Radio Waves Podcast #206

Radio: January 19, 2018

Amp Radio (97.1 FM) is finally getting a new morning show.

Former morning man Carson Daly left the station in July to (supposedly) spend more time with family, though I think money had much to do with it as former owner CBS was cutting numerous positions all last year. Regardless, the station has been without an “official” morning show since Daly left, and numerous observers speculated that perhaps Amp would simply go without.

Putting those rumors to rest, Amp announced last week that Edgar Sotelo and Brian Moote would have wake-up duties beginning in February, though no exact date was given.

Sotelo was last heard on Amp Radio in New York, where he hosted mornings until that station changed to alternative in November. Moote was part of WWWQ/Atlanta’s “The Bert Show.”

Both face formidable competition from a variety of stations such as Alt 98.7’s The Woody Show, KLOS’s (95.5 FM)) Heidi, Frosty and Frank, and Amp’s own sister station KROQ’s Kevin and Bean.

 

But Amp’s main competition is KIIS (102.7 FM), and morning man Ryan Seacrest has been literally calling in his show from New York as he hosts -- at roughly the same time -- television’s Live! with Kelly Ripa ... his radio show acting as a mere promotional tool for his television shows and appearances. This leaves KIIS potentially vulnerable, and may make for some interesting competition.

Kevin on the Weekend

Speaking of Amp Radio, if you haven’t heard Kevin (Schatz) on Amp weekends (6 a.m. to 12 noon, I believe), you’re missing out. The South Bay local boy plays the hits with a special mustache twist ...

Cuts at KCAL

The problem of declining advertising revenues in radio are apparently not hurting just the large group owners that caused the problem. Last week the Inland Empire’s KCAL (96.7 FM) announced cuts that meant the loss of longtime morning hosts James “Jimbo” Smith and Tiffany Angelo, morning producer Steven Kono, and 42-year KCAL personality Michael Stewart, who had been doing overnights.

“The cuts took us by surprise,” said KCAL programmer Darly Norsell who explained that it was even more of a surprise as the station has been doing well in ratings lately.

The cuts apparently came down straight from the station’s owners, Anaheim Broadcasting, which also owns KOLA (99.9 FM) once owned the former KEZY in Anaheim, hence the name. Anaheim Broadcasting is run by Tim Sullivan, once a general manager of KHJ (930 AM) and later KWST (now KPWR, 105.9 FM).

KCAL General Manager Jeff Parke told RAMP.Com that “ownership decided they just couldn’t keep operating KCAL with such high expenses,” adding “this has been really tough, to say the least. All the people we let go are like family.”

Patrick Tish, the remaining member of the former morning show, now hosts a music-intensive show; Frank Garcia, who serves as the station’s production director, has taken overnights. No format change is planned. KCAL was one of the stations I applied to years ago. They turned me down ...

This is an unfortunate situation; I hope KCAL can get back on better financial footing. We need local stations!

Radio Waves Podcast #205

Radio: December 12, 2018

One of the weekend highlights of the former classic rock station The Sound (now religious KKLQ, 100.3 FM) was Mimi Chen’s Peace, Love, and Sunday Mornings, an eclectic musical program that truly harkened back to the days of KMET (now KTWV, 94.7 FM) or even KNX-FM (now KCBS-FM, 93.1). When The Sound found God, her show was without a home. At least for a while. 

The obvious place for her show is the new 88.5 FM, formerly known as KCSN. And that’s exactly where she landed.

 

88.5’s facebook page announced on January 5th that “The rumors are true! We are happy to welcome Mimi Chen's Peace, Love and Sunday Mornings to 88.5 FM starting this Sunday 1-3 p.m.”

OK ... Sunday mornings on Sunday afternoon? Perhaps the show needs to change the name to Peace, Love and Sunday Brunch, as one fan (Julie Wysocki) posted on Facebook. For now it’s just Peace, Love and Sunday and started on January 7th. Same show, same vibe. Which is good.

Now all 88.5 has to do is tweak their signal. In spite of a power increase and a simulcast utilizing the same frequency of the former KSBR in Orange County, I can still barely pick up the station at home or in the car. Streaming works, of course, at 885fm.org. 

Speaking of Signal Issues

Reader Rick Hamilton of San Pedro has a bone to pick with SiriusXM satellite radio. Namely that the signal has been weak lately. “I was stuck in traffic on the freeway a few weeks ago, and the signal just kept dropping out,” he told me. “It got so bad I couldn’t even listen.”

I’ve noticed the same problem ... far  more dead spots than normal. Not so bad that I can’t listen, but I haven’t been stuck in traffic so I quickly travel through the dead spots. I plan to contact their engineering department for an explanation, but before I do, I wanted to ask you: have you been experiencing problems with SiriusXM? If so, send me the location of trouble and I will send a report listing them all. My hunch is that it has to do with un-synchronized land-based signal boosters. If you happen to know which system you are using (Sirius, XM or the newer SiriusXM) that would be helpful.

Radio’s Problems

I’ve been on a clock-radio kick lately: my Boston Horizon Duo-i started having issues, so I set out to find a replacement. Unfortunately I could not, so I bought another Duo-i off of eBay.

But I thought it would be a good idea to check out the other radios in the house, including my younger son’s Horizon Solo which works fine other than a dim clock dial. I figured I’d take the lamp from my broken radio and fix his.

“Don’t bother,” he told me. “I never listen to the radio any more anyway. There’s just nothing on.” His music comes from iTunes on his computer.

My older son? SiriusXM.

Two kids who shun radio completely, both sons of a radio dork who lives and breathes radio. If I didn’t set an example, I  can’t imagine who could. This is anecdotal, but at the same time not a good trend.

KFI HD

KFI (640 AM) was once the second-best sounding AM HD Radio station in town (KNX 1070 AM is still the best). But for reasons very unclear to me at the time, KFI management made the decision to shut off the HD on the AM signal and instead simulcast the signal on a secondary channel of KOST (103.5 FM) using 103.5 HD2.

According to a reliable source, the reason for shutting off the AM HD signal was that one listener complained that they didn’t like the abrupt change that happened when the HD signal wasn’t strong enough, and the radio had to switch to analog.

One listener. Not confirmed, of course, but most likely true ... my sources are darn good.

So the rest of us can’t experience KFI in HD because of one listener. Oh, we can listen to the KOST simulcast, but that drops out so often it is virtually unlistenable in the South Bay of LA County. To make matters worse, KFI still broadcasts in narrow band analog, so the station sounds bad even on a good wide-band AM radio. And don’t get me started on the technical tweaks that supposedly help ratings but make the station sound distorted to regular listeners.

Used to be that engineers tried their best to make stations sound good ... with the best signal of any station in Western America, perhaps KFI could at least go back to broadcasting wideband AM stereo, if indeed management won’t turn the HD back on.

///

Radio Waves Podcast #204

Radio: January 5, 2018

My grandmother listened to Hilly Rose for years on various radio stations; her enthusiasm for his show made me a fan too. I found his programs informative, educational, and entertaining ... one of the best of the first generation of talk shows as heard in Los Angeles.

Rose passed away December 27th of natural causes. He was 91.

Prior to his many years in Los Angeles, Rose perfected his craft in San Francisco at KCBS, KGO and KNEW; he was also heard (and seen) on Bay-area television station KTVU Channel 2.

Locally he was heard on KABC (790 AM) beginning in 1970. In 1972 he moved to KFI (640 AM) where he stayed until he left in 1979 for KMPC (now KSPN, 710 AM). 1982 brought him back to KABC for a couple years; he retired in 1984.

KFI is the station I remember carrying his show. Being on in the late evening hours game him incredible reach: KFI is among the most powerful stations in the United States, and reaches much of the country at night. Rose effectively had a nationwide show with calls coming in from many of the contiguous 48 states.

One of his claims to fame is pushing support for the Jarvis-Gann initiative, better known as Proposition 13. Rose, talk host friend Ray Breim, and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner were early supporters of the proposition, and helped get people to talk about it.

Two years ago I mentioned Rose in this column; he reached out to me explaining his decision to retire.

“Thank you for remembering my name out of so many talk show hosts of the 70's and 80's,” he said. “I quit KABC in 1986 because I saw the great axe coming. 

“I started doing talk shows at KCBS in San Francisco in 1963; that is 23 years of discussing the same subjects repeatedly.

“I must point out that 52 years later we are still endlessly discussing abortion, immigration. race, crime, war (Vietnam, now middle-east), immigrants taking jobs from citizens ... the list goes on and on. Nothing is resolved, indeed in most cases the situation gets worse.

“I got tired of discussing the same things over and over again, and went into the specialty of paranormal. At least there  was always something new to talk about (with the exception of Roswell). That eventually led me into doing the Art Bell Coast to Coast AM show on over 600 radio stations.

“I finally quit radio last year [2014] after 52 wonderful years in broadcasting. Yes, the outlook is dreadful, but with all the new mediums available today, surely someone with "that certain fresh touch" will emerge. They always do.”

Sound Success

The last full ratings book for The Sound (now K-Love KKLQ, 100.3 FM) was quite impressive: the November ratings for all listeners aged 6 and over was 2.8, up more than half a point from October’s 2.2 and almost a point above September’s 2.0. The real news came from the demographic of Men aged 35-64, where the station’s numbers jumped s high they were a very close 2nd in the city. Nielsen rules prevent me from quoting exact numbers, but the increase from September was almost double in that demo between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m.

I think the time may be ripe for a new approach for The Sound. Here’s my plan:

Develop programs using The Sound DJs and make them available as podcasts ... but also market the package as a ready-to-air format for digital HD stations nationwide. Advertising can be split between national and local ads (if they want) kind of like cable TV does with some programming.

 

This would keep the format going and viable until a local station is found, takes the format into what some consider radio’s future, and adds the enticing bottom floor of HD signals actually being listened to by normal people. I believe The Sound could help sell HD radios, and ultimately could help make HD truly a success.

THEN we buy back 100.3 (and for me KHJ 930 AM so I can program top-40) and we are all set …

By the way, the December ratings just released had the Sound still running for 14-1/2 of the 28 rated days. Those 14 days were among the highest ratings the station ever had. Yet the overall results for December had 100.3 at a mere 1.2 share. If the new format crashed that far already, imagine how the new station will look with a full month.

Relying on listener support rather than ads, K-Love owners don’t truly care about ratings. But having few listeners may make donations hard to fetch. Just sayin’ ...