and some observers wondered if it made a difference in support and donations to the stations, with the thinking being that listeners of specialty programming are more likely financially support a public radio station.

So I reached out to Osburn and asked directly … was there any fallout? His response is that it was basically a wash:

“For several weeks I got a lot of hate mail and resentful notes that missed the Beatles show, and others,” he explained. “I made a big effort to explain, placate them, and even compromise. In the end, I generally stuck to the plan for the good of the future of the station.

“Over a few weeks, the number of letters decreased. Nothing for a few weeks, then back to notes and donations”

Osburn insists that the move was needed to help ensure the longterm visibility of the station, explaining, “our goal to evolve for the next 10 years is working, and the previous donations are being replaced by the new. In short, it’s a push, but we are well set up for the future.”

The Real Threat

Radio engineering newspaper Radio World recently ran a story on what the writer feels is the real threat to radio longterm: subscriptions. Not to the stations or content providers, but to auto manufacturers who want to expand monthly payments to include in-dash entertainment services.

A couple throwaway lines in the story written by InsideMusicMedia.Com’s Jerry Del Colianno, namely that electromagnetic fields in electric cars make AM radio virtually unlistenable and that manufacturers claim that AM radio drains batteries in electric vehicles prompted letter reply from a Radio World reader that succinctly states what I have been saying for years: Those companies using interference as an excuse for removing AM are basically lazy … or worse, just bad.

Writes Broadcast Engineer Jeremy Burnham (bit.ly/3HSHkgu), “The article states, 'Fact: electromagnetic fields generated in non-gasoline engines make AM virtually unlistenable.’ Apparently Chrysler found a way around this issue because my 2021 Pacifica EV has a radio that receives AM just fine. I can even do some DXing (long distance listening) with it at night. If Chrysler can build a necessary filter, so could other automakers.

“The article goes on saying that manufacturers claim: ‘AM radio drains the batteries of their electric vehicles.’ Really? Quick, get me an ammeter; I need to see for myself that the radio draws excessive current while tuned to 570 AM but not for 102.7 FM or Willy’s Roadhouse on satellite radio.”

Could they both be right? Yes, absolutely. It would not surprise me one bit if automakers wanted to expand a subscription base launched with in-car internet services, or going back further, services like On-Star. And if the companies can use the excuse that it is “too hard” for regular radio reception as a way to remove AM and/or FM from the dash of future models, then subscriptions will — perhaps — increase.

But it is true that with correct shielding and a good antenna, reception of both AM and FM in electric vehicles is absolutely possible. GM, Toyota, Chrysler and others have proven it. And if the electronics and motors produced so much interference that it negatively affected reception in the car, it is likely that the cars themselves are interfering with others on the road, or even at homes and businesses nearby. Which means, basically, the cars themselves are operating illegally. It is up to the manufacturer to eliminate the interference of the products they build. Has been that way for decades.

Oh, and the claim about draining the battery? That is just bull.

View Details

Radio: February 10, 2023

The holiday ratings period - representing roughly the last four weeks of the year - were kind once again to KOST (103.5 FM), which dominated the local ratings by playing holiday music. Earning a 13.1 share of the audience , KOST earned almost three times the rating (2.79 times actually, rounded off) held by second place KRTH’s (101.1 FM) 4.7 share.

Interestingly, though, the rating was a little lower than last year at the same time, when KOST earned a 13.4 share, and down even more from 2020’s 13.9. I wouldn’t read anything into that … many things are at work, not the least of which is the fact that people were allowed to leave their homes more freely, unlike the past two years. Still - interesting.

Also interesting: Go Country’s switch to holiday music didn’t seem to make a dent one way or another, with the station earning a 2.5 … about what it earns normally.

KFI (640 AM) was 3rd with a 4.4, followed by KLVE (107.5 FM) at 4.2 and My FM KBIG (104.3) at 3.9.

Moving down the list a bit, the competition of Alt 98.7 and KROQ (106.7 FM) found the stations closer together than they have been in a while, which Alt earning a 15th place 2.3 share and KROQ tied with KPCC (89.3 FM) for 19th at 2.0

KLOS (95.5 FM) fell a little, to 2.5 from December’s 2.9 and the 3.0 share it held in September, October and November. This gave Jack-FM KCBS (93.1) a chance to take back the classic rock lead even though it was flat from December’s 2.8. The problem for Jack is that back in August, it had a 3.9 share, and other than in November, the trend has been down. It should be interesting to see what happens the first half of this year.

KLOS sister station Power 106 (KPWR, 105.9 FM) is still struggling. In spite of an excellent signal, it continues to languish far below closest competitor KIIS-FM (102.7), with a 23rd place 1.6 share against KIIS’s 7th place 3.0. There was a time when Power beat KIIS, and it wasn’t that long after KIIS set records for FM ratings — as high as 10.0 — in the mid 1980s. Kind of makes you wonder why either station doesn’t try harder.

And from the files of “I Told You So,” KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM) earned a 2.5 share of the ratings, tying KLOS and Go Country at 11th place. For historical comparison, KNX earned a combined AM-FM 2.8 share in Holiday 2021, and an AM-only 3.2 share in Holiday 2020. Clearly the simulcast on FM has not helped, and owner Audacy lost the approximately 1.5 share it had with the old KNOU format it ran on 97.1 before the simulcast, even as bad as that format was. In the meantime, KFI has increased its ratings over the same period. Weird.

Honestly, Audacy should drop the simulcast, move the call letters back to 93.1 FM and play mellow rock on the FM. But they won’t.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the Holiday ratings? KRTH’s online stream earned a 0.7 share … higher than 15 rated stations on the list and just below KABC’s (790 AM) 0.8 share of the audience.

Each rating is an estimate of the percentage of listeners, age 6 and over, tuned to a station between the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight, as determined by Nielsen.

KOST (13.1) 2. KRTH (4.7) 3. KFI (4.4) 4. KLVE (4.2) 5. KBIG (3.9) 6. KTWV The Wave (3.4) 7. KIIS-FM (3.0) 8. KCBS-FM (2.8) 9. KRRL (2.7) 10. KLAX, KXOL (2.6)
KKGO, KLOS, KNX (2.5) 15. KYSR Alt (2.3) 16. KBUE, KLYY, KRCD (2.1) 19. KPCC, KROQ (2.0)
KUSC (1.9) 22. KSCA (1.7) 23. KPWR (1.6) 24. KLLI (1.5) 25. KJLH (1.4) 26. KKJZ (1.3) 27. KDAY, KFWB (1.2) 29. KCRW, KLAC (0.9)
KABC (0.8) 32. KDLD, KRTH Stream (0.7) 34. KCSN, KEIB, KRLA (0.5) 37. KFSH, KWIZ (0.4) 39. KKLA, KPFK (0.2)
KCBS-FM Stream, KHJ, KIRN, KNX-FM Stream, KROQ Stream, KTNQ, KTWV Stream, KWKW (0.1)

///

View Details

Radio: February 3

I got into a minor disagreement with my podcast partner and friend Michael Stark over a recent column in which I was trying to clarify something and perhaps ended up making things murkier. It all had to do with the the word “stale” and radio station KABC (790 AM).

Going back a couple weeks, I had mentioned that KFI’s (640 AM) recent changes had a lot to do with not becoming stale, as KABC had become. What I meant to reference was the mid 1980s, when KFI was moving to the talk format, and was able to overtake KABC relatively quickly due to sounding young, hip, and modern … while KABC was holding on to the old guard and had become somewhat stale in comparison.

It was not a direct judgement of KABC’s programming then or now, and often sounding fresh isn’t so much the talk programs themselves, but how they present themselves. What music they use coming out of breaks, and more. A station that doesn’t evolve is likely to die due to a lack of new listeners. Done right, and a station thrives.

A perfect example of that is KRTH (101.1 FM) … diehard oldies fans lament that they no longer play songs from the 1950s and ‘60s, but as KRTH has moved into the ‘80s and even the 1990s — still a longer period back than when it launched in 1972 and played music from 1955 and up — it has gained new listeners and remained one of the areas top-rated stations.

My partner Stark believes I was too easy on the current KABC program lineup. It is stale, he says. I’m not sure that is the correct word, but I understand where he is coming from. Indeed, if KABC was playing something people wanted to hear, they would not be among the lowest-rated full-power stations in town. My choice of word to describe KABC: irrelevant.

I think that the real problem with KABC is that it isn’t offering much to attract listeners, and they aren’t really even trying. The station is mostly repetitive conservative programming, basically preaching to the choir, with no promotion at all. Two of the shows are essentially replays of podcasts, and outside of midday host John Phillips and (another disagreement with my friend Stark) Ben Shapiro, the shows are not even really fun nor all that informative. Just kind of a rehash of negative political news.

So what to do? The way I see it there are two choices. Either build around Philips and go live/local all day with people who can relate to local audiences and get out of the political gutter, or drop talk altogether and play music. Find a format for an audience that isn’t served by existing stations … such as oldies (new or old) that KRTH or KOLA (99.9 FM) doesn’t play, metal, or progressive rock. I guarantee any of those moves would do better than now, and may even bring a few younger listeners back to the band.

You Know That …

It’s funny how certain stories get told, and I suppose when they get told often enough they become “fact.” But many “facts” about radio are more legend than reality. Here are but a few examples:

You always heard that KHJ (930 AM) used a cappella jingles when they launched the Boss Radio format in 1965 because there was a musicians strike. Sound reasonable, except that it’s not true. Oh, there may have been a strike — I didn’t check — but station consultant Bill Drake had already been using similar jingles at previous stations he consulted or programmed, including KGB in San Diego (now KLSD, 1360 AM) among others.

Speaking of KHJ and KGB, it was actually KGB that launched “the Drake format” roughly one year before KHJ. They didn’t call it Boss Radio, but the elements were all there - quick jungles, fast moving format elements, and the top-30 records. The success of KGB helped pave the way for its implementation on KHJ.

You know that Rick Dees came to Los Angeles to work at KIIS-FM (102.7), right? It must be true, as I even read it in an LA Times retrospective of Dees’ career and how his arrival at KIIS led immediately to the rise of the station to the top of the ratings.

Except it wasn’t that way at all. Dees arrived with his “Cast of Idiots” to work at a revitalized KHJ (can’t get away from that station today) in 1979; he didn’t move to KIIS until 1981. And KIIS didn’t switch to a true top-40 format until a while after Dees’ arrival. Had they kept playing the sleepy “adult contemporary” format they ran when Dees first arrived, KIIS-FM would never have set records for ratings earned in the mid 1980s.

Of course you know that AM radio broadcasts always sound awful and it is due to the AM transmission system. The only way to get good sound on the radio to listen to FM.

Wrong again. While Edwin Armstrong, a key developer of AM, hated the sound or AM broadcasts so much that he invented FM, it wasn’t due to what we consider AM’s lack of fidelity. It was the interference. AM radio, due to the frequencies it uses, is prone to interference from natural and man-made sources: lightening, automotive ignition systems, computers, dimmers, and more. But Amplitude Modulation itself is not inherently bad — it was used for the video portion of television broadcasts prior to the switch to digital … which is why you could sometimes get a picture before the sound on distant stations in the old days — AM travels further than FM.

Radio manufacturers handled interference by reducing the audio bandwidth on AM radio broadcasts. Made it easier to listen to, but it cut sound quality dramatically. From a technical standpoint, analog AM broadcasts can actually have a greater bandwidth — the frequency response spread from the lowest notes to the highest — than FM stereo (20 Hz to 20KHz vs 20 Hz - 15KHz).

With modern circuits, it is relatively easy to design a great-sounding AM receiver; Carver, Denon, and a few others made great AM stereo receivers as far back as the 1980s. It just costs a little more, and the companies want to keep costs down. Too bad, actually … some AM stereo stations sounded better than their FM competitors, but few people had the right radios.

Have any similar stories? Send them over - I’d love to hear them.

View Details

Radio: January 27, 2023

I have always had a pipe dream of buying a radio station or two … primarily AM — because I want to prove you can get listeners when you program and promote a station correctly — or maybe an AM-FM combo in a major market. I’d probably run top-40 or progressive rock on the AM and something to complement it on the FM … such as Big Band.

But as I write this, something dramatic is happening in radio: mega-owner Audacy — owner of six stations in Los Angeles, a handful more in the Inland Empire, and a total of 235 nationwide — has seen its stock decline by almost 90 percent over the past year, closing January 19th at just over 26 cents per share. With about 141 million shares outstanding, that puts its total market value at about $37 million.

I think it’s time to buy the whole company. Anyone want to invest?

Here’s my plan: offer a premium to buy the entire company at, say, $50 million. Then sell off most of the stations to others. You truly don’t have to get much for them … the selling price would only need to average a little under $213,000 to break even, and even stations in smaller markets would be worth more than that.

Considering that KBLA (1580 AM) sold for $7 million in 2020, KLOS for $43 million in 2019 and KFWB fetched over $11 million in 2012, as but three examples, I figure I could sell just four of the six LA properties (KROQ 106.7 FM, KNX-FM 97.1, KTWV 94.7 FM, KRTH 101.1 FM, KCBS-FM 93.1, and KNX 1070 AM) and pay off the debt; the rest of the stations nationwide would give me a lot of operating income. Keep about 10 stations total and I’m set.

Why ten? That’s about as many as any one company should be allowed to own. More than that and you have what you have today — failing companies creating a declining industry.

Of course in purchasing the company you’d have to deal with staggering debt, for which there may be no way out short of bankruptcy . Something that some observers say is inevitable. A search revealed that as of last September, Audacy had over $2 billion in total debt, with liabilities totaling $2.73 billion. That would bring the average station selling price quite a bit higher to break even: almost $12 million. But … and this is a big but - it seems do-able, given the right management. The trick is, the company cannot remain in its current form: it must sell assets in order to get down to the handful of successful stations and remain debt-free.

Any financial wizards reading this want to tell me why the plan doesn’t work? Seems a no brainer … I haven’t seen a bargain like this since Cumulus stock was selling for under $1 a few years ago.

Stale?

I received a few letters regarding my recent column on KFI’s (640 AM) programming changes, one particularly good one from reader Alan Wolfe.

“I disagree that KABC (790 AM) programing is stale.

“Armstrong and Getty: I give this show a thumbs down. I don't know what the show is about the constant laughing of one of the hosts is totally annoying. New hosts.

“Dan Bongino: Two thumps up for this excellent show. Great show

“John Phillips: One of the best interviewers on either the radio or TV. Great show

“Ben Shapiro: Also a good show if Ben did not talk so fast. Ben, slow down

“Leo 2.0: During the 60 minutes Leo covers more information than some of the other stations cover in four hours. Great show

“Frank Motek: One of the best financial shows on the air and he is not selling anything.

“Susan Shelley with John Coupal: In one hour you know so much about what the city, county and the state are doing to rip you off.”

That is an excellent analysis.

Which made me realize I was unclear. I didn’t mean that KABC was stale; what I meant was that KFI changed this month because it didn’t want to become what KABC HAD become back in 1984. KABC being old and stale is what KFI — with a young, popular Rush Limbaugh and a few others such as Tom Leykis — used to surpass them in the ratings.

What KABC has now is an image problem that they refuse to do anything about. And their technical sound is occasionally abysmal: the audio often sounds like high school quality … Leo Terrell could not even be heard talking the other night coming out of a commercial because the music level was so high. There are also too many syndicated programs, and they refuse to promote ANY of them.

Which is too bad - Shapiro is considered by some as genius and even fun, and Phillips is a definitely a wasted talent waiting for someone to notice how good he really is. I like Bongino, but you can only say something sucks so many times before it gets dull. He needs to listen to early Limbaugh shows to see how it’s done. And why is Dr. Kelly Victory still not on the air here? She was a highlight of the day on The Doctor Hour of Phillips’ program.

KABC should be a competitor … they invented the format! But they just won’t go the extra mile to make it work. There is no reason for a major market station, even on AM, to be rated as low as is KABC, shares running between 0.6 and 0.9 for the past six months.

KABC is probably a station that purists wouldn’t want me to own: I’d take it to top-40.

Radio Waves: January 20, 2023 Benny Martinez, the young kid and relative newcomer to Los Angeles when he was picked in 1981 for the early evening shift on program director Chuck Martin’s top-40 K-WEST 106 (now KPWR, 105.9 FM) has passed away on January 3rd from complications related to diabetes. He was 66.

I remember listening to Martinez on K-WEST, the little station that should have dominated radio in Los Angeles, a true version of KHJ (930 AM) on FM, launched about six months after KHJ went country. Unfortunately, upper management didn’t give it enough time and dropped the format just as KIIS-FM was moving in; KIIS would eventually become the top-rated station in America due in part to K-WEST leaving the format to them.

I asked Martin to talk about Martinez. “I first heard of Benny while I was programming KHJ. We would receive a lot of air checks from DJs around the country … so many people wanted to work at KHJ. One day my assistant, “Hurricane” Heron, came to me and said ‘you want to listen to this one.’ It was Benny Martinez, which was working at a little station in El Centro called KXO.”

“Benny had a decent voice, but there was something more to it. He had a vibe, something in his attitude, that stuck out. He had excellent delivery, with a great pace and momentum. He was not ready for KHJ yet, but he was close to the type of personality I wanted for the station: someone with an ethnic feel … who can talk with Southern California in a general sense, but relate to listeners in the inner city as well.

“One day, he showed up in my office. My secretary said he was in the lobby, had sent me a tape and was hoping we could go over it together. So I brought him to my office, we sat down and listened; I gave him suggestions, such as to start speaking both Spanish and English on the air, moving between the two as effortlessly as he could. He was quite talented in this. After the meeting, we agreed to stay in touch while I continued to offer suggestions… which we did for many months”

It was the Spanish-English announcing that made Martinez fun to listen to for me, even though I am still most definitely not a Spanish speaker. Long before it was trendy at some stations, Martinez would through in a few Spanish words as he spoke, often culminating with “on K-WEST, uno cero seis.” But I am getting ahead of the story.

Fast forward a bit … KHJ has gone country, Martin is up in San Francisco consulting with KHJ sister station KFRC, when he gets the opportunity to program K-WEST. “We had most of the staff set … Bobby Ocean, Pat Garrett, London and Engelman, and the one holdover from the old format, China Smith. But I still needed an evening jock. Hurricane brought up Benny.”

After thinking about it for a while, “he was at the top of my list” for potential candidates, he explained. But Martin had lost track of Martinez when the young DJ left KXO. “I had no clue where he was,” said Martin. “I finally found him … working at a bank! He had given up radio because he needed a more stable job as he started a family.”

Would he be interested in working the evening shift on K-WEST? “Yes,” came the immediate reply from Martinez. And he didn’t let Martinez down. “He was exactly what I wanted for the format, for that time slot especially. He did really well for me,” he said.

Unfortunately, as I said, it didn’t last. Just as the format was building momentum, and immediately prior to KIIS-FM starting its ascension, Martin realized the station was not being supported correctly, and promises were being broken. So he reluctantly left the station, the last station he ever programmed. Martinez went on to work at other stations in town, including the KIIS-AM (now KEIB, 1150 AM) “shadow cast” of KIIS-FM, B-100 (KIBB, now KKLQ, 100.3 FM), and KRTH (101.1 FM).

Martinez also worked on Westwood One’s syndicated 70s format but ultimately realized what he already knew: radio is not the most stable of industries. So he left and sold cars at Ed Butts Ford in La Puente.

I realize this is a long tribute for Martinez, who certainly would not be considered a “legend” in the vein of Charlie Tuna, Robert W. Morgan, or “the Real” Don Steele. But he represents the last gasps of personality-oriented top-40 radio, and for that matter made his mark in an increasingly tough industry. I remember him so well because my radio was glued to K-WEST in that era, whether I was driving to Long Beach State or working at the Sears Surplus Store warehouse. It was fun; Martinez will be missed.

View Details

Radio: January 13, 2023

To borrow a slogan from ABC-television in the 1970s - unfortunately when they cancelled my favorite game show, Split Second - It’s a brand new day on KFI (640 AM), and it all started January 3rd. Tim Conway made the announcement of the change on the last day of his told time slot, January 2nd at 7:00.

Some of the shows remain the same: Wake Up Call with Jennifer Jones Lee still starts the day at 5 a.m.; Coast to Coast with George Noory still ends the day at 10 p.m. But between the two some shows were shortened and times adjusted in order to launch the all new Later with Mo’ Kelly. More on that, um, later.

It could be said that the changes reflect a reality: in talk radio, longer shifts can be tough. I think even in music radio, four hours can be too long, especially if the show is entertainment-based. Perhaps that explains why so many morning shows repeat segments or even full hours rather than having new content throughout the morning. Three hours in my opinion is a much better program length, but I digress.

Bill Handel loses an hour and will be heard from 6-9 a.m. Gary and Shannon keep the same length but move up an hour, taking on 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Next is John and Ken 1-4 p.m., followed by Tim Conway 4-7 p.m; both also sans one hour each shift. And then … Later, 4-7 p.m.

I had a chance to talk with Mo’Kelly, and he explains his new show this way: “Think the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but on the radio rather than television.” Rather than being issues-oriented like his old weekend show, he says this one will be entertaining. “Sure, a guest may want to talk about something political, and I’ll let them. But it’s not going to be a political show. It will be fun, joyous … hopefully magical.”

It’s definitely a gamble for the station, which just saw it’s ratings high enough to be tied for the number two station in the city. But it’s also been a while since any real changes have been made … by my count, no major changes have been made since 2013, the year Rush Limbaugh moved over to then-new KEIB (1150 AM), also in early January.

I have yet to reach KFI programmer Robin Bertolucci, but I can surmise a major reason for the changes was making sure the station didn’t get stale, along with trying to make sure that its audience didn’t get “too old.” Just as KRTH (101.1 FM) has remained at the top of the ratings by constantly evolving to continually attract new listeners, KFI wants to make sure it doesn’t become what KABC (790 AM) had become: old and stale.

But to do it at the almost top of the ratings? There has to be information Bertolucci has that I am not privy too. Yet I can guess: Most of the shows have not changed in years. John and Ken have been doing essentially the same show for about 30 years, for example, and moving earlier in the day may actually expose them to a newer audience. Conway seems an odd fit at his new time, but again: new audience, new potential. And Kelly? He’s been a wasted talent on the station for years; his new show gives him the chance to shine … and bring a whole new crop of listeners to talk radio.

So why didn’t KFI promote the heck out of these changes? They never do. KFI has always been run as a top-40 station that plays talk instead of music. It’s the station experience rather than any one host that has always gotten top-billing. As it continues to evolve away from issues and politics and toward general entertainment — ironically the format that KABC ran when KFI did it it — I can see it helping to keep talk radio viable. Certainly KABC — and KFI sister station KEIB — constantly prove one simple fact: that political talk as a full format is dead … both stations are consistently toward the bottom of the ratings lists.

The Greatest Ninths

K-Mozart (1260 AM, 105.1 HD2) will present what station owner Saul Levine calls the greatest Ninth Symphonies — the Schubert, the Mahler, and the Beethoven — beginning at 12 noon on January 22nd.

Listeners have a chance to voice their opinion on the subject matter as well; during the presentations, votes will be taken via email for their own thoughts on the best of the three.

And as I visited the K-Mozart website - Mozart.com- I was reminded of Levine’s dedication to shelter animals … on the top of the page, as on all of his station websites, is a link for information on pet adoptions. Levine has been a proponent of shelter pet adoptions for many years, and that definitely continues into the new year. I like that.

View Details

Special Guest: KFI's Mo Kelly who discusses his new weekday show.

Radio: January 6, 2022

Wasn’t that you who told me you always wanted to own your own radio-related internet domain, so that you could direct your friends and family to your chain of online radio stations that you program out of your spare bedroom?

You’re in luck. Audacy, owner of stations nationwide including eight here in Los Angeles (seven if you count the failure of the KNX Newsradio simulcast (1070 AM, 97.1 FM) that earns roughly the same combined ratings as it did as a standalone AM signal, but I digress) is auctioning off the radio.com domain it once used for its online presence. The company dropped radio.com in favor of audacy.com when it changed its corporate name from Entercom to Audacy a couple years ago.

Available through GoDaddy.Com, the auction ends March 28, 2023. Starting bid: $2.5 million. That’s right - $2.5 million. Minimum.

On a serious note and just for reference, Audacy couldn’t really do anything major with either radio.com or audacy.com. It is a decent little domain name, though … I just can’t see anyone or any company finding it worth that much. Generally speaking, online radio doesn’t make a lot (read: none) of money, so paying off that $2.5 million may take a while.

So if that’s too rich for your blood, I’ll sell you socalradiowaves.com for much less. Maybe half a million. Send me your offer …

Also on a serious note: I’m kidding about selling socalradiowaves..

The Radio.Com domain itself goes back to at least 1996. It was once owned by CNET networks — which paid $30,000 for both Radio.Com and TV.Com — and became part of CBS Radio when CBS bought CNET. In 2010, CBS launched Radio.Com as a clearinghouse of all CBS radio station streams. When Entercom bought CBS, the domain became its own.

AllAccess.Com, which broke the news of the auction, reports that similar domains such as Radio.Cloud, Radio.Co, and Radio.IM recently sold for anywhere from $2500 - just over $25,000.

American’s Samoa’s Best Music

Ever wonder what the legendary KHJ (930 AM) might sound like, musically at least, if the station still played top-40? Wonder no more … South Seas Broadcasting has you covered.

Using the call-letters KKHJ and broadcasting at 93.1 FM out of Pago Pago in American Samoa, the station brands itself as 93/KHJ in a tribute to the original. The music is considered an adult top-40, which is probably what I would program on the station if I were running it here in Los Angeles.

According to the station website at southseasbroadcasting.com/93khj, “the idea for KHJ Radio came about in 1994 when Larry Fuss (now President of South Seas Broadcasting, Inc., the parent company of 93KHJ) was looking out the window of his radio station in Mississippi following a big ice storm. The streets were littered with fallen trees, broken branches and tons of ice, and the electricity had been out for over a week. Fuss thought to himself, ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have a radio station on a tropical island in the South Pacific?’

“On somewhat of a whim, Fuss immediately began researching the possibility and ran across an available frequency for a new FM Radio Station in Pago Pago, American Samoa. The FCC application was filed on November 20, 1995, and finally granted on February 13, 1998.”

Regular programming began in May of 2000 — almost exactly 35 years after the late April, 1965 “sneak preview” of the “Boss Radio” top-40 launch that helped change radio forever. Like the original, the format was an instant hit.

The station features a two-man morning team, a three-person news department, and runs public affairs programming benefiting the local community. And modern “93/KHJ” jingles … so cool. Hear it yourself on the various smartphone apps or online at the website.

Ratings

The December ratings (which due to the four-week cycles actually includes more of November than December) had KOST (103.5 FM) at the top, as usual, with their Christmas music format earning a whopping 12.1 share of the audience. You can expect that to be even higher when the “holiday” ratings period is released in January.

But what caught my eye is the stellar performance of KFI (640 AM), which tied with KRTH (101.1 FM) for second place at 4.7. That’s right: an AM station tying for second place. It is truly amazing what happens when you program something people want to hear on the AM band: you get ratings. Just like so many stations did before they sent listeners to FM … such as KLAC (570 AM), XETRA (690 AM), KPRZ (now KEIB, 1150 AM), KEZY (now KGBN, 1190 AM) , KABC (790 AM) and even KHJ itself, most of which have never had ratings as high as they had when they played music (country, top-40, or even adult standards). KABC is a special case because they stopped trying to compete in talk in spite of inventing the format.

KFI does have an advantage of being a signal blowtorch, covering most of Southern California during the day and much of Western America at night. But they compete by having a good programming, good promotion, and a local presence that is missing from so many stations, both AM and FM. One could learn a lot by studying these successes past and present, especially now that so many competing stations don’t really try.

Radio Waves: December 30, 2022Poorman rings in the new year with his 3rd annual marathonWhat would the new year be like without family, friends, food, fun, and The Poorman?

You don’t have to wonder, as Jim “Poorman” Trenton is once again ringing in the new year with a 30-hour marathon on-air party you can be a part of. Just tune into KOCI (101.5 FM) in or near Costa Mesa, or via kociradio.com, poorman.net, your favorite smartphone app, or your smart speaker.

There will even be a live video stream of the event at facebook.com/jim.p.trenton

It starts at 7 a.m. on New Year’s Eve and runs until 1 p.m. New Year’s Day; the idea is to showcase local community members as they take to the airwaves with Poorman as the official Master of Ceremonies.

Each segment features a different host, and can be a station sponsor, local business owner, listener, or even a surprise celebrity guest. Each hour spotlights a different charity, and Poorman will offer live public service announcements directing marathon listeners to the charity web site as a part of the festivities.

The first four hours will be his normal show … as I wrote last year, the word “normal” being a strange description for what is one of the most unusual shows on the radio. “We – either me or listeners – choose a theme, and then listeners call in to suggest songs that match the theme.” It could be any theme: food, cars, dance moves, drinks … after the theme is chosen, Poorman tries to play as many of the suggested related songs as possible. “It’s an all-instant request morning,” he explains.

For the marathon, at 11 a.m., Poorman turns the program over to his guests, who are allowed to do basically anything they want, as long as it is FCC-legal. Poorman stays on hand to handle any issues or technical problems that crop up.

Of course this means he has to start sharp and ready to go if the guest hosts run a little too loose … I see lots of coffee being brewed at Poorman’s control center during those 30 hours.

This is the third year for the event, and it truly is a lot of fun.

Predictions for 2023With radio stations possibly being forced to pay new royalties to the artists of the music they play, there are many expecting more radio stations to shift toward talk. Not necessarily talk formats — though I would not be surprised to see a commercial FM talker within the year. I am looking to see fewer songs being played on some stations and the ability of those in front of the microphone to have a but more personality. Think Booker and Stryker on Alt 98.7 or Kevin and Sluggo on KLOS (95.5 FM).

This stems from the possibility that radio stations may have to pay these new royalties if a deal is struck between artists and the various organizations working on it. In the past, radio stations were able to avoid artist fees due to the argument that they expose listeners to new artists and new music, driving sales of records. Since radio became a thing if the past by playing mostly oldies and shunning most new music, they can’t hide behind that any more.

Will it actually happen? And will such an agreement actually mean more talking on the radio? I don’t think it will be a dramatic shift, but I do believe a subtle change will happen in the new year.

What else? I can see at least one of the major owner groups going bankrupt this year, especially if the economy declines at all; my bet would be on Audacy but honestly all three of the largest and most of the smallest are in trouble due to over leveraging their properties and the lack of content development on the part of most. Hopefully this will lead to a resurgence of independent owners, but I’ve been saying that for years … and remaining disappointed that it never seems to happen.

Expect a few talk programs to show up on KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM). Where? Overnights is the rumor. Probably cheap syndicated fare.

At least one major talk station will have some changes. Will it be KABC switching to sports betting? KFI making some adjustments? KEIB (1150 AM) dropping talk altogether? I’ve heard nothing in particular about any of the stations, but KABC and KEIB are still in obvious ratings trouble and KFI seems due in spite of quite excellent ratings — the last major change KFI made was years ago when they sent Dr. Laura to satellite and Rush Limbaugh to a different dial position. I don’t expect wholesale changes, but perhaps a few tweaks.

Would it surprise me if KFI started simulcasting on FM? Actually yes, even though I know programmer Robin Bertolucci would love that chance. KFI does so well on AM (and KNX does so poorly on FM) that the move requires a low-rated FM to make the risk acceptable. Owner iHeart has no low-rated or unsuccessful FMs in town.

Other than that, I don’t see many changes. Regardless, you’ll read it here first. And if you hear anything, or just want to know something that I can help with, please drop me a line.

Happy new year!

View Details

Radio Waves: December 23, 2022

Holiday Treats More Christmas/holiday programming is on tap for you, if you’re willing to listen via apps or online … one of which has not been heard locally in years, if ever.

In the early 1980s, Drake-Chenault produced a show called Christmas At Our House. It was very well received, since it was quite different from the usual repetition of 50 common Christmas songs. The syndicated show hasn’t been aired anywhere for over 20 years, and I don’t recall it ever airing in Los Angeles.

The program was hosted by Sonny Melendrez, who I met while he was at Magic 106 (now KPWR, 105.9 FM) circa 1984. It features lots of holiday music, along with interesting vignettes about how Christmas is celebrated in various countries around the world. There are also celebrity interviews, holiday stories, and some very unique music.

It will air commercial-free on Christmas Eve, Saturday, December 24, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. and repeat on Christmas Day December 25, from 7 a.m. to 10pm

How do you listen? The stream URL is https://la2.indexcom.com/player/6. Just copy and paste the link into your web browser and a player will launch. If you have the technical know-how you can add it to your favorite phone app, but it will also play using the online player on your phone, so you can listen on the go or in your car.

The second program is a holiday tradition. Sounds of the Season will air as usual beginning at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and running through 12 midnight on Christmas Day. The 36-hour show includes some excellent jazz instrumental and vocal interpretations of holiday music favorites from Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Marcus Roberts, Ramsey Lewis, Wynton Marsalis, Vince Guaraldi and many more.

LA Jazz DJ legend, Chuck Niles, provides a dramatic reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas at noon, and 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and midnight, 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. on Christmas Day.

“I have plenty of newer tracks this year, exclaims show producer David Grudt. “About 27 percent of the music comes from albums released in the last three years. Roughly 60 percent of the playlist this year is comprised of music in our 1,300 plus track library that are new songs, tracks that I haven’t used ever before or tracks that weren’t played in 2021.”

In the San Diego you can hear it over the air on KSDS (88.3 FM); in Longview, Texas you can tune to KFRO (1370 AM) — Longview’s oldest radio station owned by Scott Rice, former Chief Engineer of KSDS. But you’ll probably find it easier to “tune in” online at https://jazzknob.com or https://www.jazz88.org

Music Comparison Sean Ross confirmed my own observations: KOST (103.5 FM) and Go Country (105.1 FM) do have a lot of overlap, but there are enough differences that might make your choice easier.

In a sample hour, Ross reported on RadioInsight.com that KOST played holiday music from The Eagles, Michael Bublé, Bing Cosby, Lindsey Stirling, Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin, Amy Grant, Meghan Trainor, Frank Sinatra & Cyndi Lauper, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Dolly Parton & Michael Bublé, and Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme.

Meanwhile, Go Country’s sample hour included songs from Bing Crosby, Darlene Love, Taylor Swift, Elvis Presley, Faith Hill, Johnny Mathis, Kelly Clarkson, Nat “King’ Cole, Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Dolly Parton, Frank Sinatra, Idina Menzel, Lady Antebellum (Lady A), and Kenny Loggins.

I note that neither station had any songs from Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, among my favorite Christmas songs due most likely to my listening constantly to the reel to reel tape every season on my parent’s Akai M8 when I was growing up. But I digress.

What the Ross sample hours did show is that there is indeed a difference. KOST is marginally more contemporary in the pop arena; Go Country is marginally more traditional but includes a lot of more recent songs from country artists, including a superb version of Baby It’s Cold Outside from Lady A.

But again, no Fred Waring. Such a shame.

Radio pioneer Norm Pattiz passes You may not necessarily know the name Norm Pattiz, but you probably have heard programs created or distributed by the company he founded. Indeed, Pattiz is considered by many as the father of modern radio syndication via his Westwood One company.

Pattiz passed away December 4th at the age of 79.

A graduate of Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, he worked sales for KCOP-TV Channel 13 from 1970 to 1974. He launched Westwood One in 1976, which grew to be a dominant player in syndicated radio programming by the 1980s, featuring concerts and programming including “Off the Record,” the national edition of Dr. Demento’s show.

Eventually, the company acquired other syndicators including Mutual Broadcasting and the NBC Radio Network, and even lured Casey Kasem away from Watermark to host a new countdown show … then later got the rights to the American Top-40 program name under its umbrella.

In the late 1980s, Westwood One started buying its own stations, including the former KIQQ (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM) and launched Pirate Radio under the program direction of Scott Shannon. Those purchases started to undermine the finances of the company, which soon found itself having to deal with an industry in decline brought on, ironically, by large companies buying radio stations at inflated prices, leading to an over leveraged financial situation.

Infinity Broadcasting purchased Westwood One in 1994; Pattiz stayed on until 2010 when Cumulus Media took control.

Pattiz didn’t retire, though, Instead he launched Launchpad in 2012, changing the name to PodcastOne in 2013, once again putting him at the forefront of technology. PodcastOne.Com is a clearinghouse of hundreds of professionally-produced podcasts covering all interests, with such shows as Cold Case Files, Reasonable Doubt, and one of the company’s first featured programs, The Adam Carolla Show.

In addition to commercial radio projects, Pattiz was on the Board of Regents for the University of California; served under two Presidents on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees non-military U. S. Broadcasting services such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe; and helped fund many radio charity events.

Pattiz was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009 and was a recipient of the Giants of Broadcasting Award from the Liberty of American Broadcasting. His big claim to fame: he was married to former KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) air personality Mary Turner, original host of Off the Record and who serves as Chairman of the Board of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.

Fraudulent Advertising 101 Ever think some radio testimonials from some of your favorite personalities are, for lack of a better word, fake? Your instinct may be right.

The Federal Trade Commission is accusing iHeart radio stations and Google of airing 29,000 ads on stations across the country that purported to have air personalities speak of their use of Pixel 4 mobile phones, including scripted testimonials, even though the personalities never used — nor even had — the phones.

As stated on ftc.gov (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/11/ftc-states-sue-google-iheartmedia-deceptive-ads-promoting-pixel-4-smartphone) “in 2019, Google hired iHeartMedia and 11 other radio networks in ten major markets to have on-air personalities record and broadcast endorsements of the Pixel 4 phone. Google provided iHeartMedia with scripts that included lines about the Pixel 4 phone like, ‘It’s my favorite phone camera out there, especially in low light, thanks to Night Sight Mode,’ ‘I’ve been taking studio-like photos of everything,’ and ‘It’s also great at helping me get stuff done, thanks to the new voice activated Google Assistant that can handle multiple tasks at once.’ However, the on-air personalities were not provided with Pixel 4s before recording and airing the majority of the ads and therefore did not own or regularly use the phones.”

This all happened in 2019-2020; one of the reasons the phones were not available for the endorsements: they were not even available for sale at the time.

A proposed settlement puts iHeart under “probation” for ten years, Google for three. Attorneys General from six states including California joined in the action.

Let’s see what the corporate radio apologists say about this … Didn’t RKO lose their licenses over something not nearly as serious?

View Details

Radio Waves: December 9, 2022

Country Christmas In keeping with my desire to discuss holiday music in every column every week of the year I bring you more holiday music news: as expected, Go Country 105 has temporarily become Your Christmas Destination once more.

A rundown of the music played just prior to my writing this includes music from The Ronettes, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams, and Elvis Presley, so its definitely not a country-oriented Christmas format. That being said, it did also include Blake Shelton, Thomas Rhett, Jake Owen, and Lady A … so there is a nice mix there. Generally speaking, while I hate to “lose” the country format, I tend to like the variety of holiday music that Go Country plays this time of year.

I used quotes around the word “lose” because the country music is not totally gone; it is still available on the digital radio HD stream (105.1 HD3), as well as online, through various apps, and via smart speakers. The HD stream temporarily replaces the “unforgettable” Sinatra and standards format normally found there.

And don’t worry … I have more holiday music information in the wait …

Feeding Kids The 12th Annual KFI (640 AM) Pastathon has raised over $450,000 and almost 10,000 pounds of pasta and sauce through press time, though the numbers are most certainly higher once the final tallies are in.

The PastaThon benefits Caterina’s Club, a charity named after Chef Bruno Serato’s mother. In 2005, the charity began serving hot meals to children living in low-income motels; since that time the project has expanded to 100 locations in 30 cities across Southern California, serving more than 25,000 meals per week. Since inception, that makes for over eight million meals served

In addition, help is given to get families into stable homes and job training in the hospitality industry is provided, all in an attempt to break the cycle of poverty, directly benefiting 260 families and 600 teens who have graduated from the Hospitality Academy.

This year, KFI partnered with Smart and Final, Wendy’s, and Barilla — yes the pasta company, of course — to help with the 2022 drive. Water heater manufacturer Bradford White donated $5000 as well.

Since KFI got involved in 2010, listeners and partners of the station have raised over $4.6 million and 700,000 pounds of pasta and sauce. That’s a lotta pasta!

Streaming Along The vast majority of radio listening is still over the regular airwaves, of course. But streaming has picked ups over the past few years, according to Edison Research. The company recently reported that about 12 percent of listeners to AM and FM radio listen via online streams, which includes web browsers, apps, and smart speakers.

Modern apps and smart speakers especially make it extremely easy to hear your favorite station, and there are some who feel that streaming radio is the real future of radio … putting stations on an even playing field with good reception and fidelity non matter your location.

That, of course, will take wifi universal internet access to become a reality for all.

Car Radio Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey is hopping on the “Saving AM” train. He recently sent a letter to 20 automakers asking them too make sure they continue to provide AM radio reception in their vehicles

As reported by AllAccess.Com, in the letter Markey wrote, “Despite innovations such as the smartphone and social media, AM/FM broadcast radio remains the most dependable, cost-free, and accessible communication mechanism for public officials to communicate with the public during times of emergency. As a result, any phase-out of broadcast AM radio could pose a significant communication problem during emergencies. Although the auto industry’s investments in electric vehicles are critical to addressing the climate crisis and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, automakers need not sacrifice the benefits of radio in the process.”

The Senator asked for replies from the companies by December 22nd to the questions of whether they have decided to drop AM and why, what are the future plans for AM reception in their vehicles, and if they currently offer digital (HD) radio.

View Details

Radio: December 2, 2022

Leo Laporte — The Tech Guy — heard locally on KFI (640 AM) Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., announced his retirement from radio effective in December. His last live show will air December 18th.

Technically it wasn’t Laporte who announced the retirement … comedian Steve Martin called in to make the announcement for him, during the November 19th edition of the program. Laporte retires after nearly 50 years on the air, the last 19 of which were spent as The Tech Guy, giving advice and troubleshooting support to listeners on all things tech.

Replacing Laporte will be Rich DeMuro, who will bring his podcast and KTLA-TV Morning News segment to the radio airwaves. Rich on Tech will replace The Tech Guy starting January 7th; Best of Tech Guy programs will air until then.

Farm Radio

At the recent convention of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting, someone — finally — spoke in support of AM radio. That someone was none other than commissioner Nathan Simington of the Federal Communications Commission, the organization that purports to help advance the broadcast industry, even though in my opinion they normally do the opposite.

So many bad FCC initiatives have hurt radio: lifting station ownership limits, dropping news and public affairs requirements, allowing college “public” stations to be staffed by professionals, the AM stereo debacle, the HD Radio debacle, allowing low-powered translators on FM as a way to “save” AM, random enforcement of indecency rules … the list goes on and on.

Sometimes it’s not just the direct rules they make. Not enforcing existing interference rules have had a tremendously negative effect on radio reception affecting both bands, but truly hurting AM. If any product negatively affects radio reception, it is illegal according to FCC rules and regulations. Yet dimmers, some energy efficient light bulbs, cable boxes, cheap “wall-wart” power supplies, and even computers can make AM reception not only difficult, but darn-near impossible. The FCC on these issues? Crickets.

But finally, after years of silence, one Commissioner of the impotent Commission is at least trying. Speaking at the convention, Simington emphasized the importance of AM radio due to the popularity of the band among farmers, many of which are not necessarily near an FM station, the fact that AM radio operates as an essential part of the emergency alert system, and more.

He called on automakers to keep AM reception available on cars and trucks as more and more electric vehicles are developed. EVs by nature cause interference, and many automakers take the easy way out by simply deleting AM from the in-car radio. Problem is, that interference can affect reception to any radio nearby as well, which would appear to make them illegal if they do so, from my understanding of the law. But again, it has been years since the FCC actually did anything benefiting broadcasters.

Regardless, it is refreshing that at least one Commissioner is doing (or saying) something. The trick is getting the rest of the Commission — and Congress — on board.

More Christmas Music

Fred Travalena was an impressionist and entertainer; starting in the 1970s he became known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces” with appearances across the country, including headlining in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Reno, appearances on talk shows including The Tonight Show, and starring in his own television specials such as “The Many Faces of Fred Travalena.”

His wife, singer Lois Travalena, and Fred appeared together at Andrews Air Force Base in the early days of his singing career. It was at this show where he started doing his impressions — developed while in grade school — in public.

He also made a Christmas album. Called The Manhattan Christmas Suite, it is an album of songs dedicated to memories of his New York childhood; he was born in the Bronx and grew up on Long Island. But you probably haven’t heard it … wife Lois says that getting her late-husband’s music on the radio has been extremely difficult.

In this era of streaming music, perhaps it doesn’t matter. And for that matter, if it did pick up popularity streaming, perhaps stations would consider adding it to their playlist. If you’d like to hear it, search on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, Deezer, or even iHeart Music.

Give it a listen and let me know your thoughts.

View Details

Radio: November 25, 2022

One of thew absolute greats of radio — Wally Clark — passed away November 14th at the age of 84.

Clark is one of the crew that brought KIIS-FM (102.7 FM) to prominence starting in 1982 when he was named General Manager of the station, then-owned by Gannett. Teamed up with programmer Gerry DeFrancisco, a tremendously talented on-air staff including Rick Dees, who had recently moved over from KHJ (930 AM), “Big” Ron O’Brien, Bruce Vidal, Paul Freeman and more, a strong music playlist, and a can-do attitude that brought excitement back to radio.

It almost didn’t happen. KIIS-FM was all-disco for time before Dees’ arrival, and when Dees first arrived at KIIS, it was a sleepy (honestly pretty awful) adult contemporary station that barely registered among listeners. Had management at K-WEST (now KPWR, 105.9 FM) given master programmer Chuck Martin more support, K-WEST would have dominated and KIIS may never have moved to top-40.

But K-WEST didn’t support Martin; management apparently felt that top-40 was a dead format, and moved to adult contemporary as Magic 106. Meanwhile, Gannett sensed that they could make a mark and put into place a powerhouse staff, re-launched KIIS-FM as top-40, and not only saved the station, they saved top-40 radio itself.

Clark was absolutely a major reason for the station’s success. Through his tenure, he supported his staff, protected them from corporate managers, figured ways to appease the bean counters when he blew the promotional budget, and allowed creativity to thrive.

In an era marked by stations that thought being “good” was good enough, Clark and his team believed that they could do better. A goal was set to not only make KIIS-FM number one on the ratings locally, he wanted them number one nationally. Under his leadership, the station increased its ratings into and past 10 shares, and the station soon set a record for commercial advertising rates in much the same way KHJ had done more than ten years prior.

He once told me that it was fairly easy to hold back corporate suits from causing problems. “When you’re the number one station in the nation, they tend to leave you alone, even when you’re way over budget,” he explained a few years ago.

And they went over budget a lot. Again, much like KHJ, they were the king of contests … daily cash payoffs, cars, trips. They paid their talent handsomely, in recognition of the work they did. They got out into the community with “weekend warmups,” getting to know listeners directly and personally. They did charity work, had community events and concerts, and a top-notch news and public affairs staff. They hired the best engineers, and had the best jingle package. In essence, they were unstoppable.

Until they weren’t. When Clark left in 1986, things started declining. Power 106 launched and started taking listeners with their “fresh new music mix” highlighting new dance tracks. KIIS-FM at the time over-reacted and starting losing its way. Was it a loss of leadership, or just the first direct competition KIIS had seen since it launched as top-40? Probably a bit of both.

Clark left to start a consultancy and production company, and he consulted KIIS for many years after he left. He helped launch Rick Dees Weekly Top-30, which still airs nationally today. I met him years after he left KIIS, when he happened to be among a group who were part of a radio and records reunion; I happened to sit next to him during lunch and we hit it off right away. He was one of the good guys in radio, with a genuinely positive outlook on things and an uncanny ability to see and develop talent among those he worked with. I don’t think I would be exaggerating to state that without Clark, KIIS-FM probably wouldn’t exist today. And if they followed his examples, they’d be far better than they are today, even though they are still a great station.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Clark also saw the talent in Howard Stern; he directly hired Stern at WWWW/Detroit for one of Stern’s first radio jobs and later was instrumental in getting him hired at WWDC-FM/Washington, DC, the station that helped garner the attention of WNBC, where Stern would move later.

One of the nicest radio people I have met, Clark’s passing is a huge loss for radio.

More Holiday Music

KUSC announced that their Holiday Spirit Channel is back and now has a new name. “A Classical California Christmas” is filled with your holiday favorites and a unique mix of carols, choirs and classical arrangements. “It’s a festive choice to bring you comfort and joy throughout the holiday season,” the station said in a promotional email.

You can stream on the station website or on their free smartphone apps… go to KUSC.org for more information.

View Details

Radio: November 18, 2022

KOSTing into the holidays

I was just thinking that it is about time for KOST (103.5 FM) to start playing holiday music when I noticed: they are already playing holiday music. It began this year last Friday, November 11th at 8 a.m.

Being that it is not even Thanksgiving yet, it would be easy to make fun of the switch being so early again this year. But the results speak for themselves - as soon as the holiday music starts, the ratings jump upwards. Besides, when I domake fun of the early move, I get emails chastising me for knocking what many consider one of the highlights of season. So this year, I won’t.

And of course timeline-wise, it could be considered late … stores like Costco are probably sold out of Christmas items already. Unfortunately for me, between that and the fact that the local Sears store is gone, I can’t do all my shopping on the late evening of December 23rd any more. But I digress.

The station is also offering a chance to win four-packs of tickets to a private holiday party at Disneyland to be held December 7th. You can win tickets by listening, shopping at Smart and Final, following KOST on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and watching KTLA Channel 5… see the station website for more details: https://kost1035.iheart.com/

KOST has been making this switch yearly since 1999, and it is always a ratings winner.

More Holidays

One holiday station just not enough for you? Good thing we have SiriusXM available, Between the satellite and streaming, the service offers 19 holiday choices, most of which started on November 1st.

Choices on the bird include:

• Holiday Traditions - Channel 71 - “traditional” holiday music

• Holly - Channel 104 - Contemporary

• Holiday Soul - Channel 49 - Soul, Rhythm and Blues, Motown

• Country Christmas - Channel 55 - Country (obviously)

• Acoustic Christmas - Channel 6 - acoustic holiday tunes

• Jolly Christmas - Channel 14 - “upbeat feel-good holiday hits”

• and a few more

Streaming channels include classical carols, smooth jazz, kid-friendly tunes, Latin music, “rockin’” music, Jingle Jams (hip-hop), instrumentals, all Mannheim Steamroller, and more.

You can get the full lineup of channels including the start and end dates at siriusxm.com.

But There’s More…

Nineteen holiday music channels not enough for you? Accuradio’s got you covered. The free streaming service has over 100 holiday music channels - 111 to be exact - which I believe breaks the record they set last year when they hit 100.

Acoustic, Reggae, Brazilian, Celtic, Channel O (songs that being with the letter “O”), Christmas Oldies, Christmas Party, Country, Standards, Classica, Choral, Easy Listening, Latin, Holiday Spice, mixed channels, decades, wide playlists, Hungry for Christmas (songs that mention food), K-pop, Old-fashioned, and even one station dedicated to playing dozens and dozens of artists performing Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is You.” Or a channel dedicated to nothing but “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Even jingles and music you’d hear on TV are available.

I think you get the idea.

If you’ve never tried AccuRadio, you owe it to yourself to check it out at AccuRadio.Com. The service features music for just about every taste, and even allows you to combine different formats into one. All formats are curated by a real person, and not just an algorithm … that and the personalization set it apart from most - if not all - other streaming services.

Other Choices

I know that Saul Levine’s Mount Wilson Broadcasting station group will be presenting holiday music as well; I’ve reached out to Levine and will have the information once it is available. If the past is any indication, expect Go Country 105 to start playing holiday tunes sometime just before or after December 1st, and I expect he’ll offer some online streams or HD Radio sub channels as well.

Radio Waves: November 11, 2022 Remembering Steven Clean If you were around Los Angeles for the early days of “freeform” album rock radio — before it became “Album Oriented Rock” as an official format name — you probably remember Steven Segal, known on the air as the “Obscene” Steven Clean, as heard on legendary stations as KPPC (now KROQ, 106.7 FM), KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM), K-WEST (now KPWR, 105.9 FM), and KROQ during the era of the AM -FM simulcast.

He is the man who gave Dr. Demento — aka Barry Hansen — his name when they both worked at KPPC. Described by some as “brilliant” and a “genius” on the air, Clean passed away in his sleep on October 29th, at the age of 76.

In a tribute by his friend Paul Rappaport (https://bit.ly/3FF9exb), Rappaport writes that Clean “is a bit of an unsung hero. You see, Steven is one of the most important figures in the creation of FM Rock Radio.”

Rappaport explained that Clean “was a true genius on the air, imparting important thoughtful cultural messages via spoken word intertwined with just the right music to help bring his points to life,” and adding that “beyond the music, disc jockeys imparted their own powerful messages. No one was more skillful in this regard than Steven. Like Bob Dylan, this expertise didn’t come from years of practice, it was a gift from above.

“Kids would literally cut out of school early to listen to Steven just to make sure they didn’t miss anything important. They exchanged cassettes of his radio shows which were like mini works of performance art,” Rappaport wrote.

That’s the connection with radio that I remember, a connection often lacking in today’s McRadio version of the industry.

Admittedly, you have to be of a certain age to have heard him on the air. He’s just slightly ahead of my time, as I was still listening to top-40 by the time he left town to return to WBCN-FM/Boston in 1977. But various airchecks offer proof that he absolutely embodied the idea of freeform FM rock radio.

PastDaily.Com has a full unscoped hour (music and commercials) of Clean on KMET from 1975 at https://bit.ly/3sUiypr; the tribute referenced above has a scoped (edited) ’check from his arrival at K-WEST in 1976 … and includes, by the way, a mention of Be-Bop Deluxe, giving a reminder of the huge variety of music you could once find on the radio. If you’d like to hear more, there are a few other air checks showing up on places like YouTube and MixCloud.com, which has eight recordings from his time on KMET that you can find by searching his name.

More Airchecks! Speaking of MixCloud and YouTube, one of my favorite Mixcloud accounts, Retro Radio Joe, has a new YouTube page, and both are filled with absolutely delightful recordings. The big finds for me include three hours unscoped of Mark Elliot playing part of the countdown of The Big 93 hits for the year 1972 on KHJ (930 AM), and on YouTube he has a television commercial reminding viewers of the connection that legendary top-40 station KFRC/San Francisco had with the Bay Area Links are at https://bit.ly/3U3Mtaland https://youtu.be/pCs5e0y95TY.

SoCal Sound Web Update The changes referenced here last week regarding the moving of SoCal Sound 88.5 FM specialty shows to new time slots should be at least slightly more palatable to fans very soon.

The station will be creating a new page on their website that will feature “SoCal Sound Specialty Show archives- on demand.” All the shows that are airing late and that were moved, will be there for listening whenever its convenient … with one exception: “The Dylan Hours” can’t be posted on demand due to copyright laws that prohibit the posting of content that includes the playing of three or more songs in a row by the same artist.

Readers Respond Regarding new music on the radio, this email says exactly what I feel: “I just turned 59 and agree with you completely. The last 10 years and maybe longer than that, I find myself just listening to mainly college radio. particularly 88.3 KUCR and 88.7 Claremeont. Best thing ever happened to me.

“I’ve gone to the last 3 Joshua Tree Music Fests. Think very miniature Coachella. It’s great. I still appreciate the classic rock. But try to delve into the songs that are never played.” — Dan Reich

And in relation to KGO/San Francisco’s change: “I think you missed the boat when stating sports betting radio will fail. The success of this format is definitely NOT tied to the success of the two sports gambling initiatives on the California ballot. Most sports betting is done online either offshore or with local sport books.

“As you stated, the programming will be very inexpensive with the sports touts paying for 30-60 minute segments. The only true thing about sports betting … there is a sucker born every minute. This is the audience. I predict it will do very well. I sincerely hope it does not come to KABC as they have great programming!” — James Powell

View Details

Radio Waves: November 4, 2022

SoCal Sound ChangesApparently SoCal Sound (88.5 FM) General Manager Patrick Osburn has received an email or two … or 100, maybe 1000 … due to the decision to drop many of the station’s weekend programs, move others to new time slots, and expand the regular format to more hours each week.

It all happened the weekend of October 22nd-23rd, when a plan that Osburn says has been in the making for the past year came to pass. Sunday marked the end of weekend full-day blocks of specialty shows running the gamut from the Beatles to Peace and Love.

In the case of the Beatles, though, it was not the decision of station management to let Saturday Morning with the Beatles host Les Perry go. “That was his decision,” said Osburn. “We offered him Sunday mornings from 8 to 10 a.m., and he chose not to stay.” That Sunday time slot then went to Lisa Finnie’s The Dylan Hours instead.

In fact, most of the shows were not outright cancelled. Explains Osburn: “Most every show was offered a different time slot, granted some midnight to 2 a.m.” And some hosts took the move in stride. “Long time LA Times music columnist and biographer, Robert Hilburn, embraced his opportunity to move to ‘late night.’ He commented that late night radio is when FM was cool, and he immediately dug into his library and found 25-ish songs with the word ‘midnight’ in the title or lyrics. He’s a smart guy, determined to make the most of it and have some fun … which is what it’s suppose to be!”

I asked Osburn why the change. “Consistency,” he explained. We were basically three stations: One that played our regular AAA (Adult Album Alternative) format weekdays, another different station on Saturdays and still a third on Sundays. We felt that to better compete, we needed more consistency, more discipline. We’ll still run the classics and specialty stuff, but not during our ‘prime’ hours of Monday through Friday 6 a.m. to 7p.m. or Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.”

The evolution is not limited to weekends. A close analysis of the regular format reveals that the SoCal Sound is opening its playlist to newer artists, not just those that were popular in the past and happen to have released new albums.

At the risk of getting the same emails Osborne has received — to which he says he personally replies, by the way — I am going to agree with the decision. Here is my logic:

• KROQ (106.7 FM) pretends to play new music, but is 2/3 gold

• Alt (98.7 FM) is also 2/3 gold with different songs selected

• Jack (93.1 FM) is almost all gold

• KRTH (101.1 FM) is all gold

• KLOS (95.5 FM) is all gold

• The old weekend shows on SoCal Sound, just canceled, tended to be gold, or perhaps more accurately “gold-ish.”

Basically, gold — oldies, classic rock, or whatever the current term being used — is everywhere. What can’t you find anywhere? New music. I am 59. I am tired of hearing the same music I heard in high school. I don’t want to know every song I hear. I DO like radio air checks from the ‘70s due to the excitement of the stations and formats, but that is often the only time I listen to oldies.

My son happens to be in a progressive metal band. Going to his concerts and understanding his philosophy of musical evolution, I rediscovered new music. I had been listening to new country (Go Country 105, after the demise of KZLA (93.9 FM) and SiriusXM’s new country channel) along with Alt 98.7 and a few others already, but recently discovered a ton of new pop and alternative that I really enjoy. So I like the idea of giving new artists and new music more exposure.

As I have said for years: there’s a lot of good music being produced these days. It’s just hard to find. Osburn agrees.

“I am over 60, and people around my age and older are very much into both ‘music discovery’ (new releases) as well as the classics.” I’d personally say that applies to every age group, but I digress.

Osburn continued, “We are trying to attract our target audience by straddling the fine line of maximizing the primetime hours we play our core format, while honoring the artists and DJ’s that the station has featured for decades.”

Osburn says that 88-5 has over 1400 songs on their playlist, as opposed to normal commercial stations that run about 400 … or less.

“We work hard to curate well thought-out programming that fits together. In a perfect world, we would please everyone, he told me, “but you know that’s not possible. Programming is an imperfect, messy science.

“We endeavor to be intelligent, disciplined programmers, while having no fear to play anything we think might be fun for the audience,” he concluded.

Hard to argue with that.

To check out the broadcast schedule and see what special programs are still available, go to TheSoCalSound.org/programs/

(And if you’re interested in hearing my son’s band, Death of the Author, go to facebook.com/dota.band.official or dotaband.bandcamp.com)

///

View Details

Radio October 28, 2022

Longtime KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM) anchor Dick Helton recently left the station to start his official retirement after 24 years at the all-news station. His last broadcast was October 14th, wrapping up a career that spanned over a half century — 53 years, to be exact — including many 29 years at sister all news station WBBM/Chicago, where he reported news and was found just prior to joining KNX in 1998. He worked for one company, or at least one company and the remnants of the company that took it over, his entire career. First known as CBS, it is now Audacy, which bought CBS Radio a few years ago.

In case that didn’t sink in, Helton’s 53 year career was spent at just two stations … that is impressive, to say the least . Almost unheard of. You can hear his last 15 minutes on the air (or so … commercials take up a substantial portion of the quarter hour … it IS Audacy, you know) — including a few tributes — at https://bit.ly/3Ddxu7Z.

His most memorable moment? Hard to say. But he did mention on the air that one of his highlights included reading over the wire services in 1970 that The Beatles were breaking up. Helton called Apple Records in London, and was able to get through to George Harrison, who gave him details.

He met his wife (Carol Ramos) at WBBM, got married in 1995, and moved out to Los Angeles when she landed at former Los Angeles talk radio leader KABC (790 AM) in 1997. Helton, on the air at KNX, competed against Ramos for a time.

In signing off, he said “I can’t imagine having done anything else in my life. Every day, behind the microphone, well it’s felt like the right place to be. One of my colleagues at WBBM ended his broadcasts by saying ‘may all the news in your life be good!’ … I wish that for each and every one of you. Thanks for listening.”

Helton’s replacement is afternoon drive reporter Mike Simpson, who joins Helton’s former morning team-mates Jennifer York and Vicki Moore. Moore has worked morning drive on KNX since 2004 and had been paired with Helton since 2008

You Better You Bet

KGO/San Francisco — sister station to KABC — recently dropped its formerly respected and longtime — 80 years — talk format in favor of … sports betting.

Really. Sports betting. Yeah, there’s a winner. Sure.

Let’s see what it brings to the table. Money, maybe, from online betting companies., assuming California ever legalizes gambling for the masses. Cheap syndicated programming, to keep costs down as owner Cumulus Media likes to do. And no waste of actual listener time, as no one actually cares about betting information on the radio and it is pretty much a guarantee that few, if any, listeners will ever tune in.

Online entertainment and podcast services gave Cumulus Media executives awards of Employee of the Month for helping push listeners away from radio and toward their own pay services.

Will the format fail? You can bet on it. Sports radio itself rarely succeeds in the ratings; sports betting has an even lower appeal. When your “best” and most appealing program is the awful syndicated Jim Rome Show, and your filler is the even worse CBS SportsRadio, there is no way up.

Will it come to KABC? The odds are that it will. Executives at Cumulus are that stupid.

New Programs

K-Mozart (1260 AM, 105.1 HD2) has added some new programs to the lineup, including Broadway to Hollywood and The New Opera House. Both programs are hosted by opera performer Audrey Yoder.

Broadway to Hollywood debuted with a presentation of Fiddler on the Roof — including a portion in Yiddish — on October 15th; the program airs every Saturday at 9 a.m. with repeats Sunday nights at 6 p.m. The primary emphasis is musicals from, well, anywhere from Broadway to Hollywood and all places in between … hence the name.

The New Opera House launched October 16th at airs every Sunday night at 8:00. The first program featured an airing of West Side Story including the original cast. Future programs will run the gamut from “old school” to modern progressive; the intention is to expose music that is rarely heard on the radio in Los Angeles.

Yoder is a local opera performer featured in performances in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. K-Mozart owner Saul Levine is extremely proud of the new programs, as well as the ability to add Yoder to the station roster. “At a time when the big shots are degrading radio, I am proud that a little family owned station is still creating interesting programming to serve the public and not Wall Street,” Levine said.

///

View Details

Radio: October 21, 2022

He was among the first DJs to play rock and roll records on the radio in Southern California. He was among the first to do listener dedications on the radio. He was the man who coined the term “Oldies but Goodies” and later launched a record company dedicated to the preservation of those tunes. The year 2022 marked 79 continuous years on the air.

Unfortunately, 2022 also marked the passing of the radio legend who accomplished all of the above and much more. Art Laboe passed away October 7th at the age of 97.

Laboe — his given name is Arthur Egnoian — was born in Utah, where he lived until the age of 13. His sister gave him his first radio when he was just eight years old, and as Laboe said many times he was “just enthralled by it.”

Moving to California, he graduated from Washington High School in Los Angeles, attended Stanford University, and served in the United States Navy during World War II.

His radio career began at KSAN in San Francisco in part because he held a full radio telegram broadcast license, and the station needed licensed announcers, having lost many to the war effort. As told by LARadio.Com’s Don Barrett,

“With some trepidation he went to the station and was taken to see the general manager, a gruff man who declared that Art had a squeaky voice and was too young.

“‘I kicked the ground and started to walk away,’Art recalled. ‘And then he says, ‘Besides, you have to have an FCC license. We need at least a 3rd Class license. We’re a combo station.’ I walked back and pulled out of my jacket pocket these certificates and said, 'You mean one of these?'

‘I laid out a First Phone, 2nd Telephone and a Ham license. He looked up at me and said, ‘You’re hired.’ He put his arm around me and said, come with me. He took me to a room with three huge transmitter boxes and asked me if I could tune one of these things. I told him I thought so.’

“There was a sign on butcher paper in the transmitter room on the wall: If these damn things works leave it alone. Art asked him why he was hiring him. The radio station owner had been operating illegally because all his engineers had been drafted into the war. ‘Now with your First Class license, I’m legal again,’ the owner said. ‘That First Class license got me my first job in radio’”

It was at KSAN where he took on the name of Art Laboe, a suggestion by a boss to sound more American.

But it was in the Los Angeles area where he made his mark. He started hosting live broadcasts where teens from all over the area — and of all races and cultural backgrounds — would come to hear the latest records and be part of a burgeoning music scene. You might say that Laboe helped to desegregate the city through music and dedications.

He launched Original Sound Records to impress a young lady. As he explained when he received an LA Radio People achievement award from Barrett in 2012, one evening he was visiting a young lady at her apartment. As they were “getting to know each other,” the young lady wanted Laboe to keep the mood going by playing the "right song” … the problem being that the short 45 RPM records kept running out - spoiling the mood, and forcing him to get off the couch, go over and put on another record.

His idea: a long play record with multiple hits on each side. Which means, if you’ve been paying attention, Original Sound Records (and the Oldies but Goodies music they held) was basically born out of the same reason many fans of the series bought them: to be more successful romantically.

In 1975, he essentially saved KRLA (now KRDC, 1110 AM) by mixing those Oldies but Goodies with current music and creating HitRadio 11, a format of exceptionally wide appeal by its very nature of playing music that cuts across racial and ethnic lines — as Laboe had done since his 1952 arrival in Los Angeles. His request and dedication program brought people back to the station, which had languished for many years due to an ownership dispute.

At the time there were only two DJs on KRLA, Laboe and Johnny Hayes. They covered the entire day with the help of tape recordings, though most listeners couldn’t tell … Laboe mornings and evenings; Hayes in the mid days. The format helped propel KRLA toward the top of the ratings.

KRLA “Hitmen” traveled the streets of Southern California, giving away money and prizes for having your radio tuned to 11-10, even if, as happened once, the radio was tuned there in part because it was broken and couldn’t tune anything else. Didn’t matter, though, the passengers in the car loved KRLA so much that they were fine with it being stuck there.

Laboe was among the first — if not the first — DJ to program to the vast market of Latino listeners in East Los Angeles, creating a loyalty among fans that is unheard of. Generations of families listen to The Art Laboe Connection, heard locally Sundays from 7 p.m. to midnight Sunday evenings on KDAY (93.5 FM) and on Old School 104.7 FM in the Inland Empire weeknights from 9 p.m. to midnight, as well as about a dozen more throughout California, Nevada and Arizona. At press time the future of the program was unknown.

It was once said that the format Laboe helped create at KRLA was one that four generations — grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren — would all listen to … together. Family radio from the guy who stayed on the air until he died. Laboe was absolutely one of a kind, and he will be missed by fans everywhere.

View Details

Radio Waves: October 14, 2022

Special series highlights American Experience on KBLA Big news from KBLA (1580 AM) – the station is producing a series of special programs under the umbrella title of Agenda for America, an African-American Perspective. Every Thursday night from 7 to 9 p.m. through the end of October, a focus on different issues will be (or has been) presented. The State of Black Women in America was presented on the 6th; The State of Black Youth in America on the 13th; The State of Black Men in America on the 20th, and the big one hosted by station owner Tavis Smiley himself on the 27th will be Why we Can’t Wait – the Urgency of Now.

Missed them love or want to hear them again? No problems – the station has a full podcast lineup at kbla1580.com.

And while these are locally produced by hosts at KBLA, Smiley is making the programs available to stations across the country in a sort of loosely organized national network of stations, perhaps leading to official affiliates in the future.

KBLA just celebrated its first birthday as an “unapologetically progressive” talk station, having launched on June 19 — Juneteenth — of 2021. Primary hosts include Dominique Diprima, Lynn Richardson, Najah Roberts, DL Highly, Don Amiche, Zo Williams, Danny Morrison, and of course Smiley himself, who has experience both in talk radio and television, and is a successful author as well as the recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Not just politics … its also entertainment, crypto currency, humor, celebrities … kind of a modern version of what KABC (790 AM) did in their heyday. Smiley calls it a “conversation,” explaining that he feels “we are at our best when we are challenging (our listeners) to reexamine the assumptions that they hold; we are at our best when we are helping people to expand their inventory of ideas. That only happens through dialog, not monologue.”

New Programs K-Mozart (1260 AM, 105.1 HD2) is adding some new programs to the lineup, including Broadway to Hollywood and The New Opera House. Both programs are hosted by opera performer Audrey Yoder.

Broadway to Hollywood debuts with Fiddler on the Roof — including a portion in Yiddish — Saturday, October 15th at 9 a.m. and will air weekly with repeats Sunday nights at 6 p.m. The program will air musicals from, well, anywhere from Broadway to Hollywood and all places in between … hence the name. Next week: Oklahoma!

The New Opera House launches Sunday, October 16th at 8 p.m. with an airing of West Side Story featuring the original cast. Future programs will run the gamut from “old school” to modern progressive; the intention is to expose music that is rarely heard on the radio in Los Angeles.

Yoder is a local opera performer heard in performances in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo opera houses. Station owner Saul Levine is extremely proud of the new programs, as well as the ability to add Yoder to the station roster. “At a time when the big shots are degrading radio, I am proud that a little family owned station is still creating interesting programming to serve the public and not Wall Street,” Levine said.

In addition to the new programs, Levine says that the station will present a live direct feed to the Detroit Symphony at 7:45 a.m. and will be playing a full CD of Disney movie themes performed by Lang Lang. Both broadcasts will be on Friday, October 14th.

September Nielsens KOST (103.5 FM) maintained its ratings dominance in the September ratings released last week. Just shy of the holiday season when it switches to Christmas music, the station earned a 5.8 share of the audience, beating out sister station KBIG’s (My FM, 104.3) 5.5. KRTH (101.1 FM) was third at 5.1, followed by KFI (640 AM) at 4.7 and KTWV (94.7 FM) at 4.4.

Like the top-five, there were few surprises. Alt 98.7 FM (KYSR) was the alternative leader as it has been for a ling time now, beating out KROQ (106.7 FM) 2.7 to 2.1. That 2.1 finish is actually a blessing for KROQ, however, as it had been languishing in the mid to high 1s for a while. Go Country 105.1 FM (KKGO) was tied with KJLH (102.3 FM) and KSCA (101.9 FM) for 16th at 2.4. Remember when former KZLA owner Emmis said Country doesn’t work in Los Angeles? (Where is Emmis now?) And Steve Wonder’s KJLH continues its success by maintaining its highest ratings trend in its history.

Power 106 (KPWR, 105.9 FM)? Still at 1.5 … far lower than the ratings the station had under Chuck Martin when it was top-40 K-WEST. Just sayin’ since the market is overcrowded with urban-leaning repetitive hit stations and is totally lacking a straight-ahead top-40 station attracting a broad audience matching the demographics of the city, as Martin had done at both KHJ (930 AM) and K-WEST … again, just sayin.’

Each rating is an estimate of listeners aged 6 and over tuned to a station between the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight, as determined by Nielsen.

KOST (5.8) 2. KBIG “My FM” (5.5) 3. KRTH (5.1) 4. KFI (4.7) 5. KTWV “The Wave” (4.4) 6. KLVE (3.9) 7. KCBS-FM “Jack” (3.6) 8. KNX-AM/FM (3.5) 9. KIIS (3.2) 10. KLOS (3.0)
KRCD (2.8) 12. KRRL “Real,” KYSR “Alt” (2.7) 14. KLAX, KPCC (2.6) 16. KJLH, KKGO “Go Country,” KSCA (2.4) 19. KBUE, KXOL (2.2)

21.KLLI “Cali,” KROQ (2.1) 23. KLYY (1.9) 24. KUSC (1.8) 25. KPWR “Power” (1.5) 26. KKJZ “K-Jazz” (1.3) 27. KLAC (1.2) 28. KCRW, KDLD (1.1) 30. KDAY, KFWB (1.0)

KEIB (0.9) 33. KRLA (0.8) 34. KABC, KFSH (0.7) 36. KCSN “88.5” (0.6) 37. KSPN, KWIZ (0.5) 39. KKLA, KRTH Online Stream (0.3)
KTNQ, KWKW (0.2) 43. KHJ, KIRN, KPFK, KROQ Online Stream, KTWV Online Stream (0.1)

View Details

Special Guest: KBLA 1580 owner and show host Tavis Smiley. Tavis talks about building his independent station in a very crowded LA marketplace.

Readers Write Back

A few weeks ago, I asked your opinion on what you would do if you could program a local station. Interestingly, few responses actually answered the question but numerous letters reflected on radio listening habits. Such as:

“I am a big fan of AM-FM radio. My friends are like what you described in the recent OC Register article regarding commercials. And as you point out, that is what bugs me and makes me turn more to XM for music/talk radio.

“For AM I want news, sports and talk radio. I only want opinion radio for the channels that state that, say KFI 640. But as you discuss prior, KNX 1070 is the only news station but they are very opinionated and slanted and are an arm of CBS news (at least in their bias).

“Another issue you covered in prior articles is the week signal some key stations have. Like ESPN Sports (KSPN, 710 AM) which is hard to hear in Orange County in the evenings.

“But I think most of my frustrations you outlined. If I hear the damn ‘Kars for Kids’ commercial (charity) or get the sense of it, I change the channel and might not come back. It is like nails on a chalk board for me.

‘I like Mike Greenberg on KLAA (830 AM) around the 8 o’clock hour in the morning, but rarely listen, because I swear he has 45 minutes of commercials and the commercials breaks are ten minutes.

“When I listened to more FM, supplemented by podcasts at work, what bothered me was too much replay of the same music. I agree Go Country is great.

“My favorite station for my morning commute if not Stuart Varney on Fox Business, is Full Ride on ESPNU with Chris Childers and Rick Neuheisel. Great stories, interviews and conversation. Plus how can you not like a show where one anchor is called the Show Pony and has the attention span of a gnat. Thank you!” — Mike Foulger

Clock Radio Question

“I read your article months ago about HD tuners. I have a call in to Sangean to discuss with them the features of the HDR-18 clock radio. I am not computer savvy but I would like to purchase a good radio and your article stated that Sangean is a good product for radios. Would you know if Sangean still sells this radio?” — Genny Tyler

I am a fan of Sangean. They make some great radios for long distance reception, and the HD Radio tuners are well designed. The HDR-18 is still listed as a current model with a price of about $150 on Amazon at press time and mostly positive reviews.

HD Radio is the digital broadcasting system authorized in the United States, which sends a digital stream along with the regular analog signal that normal radios can pick up. The HD radio tuner decodes the stream, giving extra channels on many FM stations and arguably better sound on both AM and FM stations that broadcast in HD.

The problem is that few AM stations still use the HD system, and FM reception is often spotty in the home without an outdoor antenna. So while in the past, I would have recommended looking into it, I am now thinking that smart speakers and smartphones with apps is the better way to go. Almost all AM and FM stations (including the extra channels) stream their signals over the internet, and in most cases the apps actually work better.

That being said, this is considered a good radio with excellent sound and a good — though at night in a bedroom possibly overly bright — display. It also has two alarms and can play sound in stereo through the headphone jack. So anyone looking for a table radio or clock radio might consider it.

Streaming the Oldies

I’ll have a full ratings analysis next month when the September Nielsens are released, but I found something quite impressive that has been building over time and showing up even more in the last few months: streaming radio, especially when it comes to oldies, er, classic rock or whatever oldies stations like to call themselves these days.

Over the past six months, KRTH’s (101.1 FM) only stream has averaged a 0.3 share, representing approximately 0.3 percent of the radio audience aged six and over turned to the online simulcast of their regular signal. Two of the months were 0.4!

To put that into perspective, there are at least full power over the air stations that earn that level or less. And if you combined the stream ratings with KRTH’s over the air ratings, the station would have been number one, rather than number two, in the August Nielsens released in early September.

KRTH features the highest-rated stream in town. That’s impressive.
///

View Details

Radio: September 30

High on Podcasts and News

KCRW (89.9 FM) has hired what station management considers key people in order to help develop audience podcast awareness as well as creating new podcast programs.

Gina Delvac comes to the station from Spotify, where she helped develop in-house podcasts. She will lead KCRW’s new Podcast Audience Lab, which hopes to connect station listeners with content of interest available on demand. “We’re going to take the best of what KCRW already does every day, and bring best-in-class audio experiences to the many neighborhoods that make Southern California great,” Delvac said in a released statement.

“We'll curate the sounds and stories that matter most and be in direct engagement with the communities that drive our culture forward. We want to hear your stories, reflect your experience, and share it with the world,” she said.

The second hire, Arnie Seipel, was snagged from National Public Radio and will lead the station’s news division. Seipel spent 14 years at NPR — most recently as the Deputy Washington Editor in charge of national politics coverage.

Prior to that Seipel was ingrained in NPR’s election coverage as a story editor.

While I am not sure a political editor is the absolute best choice to lead the news staff, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt for now. KCRW has a well-deserved reputation for quality news reporting and I don’t think management would do anything to change that.

Ducks Stream

Hockey’s Anaheim Ducks is going online via a deal with TuneIn — an online and app radio station player — to stream all Ducks games without the need for traditional radio.

Hockey has always been a tough sell for radio, so the move is not too surprising. The LA Kings made a similar move a few years ago with a deal involving iHeart’s online app.

The new Ducks Stream, launched September 22nd, will carry all of the Ducks games plus a series of ten podcasts revolving around the Ducks and the professional hockey league.

There is a case to be made for streaming as the future of radio, broadcast or otherwise. Power and sound quality would be parity for all stations involved, and the savings in electricity and land costs could help create a radio renaissance. Holding the idea back for now is the lack of universally-available broadband internet access; once that happens, it could be a game-changer.

Surrender

The owner of an AM-FM combo in Lamar, Colorado is surrendering the licenses to KLMR and KLMR-FM due to storm damage to the studios.

RadioInsight.Com reports that the station’s engineers sent a letter to the FCC stating that the “studios are a complete loss” after a microburst back in July. “Unable to restore service for both KLMR-AM (920) and KLMR-FM (93.5) … requesting to cancel both licenses, return spectrum, and release call letters.

Owner 25-7 Media purchased the stations and two others in early 2018 for a total of $400,000.

Interference Problem

While listening to my radio I often hear what sounds like Morse-Code. Am I getting somebody messages? — John Buckingham, Long Beach

Interference is the bane of radio, especially AM which operates on frequencies close to many natural and man-made interference sources. Computers, cable boxes, televisions, and even light dimmers can cause interference. Sometimes, the interference can travel a fairly long distance down the power lines that supply electricity to your home. Perhaps a solar system inverter nearby could even be causing this, but I honestly have no real clue.

My hunch is that SOMEONE or something near you has to be doing something. It could be a cheap switching power supply (“wall wart”) or machinery on the same supply line. You might consider contacting one of the larger stations affected and tell the engineering department it is hurting your reception. They might have ideas or can look into it more. Good luck!

View Details

Audacy supports mental health with a special concert

Audacy — owner of numerous local stations including KRTH (101.1 FM) and The Wave (KTWV, 94.7 FM) recently announced its ninth annual "We Can Survive" concert at the iconic Hollywood Bowl on October 22.

This year's event, part of Audacy’s year-round “I’m Listening” mental health initiative, will feature performances from Alanis Morrisette, Halsey, Weezer, OneRepublic, Garbage and more. The event celebrates the power of music to bring people together, strengthening mental health in support of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP).

The initiative is part of Audacy’s support of the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention which includes this concert along with a national live broadcast held on September 21st entitled “I’m Special” that brought together athletes, artists, medical experts and others who spoke openly about important mental health issues. You can hear the special on the Audacity app.

Tickets went on sale Friday, September 16 via Ticketmaster.comand as a special treat, listeners can help decide who the next big music superstar will be during concert’s opening act. The contest, which is going on now, will help determine who will be the opening act at We Can Survive. Voting is going on as you read this at OpeningActRadio.comand the winner will take home $10,000.

Stick a fork in it As if radio has not suffered enough under previous deregulation rules, Senator Rand Paul has introduced legislation to deregulate broadcasting even more. Ironically called the Local News and Broadcast Media Preservation Act of 2022, the idea is to prevent the FCC from limiting in any way the number of radio stations, television stations and newspapers one person or company could own in any market.

Senator Paul believes this will help local broadcast companies to merge without government interference and allow them to better compete against tech giants.

With all due respect, Senator Paul is totally, absolutely, 100 percent wrong. Radio doesn’t compete against the tech giants because it doesn’t try. More accurately, the large companies formed by previous deregulation don’t try. And it is these large companies that are dragging down the entire industry. Independents do their darnedest to compete, but the big boys cut out creativity, driving away listeners at the same time that they add to the commercial load, driving down ad rates. Deregulation has absolutely destroyed radio.

If Senator Paul would truly like to save broadcasting, he would push to restore station limits. Giving time for divesture, ownership should be limited to no more than two stations in any one market and perhaps 50 nationwide. Only through the destruction of the large companies will radio ever recover, and television is not that far off.

Guilty Pleasure I happened across a special recording on Retro Radio Joe’s MixCloud.Com feed - Bill Moffett on KCBQ (1170 AM) out of San Diego. This was the station I grew up with, even though I grew upon in San Pedro, for reasons even I do not quite understand. I LOVED KCBQ. Loved it.

Anyway, I had totally forgotten about Moffett until the I heard the recording. Then it all came back to me, and the reason I loved the station. He — and almost everyone else there during their popular days of the late ‘60s through the mid 1970s — was quick-witted. Almost every set was entertaining and funny, even if it was just a few sentences long.

And it got me thinking … this would be so easy to do again. But it would take some training and commitment from programmers and owners to actually support and pay … one of the reasons stations like KCBQ (and KHJ, and KEZY, and 10-Q, and KFI when they were top-40) was quick wit … not long drawn-out skits such as we generally are used to with morning shows. Every show was entertaining, mostly because you wanted to hang on to every word just to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Back to the subject at hand, Moffett was a master. Check it out on the MixCliud feed or search Bill Moffett KCBQ on YouTube for samples.

View Details

Radio Waves: September 16

Killing Corporate Radio I’ve taken a lot of flak over the years from what I call the “corporate radio apologists” on various internet groups. I don’t understand the pressures of modern radio (I do, but most pressures are brought on by the owners themselves) and radio the way I like it is a thing of the past.

I’ve also gotten a lot of support from owners, programmers, DJs current and past, and behind the scenes employees across the country — most often off the record due to ties or potential ties with those same corporate companies such as Cumulus, iHeart and Audacy wherein they basically say I have it right. Or at least close.

My long-held contention is that radio has created most of its own problems, going back to the 1970s and ‘80s when AM pushed listeners to FM and the late 1990s and 2000s when FM started pushing to listeners to non-radio entertainment, first satellite radio and iPods, later streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify. Yet I still hold it can be reversed, and I think a recent survey from my own students (see the column from August 26) and comments taken from a 2019 Edison Research survey available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0WC5sqPO7E. The Edison survey was recently highlighted by InsideMusicMedia.Com’s Jerry Del Colliano.

It all basically comes down to too much clutter, and far too many commercials. Song repetition is mentioned as well, but that can easily be fixed. Here are some of the comments from the survey participants listening to a Ryan Seacrest morning show on KIIS-FM (102.7):

“A lot of commercials. Still goin’!”

“I might change the station and get involved in something else … and forget to flip back.”

“Oh, here’s the car commercial I hate.”

“If all these commercials were on the station I was listening to, I’d be on Spotify now.”

“How long have the advertisements been on now?”

“This is crazy.”

“Especially if you’re in the car … you ten-minute drive is all commercials.”

“There might be something I want to listen to, but it’s not worth it.”

I present: THE REASON radio is losing favor, especially among young people.

Yet it’s not like we don’t have a how-to manual available on how to run a radio station. When KHJ launched Boss Radio top-40 in 1965, a huge part of the appeal was “more music.” And there was: the station limited not only the number of commercials per hour, they were also limited per break. Six minutes per hour; two commercials per break. This gave them a chance to charge more per commercial as advertisers got more value for their dollar, and it attracted more listeners than ever to the format. Within months, KHJ was the number one station in town.

KHJ lost its way for a while, in the mid 1970s, but showing that the idea works: Chuck Martin Brough KHJ back in a huge way in 1979 with a tremendous staff, great music selection, and … you guessed it, limited commercials. 20 minutes continuous with no more than three commercials per break, usually two.

Not enough? When KIIS-FM dominated radio in the mid 1980s, they had limited commercials as well. Same for KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) and KLOS (95.5 FM). The problem is, the debt-laden major companies as mentioned above are all so desperate for revenue, they add more commercials to the mix, driving away listeners and ultimately driving down ad rates.

The best thing for radio would be for Cumulus, iHeart and Audacy to go away. And I don’t care if Audacy CEO David Field thinks I am a hater for saying this (He does).

The Good Stuff That doesn’t mean I am a true hater of radio. I LOVE radio, and love its potential. It is stations like Go Country 105 (KKGO), Alt 98.7 (KYSR), KROQ (106.7 FM) and even KIIS that I turn to when I turn on the radio … which I do a lot. Alt’s The Woody Show is among the best morning shows LA has ever had. Go Country is a great place to hear modern country music (yes, I know … it’s not “real country” but I still like it). There’s a lot of great new pop on KIIS. Frankly, I could go on and on.

So here’s my challenge to you. Let’s pretend you were given a new station. You know that there are already numerous stations appealing to the older generations. Is there something you could think of that would attract young people to the AM or FM band? Or in general, how can we as pretend station owners and managers going to attract listeners back from Spotify?

///

View Details

Radio: September 9, 2022

KIIS-FM’s (102.7) Ryan Seacrest is being honored by the National Association of Broadcasters this coming October. During the organization’s Marconi Radio Awards dinner at the NAB show in New York, Seacrest will receive the Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his long career both in radio and television.

He’s been the morning man on KIIS-FM since February of 2004 when previous longtime morning man Rick Dees — who held the spot for 23 years — left the popular station. Some would say forced out, and of course they would be right, but I digress. The program On Air with Ryan Seacrest has been syndicated to other stations in addition to KIIS for most of its life.

In addition to On Air, Seacrest hosts American Top-40; prior to landing at KIIS, he was at Star 98.7 (KYSR, now known as Alt 98.7) in the afternoon, where he did some of his best work. On television, he’s hosted various programs including American Idol, Live with Kelly and Ryan, and the tremendously popular yearly New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which he first shared with original host Dick Clark until he took over fully after Clark’s death.

His charity work comes through his own foundation, it’s primary initiative being the building of broadcast media centers, named Seacrest Studios, within pediatric hospitals nationwide. This allows patients “to explore the creative realms of radio, television and new media,” according the Ryan Seacrest Foundation website, adding that the Foundation’s aim is to “contribute positively to the healing process for children and their families during their stay by developing these centers to bring an uplifting spirit to the hospital community.”

Battle of the Classics

Saul Levine’s K-Mozart (1260 AM, 105.1 HD2) wants to battle competitor KUSC (91.5 FM) for the heart and soul of classical music listeners throughout Southern California. The most recent addition to his stockpile of ammunition: Dr. Laura Brodian, who as of August 29th is hosting concert programming weekdays from 12 noon to 5 p.m. According to Levine, “Dr. Brodian is one of the most talented hosts in the country.”

That’s not the only time to hear concerts on the station, however, as Nick Tyler presents the Evening Concert at 7 p.m. every weeknight; this program is in its 100th year, according to Levine.

While K-Mozart is not affiliated with UCLA, the studios are located not far from the campus in West Los Angeles. Being that KUSC broadcasts from the USC campus toward the East side of town, Levine is calling it the West-East Battle.

KUSC has a tremendous advantage in the battle, broadcasting 39,000 watts from a location near Mount Wilson … one of the strongest signals in town. K-Mozart, by contrast, has a main signal on the AM dial that is strongest in the San Fernando Valley, though officially the station is licensed to Beverly Hills. Before you totally dismiss the AM signal, however, the reception as far South as San Pedro is adequate during the day, and the HD Am signal in the Valley is superb.

K-Mozart also simulcasts on KKGO’s frequency of 105.1 FM, using a sub-channel of the HD Radio system. You do need a special HD Radio to hear it, but the coverage is quite good. And then there are apps and internet listening with which both stations can be heard.

The signal issues don’t bother Levine. He feels that superior programming with make a difference and he feels that he has it.

Rocking Monday

It appears that Jim Ladd’s freeform rock program on SiriusXM’s Deep Tracks channel (27) has been cut to once live show per week: Mondays 5-9 p.m. Eastern time … meaning 2-6 p.m. locally.

No reason has been given for the cutback from five shows per week … Ladd has been short on details and SiriusXM hasn’t said anything official or otherwise. My own sources have been silent, which makes me wonder if it is related t negotiations. Regardless, fans are upset and have taken to social media to condemn the changes … some threatening to stop their subscriptions.

Ladd, a mainstay on local rock radio for decades is well known for his ability to assemble sets of music with true meaning. He’s been heard exclusively on SiriusXM since January, 2012 after he left KLOS (95.5 FM) the previous October.

And while it may be possible that it was SiriusXM’s decision to make the change, one thing in my mind says it could be Ladd himself: he is 74, after all. Maybe he wants to cut back for his own sake. Regardless, if I hear something I will definitely let you know.

View Details

Radio: September 2, 2022

A few weeks ago I wrote about my tuner shoot-out, in which I pitted three old-school analog AM stereo - FM stereo tuners against each other to find the best-sounding of the bunch. Overall, the Carver TX-11b won out with its superb sound and reception on both AM and FM, though all three had their merits.

Overall, I liked the Carver better than even the more modern Sangean HDT-1x — an HD Radio tuner that wasn’t officially part of the test but that I have used for quite some time due to its ability to decode digital AM and FM transmissions: arguably better sound on AM when HD broadcasts are available, and extra channels on FM.

The problem as of late is that HD radio on AM — the reason HD was originally invented — is pretty much gone. While there are many FM streams, the only HD station I know of locally on AM is K-Mozart (1260 AM), and they are too far away from me to decode the HD. But I continued using the Sangean due to a lack of space for the Carver.

That all changed recently when I changed how I watch television … I no longer need a large cable-type tuner. This not only opened up space in my entertainment center, it reduced interference on the AM band as cable and satellite tuners were notorious for causing interference on the band. So I took the time to switch things around and put the Carver back into service.

In doing so, I discovered something rather interesting. Now that KNX simulcasts on both AM (1070) and FM (97.1), I was able to make a direct comparison of the signals. Surprisingly, to my ears, at least, the sound from the AM signal is superior to that of the FM. The AM sounded bright and clean, the FM more muted on the highs.

Neither is in stereo, by the way. KNX decided after much fanfare taking the signal to FM that stereo wasn’t needed. And to be fair, it isn’t. But on AM, at least, stereo doesn’t affect the signal at all (multiplex stereo on FM can degrade the signal in some circumstances). Wouldn’t it be great for KNX to bring back analog AM stereo to the band in Los Angeles? Few could receive it, but there are still a decent number of analog AM stereo radios in cards from the late 1980s and 1990s. Would be kind of fun if the engineers would agree to the idea.

Speaking of KNX-FM

I recently wrote about the “real” KNX-FM, you know, the one that played the mellow sound on 93.1 FM during the 1970s and part of the 1980s. In that column, I mentioned that the pandemic slowed down the use of personalities on the online recreation at themellowsound.net; that caught the attention of Steve Marshall, part of the group behind the tribute and the original music director of the broadcast station, who wanted to correct my statement and give a little more history.

“I only just now got to read your recent article on the KNX/FM tribute Internet radio station,” Marshall wrote, “and I was thrilled, delighted and humbled by what you had to say about the original. I would like to correct one thing you got wrong...that none of the original ‘personalities’ were on board. First, Chris Ames, who voices The Odyssey File, was the original news director of KNX/FM throughout most of the 70s. Then there's me: I was on the air there from 1970 through 1979. I started as Music Director and moved into the Program Director job in 1973.

“The format was cooked up by the original PD, Rodger Layng, and myself. We started as a kind of quasi, slightly hipper version of an MOR station and I refined it into what it ultimately became after I became PD. You were absolutely correct about the fact that we kept upper CBS management in New York in the dark about what we were doing. If you like, I can give you the details of that story another time.

“Anyway, back to the tribute station. Most of the promos and sweepers that you hear are me, though I don't use my name on the station. I didn't use it very much back then either, which is why I put the word ‘personalities' in quotes. I always felt that the sound and atmosphere that we created were the real stars.”

Thank you, Steve. I do appreciate the note! I was unclear on what I meant, though … I wasn’t referring to the people behind the station, I mean that I knew that some of the original personalities were intended to be brought back to the station but that the pandemic prevented them from making it to the studio to do their shows.

And you can bet that I will be getting the details of the station’s history … sooner than later. Stay tuned!

View Details

Homework assignment: A great commentary by Ken Levine "RIP Terrestrial Radio.....and good riddance"

Radio Waves: August 26, 2022

Naming a great format … poorly

What do you do when you have critical acclaim, devoted listeners, a lousy signal and little marketing? You change your name, from a rather forgettable “Independent 88.5 FM” to the even more forgettable “88.5 FM, The SoCal Sound.”.

OK, I am teasing … a bit. But I am old school – I like call letters, or variations of call letters. KHJ? KEZY? Ten-Q? KIIS-FM? K-WEST? KMET? KFI? KRLA? KOST 103? K-Earth? KROQ? Love them all.

The Sound? Alt 98.7? Tolerated because the formats were/are great. Very listenable. And The Sound at least tried to match the name to the calls, though KSWD would hardly make someone think of “the sound,” so maybe they could have tried just a little bit harder.

My FM? Hate it … hate it. The format just can’t make up for such a lame name, which has nothing to do with the KBIG call letters. I have a similar issue with Jack-FM. And of course now there is the new “88.5 FM, The SoCal Sound.” It just doesn’t work for me.

What’s my problem with it? No passion. Sounds weird. Too long. And yet, they actually have great call letters, though it is complicated with a two-station simulcast that tries to increase signal coverage. Personally, I’d just use KCSN (the simulcast station from Saddleback college, KSBR, is “OK” but definitely not as strong a brand. Maybe combine the two with the K and S that appear in both ad call it KS88, The SoCal Sound.” Much better overall, at least in my opinion. Less clutter.

By now you’re asking – why do I like real call letters? Simple … like sports franchises, they belong to the city in which they live. There’s only one Dodgers. One Lakers. One KHJ. And one KIIS-FM. On the other hand, you can have an “alt” or a “my” in every city. And there are.

But this is not meant to take away from the 88.5 format – it’s an excellent adult album alternative (AAA) format that, like much of commercial LA radio skews too much into the oldies, but is immensely satisfying and can’t be found locally anywhere else on the dial. In spite of the name, go listen, either over the air, via an app, or at the website https://www.885fm.org. You’ll be glad you did.

Just ignore the name. Or maybe just tolerate it.

Wake-Up Call

I did an early semester lesson at San Pedro High recently, using sone geometry and statistics classes to demonstrate how surveys work and how data can be collected. Off the cuff, I asked six classes of students, all in grades 10 through 12, to write down their favorite radio station or favorite way to hear music.

There were 112 responses. Want to know how many radio stations were chosen? Four, with a total of six votes: KIIS-FM (102.7) garnered three, with KRRL (Real 92.3 FM), KKLA (99.5 FM), and K-Jazz (88.1 FM) earning one vote each.

On the other hand, 66 choose Spotify, 29 chose Apple Music, and the remaining votes were split among other online streaming services or apps.

That’s frightening, if you are a station owner or manager. Less than four percent of those surveyed chose a radio station as their favorite way to listen to music. In years past it would have been closer to 90.

But because the question regarded their “favorite” way to listen to music, a followup question became necessary to truly determine of their is an issue. That question is: What percentage of your music listening time is spent on streaming (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, etc), what percent on SiriusXM, and what percent on AM or FM radio? Certainly streaming may be big as a first choice, but traditional radio has to be a close second, right?

Um … no. Just slightly more than 21 percent of the students surveyed listen to radio at all, and, and of those, over half said they listen to radio only about 10% of the time. On the other hand, fewer than 2.6 percent said that of streaming services, and fully 36 percent of respondents said they listen to streaming services at least 90% of the time.

I realize this is in no way a scientific, peer-reviewed, fully vetted survey using random sampling. But it surprised me, coming from a generation that grew up with the radio as one of our closest friends. Whether it was the top-40 days listening to Robert W. Morgan, Charlie Tuna, or Bobby Ocean, or the later days of Shana, Rita Wilde, Joe Benson, Jeff Gonzer, Jim Ladd or even Dr. Demento, radio was such a huge part of my life that I cannot imagine life without it. Yet many teens do just fine without AM or FM.

The trick is: can it be reversed? I think so. But I think it’s going to come from the small-time owners. The idea is so simple even a child could figure it out: play what kids want to hear, cut the commercials down to make each spot worth more and not drive away listeners, and get into their lives through promotions, live broadcasts, sponsored events and concerts.

Kind of like radio used to do. You know, when it as an industry was successful.

Radio Waves: August 19, 2022

The Mellow Sound: A tribute

After some disagreements among current and former partners were finally settled, the original domain for the online tribute to 1970s and ‘80s Mellow Rock station KNX-FM (now KCBS-FM, 93.1 FM) is back.

This means that online listeners using a computer can find the tribute station at both TheMellowSound.Net and its original home of KNXFM93.com. Not that it’s a big deal — either one is pretty easy to remember — but it’s nice that the disagreements were settled and things are, um, mellow again.

In case this is the first time you’re hearing of this – the tribute station is an accurate recreation of the original, with music and features such as The Odyssey File (interesting and sometimes twisted news/features of the day). Some of the original in-depth interviews and concerts of artists that aired on 93 FM are periodically available on the tribute station as well. There are truly thousands of songs in the playlist!

All that’s missing are the personalties and commercials. Personalities — yes some of the originals — got sidelined due to the pandemic but are promised in the future, and commercials? You’ll just have to do without. As a tribute station, they run no commercials, though donations are appreciated to help offset the cost of licensing and streaming, and a swag store is in the works as well.

As described on the tribute station website, “In what was then a sea of typical Pop, Rock, Top 40 and MOR radio stations, KNX-FM 93 provided a very different listening experience and the vibe of the emerging musical genre of Mellow Rock. These were the glory days of Laurel Canyon and The West Coast Music Scene. Singer-Songwriters like James Taylor, Judy Collins, Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina, Janis Ian, Al Stewart, Jennifer Warnes, and Carly Simon were there, and are HERE, actually on board this journey with us and can be heard personally introducing their many songs we play with a nod to our mission.”

The station also helped launch many iconic bands including Eagles, The Doobie Brothers, Little River Band and Steely Dan, as well as other then-trendsetting bans such as Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Pages, Little Feat, Sad Cafe’ and many others. The website continues:

“Most of these artists and bands owe a great deal of their success to KNX-FM 93 whose format was driven less by ratings and popular demand than it was by an understanding of how LA SHOULD sound. And it worked! Most importantly, The Mellow Sound was considered by the music and radio industries as simply the finest-programmed radio station in the US, and possibly the world. And it has been missed by these industries and listeners since it left the airwaves in 1983. “

I have to check details, but my memory is that — like so many stations that helped shape radio — the original KNX-FM was not supposed to have existed. Something about having to tell then-owner CBS’s management that they were doing something else. I’ll have that story, if my memory is correct, in a future column.

Celebration

Happy Birthday wishes to Art Laboe, who celebrated his 57th anniversary of his 39th birthday (can you tell I am a Jack Benny fan?) on August 7th.

Laboe is an absolute legend in both radio and records. He would often broadcast live from remote locations in his early days of radio, later going on to basically save KRLA (1110 AM) with his HitRadio 11 format in the mid 1970s.

His record company, Original Sound Records, first promoted new and upcoming talent to the market, but later brought oldies but goodies into the hands of listeners and fans with original versions of music from the early days of rock and roll. One of my own early record purchases was an Oldies But Goodies album from Original Sound. I think it was volume two.

He is beloved by multiple generations of listers going back to his work that began in 1943 at San Francisco’s KSAN; he made his Los Angeles debut on KPOP (now KTNQ, 1020 AM). And he’s still working today, with a special syndicated show The Art Laboe Connection that runs locally on KDAY (93.5 FM) Sundays from 6 p.m. to 12 midnight and The Art Laboe Love Zone on Old School 104.3 FM (KOCP/Ventura and KQIE/San Bernardino) Mondays through Thursdays from 9 p.m. to 12 midnight and Sundays 6 p.m. to 12 midnight.

Happy birthday, Art!

Radio Waves: August 12, 2022

The great tuner shootout …

I spoke of doing a tuner comparison previously when I acquired a Denon TU680NAB tuner, at one time considered by some as the holy grail of home component tuners. At least the National Association of Broadcasters thought so — they commissioned Denon to build it and take advantage of the latest technology and designs in order to showcase AM and FM broadcasts in all their glory.

That was back in 1993 or so. Since that time a lot has changed in radio itself, but in general, tuners have not changed all that much. Sure digital HD radio is available, and some HD tuners, namely those from Sangean and a long discontinued Sony, do a spectacular job receiving stations clearly with the added benefit of decoding digital HD streams that are sent along with the analog stations.

But for pure sonic performance on analog signals, the Denon is a tremendous tuner. One of my favorites. I wanted to compare it against a couple other tuners from around the same era, all of which are capable of receiving analog AM stereo, among other features. I finally got around to doing so.

The contenders: the Denon, also known as “the Super Tuner,” a Carver TX11b, and a Modular Component System (MCS) 3050, a tuner once sold by JC Penny when it offered a line of component stereos under their house brand, much like Sears did with its LXI and Proformance brands.

I had previously compared the Denon and Carver head to head back in the early 1990s, and decided to keep the Carver because, at the time, I felt it performed a bit better. Plus I liked the rugged appearance that included a full aluminum front panel that reminded me in quality of the early superb Harman Kardon Citation tube series we once owned.

The MCS tuner has a solid build quality … metal front panel like the Carver, though not as substantial. The tuner is one of the earlier designs and did not include the expanded AM band that was proposed in 1988 and added in 1995, those stations from 1620 to 1700 kHz.

Reception on both AM and FM was fine, but the fidelity of the AM side left a lot to be desired. It is better than a typical AM tuner from that era or now, but it just didn’t sparkle like the others in this comparison. FM sounded fine, though not remarkable. I’d rate it a 6 out of 10.

I tried the Denon for a few weeks to get a good feel, and it performed admirably. It wasn’t perfect: age took its toll on some internal components so the FM side needed some time to stabilize after being off for a while. But AM reminded me of why the NAB commissioned this tuner in the first place … it sounded amazing. Not in stereo, unfortunately, as there are no local AM stations broadcasting in stereo. But the nice open-sounding wideband circuitry made AM stations sound great. Noise-blanking, a system to minimize interference, worked, though not perfect. If all tuners sounded like this one on AM, KHJ would still be playing top-40.

FM reception was likewise excellent. Stations that my reference Marantz 2215B struggled with came in clean, and tightly-spaced stations including those from San Diego and Santa Barbara were able to be received when I made a few setting changes. Final rating: 8 out of 10.

But just like I remember, the true holy grail was the Carver. AM was even cleaner sounding, with a special sparkle in the high end that made stations on America’s oldest band sound better than any other tuner I have ever tried. KFI (640 AM), for example, sounded as good as if it were on FM … and I used the FM version of KNX (97.1) for comparison. I thought KFI sounded better.

Like the Denon, the Carver includes selectable bandwidth on both AM and FM (on both tuners the effect is different but definitely helpful with reception and sound quality), as well as special noise reduction circuitry that worked better for me than did the Denon. What I found interesting was that on FM, due to some special circuitry, very weak and close-spaced stations were able to be received even better than on the Denon. One station was clean and clear in stereo on the Carver, weak and mono on the Denon and MCS, and totally missing on the Marantz. Let’s call it 9.5 out of 10.

All the tuners used the same antennas, by the way.

For fun, I compared a Sangean HDT-1 … I’d put that toward the Denon and Carver overall. Reception was excellent on AM, though fidelity-wise no better than a typical modern tuner as this one focusses on receiving HD signals … and there are none in the area. FM was a little better, but the Sangean — when it receives weak FM analog signals — tends to sound a bit hollow, due to it tending to blend into mono fairly fast. They do sound clean, though.

So what did I do after all was said and done? Frankly, if I had the space, I’d use the Carver in my home. But it’s just too large to fit on the shelf I have set up, and the Denon currently needs a bit of work before it can be used daily. So my main tuner is another Sangean — an HDT-1X.

Yet all of this is somewhat moot, as my main home listening is on a smart speaker listening via apps over the internet. That, indeed, may be the future of radio.

Radio Waves: August 5, 2022

Radio Hall of Fame Inductees Announced

The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago announced this week the final selection of nine new inductees into the Radio Hall of Fame. Of the nine, three have a direct connection to our local radio scene and one is a a favorite current morning jock.

Our big local winner: Ellen K, heard mornings on KOST (103.5 FM). If you listen you already know – Ellen exudes positive vibes on her show, one of the reasons she is consistently among the top-rated morning personalities in town among varying demographic groups. What you may not know is that she is an active volunteer in local community work, and — prior to her arrival at KIIS-FM (102.7 FM), she worked in San Diego, including at the legendary KFMB-FM (B-100) when she was known as Ellen Thomas … making her a Goddess in the radio world.

I have never heard a negative word from her nor her competitors … including those who competed directly against her. Perhaps the saying is true: the best “morning man” in town is a woman.

Walt “Baby” Love did not win for his work on KHJ (930 AM) in the early-mid 1970s, but that’s how I originally heard of him. Instead, he is being recognized for his work in creating and hosting the syndicated program celebrating Gospel music, Gospel Traxx.

Love is an ordained Deacon and Elder in The African Methodist Episcopal Church, and is currently an associate pastor at the First African Methodist Church Los Angeles, also known as FAME. No local stations carry his program, but you can catch it online.

Jeff Smulyan’s connection to local radio is from the time his Emmis Communications owned KMGG (105.9 FM), which became KPWR Power 106 and the most popular music station in town for a while in the late 1980s. I was there as an intern for the switch – it was quite a fun time. When Power was at its peak as a rhythmic top-40 station, Emmis owned the top-rated stations in the two largest markets at the same time: Los Angeles and New York. That’s quite a feat.

Emmis is no longer involved in local radio, and owns just a handful of stations — all in Indianapolis, Indiana and New York, New York. The company currently focusses on sales and marketing, and in that way still has a connection to Los Angeles via Sound That Brands, a podcast marketing company developed by former Sound programmer Dave Beasing that was purchased by Emmis in 2019; Beasing acts as the CEO of the division.

Other inductees include Mark Dyson, a radio executive; Lon Helton, for his Country Music Countdown; “Broadway” Bill Lee for his work at WCBS-FM/New York; Carol Miller for her work at WAXQ-FM/New York; Chris “Mad Dog” Russo” from SiriusXM; and Suzyn Waldman from the New York Yankees Radio Network, part of WFAN/New York.

Too many New York people there … have to work on that next year. Or perhaps the Hall of Fame being put together by our own Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters/Hollywood Media Professionals will take care of the void.

Pointless Contest

Radio stations used to run contests in order to generate a buzz … excitement for listeners and a reason to tune in. That was the old days. Apparently current owners and managers forgot why contests exist at all, and have turned an old, effective tune-in to a modern tune-out.

I am thinking specifically of the current word game being pushed by iHeart Radio’s cluster of stations, including Alt 98.7, KIIS-FM, KFI (640 AM) and the rest. The concept itself is almost somewhat sound – DJs give a word of the hour, which listeners can then enter into a special box on each station’s web site. Which leads to problem number one: no excitement. Because it’s not a call in, nor winners apparently ever announced — at least I have not heard one yet — it becomes just more clutter. No one cares.

Then you add in the fact that it’s not even specific to the station you’re listening to. Nor the cluster of stations owned locally. In actuality, you’re competing against listeners from every iHeart station in every city. That’s 860 stations in 160 markets. Think you have a very good chance of winning? Hint: no.

And finally you find out it’s only a $1000 prize. Sounds great, except that KHJ once gave away $1000 a day for a month. all to local listeners of just one station. Another time they gave away a car a day for a month, and those contests were in the 1970s and ‘80s. KIIS-FM in the 1980s likewise had blockbuster contests with trips, cars, and a Daily Cash Payoff … Kind of typical of contests of the era. Even stations with small promotional budgets gave away albums and such to listeners. $1000 spread among 860 stations? That’s barely over $1 per station. No wonder they never announce winners. I’d be embarrassed if I worked for iHeart, too.

View Details

Radio: July 29, 2022

With very few exceptions, the order of popularity for our local radio stations remains pretty much unchanged since I reported on the March ratings released in April. That lack of change is why I still report on them — usually — quarterly, rather than monthly as they are released by Nielsen. If I did it monthly, you’d think you were reading the same column every month. Now you only have that feeling every three months. But I digress.

Adult contemporary music station KOST (103.5 FM) led the pack again in the June Nielsens released this month, with a solid 6.0 share of the audience. Oldies KRTH (101.1 FM) was the runner-up with a 5.5. KBIG (104.3 FM) — basically KOST but farther up the dial — was third at 4.2, followed by Spanish contemporary music station KLVE (107.5 FM) at 4.4, and “old school” KTWV (The Wave, 94.7 FM) which tied KFI for 5th at 4.3.

KLOS (95.5 FM) saw its best ratings since at least January - a 10th place finish with a 3.3 share of the audience. That’s up almost a full point compared with May’s 2.5, and a full point above January. This puts KLOS within striking distance of arguably its closest competitor — Jack-FM (KCBS-FM, 93.1) — which was 8th at 3.6.

Call me underwhelmed, but I am not impressed with KNX’s (1070 AM, 93.1 FM) 3.1 finish. With great fanfare, owner Audacy decided to simulcast the longtime popular AM station’s programming on FM (and stop mentioning the AM station at all) last November. Tons of publicity brought a temporary jump in listenership, though still lower than the total the two signals formerly earned separately. Now, over six months later, the combined rating is 3.1 … just 0.1 above what it earned as a standalone AM last September (the last full report I ran before the simulcast began) and 1.4 under the old total for the two frequencies.

I’d call that a failure, especially since the old format on 97.1 — KNOU — was underperforming as it was. But it does bring up a good point - since KNX did as well when it was AM only, if you put good programming on AM, people willlisten. Someday, perhaps, owners will figure that out. I stand by my convictions: AM is dead because owners killed it. Resurrect it by improving the content. I digress again.

Alt 98.7’s (KYSR) 2.5 share beat KROQ’s (106.7 FM) 1.8. BUT, and this is a big but, this is the best rating KROQ has seen in at least the past six months, and it came with an increase in the popularity of both stations, 0.2 and 0.4 for the stations, respectively.

An oddity - KCRW (89.9 FM) dropping, a lot. I can’t figure out why, as the station has made no major changes. I can;’t even think of any minor changes made in fact. So why the decline to a 1.0 share after earning a 2.1 just three months ago? Any thoughts?

Surprise of the month? Stevie Wonder’s KJLH (102.3 FM) is on a roll with its best rating in my memory: 2.7. This puts the station is a tie with Go Country 105.1 FM for 12th, and represents a half point increase in a month, and a full point since February’s 1.7. This may be the best rating KJLH has earned since I’ve been writing this column … and is worthy of a huge “congratulations” to all involved.

Several online streams and secondary HD stations made the list: KROQ HD2, which plays ‘80s KROQ hits, earned a 0.1 share … as did LA Oldies on KKGO HD2 and the online simulcast of Jack-FM. KRTH’s online simulcast of it’s main signal earned a 0.2. None of these huge, and it definitely shows that over the air reception of AM and FM still dominates listening.

Each rating is an estimate of listeners, aged 6 and over, tuned to a station between the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight. The full story:

KOST (6.0) 2. KRTH (5.5) 3. KBIG “My FM” (5.2) 4. KLVE (4.4) 5. KTWV “The Wave,” KFI (4.3) 7. KIIS-FM (3.9) 8. KCBS-FM “Jack” (3.6) 9. KRRL “Real” (3.4) 10. KLOS (3.3)
KNX (3.1) 12. KKGO “Go Country,” KJLH (2.7) 14. KRCD, KPCC (2.6) 16. KYSR “Alt,” KXOL (2.5) 18. KLAX (2.4) 19. KSCA, KLLI (2.2)
KLYY (2.1) 22. KROQ, KPWR “Power,” KBUE (1.8) 25. KUSC, KLAC (1.5) 27. KDAY, KABC (1.1) 29. KFWB, KCRW (1.0)
KEIB, KDLD (0.9) 33. KRLA “The Answer,” KKJZ (0.8) 35. KCSN (0.7) 36. KFSH “The Fish” (0.6) 37. KSPN (0.5) 38. KWIZ, KKLA (0.4) 40. KWKW, KTNQ, KHJ, KRTH Stream (0.2)
KTWV Stream, KROQ HD2, KPFK, KMZT, KKGO HD2, KIRN, KCBS-FM Stream (0.1)

View Details

Radio: July 22, 2022

I didn’t get one, but perhaps you did: SiriusXM sent a mass promotional email extolling the virtues of its subscription satellite radio service, with the basic point being the headline: why waste your time with AM/FM radio?

Obviously directed toward listeners, the ad caused quite a reaction … on the part of radio observers. Radio Ink (radioink.com) featured a column on July 13th asking the question - “Are you just going to take this?” And Fred Jacobs penned a column the same day in a blog at Jacobs Media’s website (jacobsmedia.com) with the headline “Memo to Radio: The Gloves Are Off.”

But while the gloves are indeed off, they are off only at SiriusXM. The huge major players in radio today — iHeart, Cumulus, and Audacy — are definitely going to do nothing but take it. Which is precisely the problem: radio, in and of itself a marketing device if there ever was one, sucks at marketing. Sorry for the bad language.

It wasn’t always this way. At one time, stations would place station music charts in retail and record stores, publish newsletters and mini-magazines of interest to listeners, place ads in newspapers, on billboards and on buses and bus benches, host free or low-cost concerts, run live broadcasts at local venues, and even give station swag away as prizes. I still have my KIIS-FM (102.7) travel brush from at least 20 years ago. The idea was that station promotions would hopefully get you to sample the station. For the most part, it worked.

When was the last time you saw an ad — or anything else — for any station in town? Considering the prevalence of pushbuttons on the radios working against the idea of just tuning around, how does any station expect listeners to find them?

Which is a shame, as many stations, as much as even I can complain, do indeed put out a good product. KIIS-FM, as but one example, sounds better today than it has in years. Much of it has to do with an abundance of good new music, but the station itself does sound good even in the important part: between the records. Likewise, content on Alt 98.7 is superb, with the best morning show in town (The Woody Show) and a great afternoon show (Booker and Stryker).

KROQ (106.7 FM) finally seems to be getting on the right track and sounds great right now as well, as does My FM (KBIG, 104.3 FM) and KOST (103.5 FM). Go Country (KKGO, 105.1 FM) always sounds good, and these are just a few.

Not that everything is perfect. The commercial loads are still too large and commercial breaks too long. Some stations still make the mistake of running commercial-free hours, which just adds even more commercials to the load in other hours. That needs to be fixed, and owners need to realize that an ad would be more effective as one of a short break than one of many. As KHJ (930 AM) management understood in the early days of Boss Radio top-40, it is better to run fewer ads and charge more, than to run more ads and discount too much.

But getting back to the point: if you didn’t already listen to the stations you listen to, would you even know about them? What they play? The personalities? The hosts on talk stations? Of course not. Radio has done a terrible job of promoting itself, and it has only gotten worse under the large corporate ownership model that began years ago.

Ironically, it is the small stations across the country that still do it right. The large corporate owners seem to have forgotten what marketing is all about. And having a nationwide contest with a key word of the day to enter on a website is notgoing to change things. It’s dull, and it doesn’t bring in new listeners. For me, competing against listeners from 700 stations around the country is a turn-off.

So will radio fix this? I doubt it. At least not until the big corporate clusters are broken up. It doesn’t matter what content you have if no one knows it’s there.

Reality Radio

If you’ve ever watched “reality TV” you know that the word “reality” is more of a joke than anything else. The same goes “Ryan’s Roses” that still runs on the KIIS-FM morning Ryan Seacrest program in spite of it being exposed as a fraud right here at least twice. Perhaps like the television reality programs, it’s “just entertainment,” so no one really cares. But I think on the radio, many people actually believe it's happening.

I’ve covered this before: it is absolutely, totally, 100% illegal to record or air a telephone conversation without the permission of all involved. So when you hear people caught in a love triangle fighting on the air, you’re hearing a script read by actors. There is nothing real about Ryan’s Roses; if there was, the station would lose its license and the owner would have to pay a huge fine.

There are services that provide the scripts and actors for stations across the country, if you want to run something similar on your own station. Which makes it even more surprising that Seacrest thought it a good idea to air a recent edition, in which a man supposedly cheated on his wife … after the couple was divorced. “I knew you wouldn’t call him if I told the truth” the actress playing the ex-wife said to Seacrest.

So not only was my time wasted with a fake “problem,” it wasn’t even a good one. I want my five minutes back.

View Details

Link to full "Radio Waves" interview with Dr. Demento: https://bit.ly/3NTWfba

Radio July 15

If you grew up in Southern California in the 1970s, you likely listened to the legendary KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM). And if you listened to KMET, you likely listened to one of the most famous programs to ever originate from album-rock radio, Dr. Demento.

Born Barret Eugene “Barry” Hansen, Dr. Demento wasn’t heard only on KMET. In fact, his show launched on KPPC (now KROQ, 106.7 FM) after a time in 1970 playing some of his personal record recollection as a guest on Steven Segal, known on the air as The Obscene Steven Clean, on KMET and later KPPC (now KROQ, 106.7 FM). Those personal records included unusual recordings, novelty songs and just strange and unusual songs dating back to the earliest 78 RPM records.

It was Segal who gave Hansen the name "Dr. Demento.”

“I had no warning of this,” Hansen says, explaining that it came about roughly the third time he was a guest in hour-long expanded segments that began in October. “He just decided he’d start calling me Dr. Demento.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

He got his own two-hour shift on KPPC at the end on 1970; He moved to KMET in 1971, where for four hours he’d play his version of hits … from artists such as Spike Jones, Jimmy Durante, Ray Stevens, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer, Nervous Norvus, and of course “Weird Al” Yankovic.

He remained at KMET until the station changed formats in early 1987. After that he could be heard on KLSX (now KNX-FM, 97.1 FM) and later KSCA (101.9 FM), where it remained until 1997. The show was also syndicated nationally in a two-hour format from 1974 to about 2010, when it became available only on the internet.

But it was at KMET where he truly shined. The first three hours of the program included various records, not always funny but always interesting, the last hour devoted to the “top-10” where you’d hear such classic recordings as “Star Drek,” “Pencil-Neck Geek,” “Dead Puppies,” “Shaving Cream,” “Fish Heads,” and many more.

Hansen was instrumental in bringing teen-ager Yankovic to a national audience when he played “Belvedere Crusin” on his show in 1976.

As mentioned, Hansen still makes his show available on the internet with new programs weekly at https://www.drdemento.com. He participates in the official Facebook fan page for the show at https://www.facebook.com/groups/drdemento. It is on Facebook where I asked his legions of fans for their memories of the show and the good Doctor himself.

“Found the good Dr. late at night by accident when I was about 12/13 years old. Right around the time Weird All came out with My Bologna. Was hooked on both of them immediately (my local radio station played Ray Stevens, so I was big into the comedy stuff with nothing on other than that)” — Ginger Boyles

“When I was 7 or 8 years old, I had an uncle that sent my family a few cassette tapes of the Dr. Demento Show that he had taped for us (it wasn't on any of the stations in our area at the time). No one else in my family was interested, so they quickly became mine. The first tape I listened to was the show that first aired Weird Al's 'Another Rides the Bus'. I was instantly hooked. Those tapes quickly became what I listened to whenever I could.

“Looking back, I've realized that I had been listening to a radio show that showed me that I wasn't the only weird person around. It was okay to not fit into the normal mold of society. Shortly after, a local station started airing the show. Not only did his show entertain with it's rich history of parody and novelty music, but I know it influenced my sense of humor in my formative years. A large amount of credit (or blame) is due to Dr. Demento and his efforts in shaping me into who I am today, someone who is comfortable with being a little off kilter.” — Joshua Hesselgrave

“Sunday nights at midnight….difficult for a jr high girl sometimes…but the desire to possibly hear ‘Fish Heads’ or ‘Dead Puppies!’” — Holly Hammond

“I helped run a coffee house in Allendale, NJ called The Grotto in the mid to late 1970s. We had live music, but when the Doctor came on the radio, that stopped and it was time to get demented!” — Seth Bogdanove

“Before Dr. Dememto would get to the Top Ten Countdown, he would play records and songs that had a theme running thru them. I remember once he played several versions of ‘Hot Rod Lincoln’ … he pointed out words and lines were changed in the different versions. And even played a song that could have been the genesis of the song.” — Robert Stone II

“I did a fake stupid hillbilly voice to request a song because I thought it would improve my chances - it did and I got a t-shirt” — Beaux Peterson

“I have a hand written letter from Dr. D. I'm sure a lot of other fans on here still have theirs as well.” — Cindy Lee

“A few of my San Pedro High friends recorded a song to the tune of ‘Rocket Cathedrals’ by Be Bop Deluxe. Their group name was ITZ… The song was called "Vinnie the Hippo" and it was about portly SPHS language teacher. They circulated a petition, and it ended up being played on the air!” — Jeff Steybe

“I remember seeing him at the Capital Records swap meet. Dr Demento would be going through bins and bins of records looking for cool stuff for his show.” — Dean Case

“Sunday night was a thing. My older brother and I would listen; we had this really old FM tube receiver that kinda glowed in the dark from the tubes and a couple of speakers hooked up to it. Sometimes with friends over, sometimes not. It was appointment radio in those days.” — Bob Orabona

“I remember listening to him on the radio, I enjoyed his Christmas shows the most, I really miss those! I joined the fan club, and I have all of his CDs.” — Russell Cinque, Jr.

I, too, have many memories, including the jingle used for the top song of the night: “It’s time for number o-n-e! This is it, here it comes NUMBER ONE!”

If you’d like to get up-close and personal with the good doctor, head over to https://bit.ly/3NTWfba where you’ll find a long-form career-spanning interview Mike Stark and I did for LA Radio Sessions. You can get a lot of inside information on his record collection, his radio career, and much more.

View Details

Radio Waves: July 8. 2022

Will electric cars kill terrestrial radio?

That’s the question posed in a article posted at consumer guide.com (read it at https://bit.ly/3nuTrGK), which talks about a very real problem affecting radio in general, AM in particular.

The problem is that the motors and electronics in electric cars create interference that is very close in frequency to that of stations in the AM band. And in some cases, most notably more expensive models from high-end manufacturers, the “fix” is to leave AM out of the radio altogether.

And as electric cars get more popular — or mandated as in California — it could lead to the demise of America’s oldest broadcasting band, at least while traveling. In most of the country, in-car listening is a huge portion of overall listening to radio.

As explained in the story, “Electromagnetic frequencies generated by EV motors happen to be comparable in wavelength to AM radio signals. The competing signals clash, effectively cancelling each other, as if they were opposing forces. As EV motors grow more powerful, AM static tends to increase.”

It’s not a new problem. Indeed, many cars and trucks have fought radio interference for decades, even in cars with gasoline engines.. Ignition systems, electric motors driving cooling fans, windows and even the heating system can cause interference. But in the past, manufacturers were able to add shielding, ground systems, or even noise suppressors.

In reality, this can be done today, and perhaps might be a legal requirement: FCC rules require that no consumer component cause interference to radio reception, and must accept interference from broadcast radio transmission. But to my knowledge, the rule has not been enforced with any regularity in years. Indeed, LED lights, cable boxes, fluorescent lights, and computers and more all cause interference, and I haven’t heard of any product being pulled off the market for doing so.

Manufacturers have tried to find solutions, but those solutions add cost and weight to the cars …. Something the manufacturers are loathe to do. In the end, it’s easier just to leave it out.

FM is not totally immune either, as it too has challenges being received in a moving car. For now it’s primarily AM, though, and the manufacturers removing it from the dashboards of at least some of their all-electric cars include BMW, Tesla, Porsche, Volvo, and Audi. Interestingly, models from more common brands such as those from Toyota, Ford, and General Motors have kept AM in their electric models. This may change when Cadillac releases new models in the future.

One solution is to put everything on the web, but that creates its own issues: not every station streams their signals on the internet, it costs stations to do so, and it costs consumers when they have to subscribe to either an in-car internet service or use their cell phones to provide a signal. Once internet access is universal, however, some say this may be the future and put AM and FM stations on par for sound quality and distance reception. (I’ll have a story on this in the future).

But in the meantime, I can’t help but think that much of this has to do with programming. If AM listening was more popular, consumers would demand that AM not only be included, but would sound good. Like the early days of automobiles and broadcasting, solutions would be found. That they are not, and people are still buying Teslas proves there is a problem.

In other words, and to repeat what I have been saying for years, if AM stations gave a reason to listen, people would, and demand that their station could be heard while driving.

Related: if AM can be removed from the dash, is FM at risk as well? Absolutely. As the mobile dashboard becomes more of an all-encompassing entertainment system with access to various online music and podcast services, some observers do indeed see a day when cars don’t have a radio at all.

I don’t see it that way, and in fact, I think solutions will be found to allow both AM and FM to continue to be found in the dash, especially as more manufacturers market electric cars. I may be wrong, but I think there are some simple solutions — or at least solutions that, once found, can be spread as a common design feature.

///

View Details

Radio Waves: July 1, 2022

Can consumers help improve radio’s success?

Brian Winnekins knows radio. AM radio in particular, with special knowledge of analog AM stereo. He should … as owner of “Reel Country” WRDN/Durand, Wisconsin, he bought a former has-been AM station that was often off the air or operating at reduced power, upgraded the transmitter site, added an AM stereo (C-QUAM) system and provided programming of interest to the local community.

Now he’s the owner of a successful (though admittedly small-town) AM radio station, and has become one of a small but growing number of small station owners acting as a united voice promoting AM, AM stereo, and highlighting the struggles felt by such owners such as the tremendous burden placed on music stations by the various music licensing companies.

Winnekins programs WRDN like the old days, with programming of help to local farmers in the area. Besides the requisite country music, listeners can tune in to information on agriculture trends, farm reports, local sports, and of course news. It is the only station providing programming specifically targeted to Durand.

I suppose in some ways, the purchase was an extension of his own interests – prior to buying WRDN, Winnekins was a farm reporter for another station in a neighboring town. Now as an owner, he doesn’t mind sticking his neck out in an attempt to attract attention to ideas that can help AM stations better compete.

Recently Winnekins attended a Wisconsin Broadcasters Association conference session on “The Connected Car – What Does it Mean for Radio?” and included a representative from Xperi, the company behind numerous audio and video technologies including HD Radio, Connected Car technologies, DTS and more.

“During his presentation, he talked about how Apple and Google are trying to use their operating systems not only for the ‘infotainment center’ but even the dashboard,” Winnekins told me. “He also mentioned how it gets harder and harder to keep radio as part of car entertainment systems as manufacturers focus on newer technologies. He said convinced one company to keep AM by showing them the number of AM affiliates for sports teams.

“I was able to talk with him after the session and I brought up the idea that we need to end the ‘analog vs digital AM’ war – such that radios should be able to receive both analog stereo and digital HD – and have receivers just tune up the dial from 540 AM to 108 FM with no ‘band button.’”

Winnekins says that the representative from Xperi said he is open to both ideas. But … automotive companies will only put options in their products that they believe their customers want. That means for AM to truly have good receivers, customers need to demand it.

“The car companies will NEVER do anything unless people who are upset that their radios sound awful actually complain,” he explains. And it needs to go straight to the manufacturers, not the dealers. And certainly not social media. “If people are just going to continue to complain on Facebook … or the ‘radio experts’ (some of whom are owners!) continue to say that radio is dying, IT WILL DIE,” he says.

“Frankly, this ‘woe is me’ crap or this ‘well the consumers don’t care about radio and want internet garbage’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Winnekins says, adding that his own experience proves people will listen given the right programming and that consumers do indeed like the sound that better radios can provide.

“I’ve had farmers stop at the station with their old work trucks, and they are impressed with the way the station sounds on those radios … but then ask why their new $70,000 truck doesn’t sound as good,” he explained. “So here we have people who like the sound of our signal on a good radio … shouldn’t we find a way to help them complain to the car companies about their new lousy radios rather than constantly lamenting that ‘radio is dead?’”

Want to hear it for yourself? Like WION/Ionia, Michigan (i1430.com), WRDN streams their signal as received over the Am airwaves by an actual AM stereo tuner, in this case a Carver TX11a. “Tune in” from the station web page at reelcountry1430.com.

New KROQ

The effect of Kevin Weatherly’s return to the programming position at KROQ (106.7 FM) is already having a positive effect. The station suddenly has a sound more in keeping with its history … a vibe, of sorts, that I have not heard in years. It’s as if everyone is suddenly proud to be there, rather than just “being there.” More oldies than I prefer, but at least some new music. So far I am liking it.

View Details

MBC Radio Hall of Fame 2022 Candidates Announced

The Chicago-based Museum of Broadcast Communications recently announced the nominations class of 2022 for the Radio Hall of Fame Twenty-four people were chosen by the nominating committee, including four of our own: two individuals and one set of two.

They are: KOST (103.5 FM) morning star Ellen K, KFI (640 AM) afternoon drive duo John and Ken, and former KABC (790 AM) and KRLA (870 AM) host Larry Elder. Actually there’s one more from LA radio’s past: Walt “Baby” Love, formerly heard on KHJ (930 AM), KFI (640 AM), and KMPC (now KSPN, 710 AM). He was nominated for his syndicated Gospel Traxx program.

While 24 are being considered for induction, more than 2500 names were suggested by industry veterans and listeners; the 25 members of the nominating committee took those suggestions and their own thoughts to pare down the list. Now more than 600 Museum members will vote for up to six of their favorites through the end of the voting cycle on July 8th, with the top-six vote recipients being inducted.

Two more inductees — for a total of eight — will be selected by the nominating committee itself. The winners will be announced on July 25th and honored at the official 2022 Radio Hall of Fame induction ceremony on November 1st in Chicago.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications’ Radio Hall of Fame honors those who have contributed to the development of the radio medium throughout its history in the United States.

Previous inductees include such legendary broadcasters as Abbot and Costello, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Dr. Demento, Tom Donahue, Bill Drake, Rick Dees, Paul Harvey, Bob Hope, Kevin and Bean, Casey Kasem, Art Laboe, Robert W. Morgan, “The Real” Don Steele, Charlie Tuna, Dick Whittinghill, and Wolfman Jack, among many others, meaning that the current candidates are among really good company.

Ellen K, who has a long history in San Diego and Los Angeles radio including being a sidekick and news reporter for Rick Dees and Ryan Seacrest on KIIS-FM (102.7) before getting her own show on KOST and proving that she has not only the ability to shine on her own, she also has the ability to be among the most popular personalities in town. Indeed, Ellen is one of the reasons KOST so often dominates the LA radio ratings. Her show is usually at the top of the ratings in numerous demographics including all listeners aged 6 and over, adults aged 25-54, and women aged 25-54.

Likewise, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou are a major reason for the continued success of KFI even as the station has tried to become less political overall. John and Ken, of course, are as political as ever, injecting themselves into local and state issues, and acting as the voice for things you want to say but can’t when it comes to local politics and political correctness. Sometimes they are off-base, but almost always entertaining.

Elder is no longer on the air, having left KRLA and other affiliates nationwide in April, but continues as a contributor to Fox News and still has his own podcast. He spent many years on KABC as The Sage from South Central and giving a unique perspective on local and national issues. More recently, he was a candidate to replace Gavin Newsom had the recall of Newsom been successful.

Love, also known as Reverend Walter Shaw, was a popular DJ on the most popular station in the United States at the time he was on the air at KHJ in the mid 1970s. He became an ordained minister in 1997; his Gospel Traxx is an extension of his work in spreading the Gospel, and has won awards including Best Syndicated Urban/R&B/Gospel Show of the Year from Billboard Magazine in 2002.

“Life is all about how it feels and this nomination feels really great!!!” Ellen told me last week. “Being included amongst so many well deserving candidates is humbling, and I’m reminded of the incredible people and moments that have led to this. Most of all, I’m grateful to be surrounded by the best!”

I imagine all of the nominees feel something very similar. This is truly a big deal, and a big congratulations goes to all the nominees. For a full list, go to https://www.radiohalloffame.com/2022-nominees.

While you’re there, take note of the fact that the photo used for John and Ken is the one I used to keep on my own website years ago just to tease the team… It has to be over 30 years old, as demonstrated by the cool 80s sweaters they don.

The Crummey Evil Side Show …

Toward the earlier days of KFI’s (640 AM) talk format, the station tended to lean political, even more than it does today. And while it tended to be on the conservative side of things, there was a semblance of balance … morning host Rush Limbaugh countered with afternoon drive’ s Tom Leykis. And in the evening was a little of both combined with a lot of levity in the form of Joe Crummey. I liked the show.

Crummey was a bit of an anomaly on KFI … at first his show seems to lean liberal, then shifted toward the middle and middle-right. But it was always a fun listen, and I was disappointed when he left the station for KABC (790 AM) — it never seemed quite the same as far as the fun factor went — and eventually he left for other cities: Phoenix and New York in particular.

While at KFI, he had a certain bit in which he would debate himself – “regular” Joe vs “evil” Joe. Logical and moral Joe vs. illogical and immoral Joe. When he went to KABC, KFI became the “evil” station.

Apparently Crummey has evil in his blood. At least part of it.

As of late, Crummey is hosting a conservative podcast, called, of course, Evil Thoughts with Joe Crummey, in which he takes issues of the day and breaks them down using quotes and soundbites from the politicians and supporters involved.

It’s a short program – usually about 15 minutes or so – but quite entertaining especially if you agree with his analysis. If you lean liberal, it is still entertaining, but I would assume you’d disagree with many of his thoughts, but truth be told, he’s hard on Republicans as well as Democrats.

Recent topics have mirrored current events: inflation, shortages, the Supreme Court, abortion, energy and more. Soundbites come from from politicians, The View, and news programs, interspersed with commentary from Crummey. But it’s not just skin-deep … a recent show on baby formula went into the why of the shortage, not just spinning blame.

In fact, that’s the premise behind most of his shows – having some fun with the soundbites as you learn a little more about the issues in a way that other sources tend to avoid.

Find it at http://joecrummey.com.

Golden

KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM) and KFI (640 AM) took top honors for radio … as per usual … in the recent Golden Mike awards held in late May.

KNX won for Best Radio Newscast Over 15 Minutes, while KFI won for Best Radio Newscast Under 15 minutes

But wait, you ask, aren’t these the only real news stations in Southern California … wouldn’t they win anyway? Not exactly. The awards cover all of Southern California, so there are stations from San Diego to Santa Barbara that compete.

That’s a lot of stations!

Each year the Radio and Television News Association (RTNA) presents the Golden Mike Awards to radio and television stations, programs, and people involved in the production of quality newscasts, reporting, and features. This year, in addition to the regular awards, the RTNA presented its 2022 Broadcast Legend Award to Jaime Jarrin, longtime Spanish play by play broadcaster for the Dodgers. Jarrin is the longest tenured active announcer in Major League Baseball, and is currently in his 64th (and final) season as the Spanish-language voice of the Dodgers.

Other radio awards locally included:

Best Traffic Report: KNX

Best Individual Writing: KOGO’s (600 AM) Remembering the Day

Best Long Form Program or Documentary: KFI’s The Death and Life of Kobe Bryant

Best Hard News Series Reporting: KPCC’s (89.3 FM) Unpermitted Housing

Best Feature News Series Reporting: KCRW’s (89.9 FM) Wasted

There are many more, and you can access the full list at rtnasocal.org.

View Details

Radio Waves: June 10, 2022

Something new at SiriusXM

SiriusXM has some new channels, or at least new to me, that I happened upon during a recent trip to Central California.

Most intriguing is arguably The 10s Spot on Channel 10, described as pop hits from the 2010s. What I find interesting about it is that I can’t figure out where its going, and that may be by design. Justin Timberlake, Drake, Fall Out Boy, Lady Gaga and the likes, of course, with a few country songs thrown in for flavor. What’s up next? You’ll never know. I like that.

Pandora Now on Channel 3 borrow’s my programming idea of getting into the services that younger listeners use to find songs to play on my station. It is described as “top-trending hits to the most anticipated new releases” and features current core artists as Cardi B, Post Malone, Khalid, and Dua Lipa; the difference from this and my idea is that I’d be using it to find new artists and not just new songs

Mosaic on Channel 15 plays “a colorful and diverse pop music collage from the 90s and 2000s” including Mariah Carey, Matchbox Twenty, Sheryl Crow, John Mayor, Gwen Stefani, and Kelly Clarkson. Sounds like KOST (103.5 FM).

Channels 104 and 105 feature special programming from country and pop performers, respectively, on a varying schedule. For example, as I write this, 105 is running music from Prince; by the time you read this it may have switched over to the next featured artist: The Notorious B.I.G. 104 is running special programs for Country Pride, in commemoration of Pride Month.

Caliente on Channel 151 is where Latin music and culture meet … Salsa, bachata, and raggaeton in a mix that includes Shakira, J Balvin, Maluma, Bad Bunny, Daddy Yankee and more.

And just in case you were worried that holiday music might not be available until November, SiriusXM online has you covered: Yes, Holiday Traditions continues all year on line. As I write this, they are playing The Christmas Song by Johnny Mathis … just the song for early June.

Catching up on all the mail …

“When I was in elementary school, I made a crystal set. A good one. Had a 50 foot long copper wire in back yard, above the roof line. I remember being able to hear Del Rio Texas, WLS Chicago and KSL Salt Lake … on a crystal set!!! All clear channels.

“In 1971, I spent the summer in Anchorage Alaska. Just about dusk with car antenna up full (4 feet). With the engine off in my 1960 Dodge Dart, the 4 tube radio would pull in the Dodgers in Los Angeles… The signal would come in like waves: loud then soft … but amazing … maybe 2500 miles.

Here is my 1960 Zenith. No bike at age14, so travel was limited. The night time radio took me to places all over America. Salt Lake, Chicago, Seattle, Texas, San Francisco. The call letters were fascinating. My pal Phil taught me to send a DX card; a few stations politely sent me a Thank You card. Radio was everything, a time machine for me.” — Victor D’Agostino

I checked with Victor, who told me the radio still works … loud and clear, he says, a testament to the Zenith build quality. He tells me the faded sticker on the back reads “Made in America, by Americans for Americans”

“Do I enjoy radio? Yes. Why? Because it offers a variety of informative and enjoyable programming that I can listen from almost anywhere and while doing something else.

“My path to radio began in the ‘60s while listening to KHJ music on my transistor radio. In the early 1970s, influenced by my Mom listening to Joe Pyne, Michael Jackson and others, I became a talk radio fan. Not only did I follow Michael Jackson, but whether from home or in my car, I’d listen to Dr. Toni Grant, Dr. David Viscott, and several cooking and money show hosts on KABC Talkradio plus LA Dodger baseball and LA Kings hockey games on whatever stations they occurred.

“Today, I continue to enjoy a variety of shows (talk, music & sport) notably The Dennis Praeger Show; NPR broadcasts; and the KFI 640 lineup with The Tim Conway Jr. show topping my list.” — Jeanie Harvey

“I was a KHJ fan in the 1960s … loved the Friday sign offs by Real Don Steele. I actually was so intrigued by radio that I seriously considered a career in radio.

I took a couple of classes at Fullerton College. Did an interesting interview, as a class assignment, to talk with the station engineer at KWIZ..

“That’s when I figured out that it is a long road to the big radio markets like Los Angeles, New York or Chicago where the big money was. Not everyone was like Charlie Tuna, making the big time in a fairly short time. You would start in a very small market and not making very much money.

“So I went another direction. I went on to California State University, Fullerton. Business degree. I am retired now, but I still enjoy the music from the ‘60s and ‘70s. — Bob Brown, Yorba Linda, CA

View Details

Radio Waves: June 3, 2022

Advice for the “new” programmer Monday, June 6th is the big day – the day Kevin Weatherly returns to program KROQ (106.7 FM). Weatherkly had programmed the station for many years and oversaw some of its highest ratings ever.

But he also oversaw the beginning of the decline. As previously mentioned, it was not necessarily his fault, but he was there. And the foundation for success that began crumbling years before he left the first time has never been repaired. Owner Audacy still believes cost-cutting is far more important than developing talent; indeed they have a well-deserved reputation as being cheap. Not in a good way, just cheap.

Add to that the fact that there is a need to protect sister station Jack (KCBS-FM, 93.1) — limiting the “gold” that KROQ can play, and you reduce Weatherly’s power even more.

He’s got his work cut out for him. But that’s not the focus of this column. Indeed, I want KROQ to excel. To return to glory. To do this, it helps to understand what put KROQ on the map in the first place.

Rick Carroll had programmed a few stations before be arrived at KROQ, most notably KKDJ (now KIIS-FM, 102.7) and KEZY (now KGBN, 1190 AM). When he arrived at KROQ in 1978, his idea was for more of an irreverent top-40 station — or perhaps a top-40/AOR hybrid — than an album-rock station. His basic plan was to go against the likes of his former stations by playing music long before they became hits, but indeed they would become hits. Listening to Carroll’s KROQ was like being part of a musical time machine, where Prince or Michael Jackson or any number of new bands would be heard on KROQ … followed months later on all the rest.

A description on Wikipedia says it best: “Carroll’s approach was to play music from the emerging new wave, punk and related genres while retaining a Top 40 presentation style and Top 40 rotations. Noted for his ability to pick breakout hits, Carroll guided songs to prominence via the “Hot Clock,” a pie chart prescribing the music to be played during each portion of a disc jockey’s air shift. His system also included a “Jock’s Choice” at the end of each hour of programming, during which a DJ could play any song of his or her own choosing. The Jock’s Choice became a vehicle for new artists such as Depeche Mode and Juluka to break into KROQ-FM’s regular rotation.” (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Carroll)

It worked far better than anyone expected, and became the prototype of new-wave music stations everywhere. Carrroll himself consulted or helped launch numerous KROQ clones in such cities as San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, and Pittsburgh. Here in Los Angeles it was KROQ more than direct competitor KLOS (95.5 FM) that put the final knife in KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM), as KMET had been the place to find new music … but KROQ got the jump on them and stole the new music thunder.

There are many who believe that you can’t play new music on the radio any more. That it will push away listeners. My take is that notplaying new music on the radio is why the average listener is aging older and older. Radio offers nothing to young people, who shun radio for Facebook, Apple Music, Pandora, Sound Cloud and more. Certainly KROQ’s current ratings prove they have nothing to lose. I believe Weatherly needs to recommit KROQ to the original intent: get local jocks who love music, let them be part of choosing that new music, give them the freedom to have some fun on the air while keeping it fast paced and entertaining, and most of all, expose new music.

It doesn’t mean playing new music for new music’s sake. But as the online streaming services and SiriusXM’s The Pulse Hits One prove, there is a lot of great new music around, and much of it never makes it to traditional radio airwaves.

Get into the areas where high school and college-aged kids and young adults hear music and find out what they like. Make it your purpose in life to break the next big act. Get them in concert for listeners. Become the must-be place on the dial for new music. Don’t limit yourself to one style – think top-40 … included everything. Young music fans are far more open to new styles than are m out adults, and adults already have their own stations.

Keep the commercials down in number and make the ads relevant and entertaining to listeners … yes, advertisements don’t have to be a tune-out. You know you have to run ads, unlike the streamers, so make them good. Most of all, treat listeners with respect. Earn their trust; earn their loyalty. You’ll have them locked in to 106.7 forever.

You may notice these are the same ideas I have for my future AM station … I’ll loan them for now to Weatherly, at least until I buy or am given my own station.

That’s my plan … what’s yours? What would you do with KROQ? It seems to me the slate is clean … am I off-base? Let me know your thoughts.

View Details

Radio Waves: May 27, 2022

More Favorite “IM” Stations

A while back I asked you what your favorite app stations (IM – Internet modulation?) and podcasts were; I thought today would be a good time to feature a few more.

• Daryl James spent 25 years doing FM rock radio in the Inland Empire, most recently at KCXX (now KHTI, 103.9 FM) in the Inland Empire, where he worked for an impressive 17 years. He nominated his own station, which I’d like to point out is not against the rules, of which there were none.

“When KCXX went to pop, I started streaming music on Dirty Radio; we have two stations available, and stream rock, metal, alternative, and classic rock,” James told me. The two stations are Dirty Radio and Dirty Radio Classics, both of which are quite good. Find them at https://dirtyradio.fm, or visit the Google or Apple App stores and download the apps.

If you want some background on the stations, see https://www.sbsun.com/2016/01/16/x1039-dj-starting-dirty-radio-online-station/.

• “I actually keep a relatively long list of stations that I like to stream covering quite a few formats. I will limit myself to just three that are among the best of the best.

“WWOZ New Orleans – While classified as a non-commercial jazz station, there is no doubt this station has a total NOLA vibe that’s often more like listening to a Mardi Gras parade than a jazz club. https://www.wwoz.org/

“KBear 101 (KCVI Blackfoot, Idaho) – Especially since you have written a lot recently about stations that might flip to active rock, I’ve thought for a long time that this station does the best job with the music mix. It is at https://kbear.fm/

“Music City Roadhouse – A non-commercial online station out of Nashville playing southern rock, blues, and honky tonk, at least during the daytime when I usually get to listen, the main guy running this station knows what he’s doing. He’s on live like an OTA station, knows how to connect with his audience, and plays a good mix of music that sticks within what he has staked out as his format. I only wish I had the time and money to make my own online station sound this lively. It is available on at least seven different apps including TuneIn and Live365. https://musiccityroadhouse.com” — Kevin Sammons, Crestline

• “The best radio app is KEXP out of Seattle!” — Matt Hommman

Found on various apps as well as at https://www.kexp.org, KEXP is celebrating 50 years of service to Seattle, currently playing a variety of music focussing on rock, including electronic, soul, hip-hop, alternative, and more. Studios are located in the city’s Uptown Arts District. Somehow that seems fitting.

• My favorite radio station is Cool Blue out of Taupo, New Zealand. It plays blues, Americana, soul, jazz etc, etc. No ads, no DJ’s, no repeats or high rotation…just Music! It can be found online here https://www.coolbluetaupo.com/“ — Bruce M

• “These are a few of my favorites for weekend listening.

“KHUG-LP 97.5 FM, Santa.Clarita:

“12N Sunday- The Down Home Show: There’s no other show like it in Southern California; it salutes talented artists from Valencia and San Fernando.

“3:00PM – Side A / Side B with Lou Paparozzi: A tasty bag of themed music that is always interesting and informative.

“4:00PM – Backbeat Charlie Show: A thematic music show offering up musical treats.

“KJAA 1240AM, Miami/Globe Arizona, another great oldies station. Their motto is “None of the hits, All of the time … We don’t play the old same songs over and over… we play different old songs over and over.”

All of these stations can be accessed on TuneIn Radio” — Mark C

• “A few years ago, somehow, I came across WLVN out of Livingston, Montana on Audacy. What I really like about this station is that most of the music is tied into the years of WWII. The lyrics are very entertaining, and commercials are played from that time such as with Frank Sinatra talking about war bonds and one I recently heard with Bob Hope. I enjoy waking up and seeing what is on each morning.” — Peter A. Keon

All excellent selections … thank you for sending them, ands keep ion sending them in.

You may notice I have not given my favorites yet. That is coming soon, after a few more of yours. One thing that Internet Modulation stations (you heard the term here first) do is give you formats, as you can read hear, that you can’t get locally on AM or FM.

View Details

Radio: May 20, 2022

In a case of going back to the future, or perhaps simply going full circle, KROQ (106.7 FM) and owner Audacy have announced the return of Kevin Weatherly as programmer of the once-mighty station.

I hate to use the word “alternative” to describe KROQ, because that’s not what KROQ was all about during most of its successful life … at least not in the traditional sense of the word. When KROQ was the trend-setting station, breaking new bands and new music in the days of DJs Rodney Bingenheimer, Jedd the Fish Freddie Snakeskin, Richard Blade, Poorman, Swedish Egil, Ramondo, etc., the songs heard on KROQ tended to appear there first, and later on KIQQ (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM) — though KIQQ broke numerous songs and bands itself — followed by other stations such as KIIS-FM (102.7), KKHR (now “Jack KCBS-FM, 93.1), and even KRTH (101.1 FM), KMET (now The Wave KTWV, 94.7 FM) and KLOS (95.5 FM).

For full disclosure, it must be pointed out that KNAC (now KBUE, 105.5 FM), during the Rock ’n Ryhythm days, played much of the same music with similar attitude … the limited signal out of Long Beach being KNAC’s downfall.

The Plimsouls, The Bangles, Oingo Bingo, The Blasters, Berlin, Wall of Voodoo, The Go Gos, Billy Idol, REM, A Flock of Seagulls, Kajagoogoo, Wham!, Human League, Peter Gabriel, X, Stray Cats, INXS, The B52s, Adam Ant, Psychedelic Furs, Prince, Rick James … almost every ‘80s band that you hear on flashback weekends — or now Jack FM — appeared first on KROQ. KROQ was the place for the hippest kids to find new music, and it was the soundtrack for so many of the era.

Which is why I was listening to other stations … I was never a trendsetter. But I digress. Intermixed with the new music, be it new-wave, British pop, or hard rock, was some traditional flavoring from The Rolling Stones, Cheap Trick, or even Led Zeppelin.

DJs on KROQ were funny, relatable, irreverent, sarcastic, and importantly, your friends. They curated the music, and especially in the case of Bingenheimer and his Rodney on the Roq Sunday evening show, they visited clubs, recording studios, and any other place they could think of to find new bands and new music.

Original programmer Rick Carroll didn’t design the KROQ to be a station to hear “alternative” music. He wanted it to be an alternative to other stations … a station where you heard something first. By the time you heard it elsewhere, KROQ had already moved on.

Something changed along the way. The music got more predictable. More formatted. More limited in scope, such that the few new songs and new sounds got lost in the constant repetition of songs from bands — many of which were talented — that tended to all sound exactly like each other. I blame modern corporate ownership, in which executives are so afraid of taking chances, they choke the life out of such formats.

As time went on, ratings dropped. Stature dropped. The once mighty trend-setter became a has-been, almost embarrassing to its history. So it wasn’t surprising two years ago when Weatherly left KROQ to join on-line service Spotify as head of North America Programming. He could once again be free to innovate.

What is surprising is his decision to return. Nothing has changed at KROQ. The station is still owned by one of the worst companies to own radio stations, one in which innovation is actively blocked. One observer quipped that it probably had to do with “giving him some huge title and backing up the Brinks truck.”

Let me be clear, I hope I am wrong. If Weatherly is given the freedom to do what he wants, and he isn’t too old to remember that not everyone wants to live in the past and on past glories, KROQ could be in for something big.

The “big title” is Senior Vice President of Programming. In that capacity, he will not only oversee the programming — including content, talent operations and even the branding at KROQ, he’ll also advise the Audacy alternative stations throughout the country. No word yet on if he will be given a budget to hire DJs for each station, or if he will be stuck with the current policy to have a handful of DJs to work with, all pretending to be local, but spinning the tunes for stations nationally and regionally.

I am not alone in my analysis. As another observer explained to me, “There's no question that KROQ's best years were under Kevin Weatherly's brilliant leadership. But let's not forget that KROQ's decline began under his watch, too. That wasn't his fault, of course. The firing of Ralph Garman, followed by failing to keep Kevin & Bean in place wasn't Kevin's idea. These moves are symptoms of the core problem. KROQ's new ownership has a deserved reputation for being cheap, especially on talent. Upon his return, Kevin will still be working for Audacy, so he'll have one hand tied behind his back.”

My message to Audacy management, and CEO David Field in particular: Leave. Weatherly. Alone. Let him do his job. Give him the financial backing to do it — invest in your stations and talent for a change. Weatherly — who officially starts June 6 — is talented enough to get the job done … when he is allowed to do his job.

My message to Weatherly: Keep an open mind to new music. Start exposing new bands. Bring KROQ back to greatness. Los Angeles long ago lost the image of being a place to find new music … you have the ability to single-handedly change that, and in doing so save not just KROQ.

And perhaps most importantly: don’t listen to David Field. Hopefully he has that in his contract.

I’ve reached out to Weatherly and hope to have a full interview with him in the very near future. At press time, I was unable to connect.

///

View Details

Radio Waves: May 13, 2022

Solving a Radio-Restaurant Mystery

One of my favorite non-radio ways to waste time, somewhat productively, is to watch videos of “LA In a Minute” on TikTok, in which Evan Lovett gives inside stories and information on attractions in and around Los Angeles. You can access his main page at https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdgFpy8v/.

But a recent posting combined that with radio, when he told the story of Carney’s restaurant, one of my favorite chili burgers in town and a great place to go with my wife, Jean when we were dating and she lived in Hollywood. Carney’s Hollywood location is on the Sunset Strip.

Called “Five Facts about Carneys,” (https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdgF7F2P/) Lovett mentioned — in fact one — that Carneys was launched by John Wolfe Senior, a “marketing genius” who was “the man responsible for KKDJ, adult contemporary radio station changing over to KIIS-FM, yes, that KIIS-FM, 102.7 and its top-40 format forever altering the landscape of Los Angeles radio, and he did all this while founding Carneys.”

That didn’t sound right… I have listened to and followed KIIS-FM for years, and prior to that KKDJ and 1150 KIIS … I had never heard of John Wolfe’s connection. Digging further with a search of his name and KIIS, I found an obituary of Wolfe’s on the LA Times site from April of 1999, when he passed away at the age of 72. In it, there is a statement that Wolfe “helped create and market Los Angeles’ KIIS radio (102.7 FM) in the 1960s.” It later mentioned that he left radio in 1973 to launch the restaurant.

This got me intrigued for a few reasons. First off, KIIS-FM didn’t exist in the 1960s; it launched the same year as Carney’s, in fact, when KIIS (1150 AM) and KKDJ were “married” on the air to form a two band simulcast, KIIS AM and FM.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that KIIS itself didn’t launch even on AM until 1970; prior to that it was KRKD, call letters it had held since 1932. So basically, there was no way that Wolfe could have been part of KIIS-FM, especially its move into top-40, something that didn’t happen until later 1981.

Searching more … nothing … outside of a few mentions that seem to all refer back to that one incorrect LA Times obituary. So what’s the true story? Related: does anyone outside of me care about it? Regardless, who would know the story?

Mike Wagner, who worked at KKDJ and later KIIS AM/FM, came through with some clues, stating “to my knowledge, Wolfe had NOTHING to do with the FM…strictly KiiS 1150 AM.” That matched my thinking: that Wolfe was at 1150 and might have helped launch KiiS … written with lower case “ii” in their marketing at the time; the iiS part of the call letters approximating the look of the frequency of 115, shorthand for 1150.

LARadio.com’s Don Barrett helped fill in some other details, using a memory from Chuck Blore, the legendary programmer who brought polished top-40 to Los Angeles via the launch of “Color Radio” KFWB in January of 1958. Interesting, though perhaps not surprisingly, Blore’s memory was also regarding Carneys. Answering the inquiry “When you have a special friend visit you, is there a favorite Southland restaurant you want to expose them to?” Blore wrote,

“Yes. Carney’s. Did you know that a radio sales guy started Carney’s? He was probably the best I ever knew. His name was John Wolfe. He was by far the Number One salesperson at KFWB when I was there and then went on to become the Number One sales person at KPOL. (Remember KPOL?) It was John who talked me into going back into radio and together we worked at KIIS/AM. Then one day he walked in and said, “I’m leaving radio.”

“’My God, John,’ said I, ‘what are you gonna do?’ ‘I’m gonna start a hot dog stand.’ ‘John! You’ve got two growing boys, and two wives to support. A hot dog stand?’ ‘Yeah,’ said John, ‘I thought about that, so I want you to do a commercial for me.’ And I did. And just today I saw a billboard for Carney’s using a line I wrote for John almost 30 years ago – ‘The best thing I ever tasted in my whole mouth.’ John died about seven years ago and today his two boys are engineering the Carney’s trains, one each. “

That memory was written in 2002; Blore himself passed away just last year — July 15, 2021 — at the age of 92.

And for the chili burger purists, Lovett does another TikTok on Original Tommy’s.

More on KHJ …

“Thank you, Richard, for reminding me how privileged & blessed I was/am to have participated in those glorious, fun-filled, nervous, energized, & ‘over-the-top’ busy days. And the opportunity of working with some of the most talented radio people who ever ‘graced the airwaves’.

“And it didn’t stop there – the entire team on & off air, administrative, engineering, clerical-support, sales, etc. all contributed their best efforts to make ’93/KHJ/Boss Radio’ the incredible and never duplicated success that it became. Being part of that is one of the great joys of my life! Thank you for bringing those memories forefront for me today.” — Betty Breneman

As mentioned in the story last week, Breneman was the music director of KHJ at the launch of Boss Radio in 1965, and was definitely one of the reasons for its success.

And KFI …

Barry Mishkind has an excellent online article giving a wonderful history of KFI as they celebrate 100 years on the air. Read it at https://www.thebdr.net/earle-c-anthony-drives-kfi-to-fame. An excellent read!

View Details

Radio Waves: May 6, 2022

KHJ and KFI turn 100

Two local radio stations celebrated birthdays in April, though you’d never know from listening. To my knowledge, neither mentioned a thing about it on the air, which is quite surprising as both are now centurions.

April 13, 1922 was the first broadcast day of KHJ (930 AM), a station launched by the Los Angeles Times newspaper. From 6:45 to 7:45, the station’s “dedicatory” program included the playing of The Star Spangled Banner, remarks from Times-Mirror General Manager Harry Chandler, soprano solos, “Ten Minutes of Fun,” news, a baritone solo, and “Bedtime Stories.”

While only 50 watts and broadcasting from the Times building at First and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, the station was heard as far away as Montana … a testament to what can happen when the atmosphere and airwaves are uncrowded and unfilled with electrical interference.

KHJ increased power to 500 watts by 1924, in 1930 it increased to 5000 watts, the most it ever used and the power it still uses today. Early programming was noncommercial and intended more to help sell subscriptions to the newspaper; that ended when Cadillac dealer Don Lee bought the station in 1927

It was April 16, 1922 when KFI (640 AM) went on the air. According to radio historian Jim Hilliker, the first broadcast was an Easter Sunday service and music from 11 a.m. to 12 noon using a 50-watt transmitter on the roof of the Packard Motor Car building on Hope Street; station owner Earle C. Anthony owned the station and was not only a Packard dealer at the time, he was also the distributor for Packard throughout the entire state of California..

By 1927, KFI was already up to 5000 watts of broadcasting power, and by 1931 it became the first 50,000 watt clear channel (no other station on the same frequency) radio station in the Western United States, making it then and now one of the most powerful radio stations in the country.

KFI and KHJ shared the same frequency (750 AM) — as did many stations in the early days of broadcasting — until January of 1923, at which time KFI moved to its present home of 640 as part of the expansion of the broadcast band. KHJ moved a few times, eventually settling in at 930 in March of 1941.

While many think the call letters stand for something, such as Kindness, Happiness and Joy for KHJ; Farm Information for the FI in KFI, the letters were actually just random assignments; it wasn’t until later that station owners could request particular calls.

What I never knew until recently was the fact that early broadcasts from the stations didn’t necessarily mention the call letters at all. Indeed, advertisements and stories in the Times for KHJ’s first broadcast mention only “The Times radio station” or “The Times Radiophone.” Most stations were named by or for the owners rather than any call letter combination.

It is a shame that neither station is covering its own birthday. Regardless, let me wish them both a happy birthday, and many more.

Boss Radio

April is a big month for KHJ in another way: it was in late April of 1965 that Boss Radio made its debut … the most imitated format ever.

The new high-energy fast-paced format — an evolution of top-40 programming from the brains of consultants Bill Drake and Gene Chanault, programmer Ron Jacobs, station manager Ken DeVaney, music director Betty Brenneman, and a relatively unknown but soon-to-be all-star cast of air personalities including Robert W. Morgan and “The Real” Don Steele — was supposed to debut on May 5th, but word got out and then competitor KFWB (980 AM) tried to steal some of the ideas, so the decision was made to make the switch early.

So, on April 27, 1965, KHJ launched a “sneak preview” of the new format, utilizing music bought at Wallach’s Music City utilizing the KRLA (1110 AM) hit list! The switch was made at 3 p.m. when Steele opened the microphone for the first time as a Boss Jock.

A surprising number of air checks exist from that era, though I have yet to find one of the Steele debut on the first day. Perhaps you have one … please send it my way. In the meantime, get over to MixCloud.com and YouTube.com and just search for “KHJ Sneak Preview.”

If you want to get a feel for the events leading up to the launch, you owe it to yourself to get a digital copy of KHJ Inside Boss Radioby Ron Jacobs (available at Amazon.Com), or head over to https://socalradiowaves.com/wp/20170505-2/ for a little taste.

///

View Details

Radio Waves: April 22, 2022

Gunslingers on the air

A radio show about guns? In Southern California? And Los Angeles, no less?

Absolutely. It’s the Gunslingers hour and has been heard on KABC (790 AM) Saturdays at 8 a.m. Effective immediately, the show is transitioning to KRLA (870 AM) Sundays at 8 p.m.. Currently the program is airing separate editions for both stations, but the final KABC show will air July 30 … after that it will be exclusively heard on KRLA

The program is hosted by Jeff Taverner, owner of Gunslingers Gun Shop and Gunslinger Auctions in Glendora; co-host Mark Romano is a political science college professor. Both are expert shooters and in fact, both are Cowboy Action Shooting Champions.

The shop opened almost 25 years ago as a way for Taverner to make some money selling part of his own personal collection. He is very proud of the fact that he made a sale on his very first day open, back on June 1st, 1998 … “unfortunately the sale was denied” from the background checks, he says, “but it was a sale!”

The program evolved out of his own advertising. He created an ad to air on KEIB (1150 AM) that he purposely made a bit quirky and different to stand out, voiced by himself. It worked, both as an advertisement and a side career as a talk host: the ad was heard by someone at KABC, who suggested he start his own show.

For the first month they made him pre-record the program, but he wanted to go live and convinced KABC to let him do so. Since that time he has been able to take listener phone calls along with presenting information and interviews in order to help people learn about such things as firearms history, safety, collecting, purchasing, and the paperwork involved.

“I try to make the show as lively and fun as I can,” says Taverner. “I hope to reach people on the fence and help them realize that they don’t need to be scared, that it’s actually fun to go shooting at ranges and competitions.”

No politics allowed, though. “This is not a political show by any means,” he insists. “That would take the fun out of it.”

Taverner is more than firearms. In addition to being what Brian Tominaga — one of his listeners who told me of the show — described as “a walking encyclopedia of guns and firearms history,” he is also a collector or cars, a collector of guitars, and a musician who toured with his band around the world, later booking acts for some of the clubs in Hollywood.

It’s only an hour, but it is a fun little show. Past recording of it are on the KRLA and KABC websites (870theanswer.com and abc.com, respectively), as well as https://gunslingerradio.com.

High Fidelity Broadcasting

Ask almost anyone under the age of 50 if AM radio sounds good, and — if they even know what AM is — the likely answer will be “no.” Indeed, even one of the inventors of AM — Amplitude Modulation — radio, Edwin Howard Armstrong, so hated the sound of AM that he went out and invented an entirely new broadcasting method: Frequency Modulation, or FM.

But what most people don’t understand is that it is not the fidelity, per se, that caused Armstrong to head back to the lab. It was interference. Lightening, for example, makes AM broadcasts crackle. The problem with fidelity is entirely different, though very much related: in an effort to reduce interference from the atmosphere, man-made sources and from adjacent stations, radio manufacturers long ago decided to limit the fidelity of most AM receivers by reducing he audio bandwidth, or the range of sounds heard, to little better than the sound of a telephone.

It wasn’t always that way. Back in 1959, WLW/Cincinnati installed a new transmitter and built new studios, the combination of which allowed them to broadcast from as low as 17 Hz to as high as 21,500 Hz — better than typical adult human hearing. For comparison, analog stereo FM broadcasts from 20 to 15,000 Hz.

Station management began calling WLW “the nation’s highest-fidelity station” when the station debuted its new facilities in January 1959. R. J. Rockwell, vice president of WLW engineering at the time told Broadcasting Magazine, “There seems to be a prevailing misconception that AM stations are limited in their permissible bandwidth … (we’ve proven that) high fidelity transmission can be accomplished in the AM band.”

Unfortunately, Rockwell and his associates couldn’t do anything thing about interference, which is the AM band’s kryptonite. Modern technology can fix some of it, but crackles and static will always be a problem. So what is the the future of AM? Opinions vary, and I have my own ideas. Stay tuned …

Radio: April 29, 2022

A slightly more normal ratings period, to a point — no major holidays or locally big events … though the Ukraine invasion is certainly having an effect — led to a March ratings period with few surprises. Nielsen released the results last week.

Of note, however, is the Ukraine effect: with KFI (640 AM) and KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM) both up substantially. In KFI’s case, it was a jump of more than half a point from February,, a full point since January, and almost 2 points from the holiday season making for a 57 percent increase in the ratings so far this year and a solid 5th place finish. KNX was not as dramatic, but rose substantially as well - up 39 percent so far this year, seventh place overall in March.

Was some of the KNX increase due to the new FM simulcast? Possibly, but in my opinion unlikely. As the ratings are released as a combination, only insiders know and they aren’t saying. Interestingly, however, outside of KFI and KNX, the other talk or information stations were essentially unchanged.

The overall winner for the month, of course, was adult contemporary juggernaut KOST (103.5 FM), which settled down to a post-holiday 5.5 share of the audience, more than half a point above second-place KRTH’s (101.1 FM) 4.9. Third place was a tie between KTWV The Wave (94.7 FM) and My FM KBIG (104.3 FM) at 4.8, showing just how close those stations are. In fact, statistically speaking, I’d consider places two through five as a tie.

KLOS (95.5 FM) is on fire … earning the highest rating the station has seen in quite some time: 3.0, and 11th place overall. Go Country KKGO (105.1 FM) did very well, too, tying Spanish adult hits station Jose-FM KLYY (97.5) at 14th with a 2.7. Right above that? Real (KRRL, 92.3 FM) and another Spanish adult hits station Recuerdo KRCD (simulcast on 98.3 and 103.9 FM) tied for 12th at 2.8. Can you say close?

Alt (KYSR, 98.7 FM) — still calling itself “LA’s New Alternative” more than a decade after it actually was “new” — once again beat format originator KROQ (106.7 FM), but the two were closer than they’ve been in a while: 2.2 vs 1.4 overall, respectively. I still think changes are coming to KROQ, sometime sooner than later.

The highest-rated public station? 16th place KPCC (89.3 FM) with a 2.4 share of the audience.

You may wonder why the station streams toward the end of the list are not included in the main station ratings. This is due to the streams not being 100% duplicative. For example, some commercials may be changed or removed. The m Ian programming is the same, however, so I’d personally count them together if I had the choice. This would move Jack, KRTH and The Wave all up by 0.2 shares.

Each rating is an estimate the percentage of listeners aged six and older, tuned to a station between the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight. © 2022 Nielsen. May not be quoted or reproduced without prior written permission from Nielsen.

KOST (5.5) 2. KRTH (4.9) 3. KBIG, KTWV (4.8) 5. KFI (4.7) 6. KLVE (4.4) 7. KNX (3.9) 8. KCBS-FM (Jack), KIIS-FM (3.7) 10. KLAX (3.2)
KLOS (3.0) 12. KRCD, KRRL (2.8) 14. KKGO, KLYY (2.7) 16. KPCC (2.4) 17. KSCA (2.3) 18. KJLH, KXOL, KYSR (2.2)
KBUE, KCRW, KPWR (2.1) 24. KLLI (2.0) 25. KUSC (1.8) 26. KDAY, KLAC, KROQ (1.4) 29. KKJZ (1.0) 30. KABC, KEIB, KFWB, KRLA (0.9)
KDLD (0.8) 35. KCSN, KFSH, KSPN, KWIZ (0.7) 39. KKLA (0.3) 40. KCBS-FM Stream, KPFK, KRTH Stream, KTWV Stream (0.2) 44. KHJ, KMZT, KROQ HD-2, KTNQ, KWKW (0.1)

Tribute

Shana — aka Shana LiVigni, though she never used her last name on the air, was a pioneering woman on local radio. Making her big-city debut on San Francisco’s KFRC, moving South to KHJ (930 AM) and later to FM via KLOS and many more, she was equally at home playing the hits on legendary top-40 powerhouses as she was introducing album cuts on the album rock leaders.

Always a fan favorite, she passed away far too young at the age of 62 back in 2015 (https://www.dailynews.com/2015/07/22/female-radio-pioneer-shana-livigni-dies/).

Retro Radio Joe just posted a tribute to Shana, where you can hear her evolution through time and formats from 1975 to 2001 It’s a real treat! Check it out at https://bit.ly/3v56jrJ

View Details

Radio Waves: April 15, 2022

The Radio Return of Bryan Suits

One of the more popular specialty hosts on KFI (640 AM) was Bryan Suits, especially when he hosted The Dark Secret Place on weekends in which he spoke of military operations and related subjects. Suits left the station in 2021 to focus on a paid podcast program.

Suits was an Army medic during Operation Desert Storm, served in the National Guard, and was deployed as part of a NATO mission to Bosnia and as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and more. He was awarded a Bronze Star Medal and was wounded in action several times, eventually being awarded a Purple Heart.

His experience combined with superb storytelling made for a must-listen program; my email was filled for weeks when he left the local airwaves.

Reader Nancy J. recently brought it to my attention that Suits is back on the air. “Don’t know if you’ve covered the most recent whereabouts of Bryan Suits but he has moved back to the Seattle area and, since early February, has a regular drive-time gig on conservative talk radio KTTH,” she wrote.

“From the sounds of it, many SoCal fans are listening via livestream because he reads texts on the air and notes the area codes – 714, 949, 909, 562, etc. including a recent 661 from Bakersfield. The podcasts are available on all platforms.

“The nice thing is to be able to hear salient, intelligent information about the war in Ukraine. He also throws in current references to CA politics as a cautionary tale to the local Washingtonians,” she concluded.

Suits’ new show is live and local for the Seattle area, airing over KTTH from 6-9 a.m. locally. Beginning on February 7th, the program is part of a total revamp of the station’s programming day, though he is among the few local programs. Others include Dan Bongino, Michael Medved, Jason Rantz, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles and Mark Levin … outside of Suits, only afternoon driver Rantz is local to the area.

“When we moved back to Western Washington, the last thing on my mind was radio,” Suits told Radio-Online.com at the launch of the daily show. “After filling in on KTTH mornings, I realized that I was born to do this. This is where I started and found my voice. Someone has to reflect what the sensible people are thinking and thankfully, KTTH is doing that. I’m humbled and grateful to be part of the team that tells the truth every day.”

Suits was previously heard in Seattle on sister station KIRO; in 2002 he left the area to work at KOGO/San Diego (600 AM) and later, KFI.

KTTH programming is available on various apps or through their own podcasting network, but like many stations across the country, the station streams its programming. Access it on the website at https://mynorthwest.com/category/ktth/.

Best April Fool’s “News” Story

“ Audacy Surrenders KNX-AM license, keeps KNX-FM,” screams the headline of an April 1st posting on Facebook’s I Love AM Radio group. The story goes on to say that the city of Torrance has sold the land on which the transmitters are located to developers, so it made sense to just turn in the license.

The tremendously well-done story — good enough to fool a few people — was written by Steve Mittman, who posted a story last year that KHJ (930 AM) was going back to playing music of its Boss Radio days.

Alas … the KHJ story would be great, if it were true.

How’s School?

KCRW (89.9 FM) wants to hear from students by asking the question: How has this school year treated you? The followup? What does “normal” now link like?

KCRW has always been active in reporting on local education issues. If you want to give your perspective on the study, head over to https://kcrw.co/3uoY5uu.

Quick Takes

According to one study, more than one-third of regular radio listeners own a turntable. I do myself, though it is rarely used. Are these listeners/owners hip, or just old? …

The FM simulcast of KNX (1070 AM), heard on 97.1, is no longer in stereo. Is owner Audacy doing this to try to extend the usable range of the signal? With rare exception, monaural signals have a larger clean reception area than do multiplex stereo signals, and without the ability to manually select mono on most receivers, it is a plausible reason. I don’t believe the station has broadcast in mono in my radio listening lifetime …

View Details

Radio Waves: April 8, 2022

Your Favorite App Stations

Two weeks ago I asked for some suggestions regarding what online streams and/or podcasts you liked. Here are some musically tasty treats:

“Love your column in the Press Enterprise.

“We use StreamS to listen to martiniinthemorning.com. Brad “Martini” Chambers and Miriam give us some fun in our mornings. Since it’s a subscription station it’s sort of a family. He usually comes to LA once a week every month and does some great studio interviews like Steve Tyrell, Dave Damiani, Jonny Blu, etc.

“Thanks to Brad we have become friends with many of the artists who carry on the American Songbook today. They are called The Wolfpack (the new Rat Pack), led by Dave Damiani with Landau Eugene Murphy, Sal Valentinetti, Jonny Blu, James Torme, Haley Reinhart, and Renee Olstead. It’s great fun to listen in and hear the classics and the new artists carry on the music.” — Joe B

Chambers should be programming an on-air station, and the fact that he isn’t is an indictment of radio. While at KLAC (570 AM) and XETRA (690 AM), he not only got ratings and brought new listeners to the AM band, he was successful at bringing younger people to the format via playing standards from contemporary artists.

“I don’t remember how I found this site, but they are 3 stations in 1 from the University of Pennsylvania that is such an eclectic mix! I’m an elder, but get so tired of ‘classic rock’ stations, and this has opened up such new stuff to me! PLEASE give it a long listen! bit.ly/38n7b2b. Thanks!” — Sonni Hopkins

I feel the same way … I get tired of the same songs over and over. Frankly, I actually like new music and there is some research I’ll share at a later date claiming that listening to new music is actually good for your brain.

“Oldies – Big 8 Radio.com (programmed by radio vet Charlie O’Brien)

“Indie rock- BAGeL Radio (live-hosted 480 Minutes show, originating on Fridays, is ‘The Place’ to go for breaking new music mixed with deep-cuts classic alternative) Both are available via several streaming aggregators as well as directly at the own websites. Cheers! —Mark, London, UK

Wow … a true long distance listener!

“Some time back you wrote about Accuradio. Another very similar service is SomaFM (https://somafm.com/). Like Accuradio they offer a variety of stations, and like Accuradio they claim that their music is hand-selected and not generated by algorithm. I have listened to some of their stations and haven’t like many of them much, but one I really do enjoy is Left Coast 70s. It’s roughly similar to Yacht Rock in SiriusFM. Left Coast 70s is available via TuneIn, so it makes it easy to listen to on my Amazon Echo.

“By the way, I have The Mellow Sound set up as an Alexa routine, so I just say ‘Alexa, play the Tribute Station.’ That works much better as Alexa easily gets confused about stations on myTunerRadio.” — Mike Christie, Hemet

It’s an art sometimes getting some stations to play on smart speakers, but well worth the time. The shortcut you mention (and a similar one with the others) is a great way to make it work better.

“We found Q102.3 Palm Springs when we were there a few years ago. It is a locally owned radio station that plays classic rock and we LOVE it. Hope you like it as well.” — Tish Husak

KRHQ is available on TuneIn and the station website at https://q102classicrock.com

“I watched a movie, ‘Music In Exile’ about the effects of Hurricane Katrina at the end of November 2021. Two public radio stations were mentioned, WWOZ (90.7 FM) in New Orleans and KRVS (88.7 FM) in Lafayette. Both play all the types of music I love. I was able to find them on the Radio Garden app and stream them frequently via my phone and JBL Bluetooth speaker. I also listen to Xpression3.16 and Radio Panamericana from Peru as my wife is from there and we both enjoy the music.” — Bob Beberfall, Ontario, CA

I have to try the Radio Garden app … you are not the first to suggest it.

“Enjoy your column immensely. Here are my favorite streaming radio stations: https://www.psychedelicjukebox.com; WWOZ for New Orleans music; and WPKN and WKZE for eclectic” — Bob Andrews, Huntington Beach

WWOZ, WPKN and WKZE are all found on the various tuner apps.

“One of my favorite online stations is KFXM 98.3 Lancaster. An oldies that is similar to K-Earth of days past. Not being able to get 91X here on LA radio it is another fav … Both are on MyTunerRadio and other apps. — Bill “telephonebill” Lodge, Redondo Beach

“My wife and I have close ancestral ties to England which may explain why our musical tastes are somewhat reserved.

“1. Smooth Radio London (FM 102.2).

“2. Exclusive Radio, from Dubai. Over 500 “stations” of a wide variety of music. No commercials, just a brief station ID between songs. Our favorite station is the Moody Blues.

“3. Classic FM, London. Perfect for a quiet Sunday morning. Includes interesting background about the classical music they play

“We enjoy your weekly columns in the Riverside Press Enterprise.” — R/John, Riverside.

“I saw you asking for people’s favorite online station and thought I’d offer mine. It’s laoldies.com. I used to listed to it on AM when there and then on HD radio, but now listen via app or online at home. The songs of my life are always good to hear again.” — Susan B

“I have been listening to the ACCU Radio app quite frequently since you had it in your column. They have quite a range, and I listen to new music, to me anyway, almost every day.

“There is a great radio station that I listen to out of Auckland, New Zealand. It is ‘The Sound.’ I like to listen to it over the website at https://www.thesound.co.nz/home.html, but it can also be found on myTuner and TuneIn Radio. — Jere Seitz

All great suggestions … keep them coming; I’ll check all of them out.

View Details

Radio Waves: April 1, 2022

Cold Cases with Steve Gregory

Saturday, April 2 marks the start of the second season for KFI’s (640 AM) Unsolved series hosted by Steve Gregory. The program runs every Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m.

Unsolved tells the story of major crimes that went cold, ran out of leads, or just lacked evidence. They remain on the books of local and federal police agencies — LA County Sheriffs, Los Angeles Police, Riverside Sheriffs, the FBI and more — waiting for that last bit of evidence or a new witness to finally be solved … and the exposure of someone like Gregory.

The show also covers crimes that Gregory calls “challenging,” giving behind-the-scenes looks at how they were solved and what techniques detectives used to gain information and insight.

It was actually an accidental show, or perhaps the better word would be unintentional. “I had done a segment on the Gary and Shannon Show (heard 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.),” explained Gregory, “and listeners responded very positively. (KFI Programmer) Robin Bertolucci liked it as well, and when I passed her in the hallway I joked about doing a weekly show. She stopped and thought about it… we talked over the next few weeks … and eventually, it happened.”

After figuring a way to work it into his already busy schedule, that is. He’s still a prime reporter for the KFI news team. This explains a bit about why there were only eleven episodes in season one – ten shows involving cases and one show with a recap of the ten recorded live in front of a studio audience and featuring detectives and investigators involved in the cases. Hopefully there will be more in season two.

“There are more than 10,000 unsolved homicides in Southern California,” says Gregory … so he has a lot of material to work with. “At first some of the agencies were reluctant to talk openly about many of the cases; now they contact me regarding cases they want to expose more!”

If you can’t already tell, I love shows like this … think of Cable TV’s former Homicide Hunter and you can see my TV binge viewing habits. Gregory — seven-time recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for journalism as well as awards from the Associated Press and more — is a fantastic host. His background in news includes investigative reporting; that, along with his interest in mysteries and police work makes him the perfect host for this show.

You can hear the entire first season at https://kfiam640.iheart.com/featured/unsolved-with-steve-gregory/.

Coming Home

Raph (Raphael) Opida, once heard on KIIS-FM (102.7) until he left Los Angeles in 2021 to serve in the New York Army National Guard, has come home to take on the assistant programmer/afternoon-drive personality positions at sister My FM (KBIG, 104.3 FM). He can be heard on the air from 3 to 7 p.m starting March 28.

Sounds Good

Is it my imagination, or is KIIS-FM sounding a bit better as of late? Musically more balanced, a bit less clutter in presentation. Ratings edging back up. Could top-40 radio be on an upward swing as of late?

Realignment

Just in time for April Fool’s Day, and due to mobile phone popularity and a shortage of available frequencies for mobile service, the FCC has decided to just shut down the AM band as of April 1st. The entire AM band will soon be used by mobile services, which need the extra bandwidth due to the popularity of hard-hitting internet news and information services such as TikTok and Instagram.

Nothing as drastic is expected for now on the FM band, though current stations will move to the old Armstrong band between 42 and 50 MHz on the FM dial and cease broadcasting in stereo. Asked for comment, the FCC could not be found. Weird.

Happy April fools Day! …

View Details

Radio Waves: March 25, 2022

Changes Coming to KROQ?

Kaplan leaves the PD post

Are the winds of change circling around KROQ (106.7 FM) once more? Perhaps. Mike Kaplan has stepped down as programmer of the once-popular station, deciding to focus on his duties in New York where he will remain Audacy’s “Brand Manager” for their alternative Alt 92.3 and vice-president of national programming for all of Audacy’s alternative stations, including KROQ.

Prior to joining Audacy, Kaplan was programmer of our own Alt 98.7 (KYSR, 98.7 FM) which is owned by iHeart.

According to RAMP – Radio and Music Professionals (ramp247.com) – which broke the story, “Mike has come to the conclusion, personally and professionally, that this is best for him. He also believes KROQ deserves a Brand Manager solely dedicated to the brand and one that lives in Los Angeles 24/7.” This, apparently, made in a statement to RAMP by an Audacy spokesperson.

Reading between the lines is important here. KROQ was being programmed from out of town, as are many of Audacy’s stations, in this case New York. The very idea that the company that owns KROQ thought it could be programmed from New York shows that few in Audacy understand KROQ … or radio, for that matter. No wonder KROQ is faring so poorly as of late in the ratings.

That’s the Audacy way, of course, as determined by leader David Field. Run it on the cheap. Time and time again, Audacy proves you get what you pay for. But I digress.

“Audacy Los Angeles has a once in a lifetime opening for a creative genius to lead the World Famous KROQ” reads the announcement for Kaplan’s replacement. “This person has a passion for music, entertainment and culture. They are immersed in the latest social media trends and marketing shifts. Most importantly, this person is a big thinker, highly detail oriented and a dynamic leader.”

Supposedly the duties include overseeing day to day music, which would be nice. With the reboot of 91X in San Diego causing such a buzz, will KROQ follow suit? More importantly, Will the new programmer, er, Brand Manager be allowed to truly control the sound of KROQ?

That’s the critical question, and in my mind more important than anything else. Los Angeles is not New York. KROQ is not like anything else, or at least should not be. KROQ has a long history of setting trends, not following them, and the new PD must be given the ability to control it. Fully. If that happens, the future of KROQ is bright. Hopefully Field understands this now.

That the resignation announcement made the point that KROQ deserves its own says a lot about Kaplan. Count me impressed. I look forward to seeing where KROQ ends up.

Cart Narcs

One of the great bits on Alt 98.7’s 5-10 a.m. morning Woody Show is Cart Narcs, in which people who don’t put their shopping carts back in the collection stall are publicly shamed in an attempt to get them to better behave.

It’s been a part of the Woody Show as long as I can remember; the audio of encounters of the Cart Narcs with the cart violators being quite entertaining. What I did not realize until I accidentally stumbled upon them while watching my latest online video vice – car repairs from Rainman Ray (https://www.youtube.com/c/RainmanRaysRepairs) – was that Cart Narc videos are on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/CartNarcs). And as it turns out, Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/cartnarcs/?hl=en), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@.cart_narcs?lang=en) and the Woody Show website (thewoodyshow.com) itself as well.

If you’ve never heard it, the Narcs will directly confront people who put their carts around parking lots, risking damage to other cars as well as taking up parking spaces. Normally, the encounters are fairly benign, but there are times when the violators get a bit, well, angry. On Woody’s show, the content is cleaned up… I never knew how dangerous some of the encounters can be until I watched the videos.

And if you haven’t heard the Woody Show on Alt … what are you waiting for?

App Radio

I listen a lot to radio via my iPhone apps, myTunerRadio and StreamS HiFi Radio, and my plan over the next few months is to highlight great stations you can hear over these apps and others.

But it occurred to me that I am just one person … combined with your knowledge and your experience, perhaps I can compile a list of great stations from all across the world that I can let everyone know about.

So send me your favorite online stations, whether they be online only or a stream of an existing AM or FM signal. Podcasts too, for a separate edition … if you like it, let me know what it is and preferably how to receive it.

View Details

Radio: March 18, 2022

I recently bought a tuner off of an online marketplace - a Denon TU680NAB, arguably one of the best tuners of the modern age. It was developed by Denon in cooperation with the National Association of Broadcasters to showcase the best of what AM and FM radio offered back in 1993, the year it was released to the public, and included improved AM and FM reception and fidelity.

I wrote about it soon after it was released, though I returned the unit I had bought in favor of keeping the competing Carver TX11b. Both the Denon and the Carver featured AM stereo reception utilizing the Motorola C-Quam standard, one of four competing stereo broadcasting standards available for AM, and the most-widely adopted in the United States.

I probably kept the Carver more from snobbery than anything else, though like the Denon it offered amazing reception on both bands, great sound, and great looks. I still own it today.

But the Denon was always something special, so when I saw a great deal online, I decided to grab it. The funny thing is that I almost didn’t … shipping was more than I had hoped, though in total it was still a very fair price. I actually tried to cancel the order but felt guilty when the seller said they had already sent it even though I had not paid them yet. So I bit the bullet, sent the money, and like my Dad used to do when he bought collectables … didn’t tell my wife what I did.

I have yet to do a side-by-side comparison of the new model with the Carver, or even the JC Penny MCS tuner that also receives AM stereo. Of course no local AM stations even broadcast in stereo, so that can’t be compared. But listening to AM on the Denon so far is pure joy.

Even without stereo, and even though there is more interference on the band than there was in 1992, the sound is stunning. Special noise blanking circuitry minimizes much of the local interference from sources that “buzz,” like fluorescent lights and electric motors. The frequency response on AM is tremendous, extending past 9 kHz, according to tests run in 1993, far past the typical 3 kHz most AM tuners since the 1980s allow. And it shows. AM sounds great.

FM reception is similarly impressive. Even with just a standard wire antenna — I have yet to connect it to my house antenna — the stations it receives are clear and easy to tune, even when short-spaced and coming from as far away as San Diego … on a clear day, of course.

This tuner is theoretically obsolete. HD tuners and radios have theoretically replaced traditional analog tuners, especially in cars. In reality, all tuners are obsolete … so much listening is done online using smart speakers, smartphone apps, and online computer listening to either traditional AM and FM stations that stream their signals, or services such as Spotify and Apple Music that are online exclusives.

But I can’t help but wonder - if the NAB could convince radio manufacturers to make tuners with specifications like those found in the Denon — whether or not they also feature HD — perhaps analog broadcasting could have a couple more decades to compete. Especially if AM stations that mostly dropped HD broadcasts turn on analog stereo again. Certainly seems to be worth a shot.

Back on the Air

KRDC (1110 AM) was off the air for about two weeks due to transmitter work apparently related to upgrades that will allow KSPN (710 AM) to share the transmitter site. Increased land values are causing AM station owners to rethink and repurpose their vast landholdings used for transmitter sites; KSPN is expected to begin sharing the 1110 transmitter site in the near future, though an exact date has not been officially announced.

New Voices on 88.5

Julie Slater will take over the 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. mid-day slot on Adult Alternative 88.5 (KCSN, 88.5 FM). She replaces Marc Kaczor, who will remain at the station and focus on his duties as program director. Slater started her shift on March 14.

New to the Saturday lineup on 88.5 is Lesley James, who will anchor the Saturday lineup from 12 noon to 4 p.m. starting March 19. James replaces no-one, as the station ran jockless during most of her new show hours; Don James will now start his show at 4 p.m. rather than 3:00.

Auction

By the time the print edition arrives, the auction will be over. But if you catch this online, you can try to bid on a piece of broadcast history when Casey Kasem’s estate goes on the auction block at 1 p.m. Pacific time March 17th.

Beverly Hills-based Julien’s Auctions (juliensauctions.com) will be handling the sale, which will include his Neumann microphone, his collection of vinyl records, a Fender guitar signed by the Beach Boys, and much more.

It is doubtful that Kasem’s children are too happy about the sale. But that’s just a hunch …

View Details

The Great 91 X-periment

The Great 91X Experiment, in which San Diego’s XETRA (91.1 FM) has become what the program director calls a format of one is quite intriguing. Many observers are trying to pigeonhole the format by calling it “classic alternative,” but that misses the point … and honestly proves that many supposed insiders really don’t understand the format.

91X, like KROQ (106.7 FM) here, didn’t start as “alternative.” That description is more recent, and reflected a tightening of the playlist that came long after the initial success. The stations began as a “rock” or rock and new wave, playing music that was really meant to be cutting edge, heard first here and later on other stations. Rick Carroll, who was the programmer that brought KROQ to its heights in the 1980s and was an early consultant when 91X adopted the format, actually considered it a form of top-40, but both stations were definitely close to mainstream.

To borrow the slogan from UCLA’s student station, the idea what they were playing “tomorrow’s sound today,” i.e. the songs that you’ll hear on other stations later. And it was true. KROQ and 91X were both early players of Prince, Pet Shop Boys, The Clash, English Beat, Duran Duran, The Cars, Sparks, The Police and Devo, all the while still playing mainstream artists such as the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys.

Something happened along the way, and I don’t know why. The playlist got tighter and tighter. Eventually, rather than being the station where you’d hear music months before it was played on other stations, it was the music you’d hear only there.

So while the observers have a point - there is more “gold” in the 91X format now than before the switch, the reason has a very positive potential. The songs being added — primarily from the early 1980s, in place of more recent alternative hits — are being added in part because the audience loved them during an A-XYZ special the station ran, playing songs that had not been played win the air in years.

And there’s the rub. Many listeners are so young, they never heard the songs in the first place. Talking Heads. Adam Ant. Ramones. Red Hot Chili Peppers. And if listeners respond positively to songs they never heard before — new to them — that means there is the potential to add new songs without, as programmers always fear, scaring them off. New music is new music.

91X has the potential of becoming a radio station that actually attracts younger people back to radio. That would be a good thing. I’ll be watching this closely … stations around the country will be as well.

Slightly off topic but still related … the 91X website is well-designed and fun to visit, easy to navigate and informative. Check it out at 91x.com.

Boss Radio Request Line

“I recently read your tribute article to Sam Riddle. I was hoping you might be able to help me with a riddle of my own. I am the owner of the KHJ Boss Radio's Surfin'Bird, a 1956 Thunderbird built by legendary customizer Bill Cushenbery, given away by the Boss Jocks in August of 1966.

“In combing through known radio broadcasts, etc I have been unable to find out who originally won the car. The promotion ended August 8th with the winner being announced on the Dick Curtis 18 to 34 Show.

“I am unable to find any radio spots that mentioned the winner, which is odd, as most contest winners were mentioned on air. I was hoping you might have have some insight as to how to contact Gary Mack or Johnny Williams. There are many great stories surrounding this great promotion, and unfortunately all the people that know are leaving us.

“Here is a links to information I have compiled to date around this great moment in radio history. And help or ideas are greatly appreciated.” — Kevin Bennett

The links Kevin provided are: https://kustomrama.com/wiki/The_KHJ_Surfin%27_Bird\ and http://thesurfinbird.weebly.com/history.html … if you or someone you know has the answer, please let me know!

View Details

Guest: Dave Beasing, Sound That Brands

Radio: March 4, 2022

If I wanted to, I could write about radio ratings every week. They are released by Nielsen (officially) every month — years ago it was just quarterly — and there are so many demographic breakdowns that I could start doing nothing but in-depth analysis on exactly who, what and where people listen to their favorite station broken down by ethnicity, age, sex, and more.

That, of course, would be a bit dull after a while, so I tend to stay with quarterly reports and the largest demographic - people aged six and older - unless something interesting comes up. Something interesting came up.

But it’s not really in the way anyone might have thought. I refer to the ratings of KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM). I have not seen the breakdown by demographic yet, but it is interesting what Nielsen has done when it comes to how it places the station on the list. Rather than comparing its ratings as an AM station running the all-news format over the past six months, the ratings company is using the FM signal.

This raises an obvious question of why, due to the fact that the FM simulcast was added to the AM signal, not the other lazy around. So a fair comparison would be the new combined AM-FM ratings against what KNX earned as a standalone AM.

Related was the big surprise to me: as a combo, the signals are no better than was KNX as an AM signal alone. So creating the simulcast, thus far, has done nothing ratings-wise.

For the month of January, KNX AM/FM earned a 3.1 share of the ratings. In the Holiday ratings - the last four weeks of the fiscal ratings year, also as a combo - the station had a 2.8, lower most likely due to the KOST (103.5 FM) holiday music juggernaut. But compared with Holiday, ’21, KNX as a standalone AM earned a 3.2, in June ’21 it had a 2.8, and in September had a 3.0. Basically, the ratings have held stead at a very respectable level throughout the year, as they have for many decades.

But you wouldn’t know that by looking at the latest list. Nielsen shows KNX (now called KNX-FM) with a full point increase due to the simulcast, moving from a 1.8 share to the aforementioned Holiday season 2.8 and then January’s 3.1. I don’t know - and don’t think - it is anything truly sinister, but what it doesn’t show is the total loss of at least a 1.5 share, the average 97.1 FM earned when it played top-40 as KNOU ands earlier as KAMP.

In other words, while it is far too early to tell, KNX has not attracted any new listeners, at least as measured by total audience, since adding the FM simulcast, and has in fact lost a substantial share of what they earned as separate stations.

As I said: interesting.

And I know I’m alone here - I don’t expect this to change much. I predict that over time, there will be a few listeners who switch to the FM signal. But my hunch is that most will stay with the AM, and the FM will attract few new listeners in the long run. The FM signal just doesn’t add much appeal over the flamethrower AM — especially for a spoken word format heard over hundreds of miles including many the FM doesn’t even reach — not to mention the available smartphone apps.

New X

San Diego’s version of KROQ (106.7 FM) — XETRA (91.1 FM), officially licensed to Baha California, Mexico — has been playing some form of new-wave or alternative since 1983. They were the first to do so full-time in San Diego.

But like KROQ here, the station just isn’t the trendsetting station it once was, beaten usually, though close, by competitor KBZT (Alt 94.9 FM) and as far down the list as alternative stations tend to be recently. Alternative is a tough format to be in right now.

So the station is revamping itself into itself … embracing classic alternative rock as well as highlighting new music. Still called 91X, the station has expanded its depth so much that some are calling the format “Classic Alternative.” Programmer Garrett Michaels insists that new music will stay, however.

One thing I noticed in looking at the San Diego ratings: Active Rock station KIOZ (105.3 FM) beats them all: 91X, KBZT, and our own KROQ and At 98.7. Active Rock has fewer limitations on what can be played within the format , and can lean alternative, metal, or anything else as audience tastes evolve. KROQ itself was once closer to Active than Alternative. My favorite streaming station, Rock 108 from Waterloo, Iowa, is Active Rock.

For comparison, in San Diego’s ratings, KIOZ is 4th place with a 4.9 share, KBZT is 16th at 2.2, and 91X is 18th with a 1.9. Without knowing what the new 91X will do, the question to me remains: why isn’t Active Rock being done in Los Angeles, against Alt 98.7’s 2.4 and KROQ’s 1.4?

View Details

Radio: February 25, 2022

Jim “Poorman” Trenton is expanding his Morning Rush show’s reach by simulcasting all but the last hour of his weekday 6-11 a.m. low-powered community station KOCI (101.5 FM) show on Radio Suerte KLIE (90.3 FM), another low-powered community station.

KOCI covers Costa Mesa and Newport Beach; KLIE is licensed to Fountain Valley but can be heard as far away as San Pedro, depending on the weather. Both stations can be heard via streaming on their webpages (KOCIradio.com and radiosuerte.com) as well as on various smartphone apps.

Poorman says his show will stay exactly as it is now, with a theme each morning giving the basis for the songs that are played. Every song suggested has to fit the theme in some way, so, for example, if the theme was “the evening,” or even “fabric,” you might hear Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues.“It’s an all-request show already,” explains Poorman, “so you never really know what’s going to be played next. I’m really excited to see what the new audience comes up with for suggestions.”

KOCI will air the last hour of the Morning Rush exclusively due to programming needs on KLIE.

Making Restaurant Dreams Come True

Speaking of Radio Suerte … Want to make your dreams come true? If your dream consists of owning a restaurant, Radio Suerte wants to help you out.

Airing Wednesdays from 1-3 p.m., the Frank Garcia Show will give advice and assist anyone who would like to open their own restaurant. Garcia’s experience comes from his own life as a restauranteur and philanthropist, as owner of La Casa Garcia in Anaheim and the founder of We Give Thanks, the non-profit that sponsors the annual free Thanksgiving dinner at the Honda Center.

According to station manager Maria Luisa Luna, Garcia is getting more involved in both the station and one of her proudest activities: feeding the homeless. “We feel very blessed because — since 1987 — we’ve been taking care of the homeless and less fortunate in our communities due to the generosity of Victor Mendez — the star of Radio Suerte. Frank Garcia has agreed to step in, and from now on he will sponsor the International Crusade of the Penny by giving us all the food necessary, lending his dishes, and lending his delivery truck for us to take food to different destinations.”

The station sponsors the events once per month.

Radio Book Review

I happened across two books recently, both of which have at their heart, broadcasting. They are written by former stars of both radio and that trendy thing called television, and fun, excellent reads.

50 Years of Celebrity Chatter (2021) by Bill Diehl gives a personal and behind the scenes look at the celebrities and stars who Diehl was able to interview throughout his own career working radio, first independently and locally, followed by a long career with ABC Radio where he spent five decades … the first 36 years as a staff correspondent and later — as he says “after retirement” — as a freelancer.

If you were a celebrity during that time, Diehl probably interviewed you. Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Charlie Chaplin, Celine Dion, Liza Minnelli, Tom Hanks, John Denver, Barbara Streisand, Tony Bennett, Peter Jennings, Esther Williams, Katherine Hepburn, Larry King, Sharon Stone, Steve Allen … they are all there, just to name a few.

Diehl presents the stars as the people that they were and are, including personal recollections of the events leading to the interviews as well as something interesting that may have happened while talking … such as the time Robin Williams asked for carfare home after the interview was done. “One of our assistants gave him five dollars,” Diehl recalls.

Diehl isn’t name dropping; he takes his work seriously, and in fact used to be among the writers at ABC Radio who pre-prepared and updated celebrity memorials in case they passed away suddenly. In this book he presents his interviewees as regular people, like you might just meet on the street.

It’s a fun read, not overly intense, and very entertaining. Well worth checking out.

In Bed with Broadcasting, a Memoir (2017) by Ken Davis takes you on a trip through time with award-winning writer, producer, editor and on-air reporter Davis, who spent the majority of his career in television — he began anchoring news on NBC-affiliate KOAI-TV in Flagstaff, Arizona at the age of 20 — but his roots are in radio via work during college, so I think it’s OK to mention him here. Besides, television is nothing more than radio with pictures, right?

Davis calls broadcasting his “mistress,” and that helps set up the life’s story he provides about the trials, tribulations, occasional ethical concerns, and the people he ran across throughout his more than 40 years in the business.

He tells the story of the time he decided to — finally — devote an entire day to his family, only to almost miss out on the biggest news story of the year. Of the time Walter Cronkite asked Davis what he thought of Cronkite’s replacement Dan Rather, then turned the conversation toward Davis himself.

That one sticks out because it shows how serious Cronkite was when it came to news.

“The old newspaperman let out a deep breath and tapped those long fingers on the table.” Davis wrote of the conversation he had. “You can’t just pretend to be an objective journalist. You have to walk the walk” Cronkite told him.

“Then he said something that I’ve repeated to journalism students over the years. ‘Respect your audience. A reporter’s only job is to hold up a clear mirror and truthfully show what’s happened.’ He leaned closer. ‘Opinions have no place in our business. Even my own kids don’t know how I vote.’”

It’s an easy read that envelops you into the world of Davis, his family and his career, and the balance involved that occasionally becomes difficult to master. The insights and behind the scenes information help garner a renewed respect for true journalism, that often seems to be lacking today. Again, another highly-recommended

View Details

Radio: February 18, 2022

Years ago, it was relatively common for radio stations to give away special radios that tuned only to one station: theirs. The novelty radios were essentially transistor radios with the normal tuning knob removed and special circuitry that locked on to a single frequency.

Something similar is happening to certain radios in the Seattle, Washington area: some factory-installed radios in 2014-2017 model-year Mazda automobiles are locking on to just one station, KUOW, at 94.9 FM.

Perhaps the slogan for the station should be “The Outer Limits,” since they are taking control of the radio. But I digress.

KUOW is an NPR station that broadcasts using HD Radio technology. According to radio engineering newspaper Radio World (radio world.com) and a statement on the KUOW website (kuow.org), they are aware of the issue but don’t know exactly what is happening.

Service managers at local Mazda dealerships have — as has the station itself — been inundated with complaints regarding the issue, in which the infotainment systems in the cars go into a cycle where they lock up or continually reboot. For whatever reason, the radios will then lock on to KUOW and only allow for volume changes.

The station has been talking with engineers from Xperi, the company that invented and licenses the HD Radio system to stations and receiver manufacturers, in an attempt to determine what is going on. One theory says that some sort of data may have been sent with the station’s signal, such as images that can be displayed on the screen, and they may have inadvertently corrupted some of the programming code that runs the infotainment systems.

The station shared with Radio World a statement from Mazda, reading in part: “Between 1/24 and 1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014-2017 Mazda vehicles with older software … Mazda North American Operations will support impacted customers with replacement parts” … at least once they are available. And perhaps after the issue that caused it is truly identified.

KUOW says that the HD Radio system in the vehicles pulls images from an NPR database, and uses local images from the station when an NPR image is not available. This technically means that the issue could be more widespread than though, and it may affect other areas of the country — and potentially other radios — if a fix isn’t found.

It is also possible that the KUOW lock may just be a side effect of a programming error caused by another station. Consider that I’ve had digital radios go bad in thew past that locked onto particular stations when they rebooted, just by coincidence.

In the meantime, the great HD Mystery continues. And I guess KUOW’s ratings will benefit!

Rethinking HD

A “questionable” purchase on my part, along with the advancement of other technologies, has me rethinking the future of HD Radio itself. And this came about before the KUOW saga.

Back in the early 1990s, the National Association of Broadcasters got together with Denon to produce what was to be the ultimate tuner, designed to take advantage of all known technologies to help in the reception not only of FM, but AM as well … including a wider, high-fidelity bandwidth, an AM stereo decoder, noise reduction, and more.

It was called the TU680NAB, and it was quite a tuner. I tested one out but ultimately preferred (and bought) the competing Carver TX11b, partly because I slightly preferred the overall reception, and I was a bit of a Carver snob. But the Denon was considered among the best tunes ever produced, due to its sensitive tuning and extended fidelity, especially on AM.

HD Radio came later, and rendered it essentially obsolete, due to its HD’s improved fidelity, the extra channels on FM, and the complete lack of noise and interference on AM. But problems quickly arose, due to both interference from the HD signals themselves especially on the AM band, and the licensing costs to run HD streams. In the meantime, apps such as Streams HiFi Audio and myTunerRadio have made online apps more reliable and easier to use, and can tune stations from around the world.

While at one time, HD on AM made for a nice listening experience, most AM stations in Los Angeles and nationwide that once ran the HD signals have turned them off, though HD is still common on FM. True counts are hard to come by, but it would not be a surprise to me if there are more stations broadcasting in analog AM stereo than there are using AM HD.

A group on Facebook that I am part of got me interested in that Denon tuner, and I happened to find one relatively cheap. Just like I remember, it sounds fabulous. I have not compared it to the Carver since the 1990s — I need to get the Carver out of the attic to do so — but it is impressive. AM stations, even though none are in stereo locally, sound fabulous . Better than I remember… So do FMs.

And unlike HD radio, where AM stations only sound good when receiving the digital signal, AM on the Denon sounds great even in mono. Yes, almost as good as FM.

So it got me thinking: why don’t AM stations turn on the stereo again, and pressure radio manufacturers— through the FCC and the NAB — to make tuners capable of receiving stereo and the full fidelity AM can have? It may be only a temporary solution as apps take over broadcasting over the next 20 years, but it would be an easy, inexpensive solution regardless.

As long as AM stations start running formats people want to hear.

///

View Details

YouTube links mentioned in today's show about Howard Hesseman:

Underground FM Radio - part 1

https://youtu.be/VQsAQgS6Xo8

Underground FM Radio - part 2

https://youtu.be/4Y9D_z_bQmc

Radio: February 11, 2022

I was going to do a tribute to Howard Hesseman — aka Dr. Johnny Fever from television’s fictional AM radio station WKRP/Cincinnati — anyway, just due to his realistic portrayal of a DJ on the television show that more accurately portrayed the operation of a radio station that many managers want to admit.

Hesseman passed away last week at the age of 81.

As a radio geek, WKRP was my must-watch show when it ran on CBS television from 1978-1982. There are numerous stories circulating how the station’s characters and antics were based upon people and situations that actually existed and happened; ask anyone who’s ever worked in radio and they can tell you how they worked with pretty much every character on the show.

Even the music was authentic, though at least one observer got that part wrong in their own tribute to Hesseman, stating that WKRP was presented as a top-40 station but actually played album rock. For those alive at the time listening to such stations as Ten-Q here in Los Angeles, the music played on WKRP was absolutely representative of post-bubblegum top-40 radio of the late 1970s. But I digress.

What helped deal the deal for Hesseman to play the part of Fever on the radio was that Hesseman himself was a DJ, though not for long. Bay-area residents may remember hearing a DJ named Don Sturdy playing music on early FM freeform rocker KMPX circa 1967. The stint didn’t last long, but it did give Hesseman an intimate look at radio, and like WKRP, a station that — due to FM rock radio’s infancy — struggled financially and was always on the edge … in fact, legend has it that the father of freeform radio Tom Donahue got the idea for playing the music on KMPX when he called the station and the phone was disconnected.

Hesseman was among his first hires.

Dave Beasing, former programmer of The Sound (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM) and currently the man behind podcast and marketing company Sound that Brands, had this to say: “Somewhere "town to town, up and down the dial", everyone in radio either worked with a Dr. Johnny Fever or was one.

“They were talented, each originals in their own way, and just as rich as the TV character on air and off. A few of them were on the right station at the right time and became beloved local icons. Long before Tik Tok, they brought us together and made us feel cool to belong to something our parents didn't understand. As new generations increasingly access audio on national platforms instead, those Dr. Johnny Fevers are passing, and most won't be replaced.”

Rest in peace, good Doctor.

A Good Sign

The news that Ted Stryker has joined Alt 98.7’s Chris Booker for the new “Afternoons with Booker and Stryker” airing weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. is great news. Not just for Stryker, Booker, or even Alt. It actually is a good sign that at least one programmer understands it isn’t just the music that attracts an audience. Indeed, as my podcast partner Michael Stark always says, “what’s between the records is the important part.”

Stryker is a tremendously talented and among the best personalities on local radio. His on-air style is refreshingly upbeat, positive and funny. I think this will be a great addition to Alt, and I think that KROQ will ultimately regret letting him go.

It also puts him back on afternoons, where he shines. The email I’ve received so far agrees, with letters such as this one from Daniel Klatte stating emphatically, “I love the new (Alt 98.7) afternoon show. The problem is that there are too many shows I love. Kevin and Sluggo, Woody, Klein and Allie, Heidi and Frank. This is one of the best times I can think of for comedy radio!”

A very good problem to have … for both listeners and the radio industry itself. It’s a great move on the part of Alt management.

Happy Birthday

Rez Radio KPRI (91.3 FM) turned 11 years old last week; the station is a service of the Kupa Pala Rez Indians, and broadcasts a low-power signal that covers a small portion of Southern California. You can hear it easier using any smartphone radio app or through the station website at RezRadio.FM

Station manager John Fox recently talked of all the programs the station offers in addition to playing a huge variety of album rock and other music. “We are free of the constraints and demands of commercial radio’s need to cater to advertisers, so the full 60 minutes of every hour are devoted to informing and entertaining. We don’t even browbeat listeners for donations for a solid week every three months like other non-commercial stations.

“Thank your tribe for that.”

View Details

.....with our monthly guest Dave Beasing, "Sound That Brands"

Radio: February 4, 2022

As per usual, the holiday ratings season was especially kind to KOST (103.5 FM) … for years LA’s “official” holiday station. Sure others have tried to steal the station’s Christmas thunder, but none have thus far succeeded … and KOST once again walked away with the top-spot by a long shot, earning a 13.4 share of the ratings for the holiday period covering roughly the last four weeks of 2021. This was almost three times the 4.4 share earned by second-place KRTH (101.1 FM).

Interestingly, the 13.4 was slightly down from the same period in 2020, when KOST earned a whopping 13.9. But it was still a remarkable feat, and the slight decline — well within the typical margin of error — is likely due to supply chain problems. Yes, that was a joke.

The only other full-time holiday station in town, which got a much later start with the music than did KOST, was Go Country 105. It’s an interesting competition, but Go Country just can’t get the huge numbers KOST does, and was in 18th place with a 2.1 share. Is that bad? Well, not really. The 2.1 is in line with Go Country’s normal ratings, and Holiday 2021 was about a half point above the station’s Holiday 2020 share of 1.5 … perhaps it’s beginning to catch on. I personally like the extra choice.

As stated, KRTH was in second place at 4.4; right behind was KLVE (107.5 FM) at 4.3, My FM KBIG (104.3 FM) at 4.2, and rounding out the top-5, The Wave KTWV (94.7 FM) at 3.9. Funny thing about the way … I think their slogan should be along the lines of “always just minutes away from a Michael Jackson song.” But I digress.

Alt 98.7 was the top-rated alternative rock station with a 2.2 share, handily beating KROQ’s 1.5 and adding fuel to the rumor of KROQ sliding into an active rock format. This would actually be a good move for KROQ, as alternative is somewhat of a dying format and very restrictive in what can be played. Active rock encompasses alternative, but is open to far more … and is closer to what made KROQ “world famous” in the first place. It will be interesting to see if the rumor becomes reality.

Adding an FM signal to KNX (1070 AM, 97.1 FM) didn’t help attract a larger audience, at least not yet. The station earned a 2.8 share, up slightly from the previous month’s 2.6, but down from the month before that, when it had a 2.9. Last year during the holiday season it had a 3.2. Make of that what you want, but I still believe in AM radio, and I just can’t help think that it is the content that drives listening more than the band … I am still not convinced that news on FM will be any more popular than on AM. Time will tell.

KFI (640 AM) was the top talker once again, something it has been able to claim for years. Decades, actually. 8th place with a 3.0 share, compared with KEIB’s (1150 AM) 1.1 KRLA’s (870 AM) 1.0, or KABC’s (790 AM) 0.7. Sports talkers KLAC (570 AM) and KSPN (710 AM) earned shares of 1.1 and 0.6, respectively. Outside of KFI, every one of the talk and sports-formatted stations earned better ratings playing music. In some cases, not that long ago.

The one surprise? I can’t find satellite syndicated Christian rocker KKLQ (100.3 FM) … it’s gone, ratings-wise. Last year it was tied for 16th with a 2.1 share of the ratings; this year it’s just … gone. Weird.

Each rating is an estimate of the percentage of listeners aged 6 and over tuned to a station between the hours of 6 a.m. and 12 midnight, as determined by Nielsen.

KOST (13.4) 2. KRTH (4.4) 3. KLVE (4.3) 4. My FM KBIG (4.2) 5. The Wave KTWV (3.9) 6. KIIS-FM (3.6) 7. KLAX (3.1) 8. KFI (3.0) 9. KRCD, KSCA (2.9)
KNX (2.8) 12. Real 92.3 KRRL (2.6) 13. Jack KCBS-FM, KLYY, KXOL (2.5) 16. KBUE, Alt 98.7 KYSR (2.2) 18. Go Country KKGO (2.1) 19. KLOS, KPCC, Power 106 KPWR (1.9)
KJLH, KLLI, KUSC, (1.8) 25. KCRW, KROQ (1.5) 27. KDAY (1.4) 28. KEIB, KLAC (1.1) 30. KDLD, KKJZ, KRLA (1.0)
KFWB (0.9) 34. KABC, 88.5 FM KCSN, The Fish KFSH (0.7) 37. KSPN, KWIZ (0.6) 39. KKLA, KPFK, KTNQ (0.2) 42. KHJ, KTWV Stream, KWKW (0.1)
(Ratings are © 2022 Nielsen. May not be quoted or reproduced without prior written permission from Nielsen.)

HD Changes at 105.1 FM

Classical and oldies have changed places on the digital HD stream, something you may want to note if you own an HD Radio. Effective immediately, the simulcast of classical music heard on KMZT (1260 AM) is found on 105.1 HD2, while oldies on K-Surf are on HD4. Sinatra remains on HD3, and all of the online streams remain the same as well.

Why the switch? From a technical standpoint, it doesn’t really matter - owner Saul Levine and his engineering staff have always been able to get good sound out of the limited digital bandwidth, even splitting out among four station streams. It likely has more to do with making the classical music easier to find on HD radios. Again, the online streams won’t change, nor will any station heard through smartphone apps.

There are minor changes to the K-Surf playlist, however. The focus will remain on music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, but you may hear some more current music … “if it fits the feel of the station,” says Levine.

View Details

A VERY special Radio Waves: An hour long visit with Lyle Gregory, 40 year producer for the recently passed, Radio Hall of Fame member, former KABC-AM host Michael Jackson.

Radio: January 28, 2022

Longtime radio broadcaster Michael Jackson — most known for his talk program heard for many years on KABC (790 AM) during its talk format heydays — passed away January 15th at the age of 87.

His Los Angeles career began in 1963 at KHJ (930 AM), but he gained his radio experience in South Africa, when his family moved there from London when he was 11; Jackson started on the air at the age of 16 in Johannesburg. In 1958 the family moved to the United States, and he quickly landed on the air in San Francisco playing popular music of the day … something he reportedly hated to do.

He worked nights at KHJ — still playing music while incorporating elements of talk — before moving to work in news at KNX (1070 AM) in 1965 just as KHJ was launching the teen-oriented Boss Radio format.

But KABC — where he moved in 1966 — is where he gained real traction. The combination of KABC and Jackson was a perfect fit for both, as KABC was deeply committed to the new talk format and Jackson found a place where he could be what he wanted to be.

Always a gentleman both on an off the air, Jackson was the consummate professional. He treated his guests and listeners with nothing but respect. And he had guests from all walks of life. He leaned liberal personally, but he spoke with political leaders from all sides and treated them all equally well. To say that Jackson was the perfect gentleman puts it lightly. He truly was a class act.

He spent over three decades at KABC and on the syndicated ABC talkradio network, interviewing such newsmakers as advisors to Richard Nixon, then- Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan, Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, and Bill Clinton, and a far-too-long-to-list selection of other politicians, movie and TV stars, musicians, signers, and artists.

Perhaps the one criticism people might have is that he tended to be nice in his interviews, often avoiding what might bee considered tough, in-your-face questions. But that didn’t seem to matter to listeners, who propelled his show toward the top of the ratings for most of his tenure at KABC.

When KFI (640 AM) entered the talk arena, KABC didn’t know how to respond, and management made numerous missteps that led to the decline of the station in general, and Jackson in particular. One such move was putting Jackson in a part time position with no one to take up the slack in his old slot; eventually Jackson left the station for good — the station fired him in 1998, and KABC continued to drop in both ratings and stature under numerous programmers and missed opportunities.

When the original KRLA (now KRDC, 1110 AM) went talk in 1999, Jackson joined the station and revived his show. But KRLA dropped talk soon after and Jackson was out. He later went on to work at KLAC (570 AM), another short time at KNX, and finally KGIL (now KMZT, 1260 AM) before retiring in 2008. He told me at the time that he retired in part to be with his wife, Alana, who was suffering from her own health issues. She died in 2014.

I didn’t realize it, but for the past ten years Jackson was fighting Parkinson’s Disease. That explains his lack of public appearances and the few interviews he did. He kept his own health issues private.

Jackson’s popularity among listeners was strong enough that as recently as last month, I received emails asking where he was and what he was doing. Unfortunately, it had been many years since I was able to connect with him. He really didn’t like to talk about himself, and I suppose that with his declining health and the direction of radio precluding a return to there airwaves, he didn’t see a major reason to talk … I can appreciate his decision. Classy to the end.

In addition to his work on the radio, Jackson played numerous characters in various television shows, including a TV announcer on The Munsters, a news commentator on Police Story, and as the voice of Alfred Pennyworth in 2012’s Batman, The Dark Knight Returns.

There are very few people as closely associated with talk radio as Michael Jackson. He is one of the greats … and hopefully his style of talk radio can some day make a comeback.

Longtime Jackson show producer Lyle Gregory is scheduled to be the guest this week on the RadioWaves podcast with myself and Michael Stark; find it at laradiowaves.com.

View Details

Radio: January 21, 2022

While most of the hosts — the non-students — of 22 West Media’s award-winning Mornings on the Beach, heard on 22 West Media (88.1 HD3 and 22westmedia.com) weekdays from 8-9 a.m., left the program in December, the search for replacements began slowly.

The program is produced on the campus of California State University, Long Beach, and apparently it’s hard to recruit students to host a program on a student-run radio station when said students are off for Winter Break, especially when the latest surge in covid cases has kept the campus closed down more than normal.

But station manager Danny Lemos told me that the search for radio’s next stars has begun in earnest. He calls it The Next Big Broadcast Star Search,” which will be conducted virtually. CSULB students — applicants must be currently registered at the University — with a 'more than average” interest in radio and broadcasting are encouraged to apply through the 22 West Media web page.

Lemos says that sample audio or video files can be uploaded at the time of the application submission. “We are looking for students with a strong interest in broadcasting and a positive attitude to lead the show, learn radio skills, and have a ton of fun!” Questions about the process can be directed to info@22westmedia.com.

The rest of the story

Last week’s tribute to former DJ Billy Pearl, who passed away two weeks ago, included a couple minor inaccuracies. As it turns out, Pearl was indeed hired by one programmer and fired by another, but it was Gary Cagle who hired and Charlie Van Dyke who fired. Insiders tell me that it was Pearl himself who brought his tenure to an end

with a bad attitude … and not a change in station direction. Writing at http://kenlevine.blogspot.com, Pearl’s former college roommate Ken Levine said:

“Apparently he made his displeasure known inside the building to the point where he was let go after maybe one year. And think about it, for a station to fire one of their absolute best and most popular performers, he must’ve driven them scooters.”

Doesn’t take away from his talent, but it does explain the short tenure at KHJ. And reminds us to appreciate our blessings.

Cornucopia of Radio History

I’ve mentioned MixCloud.Com before, a few times at least. Recently the postings are so superb that I have to mention it again.

MixCloud’s Retro Radio Joe (mixcloud.com/retroradiojoe) and Radio Maven 77 (mixcloud.com/rob-frankel) have both been posting material that is a virtual history of top-40, freeform FM and album oriented radio so varied, I honestly have no clue where the material came from. Recent additions include:

• Dusty Street on KROQ (106.7 FM) from 1984. This was still KROQ’s new wave infancy, as it was quickly becoming the place to find new music. Street is one of the originals, and this is a great listen.

• KKDJ’s (now KIIS, 102.7 FM) Rewind ’73 Year in Review with Charlie Tuna. I’ve heard this before, but it is still a great listen. Music and news of 1973, as Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War dominate the newscasts

• Dave Diamond on KBLA (formerly at 1500 AM) from 1965. KBLA was a creative force that had the talent and music … all out lacked was a signal and a budget to truly compete. Diamond is always amazing and this is him in a more relaxed post-KHJ vibe.

• Charlie Tuna on KHJ (930 AM) from 1972. Tuna is one of the best DJs ever, no matter the format. He did top-40, oldies, country, and more. Here he is in his early element, absolutely flawless.

• JJ Jackson from KLOS (95.5 FM) in 1978. Jackson was smooth, smart, and loved music. Here he is long before his MTV VJ gig, using the on-air style only he could do.

B. Mitchel Reed on KLOS from 1981. Reed is one of the early freeform DJs heard here playing album rock.

Bob Crane on KNX (1070 AM) from 1964. Crane was immensely popular on the radio, with a friendly personality that served him well when he transitioned to television’s Hogan’s Heroes. Here is hosts one of the most popular morning shows ever heard on KNX.

There’s much, much more, including Jack Snyder, Paraquat Kelly and Mary Turner on KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM), a montage of KHJ’s Summer Jam programming from 1975 — which includes Billy Pearl, a separate Pearl recording, and much more. Absolutely worth checking out if you’re a radio geek like me.

///

View Details

Radio: January 14, 2022

Former personality Billy Pearl — most popularly heard playing the hits on KHJ (930 AM), and KIQQ (now KKLQ (100.3 FM); later talking law on KABC (790 AM), passed away January 4th after a two-year battle with esophageal cancer, cancer of the long, hollow tube that runs from the throat to the stomach. He was 71.

His radio career began at UCLA, as part of the campus student-run station. After graduating with a degree in history in 1972, he started his career in radio … a far cry from the teaching career (American history) he had been planning. “When I walked into UCLA's radio station, KLA, my whole life changed,” he once told LARadio.Com’s Don Barrett.

He never worked outside of the Los Angeles area; his first stations after college were KKDJ (now KIIS-FM, 102.7) and K-100 (KIQQ, now KKLQ, 100.3 FM). He arrived at KHJ — at the time the top-rated music station in the country — in 1974 with great fanfare, “part of KHJ’s on-air urban renewal” as was written in a story the Los Angeles Times. In that same story, Pearl told of practicing the KHJ call letters in the shower, long before he was hired, demonstrating how much he wanted to work there. His charm , high-energy, and on-air positive persona impressed both listeners and insiders alike.

Longtime KHJ (and numerous other stations) Production Director Douglas Brown had this to say about Pearl: “Bill was very energetic and focused; he had a great sense of timing on air and was really excited to be at KHJ. He used to sit in the studio getting familiar with the tempo and timing of new song intros and fades as show prep.”

Unfortunately, his tenure at KHJ lasted only about a year; the revolving door of KHJ programmers was the culprit. Pearl was hired by Charlie Van Dyke; when Michael Spears was brought in from KFRC/San Francisco and took the station in a more “bubble-gum” direction, the hipness of Pearl was not desired. He went on to help consult KRLA (now KRDC, 1110 AM) in 1976 and program KIQQ when he returned in 1977, but neither lasted long. While at KRLA, though, he helped launch “the Hitman” promotion where the station would give prizes to people who had home-made KRLA signs in the yards or on their cars.

"We beat the assumed-unbeatable KHJ with a small budget semi-automated outlet." Pearl told LARadio.Com’s Barrett, who added that Pearl celebrated the feat by doing a live show from KRLA's old Pasadena studios as "Jack Cheese.”

In 1977, Pearl — a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA — decided to enter the UCLA School of Law and became an attorney. His love of radio never left, though, so he went back on the air first in 1981 at KMPC (now KSPN, 710 AM) and a year later at KABC (790 AM) - talking law rather than playing music. You may remember him paired with liberal Bill Press as one of the Dualing Bills on KABC.

He left radio in 1991 to begin a writing career, first with op-eds in newspapers across the country and later as publisher of one of the internet’s first internet-based newspapers, LBReport.Com, which he launched in 2000 in part to keep politicians accountable. His family promises to keep the news website going as a tribute to Pearl.

Readers Write

This is an interesting one:

“I read with interest your ongoing coverage of WION/Ionia.

“I recently came across another extremely unusual online entity that’s unique, even for the Internet. It’s called WIWS, a re-creation of a long gone AM radio station that used to be in Buckley, West Virginia.

Here’s what makes it unlike anything else on the net: the creators have taken great pains to not only have a very electric Top 40 playlist, with songs unheard in decades, but they’ve gone to extraordinary efforts to make it sound like an old AM radio from the 60s, complete with static in the feed, scratchy records on occasion, and that audio that used to come out of those old, cheap transistor radio speakers.

“It also boasts vintage jingles, old news updates and ancient 60s era commercials (including one I heard for Kent cigarettes, now taboo on real radio stations). In fact , the site adds a warning that some spots they air may no longer be politically correct and could offend some listeners. But they were on the air back then, so WIWS airs them now in the interests of authenticity.

“It’s certainly an experience, a definite real blast from the past and worth a listen. Here’s the site, which contains all the info about what it is, who’s behind it and how to hear it: https://wiwsradio.com” — Aaron Fleming

Actually, the fidelity isn’t that bad — remember, AM radios were often much better back then compared with so many today — but you’re right … the playlist is huge. The focus is on the early 1960s, so it’s a little before my time, but it is absolutely a blast to hear.

View Details

This week: Dave Beasing joins us for this first show of the year. We'll cover the column and also cover a bunch of other topics from the current ratings to Richard's 35th anniversary as a radio columnist. Also, we are "testing" out our first theme submission.

Radio: January 7, 2022

Disagreements over the direction and management of the online recreation of the original KNX-FM at knxfm93.com, along with concerns regarding the owner of the “new” KNX-FM (97.1) — a simulcast of KNX Newsradio (1070 AM) — caused the temporary loss of the online mellow rock format last week. But fast action on the part of the remaining volunteers had the tribute station back online within two days.

You won’t find it at the old online address, though. As part of the split, a new location was created with an official launch of 12 noon Pacific time on Friday, December 31st: www.TheMellowSound.net. As well, a new Facebook page has been created at Facebook.com/TheMelllowSound.Net. This should alleviate any conflict with the new KNX-FM news simulcast.

There will be a few changes … the station will more clearly identify itself as a tribute to the original KNX-FM (now KCBS-FM, 93.1) and no longer operate exactly like an on-air entity — no top-of-the-hour identification, for example (though I really liked that!). But the elements that made the original so special are still there or will return as soon as everything gets transferred to the new server: The Odyssey File, interviews, concerts, jingles, artist promotional IDs … and of course, the music.

Founding partner Patrick Veling tells me that he hopes to take the “station” to an even higher level, through the addition of station memberships, swag, and more. “We are creating a robust interactive listener environment,” he explained, “with better, more reliable streams and a stronger relationship with listeners … a stronger bond with fans of the original Mellow Sound.”

Veling says that he doesn’t want to ask for donations — though they would still be appreciated and accepted. But he hopes that the costs of running the station, from server costs to artists royalties and more, can be funded through the sale of memberships and merchandise — T-shirts, hats, stickers and such.

Staying with The Mellow Sound is Veling, along with other founders and volunteers including Brad Goldman, Douglas Brown, Steve Marshall, Christopher Ames, Mary Price, and Kevin Speaks, all of whom were either part of or fans of the original KNX-FM. Another founder, Dale Berg has left the group, and has brought back a format of his own, “97 Lite FM,” which is the stream you currently hear when you go to the old knxfm93.com website or tune in using the various smartphone apps.

Berg ran the old streams himself, which is why the new format took over the old stream location … causing confusion among listeners, to say the least. Lite-FM, says Berg, plays music that extends through today, creating what he considers what would be KNX-FM as it might exist today.

Veling explained that the sudden move to Lite-FM on the part of Berg did cause some listener concern, but that TheMellowSound.net is already available online, and will be on the various apps and smart speakers perhaps by the time you read this.

Changes at WION

WION/Ionia — my favorite AM station in the world — is going through some technical changes that may cause interruptions with online listening.

Station manager Jim Carlyle told me that the company they used for handling music royalty fees for online listening went out of business with little warning, forcing WION (and other streams around the country) to find alternatives. In WION’s case, it also meant changes to how the online streams were hosted. The net result: there may be periods where WION will be unavailable, but they will be back on shortly if not by the time you read this. Still showcasing the amazing fidelity of AM stereo. i1430.com.

Christmas Drive

Fountain Valley low-power station Radio Suerte (KLIE, 90.3 FM; radiosuerte.net) showcased the power of local radio via a Christmas toy and food drive.

Station manager Maria (Mary) Luisa Luna says that the idea for the drive came after seeing so many friends, family and community members lose their battle with Covid-19. The station, along with the nonprofit Crusade of the Penny, decided to have a toy drive “and focus giving boxes of canned and dry goods to the families that are less fortunate and give face masks to remind them that the virus or pandemic is still with us,” she explained.

"We requested toys during our programs and had a good response not just with toys but monetary donations to apply toward the families and children,” Luna told me. “We passed out 300 toys, 400 bags and boxes of food to families, and 500 face masks” primarily to families in Garden Grove, and Santa Ana, she said.

“Our Goal for the month of February is to go back to La Palma Park and feed the homeless. In the past we have also cooked complete meals for the Fullerton Armory … 400 Red or Green chile burritos, salad, and for dessert: Arroz con Leche - like a rice pudding Mexican style,” Luna said. “We assist anyone in need, and have been doing this since 1987.”

View Details

Special guest on this week's show: The Poorman

Radio: December 31, 2021

Looking for something to do on New Years Eve? How about joining low-power community station KOCI’s (101.5 FM) Jim “Poorman” Trenton for a 29-hour New Years Party Marathon!

“Poorman? The same one I used to listen to on KROQ (106.7 FM)?” I hear you ask. Yes, the very same. Poorman — who got his name writing The Poor Man’s Guides to inexpensive dining in the early 1980s — has been with KOCI for a few years playing classic rock and roll along with seldom heard cuts every weekday from 6-11 a.m.

This is the second year for the New Years radio marathon party, which will begin at 6 a.m. December 31st and run through 11 a.m. on January 1st.

Poorman says the inspiration for the marathon came from what he calls the mythical DJ - “the DJ who locks himself in the studio, won’t let anyone in, and won’t get off the air,” he says. The covid shutdown gave him the chance to actually do it … and considering that all the guests will arrive via Skype, the show is covid-safe,

The first five hours will be his normal show … “normal” being a strange description for what is one of the most unusual shows on the radio. “We - either me or listeners - choose and theme, and then listeners call in to suggest songs that match the theme.” The show last Thursday, for example, was on holiday food. After that, “it’s an all-instant request morning,” he explains.

At 11 a.m. New Years Eve, Poorman turns the program over to his guests — leaders in the community, artists, CEOs — who are allowed to do basically anything they want. Poorman essentially acts as the Master of Ceremonies and stays on hand to handle any issues or problems that come up.

Which means that, while Poorman is partying, he can’t really “party” … staying on the air so long and needing to remain sharp and alert means lots of coffee, and no drinking or other mind-altering substances allowed for him. Not that the rule necessarily applies to his guests …

Each hour will also be dedicated to a charity, either one chosen by Poorman, listeners, or guests; each one will be given on-air recognition with listeners being directed to the designated charity’s website.

“This is so exciting, as in addition to being a fun show to do, it benefits a lot of good causes.” It also harkens back to the type of radio Poorman and others were doing in the studios of KROQ. Or KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) … radio that helped bond listeners to stations and created lifelong, almost rabid fans.

Want to hear it but don’t live near Costa Mesa, the low-powered station’s area of coverage? They have you covered as well: “tune in” through KOCI.com, www.poorman.net, and via Alexa, TuneIn and the Smart Radio app available for Android and iPhones.

The Poorman will also live stream the event on video through his Facebook page at Facebook.com/jim.p.trenton.

KNX-FM Returns

Not the Mellow Sound, unfortunately. For that, you have to go online. But as expected once the simulcast with KNX (1070 AM) began, on December 21st, owner Audacy changed the call letters of KNOU to KNX-FM (97.1) to better reflect the ties with the all-news format.

It still remains to be seen what will happen to the AM signal … my sources tell me that Audacy would love to switch all the listeners to FM. However, the AM signal is actually better, with longer reach and — if you can find a decent radio — fidelity that comes darn close. KNX engineering has long been a high point of the station; perhaps they could lead a charge to bring stereo sound back to the AM band if, as seems to be happening, most AM stations are giving up on digital HD broadcasts.

New Year Wishes

2022 will be the 35th Anniversary of this little radio column, which got its start in the old San Pedro News Pilot and Torrance Daily Breeze “Entertainer” section when former editor Don Lechman gave me the chance to write about my love: radio.

In the early days, I was a caustic, cynical young man longing for radio the way I like it, hoping to stay in touch with radio program directors and and a job playing the hits. Much has changed since then … now I’m a caustic, cynical old man longing for radio the way I like it, having given up on program directors and planning ways to buy my own AM station for peanuts so I can play the hits.

I have always written this column from the perspective of someone who loves radio and wants it to be as good as it can be. I still love radio, and obviously you do as well, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this right now. I appreciate that you do, I love reading your letters and emails; as we begin a new year together, I wish you the best for 2022, and hope you will continue to stay in touch.

View Details

Radio: December 24, 2024

Seasoned Sounds

Just like my annual watching of It’s a Wonderful Life, one of the “must-dos” this time of year is to tune in to Sounds of the Season, which will once again be heard on Ken Borgers’ internet tribute to the original KNOB (now KLAX, 97.9 FM). You can find it at www.JazzKnob.org.

The program is a 36-hour program that starts at noon Christmas Eve and runs continuously through midnight on Christmas day. It features some excellent jazz instrumental and vocal interpretations of holiday music favorites; along with what many consider a highlight of the season: a reading of the classic “Twas the Night Before Christmas” by the late, great LA Jazz DJ Chuck Niles. This reading will be heard six times throughout the program: 12 noon and 6 p.m. December 24th; and at 12 midnight, 6 a.m., 12 noon, and 6 p.m. on December 25th.

The program will also feature holiday favorites by Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Marcus Roberts, Ramsey Lewis, Wynton Marsalis, Vince Guaraldi and many more.

If you happen to be in the San Diego area and want to hear it on the radio, you can also find it on KSDS/San Diego (88.3 FM or www.jazz88.org) during the same hours as a simulcast with the internet version. In past years, the netcast and broadcast were slightly different; show producer David Grudt tells me that this year only the hourly station ID will differ.

Niles was on heard on a variety of jazz-formatted stations including KLON (now KKJZ, 88.1 FM), KBCA (now KKGO, 105.1 FM), KFOX (now KFRN, 1280 AM), and of course KNOB.

JazzKnob.org is an online tribute to Sleepy Stein’s KNOB/Long Beach, which played mainstream jazz. Stein was the owner of the station in 1957 when he launched the jazz format with just 320 watts at its original frequency of 103.1 FM. One year later, he was able to increase power to 79,000 watts by moving to a new frequency, 97.9 FM.

Stein sold the station in 1966 and the new owners changed the format to MOR (Middle of the Road) music … think standards and lighter fare … then Beautiful Music and eventually soft rock. Today the station is known as “La Raza,” playing Regional Mexican music, which it has been playing since 1988.

Now at JazzKnob.org, you can tune in any time 24/7 and hear mainstream jazz from artists both past and present.

KNX Response

One of the letters below highlights something I had thought of after writing the column last week: there anew so few AM stations worth tuning in, KNX (1070 AM) gets a prominent preset. On my FM tuner, I already filled all the presets with stations that play music … so while the sound may be better on most FM radios, it may or may not be good enough to be “preset worthy” on the 97.1 FM simulcast.

Here’s a sample of the letters I received on the subject:

“My car has 3 radio ‘bands' that I can access with the press of just one button - one AM and two sets of FM stations that I have preset. The only AM station that I have set is KNX 1070, so I can conveniently get there, and the reception is almost always perfect … but my primary means of access to KNX will continue to be through 1070 AM due to its clear signal and quick access.” — Richard Berenson

“I’ve been a KNX 1070 listener for probably 60 years. Growing up in Torrance we didn’t watch much TV but there was always a radio in the kitchen set to KNX (or KFWB if my sister and I were hand washing the dishes).

“That’s where I first heard old radio shows late in the evening, listened to Bob Crane, horse races live from Hollywood Park and heard the news about countless world and national events like Alan Shepherd’s blast into space and the first heart transplant.

“When I was commuting to work for 32 years, it was KNX 1070 that rode along with me. Oh, who can forget all the good traffic reports you got from Bill Keene?! It was only on the weekends that I turned to FM for music rather than news, traffic and weather.

“I still listen to KNX in the car as I run errands around town and have always been amazed that I can still pick them up as I head over the Grapevine.

I’m sticking with AM 1070 as long as they’re there live.” — Debbie Musser

“I switched to KNX FM. I’ve always enjoyed KNX, but even more now because of the sound clarity.” — Hector

“I'm an older listener who remembers the old jingle ‘KNX 11070 Newsradio.’ I'll listen to 1070 for as long as it's available, and if I have to eventually switch, I will, but grudgingly.” `— Judy Browning

One unrelated question … with KNX now found on FM, and the possibility of the KNX-FM call sign returning to the band — on 97.1 instead of its old home of 93.1 — will owner Audacy be bothered by the KNX-FM tribute station found at knxfm93.com? Hopefully not.

KSPN sold

Disney has agreed to sell KSPN (710 AM) to Good Karma Broadcasting, which will retain the ESPN sports format currently found on the station as well as on KRDC (1110 AM). KRDC itself is not part of the deal, and it is unknown what Disney will do with it in the interim as it continues to look for a buyer; Disney previously announced plans to exit radio broadcasting completely.

View Details

Former PD of "The Sound" in LA Dave Beasing helps sort out the move of KNX Newsradio to the FM dial.

Radio: December 10, 2021

KROQ (106.7 FM) has ended its “two minute promise” of short commercial breaks, under the direction of owner Audacy, which discontinued the idea on all of its owned and operated alternative music stations. According to AllAccess.com, the move was made due to higher demand for commercial time.

Doubtful, but we’ll pretend it’s true, at least for now.

Unfortunately, this brings back the long commercial breaks that have been the bane of radio for a long time, and one of the reasons listeners search out other entertainment sources such as Spotify and Apple Music. In reality, the idea was sound: fewer commercials per break makes each spot worth more to an advertiser, due to the fact that the message isn’t buried among so many others, and the obvious tune-out that long breaks almost force on listeners.

Once again, stations miss the message that was sent by KHJ (930 AM) during the Boss Radio days of the late 1960s: shorter commercial sets and shorter commercials — especially interesting ads or those read by the personalities themselves — create a situation where listeners stay tuned in, they gain marketing information, and the advertiser gets a new customer. Long blocks destroy all that.

New Mornings

Mornings on the Beach, an award-winning show airing on Cal State Long Beach’s student-run 22-West Media Radio (formerly K-Beach, www.22westmedia.com and 88.1 HD3) Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Essentially, the current “non-student” hosts — Danny Lemos, Charley Sharp, and Michael Stark — fired themselves. The last new show aired on December 3rd, and “best of” programs will air through December and likely until at least the end of the university’s winter break.

But the show is not going away. Lemos, who also acts as the station’s advisor, explained that the decision was made to turn the show over completely to students. In that spirit, the station has launched an all-out search for the next hosts, involving CSULB’s Associated Students organization, the Daily 49er campus newspaper, on-air announcements and more. Current students who are part of the roundtable, including news reporter Nick James, are expected to return. Lemos will stay on as the show’s producer.

“Us leaving is not important,” said Stark. “The search for some new personalities who will carry on the show’s tradition is the real story.” The show will feature all student-hosts when it returns.

Needing a Doctor

While they originally said the 1:00 p.m. Doctor Hour — primarily starring Dr. Kelly Victory — would return to KABC’s (790 AM) John Phillips program, it appears that it will not be happening. Now at 1:00 on Phillips’ show is the Saving California Hour, and Victory says that neither Phillips nor station manager Drew Hayes have seriously discussed her return.

It was an all-volunteer position for Victory and the other doctors involved, so it’s not a true loss for her or them, but it is a huge loss for listeners. The Hour was the best hour on KABC, and was a calming, informative hour giving not just advice on all things Covid, but any medical issues important to callers.

Hopefully another station will take the initiative and bring it back. In the meantime, Victory still makes appearances on various radio and television stations across the country, as well as podcasts.

Future Tease

Is the future of radio here? Will AM and FM merge to become IP Radio? Or perhaps IM Radio for Internet Modulation? Regardless, it’s an intriguing question that many observers believe will indeed happen. The idea is that the new protocols can make the internet a viable medium for radio content, paving the way for an entirely new version of radio.

In a future column, I’ll present some opinions from trendsetters who are on the forefront of what could possible be a radio revolution. In the meantime, would you be willing to transition to a new type of radio if the content you want was available?

View Details

Radio: December 3, 2021

The announcement was intriguing: Accuradio goes for the record by adding 100 holiday music channels to its online service. “We’re highlighting the upstart, competitive nature of AccuRadio by launching 100 holiday season channels at a pace of one at least one a day,” says company spokesman Michael Lev. “Dozens more than Pandora is offering. Last time I looked we were at 68 channels; last year we did 81 stations.:

OK, I think they have the record already, though to be honest I haven’t verified the numbers of either Accuradio or Pandora. It’s barely past Thanksgiving … I just started thinking about Christmas. But Accuradio is new to me, so I began my quest to find out more.

You can listen to Accuradio through the company website (AccuRadio.com) or via smartphone apps available for the iPhone or Android. Audio quality is superb, with full fidelity as I listened in my truck.

One killer feature I found almost accidentally is station blending … if you find a channel you like and want to add to it, you can combine the two. Or three. Or more. I combined top-40 HitKast with Alternative Now and Today’s New Country to create a channel I haven’t named yet. Maybe K-WAG would work.

The app is “compatible” with Apple Car Play and Android Auto in the sense that you can stream through your phone into your car stereo, but it is not “native,” meaning you cannot access the app directly and make selections or changes on your car stereo’s main screen, but you can use the “now playing” screen to pause music or skips songs.

Likewise, there is no native support for smart speakers, but you can send audio from your phone or computer to your speakers as long as you have the right set-up.

Unlike Pandora’s and Spotify’s free versions, Accuradio — which has no paid versions — allows unlimited skips, so if you don’t like a song or just don’t want to hear Maggie May right now, you can just skip on to the next. Or the next, without running out of skips and being stuck with Modern Love.

Here’s what caught me off-guard: the service isn’t new! It launched back in the early days of radio streaming in 2000. Originally called RAIN radio due to its connection to founder Kurt Hanson’s RAIN newsletter - Radio and Internet News — Hanson later changed the name to Accuradio. The original three channels — pop standards, modern rock classics, and piano jazz — have evolved into roughly 1000 channels covering more than 50 musical genres. All of therm curated by actual people who are said to love music; many of whom have backgrounds in music, radio, or television.

What inspired Hanson to develop an internet music service after a successful career in and around radio itself? Besides RAIN, he founded Strategic Media Research where, among other things, he launched an alternative ratings service to Arbitron (now Nielsen) called AccuRatings. He’s worked in radio since high school and has advised stations throughout the country.

“I haven't thought about this for a long time -- it was actually when I was in high school in 1972 in Milwaukee, listening to one of the first FM top 40 stations (WZUU-AM/FM), he explained. “It was a great summer for music -- Jackson Browne, the Stylistics, Badfinger, America, the Chi-Lites, Don McLean, Paul Simon, etc. Except every 70 minutes the station wrecked the music flow by playing Sammy Davis, Jr.'s "The Candy Man" because 8-year-olds were buying and requesting it! ARRRGHGH!!!! I dreamed of the day when radio programmers would have a better handle on what their listeners wanted to hear -- and even better if listeners could control what they heard."

That led Hanson to found Strategic Media Research and eventually launch Accuradio.

What sets Accuradio apart from other streaming services? Hanson says it’s the personalization and customization. “We have a lot more variety and personalization options than AM/FM streams, and unlike Pandora (which is programmed primarily by computer algorithms using their Music Genome Project), our channels are curated by real human beings who love music

We also have, unlike Pandora and and its ilk,” he says, “some actual station voices to give us "stationality," but they're mainly brief sweepers that don't draw attention away from the music.”

Treasures for Troops

The little AM station I wrote about recently in Michigan — WION/Ionia (i1430.com) recently completed its Treasures for Troops event, in which the station collects donations to be sent to U.S. service men and women around the world. This is the eighth year for the event.

Boxes are packed with donations including letters, cards, and notes from Saranac, Ionia, Lowell students, Ionia area residents, and others. Each box also contains three “staple” items of Peanut Butter, Chunky soup, and some beef jerky, along with a variety of items from the needs list published locally each year.

“186 boxes were mailed to active military members deployed far from home,” according to station manager Jim Carlyle. “The boxes will be a surprise to most recipients, however some addresses were provided to the Blue Star Mothers by families and friends of the deployed.”

View Details

Radio: October 29, 2021

It’s kind of funny, perhaps a bit sad, and definitely a reality that while some supposedly are working to improve the AM band, others — primarily owners — are doing things that actually hurt it..

I’m not talking programming here, though that is certainly a major cause of the lack of listeners to broadcasting’s oldest and original band. No, I’m talking the economic reality that the land many AM transmitters sit on is often worth more than the radio station itself. To the point where many stations, dominant in the past with monster signals, are now often barely receivable.

The next station to make the move appears to be KSPN (710 AM), as the all-sports station has been approved by the FCC to move to a different transmitter site, and at a lower level of power.

As explained by Doc Searls — a fellow since 2006 at what is now the Berkman Klein Center who studies technology and related issues including radio — the plan has KSPN moving to the KRDC (1110 AM) site and sharing the transmitter. “That plan is in place because the current KSPN site (in use since the 1930s) is the vast spread of land in the Valley on which the station's three towers sit, and that land, surrounded by suburbs, is worth far more than the signal itself.”

Searls expects that the format and call letters will be transferred to 1110 AM, which is already simulcasting KSPN’s programming, though that is complete conjecture. But the move is not unexpected … as he says, “AM station owners are doing this everywhere. KHJ (930 AM) and KABC (790 AM) have already done it — moving to other sites they share with other stations —and unloading the land under their old towers. In both those cases, the signals aren't much different.”

Unlike KHJ and KABC, however, this one appears to be something that will cause signal degradation … lower power on a former landfill in Irwindale — worse land as far as signal propagation — cannot be an improvement. I can barely receive 1110 AM in some rooms of my house near San Pedro.

But the reality is that real estate is indeed more valuable than many AM stations. Sad, but true. Makes you wonder how much longer the cycle can continue.

What’s With Bongino?

Dan Bongino, heard locally on KABC from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, has been “fighting” with Cumulus Media — distributor of his syndicated show as well as owner of many stations on which his show is carried — threatening to quit over the company’s Covid vaccine mandate.

Interesting especially since Bongino has already been vaccinated. For his part, he claims he is sticking up for his fellow employees who may not wish to get it; like may others it appears that he is pro-vaccine, anti-mandate. And it may indeed be true.

But a few flags were raised when I first heard the story. First off, Bongino is no Limbaugh. Yes, his show is run at the same time, but like all wanna-be Limbaugh’s from both sides of the political isle, Bongino doesn’t get what made Limbaugh tick … what made him popular. Essentially, outside of Cumulus Media management, which would need to find a replacement if Bongino actually did quit, few would care.

Secondly, by protesting, he is breaking the intent of company policy … Cumulus doesn’t want to be part of anything that may be considered anti-vaccine. So you have someone with marginal ratings threatening to leave a company barely hanging on when he probably doesn’t much care if he has a daily radio show or not … he can always go back to podcasts and cable television exclusively.

My hunch? Cumulus wants or at least likes the publicity. We’ll see how this plays out.

War

Almost 85 years ago — October 30, 1938 — War of the Worlds was broadcast on CBS Radio, including KNX (1070 AM) here in Los Angeles. In it, Orson Welles scared the nation into believing that the earth was being taken over by martians through his presentation of a radio adaption of H. G. Wells’ book on his program Mercury Theater on the Air.

Panic ensued as people believed that the program was actually real radio bulletins and news being reported over the network. Or at least that’s what we have all been led to believe.

While there may have been a few who missed the numerous announcements — made at every break — that this was a play, the idea that the entire country panicked has been at best an exaggeration. An urban myth.

As it turns out, the audience for War was small. Most of the nation was tuned to the popular NBC program, Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy and variety show. In fact, the Hooper Ratings service had telephoned households the night of the broadcast for its national ratings survey and determined that only two percent of the potential audience was listening to Welle’s show. This means that 98 percent of America was not.

Slate.com stated it this way, in a report they ran about ten years ago:

"Far fewer people heard the broadcast — and fewer still panicked — than most people believe today. How do we know? The night the program aired, the C.E. Hooper ratings service telephoned 5,000 households for its national ratings survey. 'To what program are you listening?' the service asked respondents. Only 2 percent answered a radio 'play' or 'the Orson Welles program,' or something similar indicating CBS. None said a 'news broadcast,' according to a summary published in Broadcasting. In other words, 98 percent of those surveyed were listening to something else, or nothing at all, on Oct. 30, 1938. This minuscule rating is not surprising. Welles' program was scheduled against one of the most popular national programs at the time — ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety show.”

(See it for yourself at https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.html”)

It must also be added that some CBS affiliate stations had preempted the Mercury Theater program in favor of local programming, further limiting the audience.

So how did a non-panic become a known panic? Blame newspapers. As Slate explains, “Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. “ Kind of sounds like television news today … but I digress.

Regardless, the show is considered a classic. While KNX no longer airs the Drama Hour that once ran War annually at Halloween, you can still find it on-line. Do a search or just go to one of the Old Time Radio sites, such as otr.net, which has a download available at http://www.otr.net/?p=merc.

///

View Details

Southern California radio’s latest ratings offer surprises and a new No. 1

As recently as July, KOST (103.5) was getting beaten by KRTH (101.1 FM) in the local Nielsen ratings. But with just a few weeks to go before its annual switch to holiday music (and the annual ratings bonanza), KOST pushed ahead to become the No. 1 station in town a bit early, edging out KRTH by a whisker: 5.5 vs 5.3 in the September ratings.

The two dominant stations were almost a full point ahead of third-place KTWV’s (94.7 FM) 4.6, and the 4th place tie of My FM (KBIG, 104.3 FM) and KLVE (107.5 FM) at 4.5.

Each rating is an estimate of the percentage of listeners aged 6 and over tuned to a station between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight. For the most part, with just a few exceptions, things are generally the same as they were when I last reported the ratings back in July.

As usual, KFI was the No. 1 AM station in town, tying KIIS-FM (102.7) for 7th place at 3.8. This made KIIS-FM the top “top-40” station, though there is so much overlap between it and My FM that the lines of top-40 vs. My FM’s “hot adult contemporary” format are certainly blurring. Stations that might be considered true direct competition to KIIS are Power 106 (KPWR, 105.9 FM) at 1.9, and Now (KNOU, 97.1 FM) at 1.5.

Both Power and Now beg the question: What are they doing to address this? Both stations have signals that are among the best in the city; to be rated so relatively low makes one wonder why the owners are staying with the formats they currently run. Both stations changed formats in the past with ratings that at the time were higher than they both earn now. Heck, most AM stations abandoned music with ratings higher than that back in the last 1970s and early ‘80s.

It was not a good month for alternative rock, with both Alt 98.7 (KYSR) and KROQ (106.7 FM) down compared with the last quarter. For September, Alt was at 2.3; KROQ at 2.0. Back in June, the stations had shares of 3.2 and 2.3, respectively. In San Francisco, the former alternative leader once known as Live 105 just changed to a Jack (KCBS-FM, 93.1) clone called Dave. That won’t happen here as we already have Jack, but it does make you wonder how much longer KROQ’s ratings in particular will be tolerated.

As mentioned, KFI was the top AM station in town, and therefore has the top talk ratings in town as well. KFI’s competition? KRLA (870 AM) earned a 2.0 share, KABC (790 AM) had 1.1, and KEIB (1150 AM) had a 1.0. That means KFI had just slightly less than the total of its competition … not bad, not bad at all.

On the strength of the Dodgers, KLAC (570 AM) took top sports honors, with a solid 2.1 share. KSPN (710 AM) — which simulcasts its programming on KRDC (1110 AM) — was at 0.5. Repeat: 0.5. On two signals. Wow. Perhaps oldies on 1110 AM would work better? And perhaps some middle-of-the-road music combined with sports on 710? Just thinking out loud.

People are listening to online streams … KLOS (95.5 FM), which earned a 2.6 share on FM, earned another 0.2 on its stream. KPWR earned a 0.1 share with its stream. And a couple of HD Radio signals showed up as well, with LA Oldies on 105.1 HD2 and ‘80s alternative on 106.7 HD2 both earning 0.1 shares. Interestingly, while you’d think that Mose people would listen to classical music on HD or online, it was KMZT’s AM signal (at 1260) that earned the rating … also at 0.1.

Here’s one I can’t figure out: What happened to KKLQ (100.3 FM)? They seemed to be doing fairly well just a short time ago. Did something happen? Or is this a case of one or two ratings meters making a huge difference in the ratings calculations? Or are people not liking a canned syndicated format?

The full story:1. KOST (5.5) 2. KRTH (5.3) 3. KTWV (4.6) 4. KBIG “My FM”, KLVE (4.5) 6. KCBS-FM “Jack” (4.2) 7. KFI, KIIS-FM (3.8) 9. KLAX (3.5) 10. KNX, KPCC (3.0)12. KLYY (2.7) 13. KLOS, KRCD (2.6) 15. KRRL (2.5) 16. KSCA, KYSR (2.3) 18. KKGO, KLAC (2.1) 20. KRLA, KROQ (2.0)22. KLLI, KPWR, KXOL (1.9) 25. KCRW, KUSC (1.7) 27. KBUE, KJLH (1.6) 29. KNOU (1.5) 30. KDAY, KKJZ (1.2)32. KABC (1.1) 33. KEIB (1.0) 34. KDLD (0.9) 35. KFWB (0.8) 36. KFSH (0.6) 37. KCSN, KSPN, KWIZ (0.5) 40. KKLA (0.3)42. KLOS Online Stream, KTNQ (0.2) 44. KHJ, KIRN, KKGO-HD2, KMZT, KPWR Online Stream, KROQ-HD2, KWKW (0.1)

Kelly honored

KFI’s Mo’ Kelly says he is “honored … and humbled” by his being named radio’s Journalist of the Year, 2020 and having radio’s Best Personality/Profile Interview according to the Los Angeles Press Club at the organization’s 63rd Annual Journalism Awards Dinner held on October 16th. Will this recognition lead to more time on the air? One can hope …

New name

Ted Stryker left KROQ’s morning show and reporter Kelli Skye Fadroski talked to the DJ about his new podcast “Tuna on Toast.” KROQ’s morning show, now called Klein and Ally, also airs in Kansas City and Dallas and was heard on Klein’s former station in San Francisco until that station changed formats from alternative to “Dave.”

View Details

Radio: October 15, 2021

By now — especially if you’ve read this column very long — you’ve probably heard of HD Radio, the broadcasting system authorized by the FCC where digital broadcasts are sent along with regular analog signals, giving supposed better sound quality (promised in last advertising as “like FM on AM, like CDs on FM”) and for now only on FM, extra channels. All of which available over the air only if you have an HD Radio tuner.

But what are those extra channels, and is it worth upgrading to an HD Radio at home or in your car? Those are the big questions, and today I will try to answer them. First the extra channels you can hear broadcast along with your favorite FM station; the following is a list of the available extra HD stations in Los Angeles, and the format they run.

(Key: 88.1-2 refers to the second audio channel for KKJZ, found at 88.1 FM; all -1 channels duplicate the regular analog station and are therefore omitted).
88.1-2 Jazz vocals
88.1-3 Cal State Long Beach student run station; various programs from oldies to hip-hop; the home of Mornings on the Beach, an award-winning morning program covering various lifestyle issues
88.5-2 Contemporary Jazz, local news, and entertainment from Saddleback College
88.5-3 The Latin Alternative: Alternative music, electronic dance music, indie pop, Sal Soul and classic rock … en espanol
89.3-2 The Current: Contemporary alternative music from Minnesota Public Radio
89.9-2 Eclectic 24: a continuous stream of eclectic music curated by KCRW’s own Chris Douridas
92.3-2 News/Information from the Black Information Network
93.1-2 Simulcast of K-Frog’s (KFRG/Riverside) country music programming
93.1-3 The Bet: Sports gambling information and CBS Sportsradio programming
93.9-2 Spanish adult contemporary music
94.7-2 Rhythmic contemporary music
94.7-3 Radio Hamrah: News, information and talk programming for the global Persian community
95.1-2 Owner Audacy lists KFRG-HD2 as Next Country, supposedly playing the next country hits before they are hits. But when I tuned in, the station was playing light rock in Spanish.
95.5-2 Southern California’s FM Talk Station… 24/7 repeats of KLOS (95.5 FM) morning show, Heidi and Frank. Other shows were/are promised, but for now that’s it.
95.5-3 News, information and talk in Armenian from SoCalArmenian.com
97.1-2 Channel Q: Electronic Dance Music and other programming designed to appeal to LA’s LGBTQ residents
97.1-3 Firelane: non-stop dance music
98.7-2 Simulcast of KLAC ’s (570 AM) sports programming
100.3-2 Air 1 Radio: contemporary Christian religious/worship music (essentially a simulcast of KYLA/Fountain Valley 92.7 FM and a handful of other stations in areas surrounding Los Angeles)
100.3-3 Radio Nueva Vida: Christian music and talk in Spanish
101.1-2 Simulcast of KNX (1070 AM) newsradio
101.9-2 Simulcast of KTNQ (1020 AM) Spanish-language news/talk
101.9-3 Armenian Music Radio
103.5-2 Simulcast of KFI (640 AM) talk radio
103.5-3 The Breeze: Soft Rock similar to what KOST (103.5 FM) itself used to play
103.9-2 El Sembrador: Spanish-language Catholic radio programming from El Sembrador Ministries’ ESNE Radio network.
103.9-3 Another simulcast of KTNQ
104.3-2 Pride Radio: “The Pulse of LGBTQ+ America” - iHeart’s version of Audacy’s Channel Q. Electronic Dance Music and a little top-40.
105.1-2 LA Oldies, as formerly heard on the old KSUR (now KMZT, 1260 AM). Oldies from the 1950s through the early 1980s with an emphasis on the late ‘60s and ’70
105.1-3 Unforgettable FM: all Frank Sinatra, all the time
105.1-4 Simulcast of K-Mozart (KMZT): classical music with a few related specialty programs
105.9-2 Simulcast of KDAY (93.5 FM) old school Hip-Hop
106.3-2 AAX Radio: Not really sure here. Supposedly Vietnamese programming, but when I tuned in I heard an english-language discussion on weddings and masks.
106.3-3 Simulcast of KYPA’s (1230 AM) Korean-language programming of music (including english-language oldies) and information. Interestingly, it wasn’t an exact simulcast … background music that played on the online stream and on the AM signal was absent on this version. I assume the processing was different and something got nulled-out as it made its way here.
106.7-2 Roq of the ‘80s: The music that made KROQ (106.7 FM) famous; pop and alternative music from the 1980s
107.5-2 Radio Jan: “the best Armenian radio station in the USA.” Launched first in Armenia in 2012 and in Los Angeles in 2017, the station plays Armenian popular music
107.5-3 Radio ITN: 24-hour news and entertainment serving the Persian-speaking community

Currently, only FM stations can broadcast the extra channels, though the HD system would allow AM stations to do so if they went all-digital. There is not enough space in the AM band to allow extra channels using the current hybrid (analog and digital) system; unfortunately going all-digital means a station would lose traditional radio listeners. A few stations nationwide have done so, but none locally.

So you can see that there are many “secret” stations that can be heard using an HD Radio tuner. Should you go out and buy one? Chances are you already have one in your car if you own one bought in the last ten years … many models come as a stepped-up audio option. And ten years ago, I would have said “yes” to buying one.

But there is a problem with the extra channels on FM: unlike the main station, there is no buffering. This means if you don’t have a clean signal, the extra station just drops out. Maybe for a half second, maybe for a minute. This is not a problem at home, but while driving, the signal can pop in and out constantly. VERY annoying.

Combine this with the improvement in internet accessibility, apps you can use via modern stereos and your smart phone in your car, along with smart speakers and bluetooth connections at home and today, I’d say pass. This doesn’t mean avoid the stations listed above, just listen through your phone app and your smart speakers.

My recommendation: Skip the HD, and use an app. Of course if you do already own HD Radios, by all means use them … I have four. But the apps are actually better now in use, and they also stream AM stations, most of which no longer broadcast in HD anyway.

View Details

Radio: October 8, 2021

It was more than 56 years ago when Boss Radio launched in 1965 on KHJ (930 AM). I was just two years old when the format debuted in town with a young but experienced on-air staff, but I’ve had a connection to the station and the format long enough to understand its significance. KHJ literally changed Los Angeles top-40 radio forever.

So while perhaps it should not be surprising to lose another, it is still sad when an original Boss Jock passes away.

It happened this past week as news came out that Sam Riddle passed away at the age of 85 on September 27th. Riddle’s passing leaves only two remaining original Boss Jocks still living, Gary Mack and Johnny Williams.

KHJ was not Riddle’s first local station. He actually came to Los Angeles from the former KDEO (now KECR, 910 AM) in San Diego to work at the original KRLA (now KRDC, 1110 AM) in 1960 to take on former top-40 leader KFWB (980 AM). Riddle stayed at KRLA a few years, leaving in 1963 for a spot on KFWB, and then in 1965 for KHJ, where he stayed until 1970.

Sam Riddle passed away at the age of 85 on September 27, 2021. (Image courtesy of KHJ)

It was during those Boss Radio years that Riddle’s broadcasting career truly took off. In addition to his work on-air at KHJ, he became a television star via the programs “9th Street West” and “Boss City,” both airing on the then-KHJ sister television station, KHJ-TV Channel 9. Other television shows included “Hollywood A Go Go,” “Sounds of Now” and perhaps his most famous work, the syndicated “Star Search,” which he produced throughout its run. (He’s even listed as providing voice work on an episode of “Gilligan’s Island”, “Don’t Bug The Mosquitoes.”)

But radio was his first love and he stayed with it for quite some time. After leaving KHJ in 1970, he found himself up the dial at KDAY (now KBLA, 1580 AM), the top-40 version of KROQ (1500 AM, no longer on the air) in 1972, and once more on KHJ in 1974. His famous opening line to his shows was, “Hello music lovers,” a line he used for many years.

Friends of Riddle were posting remembrances of him on Facebook recently, with one in particular from Beach Rogers (KNX 1070 AM Newsradio fame) that described Riddle succinctly: “Got to know Sam during his two years at KFWB, and it was one of the best of times. Such a good guy to be around and not surprising he went on to be a success at whatever he tried. A Good Man now lost.”

I was supposed to do a career-spanning interview with Riddle on the podcast series I do with Mike Stark, but due to the pandemic and Riddle’s health issues, it never happened. That is a shame, but Riddle will be remembered as one of radio (and television’s) best. Alas, another good one gone. He is survived by his wife Adrienne, children Scott and Courtney, and grandchildren Miracle and Garin.

Morning Shows

The emails started arriving almost immediately after the column hit the street: Who do you like in the morning and why? Please keep the emails and letters coming; here are a few of the initial responses…

“I am very old school and still enjoy radio. I grew up in New York City listening to lots of AM stations. I even got to see the Beatles live in concert twice! In the morning, I listen to KOST 103.5 the Ellen K Morning Show. I enjoy the banter and the contests. However, I don’t agree with Christmas music starting in November. In fact, the station loses me as a listener until right before Christmas.” — Phyllis Metzger, Long Beach

Don’t get me started on that Christmas music. Apparently, you and I are the only ones who feel that way, since KOST dominates the ratings when they do it. But Ellen is fabulous as the morning host on KOST, exhibiting a great talent that solidified when she got out on her own after playing second fiddle on the KIIS-FM (102.7) morning show for many years.

“My favorite morning show is Poorman’s Morning Rush on KOCI (101.5 FM) out of Newport Beach. You probably remember him from the ’80s KROQ. He does what you have been preaching … he has no playlist. He has a musical theme every day (for example “fun”) and the listeners call in with their song requests that contain the theme in the name of the song, in the lyrics or in the artist. He plays any era, any genre of music. He fields as many calls on air as possible. He also has segments from local businesses. It’s so much fun; you get to know the regular fans and you feel like part of a family in no time.” — Cindy Curti (Cee Cee)

I will check this out. Thanks for the tip.

“I too listen to The Woody Show and have been since their LA debut. I like the easy flow of Woody’s conversations and really enjoy all of the team. I really like the getting to know….segments when we get a deep dive of each person’s likes and dislikes. Woody and Greg Gory are probably my favorite; Ravey is hilarious – I love her fondness for Harry Potter and all the nerdy stuff. The best part of the show is when Woody and team are recapping their regular life shenanigans and when Menace is trying to pronounce something.“Sometimes I can do without the raunch talk. As sensible as Greg seems, once he starts talking his gibberish about ‘your mom’ jokes, I feel like maybe we really don’t know him as well as he appears to be.” — Lynn Romero

I agree … it’s kind of funny, as the show, in general, is pretty clean. But every once in a while they get stuck on a subject that you have to tune out… luckily it’s not too often.

“I love the Klein and Ally show on KROQ (106.7 FM) after listening to Kevin and Bean for 30 years and before that the Raymondo and Evans show. …I go to Woody during the commercials, and from 5-6 a.m. since Klein doesn’t start until 6:00.” — Daniel Klatte

That’s a lot of dedication to KROQ! All are great shows indeed.

View Details

Radio: October 1, 2021

Radio has always had trends, and one trend that always seems to periodically reappear is the idea of “narrowcasting” — generally thought of as limiting the various genres a station may play.

The idea is relatively sound in a programming research way: super-serve your audience by playing what they want to hear, and leaving out the songs that many cause tune-out. And over the years in its various cycles, the plan has worked, broken up by the sudden (and sometimes unexpected) resurgence of mass-appeal top-40 formats that broaden the playlist significantly.

One example harkens back to the late 1970s, in which many of the formerly top-rated Am top-40 stations were replaced by stations forcing on one style of music, be it rock, alternative, new wave, disco, or even country. But then stations like KIIS-FM went mainstream in the early 1980s and brought top-40 back into the limelight, blowing out the competition by playing a wide playlist once again.

It seems like this is the way it goes… stations get big playing a huge playlist, then others come in and steal listeners by going narrow. Indeed, KIIS-FM itself was temporarily knocked out of the top spot by Power 106 in 1986, when Power focussed on dance music, though one could easily argue that KIIS reacted too much and started sounding too much like Power itself, sending listeners elsewhere.

More recently, it seems that narrowcasting has become the norm again, and longer than the typical cycle. Yet a recent article on PowerGold questions the wisdom of the trend in today’s competitive reality.

In the column, Sean Ross argues that with online music services — he specifically mentions SiriusXM, but the same argument could be applied to Apple Music, Spotify, and even many independent streaming services — doing the narrowcasting, is it truly a good idea for a broadcast station to maintain such a narrow playlist? Might it be better to expand?

In Ross’ opinion, yes. And he gives examples of stations that have expanded with great success. WISX/Philadelphia, WLTW/New York, WFEZ/Miami as a few examples, and the resurgence of a format known as Active Rock, a format I’ve been pushing to get in Los Angeles for years.

Ross’ examples are mostly related to light-rock and adult contemporary formats, and he is on the money. One reason that KOST (103.5 FM) and My FM (KBIG, 104.3 FM) beat sister KIIS-FM (102.7) — at one time the music leader of all music stations in the country — is that KOST and My FM tend to play more styles of music … exactly what KIIS-FM used to do when KOST and KBIG stayed tight with only light hits and oldies.

If you were not paying that close attention, you might even say that My FM, especially, sounds much KIIS-FM of the 1980s. And like KIIS-FM of the 1980s, My FM is one of the dominant music stations in town.

The problem with narrowcasting is that it works … but only for a while. Eventually, people tire of the same sound. That’s what happened with KROQ (106.7 FM), KLOS (95.5 FM), to a lesser degree Alt 98.7, and why KRTH (101.1 FM) and KOLA (99.9 FM) have thrived by adding more recent but still older songs and leaving behind what many consider true oldies, the songs from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

KLOS figured it out … the playlist has been expanded (though still not as much as I’d like), and the ratings have rebounded. I think the time is ripe for an Active Rock station — one playing a wider variety of rock and roll — to make an appearance, perhaps at KROQ, a station that once defined the format. Active Rock plays literally anything, and can adapt with the times. You aren’t stuck with songs from Twenty One Pilots.

And it must be noted that KIIS-FM is even expanding somewhat, such that you can once again hear songs that don’t sound like all the rest.

So while it may be an accident, and many successful business decisions and creative ideas are, stations that stop trying to program against online services are going to be the next big thing. You’re already seeing it … broadcast radio’s future may indeed be bright.

Morning Woody

While there are numerous morning shows I enjoy, The Woody Show on Alt 98.7 is still my favorite. The primary reason is that the team — Woody, Ravey, Greg Gory, and Menace — are all friends, and more importantly fun. Listening lately, I have realized that Ravey is my favorite because she constantly says things that just crack me up. Is it the sarcasm or the dark humor? I’m not sure. Probably both.

The show has been among the most popular shows in town since shortly after it arrived in April, 2014. If you have not checked it out, tune in to Alt from 5 to 10 a.m., though be aware: they rebroadcast earlier segments in the final hours … something I detest …

What are your favorite morning DJs and hosts? Do you prefer music? News? Shows like Woody? Let me know what you like and why … send me a note and I’ll put your favorites together for a future column so that we can all find something to suit our tastes.

View Details

Radio: September 24, 2021

Audacy — owner of numerous stations in Los Angeles including KRTH (101.1 FM) and KROQ (106.7 FM) — is getting ready for the 8th Annual “We Can Survive” concert to be held at the Hollywood Bowl on October 23rd.

Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Doja Cat, Shawn Mendes, The Kid LAROI and more will use their musical powers to help strengthen — and raise money to help — mental health via a partnership with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The Foundation funds research, supports survivors of suicide loss, advocates for public policies to help mental health, and educates the public about the issues.

Tickets are on sale at Ticketmaster.

Where’s Red?

“I was a listener to Rock ‘n Roll in the 50’s/60’s living in the San Fernando Valley … a cruiser of Van Nuys Blvd back when … I went to school with the local DJ Red Blanchard’s daughter…..do you have any updates on his whereabouts?: — Drexel Smith

This was an interesting one to me, as Blanchard is just a little before my time. But I love a mystery; here’s what I found:

Richard Bogardus “Red” Blanchard was a DJ on a variety of stations in town, including KABC (790 AM), KXLA (before it was KRLA; now KRDC 1110 AM), KPOP (now KTNQ, 1020 AM), KFWB (980 AM) and KNX (1070 AM). His longest tenure at any of the LA stations was about five years - from 1960-65 at KNX; the others were only for a year or two.

But he had a long history in radio prior to arriving in town back in 1956: he was interested in radio at a very early age and in 1938, at the age of 18, he got his first ham radio license (W1LDI). Commercial radio came after he got out of the Army, starting in 1945 at Riverside’s original KPRO. After that he was at a variety of stations in San Diego, Las Vegas, and San Francisco; his last station before arriving in town locally was at the Bay Area’s KCBS.

As a DJ, he specialized in novelty songs and comedy, making for a very entertaining program and explaining his presence on many of the top stations in town of the era. One description had him as a master of puns and parodies, along with the always on hand “gross out” gag. He made a few of his own novelty recordings as well, including Captain Hideous (King of Outer Space), Pagan Love Song, and Ape Call, among others.

In San Diego, the Daily Journal gave him the recognition as “Show of the Month.”

His work at KNX included staff announcer, but he always had a love of the technical side of things, so in 1965 he left radio for television, and became the technical director for KHJ-TV Channel 9, where he stayed until he retired sometime around 1980.

Talking about his career with LARadio.Com's Don Barrett, Blanchard spoke of being let go from one of his stations: “I was fired due to illness,” he said. “The boss got sick of me.”

Blanchard passed away in June of 2011 at the age of 91; his death was from complications during his recovery from cancer surgery.

Hawking Wares

“When I started listening to talk radio in the 80's, it was unheard of for the radio hosts to hawk their books on the air. One host who did that was Dr. Toni Grant, who was fired from at least three stations (KFI, KRLA, and one in Texas) for doing that in the 90's. Now they all do it to some degree. Mark Levin is by far the worst and for five months he has spent 90% of his show reading from and hawking his latest book.

“Why do the syndicators allow that … is that part of the hosts' compensation? And why do the affiliates put up with it?” — Judd Silver

Easy one: money, and lack of caring.

An unfortunate side-effect of the modern radio model is a singular focus on easy money. It takes time to develop a program, let alone a full format, so many stations rely on free (where the show is provided at no cost to a station in exchange for the show being able to sell some of the commercial time) or even paid programming (where the host or distributor pays to have the programming carried by a station) to make ends meet.

It isn’t the best quality, but it’s cheap. Many talk programs heard in the evening or on weekends are paid programming, many syndicated programs get placed for the advertising agreement. Stations with small budgets or operating losses can thus carry programming, even if it isn’t the best.

Now I have no clue as to the financial agreement the hosts you mention had or have with any stations. But because the programming is no longer under the direction of a local program director or owner, the content of the show can be passed off as being the responsibility of the show provider. And that allows exactly what you are witnessing, and it is something I think is not helping radio maintain listeners.

View Details

Radio: September 17, 2021

KOST (103.5 FM) morning personality Ellen K has been selected to host the annual 2xU Malibu Triathlon to be held at Zuma Beach in Malibu on September 25th and 26th.

The event is sponsored by Bank of America and brings together triathletes of all levels who compete to support the Pediatric Cancer Research Program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Participants come from around the country and include professional athletes, Hollywood celebrities, amateurs and what the organizers call “challenged athletes” to race on what many consider one of the most beautiful courses in the sport of triathlon.

This year the event is expecting to include Super League Triathlon athletes and recent Tokyo Olympic triathlon medalists Flora Duffy, Georgia Taylor-Brown, and Katie Zaferes. Celebrities will include Chace Crawford, Eric Etebari, Daniela Ruah, Sean Dominic, and Alexi Papas … and many more. For a full list of celebrities and professional athletes who are participating, go to https://malibutri.com/celebrity-division. You can be there too, either as a competitor or spectator … go to https://malibutri.com for information and to register.

Ellen K has been a longtime supporter of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and is even a CHLA Foundation Board of Trustees member. The annual broadcast has helped raise more than $650,000 for CHLA .

Banana Joe Passes

Cable television Game Show Network’s David Schwartz — formerly with the late-great original KRLA (now KRDC 1110 AM) — broke the news locally that Banana Joe Montione passed away on September 11 at the age of 67.

Natural causes is the official reason, though that seems way too young for my 58-year old soul. Regardless, if you were listening to KHJ (930 AM) during the famous “miracle” that via great programming and a top-notch staff on the air and off brought the station back to greatness, you would have heard him: Banana Joe was an instrumental part of that resurgence.

Then-programmer Chuck Martin recently spoke of Montione on KHJ, stating that he was exactly what the station needed on the air - someone young, upbeat and hip. Unfortunately, personal issues caused Montione to leave the station, something that Martin still feels badly about today, fully 42 years after the separation. Yet in spite of letting him go, “we remained good friends throughout the years,” Martin said.

After leaving KHJ, Montione eventually became a station owner along with an investment group that purchased a station in York, Pennsylvania, and another soon after in Pittston, Pennsylvania. He held them for a few years, then sold them in 1988 to get his production company off the ground, launching the syndicated Banana Joe Flashback Show in 1991 that ran on KIIS-FM (102.7) locally.

In 2003 he formed the Banana Joe Radio Group, and launched an internet station soon after called FlashbackTop40.Com, a version of which has been syndicated to a handful stations across the country. He called the format, consisting of hits from the 1970s through the ‘90s with a top-40 sound, “a modern version of the great top-40 radio sound so dominant during the eras we cover.”

Through the years of this column I conversed with him occasionally, and he was always upbeat and sounded just as I remember him on KHJ. Even though he hasn’t been on the air here in many years, he will be missed.

Titanic Limits

The National Association of Broadcasters is trying to convince Congress and the FCC to allow even more stations to be owned by even fewer companies than is currently allowed — including total abolishment of ownership caps in some cases. This means that one company could own every AM station in a city, as but one example, depending on circumstances.

Considering how poorly the radio industry has fared under deregulation, the NAB’s position is akin to thinking that the Titanic would not have sunk had it only hit more icebergs.

View Details

This LA radio station is doing something that no other is doing right now

Bilingual Latin pop station KLLI (Cali 93.9 FM) has gone with an on-air lineup solely of women on the air for much of its schedule. All daytime shifts are now held by women, and the station claims it is the first time this has ever been done in the history of Los Angeles radio.

Well, not quite. KOST has had an all-women air staff for a while now. But as KOST afternoon personality Sandy Stec broadcasts her show from a studio in San Francisco, Cali does seem to be the first all-female air staff broadcasting locally. (Stations have been using distance broadcasting for a while now – half of the former teams of Kevin and Bean and Mark and Brian Show were beaming in from thousands of miles away.)

Regardless, it wasn’t that long ago that having just one female DJ was unusual, so I understand Cali’s excitement. Angelica Vale starts the day at 6 a.m., followed at 10:00 by Caro Marquez, and Melissa Rios from 3 – 7.

Moreover, in this era of negativity, Cali stands out by trying to be as uplifting on the air as possible. “We’re just getting started,” said General Manager Irma Barrios, who is proud of the success the station has seen thus far. “And it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Long-distance local?

When the FCC realized that local communities were being left behind in the post-deregulation era of radio, it began licensing low-powered stations designed to super-serve those same communities. And while not perfect, the idea is not only sound but needed. Indeed, the major broadcasters often don’t even have a local studio anymore, and programming is often done from cities thousands of miles away.

But what happens when the low-powered community stations are themselves run from a city thousands of miles away? We’re finding out right now right here, as KLBP-LP (99.1 FM if you are near Long Beach; online at klbp.org) General Manager Rose Lozon announced on her Instagram that she’s been in Philadelphia for a while now.

“So the cat’s out of the bag … We moved to Philadelphia, intuitively following some opportunities,” she announced. “I love the culture, the activism, the food, the nature, the people … and I’m just really so truly happy.”

She hasn’t resigned from her post as GM of the LPFM community station she runs, at least yet. In her Instagram message, she writes that October is when she plans to do so, though she plans to stay on as an advisor.

Considering the spirit of what a local station is and should be, I hope the next GM is a member of the community.

Country Guest

Superstar Jason Aldean has taken over the midday shift on Go Country (105.1 FM) for the month of September. Weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Aldean can be heard spinning the tunes along with friends Hardy and Lainey Wilson, both of whom are part of Aldean’s Back in the Saddle tour of concerts. The guest shift runs through September 24th.

Letter of the Month

In response to my column last week regarding how to get young listeners back to radio, I received this from reader Mark Bradley:“I have 5 kids in their 20’s and 30’s. They have Spotify, so they don’t need radio…The problem is a lack of good new musicians. You don’t get it.”

Actually, I do get it, and you do, too: They are listening to Spotify because radio doesn’t play what they want; that was exactly my point. The sad thing is that programmers don’t get it. I just don’t understand why they don’t remember history. The story is that in the 1960s, Tom Donahue actually reached out to stations that had disconnected numbers — the ones having financial issues — and they were the ones he would pitch his format to — the very format that helped put FM radio on the map, and helped make FM eventually be the dominate radio band.

Why stations that are essentially losing money — and make no mistake, they are — don’t just try something different is beyond me. And beyond stupid. Radio needs young people to survive.

Of course maybe if they keep going the way they are, I will indeed get to buy my own station, once the value is about $10 total …

View Details

Radio: September 3, 2021

Radio’s Future Problem

Besides writing about what I love - radio - I also teach high school math classes. This year I teach two sections of statistics, and as an introductory lesson I had my students create a set of questions for a survey. There were few rules, as it were, as I wanted them to discover for themselves the basics of what makes a good survey question.

As an example, I did my own basic survey and asked the students — all juniors and seniors — if they listen to the radio. To my shock, not one did. Two classes, with an enrollment of 39 students each, had not one person who stated that they listen to the radio.

Now, as any statistician knows, these two classes are not necessarily representative of the world at large. Certainly there are young adults who do indeed listen, but the fact that none here do is a problem nonetheless.

So I asked why, and I asked others including the guitarist of local band Law, which had just come back from playing a show in Ventura. The responses were surprisingly similar: in general, radio stations don’t play anything that appeals to them.

This, of course, is not news to me. You may remember my AM Improvement column a while back in which I would use high school and college students to help me program my station by finding what they like, what they listen to on streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, along with what they find entertaining on YouTube, TikTok, and the like. I’d even hire teens and young adults to both consult and work on the air, and get them out into the community to serve as station ambassadors.

My ideas are not new by any means … that was the game plan for top-40 stations years ago. But somehow this has all been lost in the modern era, when most local stations don’t even have local DJs on the air all day, if they have local DJs at all. And don’t get me started on contests that are run nationally, such that the chance of anyone in Southern California actually winning are lower than winning the lottery.

The problem is, it’s not being done … so young listeners - radio’s future - are being pushed away to the competition. If something doesn’t happen soon, it’s all over… meaning that radio could be dead within one generation.

What can be done? Stop marketing solely to old folks like me. Or better yet, stop assuming that even someone as old as I am (58) only wants to hear the same music I heard in my high school days. Here’s a clue: I don’t. I like new music. I don’t like knowing every song I hear. But like Law’s guitarist Aidan Palacios explained, “unless you like oldies or one type of pop, you are not going to find anything of interest on the radio today.” Country music excepted.

The great thing is, young people aren’t truly averse to radio listening if they found something of interest. They don’t shun radio because it’s old technology, as so many experts say. They just want to hear something designed for them. So rather than this being a doomsday message, this is actually a message of hope. All it would take is a local owner to start the trend. Now to get that trend started …

Mailbag

“I lived in Southern California for 26 years, moving to Arizona 14 years ago. I continue to listen to John & Ken, John Phillips, and Frank Mottek on-line. I do visit SoCal four times a year.

“AM sounds so tinny compared to online and KFI on KOST-HD2 has dropouts on the 405 around the Sepulveda Pass and into Ventura County and as you know, on the FM HD2 it doesn't revert to the analog signal. I listen to both KFI and KABC thru the iHeart app and it does a good job of integrating online ads with the program content. So even if I still lived in Simi Valley, I'm sure I would listen mostly online (especially KABC).” — Bob Bartholomew, Yuma, Arizona

That’s what I’ve found. The extra HD streams on FM drop out way too much to the point of annoyance, while streaming tends to work well in most areas.

“Thanks for bringing up 88.5 Not enough people know about this wonderful station. Good Job.” — William Dunaway

Thank you. I am trying to promote good radio, so if you know of something I miss, please let me know.

“I love reading your weekend articles, sure brings back a lot of good memories. Back in the late Sixties I remember my Mother always listening to a radio program daily and I believe it was the Bill Balance Show. Do you remember that by chance? — Randy Miera

Absolutely! In fact, I interviewed him years ago for the short-lived RadioGuide Magazine. He started in town playing top-40 music, but eventually became even more famous for his Feminine Forum, which brought huge ratings and success to KGBS (now KTNQ, 1020 AM) and later KFMB/San Diego. His best segments ended up on top-selling records, and he even released books giving relationship advice. All with a comedic twist.

View Details

Radio: August 27, 2021

Low-power FM radio stations are tough to come by in Southern California. Not that there is no interest in launching them, and not that there actually aren’t any. The problem is that commercial stations in San Diego, Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles, and even Santa Barbara counties fill every available frequency, and the weather often allows the commercial stations to cover vast areas … meaning that supposedly distant stations can overpower the low-power FM station even it’s licensed area.

Add to that the fact that the LPFMs, as they are called, cannot run commercial advertisements, and you have a situation where a hard-to-find station usually cannot support a budget allowing it to get the word out on its existence.

Of course the whole idea of LPFMs only came about because the FCC allowed the educational band of full-powered stations to stray from its intent of serving local communities, along with allowing huge conglomerates to take control of the rest of the band such that few stations program to a local audience. But I digress.

As I said, though, there are a few LPFMs around. Among them is one I just discovered, quite by accident, due in part to the odd weather conditions near my house.

I happened to be testing out my “new” car stereo — a Kenwood removed from my wife’s car — when I happened upon a station at 90.3 FM. Of course I know 90.3, and you may as well. It’s XHITZ, broadcasting from just South of the border with a transmitter in Tijuana, Mexico. I used to listen long ago when it was a good rock station, with such DJs as Bill Hergonson.

But this time I wasn’t hearing top-40 music as the station now plays. It was oldies, primarily from the 1960s, along with some old-school from the ‘70s and ‘80s. And I wasn’t hearing commercials. Did XHITZ change into something different? Then I heard the top-of-the-hour ID: KLIE/Fountain Valley: Radio Suerte.

It’s apparently not a new station, as it received special recognition from the United States Congress in 2019 even though RadioLocator.com says the license was granted in January of 2021. Either way it is new to me, primarily due to atmospheric conditions that blocked XHITZ and allowed its 90-watts of power to reach me as I was driving around upper San Pedro last weekend.

The station is bilingual, English and Spanish, but the music is the language it speaks. Songs — and occasionally versions of songs — you haven’t heard for a while are the stars. Station CEO Maria Luisa Luna puts it this way, as an introduction of the station website (radiosuerte.com): “Radio Suerte is like no other station you have heard. We are the first bilingual station bringing you golden hits, playing jewels from the 60's - 70's -80's and 90's. We pride ourselves in playing music the whole family can hear.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if Maria grew up with the original KRLA (now KRDC, 1110 AM) or even the Chuck Martin-programmed KHJ (930 AM) circa 1979-80, which did the same thing. KRLA in particular, when the legendary Art Laboe was involved, created a format often listened to by multiple generations in families.

The station is downright fun. And you can hear it at radiosuerte.com by clicking on the player link on the main page.

HD Update

HD Radio, the digital radio broadcasting system authorized in the United States, had its genesis as a way to improve the sound of AM radio. Yet the state of HD on AM is dismal, at least in Southern California. While almost every FM station in town uses HD to add extra channels (that they rarely promote) and hopefully improve fidelity if heard over an HD Radio tuner, there are only two HD AM stations left that I know of — KBRT (740 AM) and KMZT (1260 AM).

Why did KFI (640 AM), KABC (790 AM), KFWB (980 AM), and KNX (1070 AM) turn off the HD? A KFI spokesperson told me it had to do with a listener in the fringe reception areas annoyed by the drastic sound change when the station switched between analog and HD. I’m not sure about the other stations, but for those of us with HD Radios, it is unfortunate - the sound quality and lack of background noise is striking compared with typical analog.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter, as the future of AM radio — or perhaps radio in general — may be online. Between online internet access, smartphone apps, smart speakers and the like, the value of HD on AM or even FM is somewhat diminished. AM stations sound great via apps, and you can listen to distant stations with ease.

I’m not ready to say AM and FM over the regular airwaves are dead, but it’s an interesting thought. What are your views?

Tuna on the AM and FM

Charlie Tuna from August 23, 1976 is the star of KIIS AM and FM on a recent MixCloud addition. The short segment features a full newscast, and a reminder that the station was not known as “kiss” back then … it was still K-double I-S, including the jingles that have a groovy soul-full “AM and FM” vocal a part of the package. Also included: a montage of Neil Diamond songs that the station custom assembled. Tuna, as always, sounds great … though he isn’t heard nearly enough.

Hear it at https://www.mixcloud.com/retroradiojoe/kiis-fm-los-angeles-charlie-tuna-8-23-1976/

View Details

Radio: August 20, 2021

The tremendously accurate recreation of Mellow Sound KNX-FM (now KCBS-FM, 93.1) that was so popular in the 1970s and part of the ‘80s — KNXFM93.com — has another special in store.

Saturday at 5 p.m. and again Sunday at 12 noon (Pacific time), the popular internet station will present 90 minutes of Linda Ronstadt recorded live “over space and time,” says station spokesman and producer Douglas Brown. What he means is that it’s not one concert on one date but a combination of her best performances — and those of some of her friends — recorded over the years and in different venues. Perhaps you were at some of the concerts yourself.

It’s another of the station’s “In Concert” series, and it’s available only inline via the internet, your smartphone using a radio app, or your smart speaker when you say tell Siri, Google or Alexa to “play knxfm93 on TuneIn Radio.”

If you haven’t sampled it yet, by the way, you owe it to yourself to do so. The music mix is huge, and the presentation is top-notch, from the jingles, to the announcements, to the all-new Odyssey File. If you weren’t paying attention to the fact that they run no commercials, you’d swear you were hearing the original KNX-FM.

Honestly, I am not sure why someone doesn’t put the format on the traditional radio airwaves.

DJ Denning

Country artist Travis Denning is performing October 12th at the Greek Theater as part of the Brothers Osborne “We’re Not For Everyone” tour. In celebration, Go Country 105 (105.1 FM) is giving away tickets all this month and giving Denning control of the Go Country airwaves weekdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. through the end of the month as the August mid-day guest host.

The station is also giving away tickets to the concert, which are actually possible to win being that the contest is for local listeners, not nationwide like so many cheap discount huge corporate-owned competing stations. You know which stations I mean …

Speaking of Go Country, station owner Saul Levine is a huge lover of animals and has spent many years promoting and supporting the adoption of shelter animals. He and the station promote the adoptions right on the website, GoCountry105.com.

Valley Fest

Independent 88.5 FM invites you to join them for an evening of great food, fun, and live entertainment as you support local small businesses. It’s called The Valley Fest, and it will be held on Saturday, August 28th from 5 - 10 p.m.

The station calls it an assembly of “hidden gems,” featuring food, brewers, artists, creators, and entertainers. Registration needs to be done through Eventbrite; find information and a link to register at the station website, 885fm.org. The event is sponsored by 88.5 FM, The 818 Insider, and Westfield Topanga and the Village

What is 88.5, you ask? Quite simply a hidden gem itself. Over the air, I think the signal reaches about 27 people … maybe 28. But you can listen online at the website or via your smartphone or smart speaker. One of the few stations that plays new music and new artists, albeit on the adult alternative light-rock side. Definitely worth searching out. It is a service of Cal State Northridge and Saddleback College.

Takeover

Want your 15 minutes of fame? Want to be on KIIS-FM (102.7)? Get both by nominating yourself for Takeover Tuesdays, winners are announced Tuesdays at 2 PM.

Shy? Nominate your friend. Sketchy details are at kiisfm.com.

View Details

Radio: August 13, 2021

AllAccess.com broke the news that Garry Meier — perhaps best known for his many years paired with Steve Dahl on WLS, WLUP and WLUP-FM in Chicago — has started hosting a new show on KABC (790 AM) Sunday nights at 10:00.

As half of the Steve and Garry Show on WLUP, Meier was part of the WLUP Disco Demolition Night held in July of 1979 which was originally conceived as a publicity stunt for the station to “end disco once and for all.” What ended up happening is that the event, held between games of a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the visiting Detroit Tigers, got out of hand when fans stormed the field after the records were blown up, and refused to leave. The second game of the day was first postponed and later ruled a forfeit win for the Tigers.

It was perhaps one of the most notorious radio events of the decade, with news coverage all across the country.

A member of the Chicago Radio Hall of Fame, Meier’s one-hour program is a lighthearted look at the news and current events … no particular topic is to be discussed or not discussed. The program is also available as a podcast on the KABC.com website.

Speaking of KABC

The station is placing the daily 1 p.m. Doctor Hour — among the highest-rated hours of its broadcast day — on hiatus, “officially” in order to devote time to covering the issues behind the recall of Gavin Newsom. The hour — one third of John Philip’s noon - 3 p.m. weekday program (formerly) airing at 1:00 — is expected to return after the election.

But it won’t necessarily return with Dr. Kelly Victory, the primary and most popular guest on the segment and someone who has been with the station for almost seven years as the go-to expert when public health issues arise. For the past year and a half, Victory has been on the air almost daily weekdays taking calls and answering questions for all things Covid-19.

“After 18 months of donating my time, five days a week, to be the voice of calm and reason on KABC, they called me recently and said they are canceling the hour. They are ‘worried about any negative information about the vaccines.’”

Part of that worry is a corporate culture that lives at the major mega-corp radio companies like KABC owner Cumulus. Cumulus talk host Phil Valentine, heard on 30 affiliates nationwide, was an outspoken anti-vaccine proponent until he became ill with Covid-19 and was placed on a ventilator in late July. The worry, says observers, is listener or regulatory backlash due to the nature of the discussions and public policy.

That’s a bit hard to understand in this case, though. Victory is far from anti-vaccine, though she believes in presenting information and letting people make the risk-benefit decision themselves. She thinks that is exactly the problem.

“I always present a balanced view when I do these segments, whether on KABC or elsewhere,” says Victory, an emergency trauma expert and public health specialist. Part of her expertise is on disaster preparedness and response. “If I can’t speak the truth, then my job is over,” she told me, adding that she always strives to be calm, balanced and measured.

“You can’t make good decisions out of fear,” Kelly said.

Her decision right now is to seek out a different platform to help spread accurate information and help people make informed decisions. “My mission hasn’t changed.” But it does apparently signal a split from KABC, with Kelly stating that she won’t return unless she gets a guarantee that she can say what she believes as truth. My hunch is that she’ll return to the local airwaves, but on a different station. “I’m not going to sign up to be censored.”

“Virtue untested is no virtue at all,” Kelly told me, reflecting on what she feels is the station dropping the segment due to perceived pressure from outside. “I broadcast from the ICU when I was in the hospital – as a patient, rearranged flights and travel plans to accommodate the show, and was on the air almost every day for 18 months — as a volunteer — just to help people out.”

It’s unfortunate, as the doctor hour is definitely one of the best hours on the radio. Hopefully it will be back on the air sooner than later. Somewhere.

Letterbag

“I'm a dedicated listener to Swing Time and I can't find any information about why Johnny Magnus will no longer be hosting. Can you enlighten me?” — Frank Coffey

“Good morning from West Hills!! Did Johnny Magnus leave… there’s a new guy on the air this morning!” — John Del Gatto

“Do you know what happened to Johnny Magnus on K-Jazz? I don't understand why DJ changes are so secretive.” — Alex Nigian

It appears to just be a change, with longtime radio personality and programmer Chuck Southcott taking over the Swing Time program from former host Johnny Magnus. Like Magnus, Southcott is an expert on the genre, and can be heard from 7-10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays on KKJZ (88.1 FM). Southcott tells me he loves playing the music once again.

I am told that the health of Magnus is not an issue.

“I have been searching the airwaves for a station to take the place of 1260AM when classical music replaced the oldies. I found it at 88.1 FM coming out of Cal State University at Long Beach. They play some jazz and a good mix other stuff and very little talk. Love it!” — Katherine Samuelsen

Interesting replacement, aside from the difference in music. Saul Levine of 1260 also runs 88.1 — they even use his studios in West LA for the programming.

By the way, the oldies formerly found on 1260 AM can still be heard at LAOldies.com, as well as via phone apps and smart speakers, and on HD radios (KKGO HD2).

View Details

Kevin Ryder responds to KROQ column, talks connection to listeners of the World Famous 106.7

The mail was almost 100% in agreement with my commentary last week on KROQ’s (106.7 FM) has-been status. Only one letter disagreed, and it pointed to a website of supposed radio insiders who disagreed. I am absolutely wrong, they all said.

I know them well. I call them the corporate radio apologists. They will defend to the death what iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus have done to radio, which is to send listeners to alternative sources such as Apple Music and Spotify, make radio a background entertainment service minimizing ad rates and station value, and, in general, make radio less important in the lives of people.

You, on the other hand, said this:

“Unfortunately the state of radio is more concerned with the bottom line instead of evolving a brand into the tech era. “ — Don A

“You nailed it. Good job. It's about time.” — Max Tolkoff

“Been listening to KROQ since their AM days. Regarding your brief article, they let go of all their talent. I could list them but you know who they are starting with Ralph and Lisa. I finally cut the cord and now listen to KLOS. Feels like the old days with Kevin Ryder and other familiar voices. I love Heidi and Frank. Feels like the old days just with (expletive deleted) music, but that's what my music library is for.” — Scott W

Kevin Ryder, who spent 30 years waking up Los Angeles on the Kevin and Bean morning show on KROQ — and currently heard doing afternoons on KLOS (95.5 FM) as half of Kevin and Sluggo — agreed with my analysis.

“I didn’t understand the level of connection that you can have with listeners. I had no idea,” Ryder told me recently on the LARadiowaves podcast. “Until probably 12 or 13 years into doing the morning show on KROQ, did I realize, people are really invested in this, and invested in me as a person,” later explaining that “the problem I think is there are so few huge corporations that own so many radio stations … and I just think that they have miscalculated that connection, many different times.

“It’s a real connection … and it’s the connection that they don’t understand.” Ryder's former partner, Gene "Bean" Baxter chimed in on Twitter as well, saying "I'm sad to see what it's become."

There were more letters (and more of the interview with Ryder at LARadiowaves.com where he talks about KROQ, radio people and his new gig at KLOS), but the idea is there. I just don’t see any real progress until KROQ is either independent again, or Audacy let’s the local creative juices flow. National and regional programming just doesn’t cut it.

No Rush

There was always a bit of mystery surrounding the success of radio talk host Rush Limbaugh, who passed away this past February 17th. Not that there should have been, but there most definitely was: to this day, few seem to understand what made him successful.

Yes, I know there are those who will analyze the show and say that it was his conservative views presented in a liberal-dominated media world. I've said it before but this absolutely misses the real reason he was popular. And the lesson not learned is the reason that so many competitors on all sides of the political spectrum have missed the boat … few conservatives ever matched his success, and liberal Air America failed miserably.

What made Limbaugh tick was that he was an entertainer first, political talker second. There were times his show segment didn’t even feature politics at all, with football being his main diversion. The point is that he was fun. And while I am sure to get a ton of hate mail (mostly from those who never heard his show), it is an absolute fact. Especially in his early days, it was not just conservatives who listened. He didn’t insult listeners who disagreed; he embraced them. In the political arena, he was friends from the full spectrum of politics.

I bring this up now because I’ve been sampling his supposed replacements, Dan Bongino — heard locally from 9 a.m. to 12 noon on KABC (790 AM) — and (Clay) Travis and (Buck) Sexton — heard locally on KEIB (1150 AM).

Both shows are fine, for what they are: political commentary mixed in with interviews of political leaders. But they are not Limbaugh … they are the equivalent to the shows that ran on many stations that carried Limbaugh, and were just there to fill space on the hours Limbaugh was not broadcasting himself.

That doesn’t mean they are bad, and it doesn’t mean they can’t become something better. But when I listen, I cannot get past the preaching to the choir feeling that was never there with Limbaugh. They are informative, and of course similarly biased … but lacking the fun.

Part of that fun came from Limbaugh’s first jobs in radio: playing top-40 music. He honed his craft making the most of his limited time in between the records, and as my RadioWaves podcast partner Mike Stark always says, it is what is between the records that counts.

Limbaugh didn’t bring people back to the AM band and launch a talk-radio revolution by sounding like everyone else, and he never did sound like everyone else. Bongino, Travis and Sexton need to think about what they are doing and make their shows not only more entertaining, but present their views in such a way that they, too, can attract those who may disagree but are willing to listen to views other than their own.

I just don’t see that right now. But they can do it. And should.

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com

View Details

Special guest Kevin Ryder formerly of "Kevin & Bean" on KROQ - now "Kevin & Sluggo" on KLOS

Radio: June 25, 2021

By now you probably know that KROQ (106.7 FM) is in trouble. The once trend-setting station that helped put New Wave on the map and helped create the eventual “alternative” format in radio has seen better days, to say the least. Most recently, while ratings edged up slightly in May to 2.2 from April’s 2.0, the fact is that since the beginning of the year KROQ has been beaten in the ratings every month by Alt 98.7 … in two months by a full point.

There are numerous reasons for this, not the least of which is that the station is owned by Audacy, a company so desperately trying to stay afloat under massive debt that it no longer has local personalities or local programming for numerous formats they run nationwide … including alternative, which means KROQ is hobbled by upper management.

Oh, sure, you could make the station perhaps slightly more successful than it is now if you get the music mix just right, have the right promotions, and maybe do something to knock Alt off the air. But the fact remains that KROQ was KROQ precisely because it was Los Angeles. You can’t do KROQ unless you make it its own.

Students of local radio history have seen this exact thing before. No one outside of former programmer Sam Bellamy, former General Manager David Moorhead, and a handful of others understood what made KMET tick in the late 1970s when they dominated their format. When Bellamy was let go and management got lazy, it was KROQ itself that did the Mighty Met in. And they did it by beating KMET at its own game - playing the right music for Los Angeles, finding the right attitude in the personalities, and being a part of a new wave (no pun intended) of music and listeners … made for Southern California.

KROQ today? Meh.

The music is programmed nationally. Most of the personalities are broadcasting from here, but are syndicated as well. The remaining come from other cities. This is just a national version of an alternative format, sounding exactly like you would hear in Portland. Or New York. Or wherever.

Definitely not Los Angeles. Nor Southern California. And no one cares any more, including listeners who at one time were among radio’s most passionate.

So excuse my lack of enthusiasm for the search currently in progress for the “solid, strong anchor for the morning show on this legendary radio station” as was posted on consultant Steve Reynolds’ Facebook page. Reynolds is helping with the search from his home base in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Know how to build a great culture and do spectacular radio?” He continued. “You super talented, have a great attitude, and ready to do the work that'll make you an even bigger superstar in the industry? DM me any names (yours or others, even if they're working). This is freakin' KROQ, folks.”

Except that it isn’t. For all intents and purposes, KROQ is dead, and will remain so as long as it is part of Audacy. It isn’t the morning show that is the problem — the station had great talent there with Ted Stryker … at least until they removed him from mornings. But a replacement won’t make a bit of difference until KROQ is freed from the restraints given by overpaid, useless upper managers and a CEO who don’t “get” radio. KROQ cannot be KROQ when it has to play everywhere. It just sounds canned. Predictable.

When was the last time you listened to KROQ? See my point?

New Talker

After months of anticipation, KBLA (1580 AM) has launched its new talk format with an all-new lineup of hosts.

Weekdays from 6 to 9 a.m., it’s First Things First with Dominique Diprima, described as news and commentary from a uniquely different perspective. Following DiPrima at 9:00 is station owner Tavis Smiley with “insightful conversations with thought leaders, opinion makers, celebrities, authors and artists.”

At 12 noon Middays with Danny Morrison presents a community-centered program from “a politically astute, socially conscious, unapologetically opinionated, call to action warrior.” D.L. Hughley lightens afternoons somewhat from 2-4 with a “no hold barred ride of reality and humor.” At 4:00 every weekday afternoon, Alonzo Boded asks “Who’s Paying Attention?” As he attempts to root out the truth in an entertaining fashion.

At 7 p.m., Dr. Jeshana Johnson gets to the heart of relationships on Let’s Get Intimate … something particularly important as we re-enter life after the pandemic. Finally at 9:00, Don Amiche Vs. Everybody + Crysta and Kiara bringing “the other side of news, politics, pop culture, and life.” Repeats and best-of segments will air on the station between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m.

Using the branding of “unapologetically progressive,” the station launched on Saturday June 19th — Juneteenth — with a sort of sneak preview; the official format began this past Monday June 21st. Give it a listen and tell me what you think.

///

View Details

Radio: June 18, 2021

Last week I asked two questions: do you enjoy radio, and more importantly why?

I didn’t really give much thought to it, but a related question is do you still enjoy radio, but as it turns out, that comes out in your emails over the past few days. Obviously, you do (did) enjoy it, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this column. But your response are important, I believe, to move the industry forward such that it will still be relevant in the years ahead.

“You mentioned having a transistor radio at an early age. I can do one better...my first was a crystal set that my brothers made in their hobby room upstairs in our house. It couldn't reach much except for the local station in our small town in northwest Washington, but it was great to listen to underneath the covers when I was supposed to be sleeping at night.

“Later when doing homework in high school, disc jockeys from Seattle at KIRO kept me focused (?) on the work. The Hit Parade countdown to the # 1 hit was a favorite which we teens waited for each week. Our family listened faithfully to such programs as Fibber McGee and Molly and always laughed heartily when he opened the closet door and the contents came crashing out. Bob and Ray, in later years and their subtle humor was a favorite of mine, and a bit of relief from other madcap humor of the day.

“Now, FM Classical programming is my choice now and the extensive play list of KUSC continues to fill my home and car.” — June Russell, Laguna Woods

“As an only child living in Southern California I didn’t have siblings or a lot of friends around especially in the evenings, so it was easy to build a “friendship” in my mind with the people in the box. Sports were the source of my first connection. Vin Scully could have been part of the family … I can still recite parts of some of the Farmer John and Union 76 ads from the games. Scully was so important to the team that almost everyone would bring a transistor radio to the games and you could hear his voice throughout the stadium during the game.

“It didn’t take long for me to find out there were other things on the radio. I made it a point to listen to Lohman and Barkley when I could in the mornings. I loved those crazy characters Lohman made up like Ted and Eva Baloney, etc. As I grew older, the radio became a gateway to new music for me.

“ I will say that the fragmentation of media can be disappointing and even a little dangerous. We all have different playlists and they have all diverged and have less and less in common. It kind of makes me pine for the innocent days in high school when punk rock fans like me listened to KROQ while the stoners listened to KMET. “ — John Standiford, Cypress

“Back in the fifties, I’d lie in bed, in Venice, listening to Lucky Lager Dance Time on, I think, KFWB. The sweet-sounding tunes lulled me to sleep. I can still remember the theme song for that show: “Dream…” And talking about skip: I was stationed in Panama during the early sixties, and remember that, on certain nights, we’d pick up a SoCal station or two. Good music and back-home news. Now, that was exciting.” — Mike Levitt

“I was a 40 year long haul truck driver, the radio was essential to keeping me awake and not bored. I love talk radio … missing RUSH more than words can express. For music it was country or classical.” — Pete Fitzek

“My earliest recollections are KMPC with Dick Whitinghill. ‘Around the corner and up your street, now its time for As the Stomach Turns, brought to you by Kers…the last word in crackers.’ And the serial ‘lost’ … tell your mother to go to the market and get lost.

“We listened at breakfast and at 8:25 a.m. or so, it was the business report: a female voice would say: ‘E.F. Hutton & Company, the market, just a moment please.’ When that was over it was time for school. At night it was KMPC and Gary Owens with the ‘teenage underground.’ Then KFWB: Bill Balance and the rest. And oh how I miss Jim Healy’s sports on KLAC.” — Joe Davis, Laguna Niguel

“LOVED your article today about the radio stations of long ago; they were the BEST!! Everything you said about them was true. I loved KHJ back in the day; Charlie Tuna was my fave! So glad he ended up on KRTH years ago, and I was lucky enough to get to meet him when he did a couple of outdoor gigs at a Stater Bros. near me – and even had my picture taken with him … Something I treasure to this day.

“I loved looking forward to going to the record store and getting the latest program with the top songs of the week listed. So fun to see just who was up and coming, and listening to the new songs. And it was fun to call in and request songs, as well as participate in their contests. I think of our old radio often, as I listen while I drive – so not what it used to be!

“I’m saving your article from today, and putting it in with my old record albums that I still have. It was so much fun to listen to radio back then – and be a part of it.

I miss that. Oh, and don’t forget Jeff Gonzer of KLOS – what a show he had!” — Michele Cruz

“I will spell it out:

“Right here -- We can listen to radio anywhere in our home, and just about anywhere outside of home. Activity-oriented -- Radio can entertain and lift us while we are doing just about any activity -- as it did for you when you worked in the back warehouse at Sears Surplus. Dramatic -- As Jack Benny said, on radio, the screen is as wide as your imagination. For sports fans, a big game is even more epic on radio than on TV, because you are hanging on the announcer's words and because you become more aware of the crowd noise. Information and intimacy -- All-news radio is still the best place for reliable, immediate information on breaking news. No matter how good GPS is, it's still comforting when driving to hear the traffic problems from a real person (WHY is there such a back-up?). . . . As for intimacy, on TV, you feel the announcer is talking to "everyone." On radio, you can feel the announcer is talking only to you -- it's just the two of you. Over distance -- We can pull in stations from other cities and, at night, other parts of the country. There are few pleasures better than cruising on a highway at night while listening to a terrific interview or game.

“Yours shopping for a new transistor radio” — John Lowe, Seal beach

One response perhaps brought out the real reason we all love radio: the human connection you can’t get from an online jukebox. “Yes, I listen to radio, happily. Simple, easy, interesting, no user name, password … no instructions needed … Sam Riddle, Wink Martindale, Wolfman Jack … I embrace print, radio and human interaction.” — L.T. Karg

LA Radio Waves: Recent Episodes

LA Radio Studio