Radio Waves Podcast #227

Radio: June 29, 2018

KLOS (95.5 FM) has survived numerous competitors over the years and continues to prove it is still an amazing station and fully worthy of consideration for one of your radio presets.

This week (or last week, depending on when you read this) is a perfect example. Evening DJ Melissa Maxx has been out, so this week they are bringing in guests to handle the 7 p.m. to 12 midnight shift. Included on the guest list is none other than Rita Wilde, formerly heard on The Sound (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM), KEZY (now KGBN, 1190 AM), and of course KLOS. Rita ‘s shift is/was Thursday June 28th.

Jed the Fish of KROQ (106.7 FM) fame was the Monday guest; comedian label owner and Podcast Star Joe Sib Tuesday, and Full Metal Jackie and Munky from the band Korn on Wednesday. As I write this no one was scheduled for Friday but that may change, as this was being put together fairly quickly.

“It feels like completing the circle,” Wilde told me. One her Facebook page, she told went into more detail.

“I can honestly admit that I never thought I would be able to say the phrase " 955 KLOS" on the radio again. I had a wonderful ride at 3321 S. La Cienega and I am grateful for that magical time and my memories.

“Think about it. 955 KLOS has been a consistent presence in Southern California. Musical trends and personalities have changed but KLOS has remained a rock station for most of our lives. It is an iconic brand, a rock in our lives. I am so honored that I was asked by Program Director Keith Cunningham to be a guest DJ.

“I am blessed and grateful.”

The guest slots happen to be set during the station’s annual blood drive, which runs June 27-30 at locations throughout the area. 

All donors will receive a commemorative 37th Annual KLOS Blood Drive T-shirt, a voucher for a free combo meal courtesy of Wahoo’s Fish Taco, a discount ticket offer from the LA Galaxy and a voucher for one ticket to one of numerous concerts including Scorpions and Queensryche; Deep Purple and Judas Priest; Bush, Stone Temple Pilots and The Cult; Kid Rick; and Foreigner with special guests Whitesnake. Tickets are limited, though, so if you’re interested, reserve a spot online at www.955klos.com right away.

Passings

You may not know the name Arnie McClatchey, but if you grew up in 1970s Orange County, you probably heard him ... even if indirectly. He was a personality at KWIZ/Santa Ana (1480 AM) in 1966; in 1967 became programmer at  1190 KEZY/Anaheim and was the man who changed it to a powerhouse top-40 station around 1968. In 1975 he left to program and later purchase KYMS/Santa Ana (now KALI, 106.3 FM), a station he switched to contemporary Christian music -- among the first in the nation -- and was the start of a longtime association with the format.

He purchased KELP/El Paso, Texas in 1984 and moved to the area permanently in 1994. He passed away June 20th at the age of 76.

East Coast transplants know of Dan Ingram. His 50-year career in top-40 and oldies radio was spent on the giants of the East Coast, including WABC and WCBS-FM in New York. His quick wit and biting satire made him among the most popular DJs in the history of New York radio.

He was also known for playing “special” versions of (sometimes annoying” popular songs. Remember Paul Simons’ “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover?” Ingram’s version was “Fifty Ways to Love Your Leaver.” Paul McCartney’s “My Love Does it Good” became “My Glove Does it Good.” The stuttering on Elton John’s “B-B-B-Benny and the Jets” went on seemingly endlessly. He even re-arranged the letters for the spelling of Saturday in the Bay City Rollers’ “Saturday Night.”

Ingram passed away June 24th at the age of 83.

Radio Waves Podcast #226

Radio: June 22, 2018

Last week I had a chance to sit down and talk with Chuck Martin, the last programmer of KHJ (930 AM) before the popular top-40 station went country in November of 1980. Martin and longtime KHJ engineer/production director Douglas Brown joined me and LA Radio Studio’s Michael Stark for a career-spanning audio interview of Martin that will be available shortly at LARadioWaves.Com.

I’ll have details on the the interview and a story on Martin here when the audio interview is posted, but I will tell you: I am still giddy over the experience. In my humble opinion, Martin is among the best music radio programmers to ever make it in Los Angeles, and I am convinced that his experience, expertise, and tremendous passion could still take a station from “worst” to “first” ... just as he did at KHJ.

Or would have had the suits in charge not blown it by going country. I just wish more people in radio had even half the passion of Martin. Details soon!

NAB Wants More

Radio consolidation has been such a tremendous success that two of the three largest companies are in bankruptcy, the longterm viability of the third is questionable among some observers, and advertising revenue has not even come close to levels the industry saw in the pre-consolidation days.

So what does the National Association of Broadcasters want? More consolidation. And they are lobbying the FCC to allow any one company to own up to eight FM stations in any large market, an unlimited number of AM stations in those markets, and no cap at all in smaller markets.

You hate liver and onions? Here, have more.

Consolidation has brought the industry to its knees. Station groups are so large, that management is incapable of running them. Promised savings never materialized, so programming was cut. Hourly spot loads, or advertising time, increased to make up for declining revenues, causing ad rates to plummet. 

Essentially, radio created its own competition. Without consolidation and the decimation of good programming, services like Spotify, SiriusXM or even iPods would never have become the force they are now. Through bad decisions, radio executives pushed listeners away ... just as AM programmers pushed listeners to FM in the 1980s.

What radio needs to survive is vastly reduced ownership caps, and the FCC would be wise to consider such rather than the tremendously damaging actions being proposed by the NAB. Neing that the FCC has been impotent for decades, though, I am sure the NAB will get whatever it wants.

Bresee Passes

It is said that Frank Bresee’s love of radio came from a school field trip to then-KFAC (now KWKW, 1330 AM) when he was ten years old in 1939. The radio actor, announcer and historian passed away June 5 at the age of 88.

Through the years he played various roles on programs such as Red Ryder and Major Hopalong, hosted his own program presenting old time radio programs on KNX (1070 AM) and other local stations as well as Armed Forces Radio, and worked as an assistant on Bob Hope’s radio show.

Along the way he collected scripts, transcription discs, and more; his collection -- including 3,900 audio tapes -- is stored at the Thousand Oaks Library.

No information was available as to the cause of his death.

Radio Waves Podcast #225

Radio: June 15, 2018

Richard Irwin was a former radio personality and program director at stations including KAFY/Bakersfield and KROY/Sacramento. He is perhaps better known as the man behind the top-40 radio online museum called ReelRadio, aka Uncle Ricky’s Reel Radio Repository, a site that featured hundreds of recordings of radio stations from around the United States and a few from Canada.

Irwin passed away last week after a long battle with health issues that were causing him great pain. He will be missed.

After leaving radio he became a software engineer and webmaster. It was his expertise in both that allowed him to set up a site for one of his hobbies, collecting airchecks of radio stations, and sharing it with the world.

ReelRadio was the site that got me hooked on the internet more than a quarter century ago. I even had to buy a faster dial up modem - remember those? - in order to hear the recordings encoded in RealAudio - remember that?

For a radio junkie like me, ReelRadio was even better than being a kid on a candy store. I could relive my youth and more ... there were recordings of KHJ from the Boss Radio years through the amazing comeback days of programmer Chuck Martin. The Mighty 690. KIIS and KIIS-FM. Chicago’s WCFL and WLS. Everything.

Over the years the site expanded and improved. Unedited airchecks were added, and Irwin even restored some recordings to full length, taking the time and care to match the music to the original recording in speed and sound -- not easy work. He even added the same processor as used on many stations of the era to add to its authenticity.

The site itself had its ups and downs, relying at various times on donors and subscribers, eventually becoming a nonprofit organization. Irwin and the ReelRadio Board of Directors made sure music licensing fees were paid, even though realistically they probably wouldn’t be needed.

A few years ago Irwin thought he’s run afoul of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and he thought the site would have to drastically change; I am happy that I was part of the resolution to the dispute through personal contact with Jonathan Lamy of the RIAA. It was the least I could do for Irwin, considering how much entertainment value he provided me over the years.

More recently Irwin’s health declined and he was in intense pain most of the time. He never had a chance to update the site the way he had hoped -- including re-encoding the audio files into something more modern. So he placed it in limp-mode, and was searching for someone “qualified” to take it over. I  -- and I am sure others -- offered to help do so, but I soon realized that he was not ready to give it up ... yet ... it was his baby, after all and I understood his reluctance.

When he entered the hospital for surgery that promised to alleviate his pain, he shut the site down temporarily until he recovered. unfortunately, he never had the chance: tests got delayed and he passed away before the surgery could be scheduled.

Irwin’s passion in preserving access to radio’s history cannot be denied. His site was extraordinary well-done and was unmatched anywhere else on the internet ... or anywhere else off the net for that matter. Nowhere else could you find the depth and breadth of the collection he put together. His presence will most definitely be missed.

I personally hope the remaining members of the ReelRadio Board or Irwin’s family will let his legacy live on, either through reopening the present site or finding someone who can take over operations and update it and run it in the way Irwin intended. I would be interested in being a part of it, if I can help in any way.

In the meantime, I am going to take some time to reflect on the wonderful person who was Richard “Uncle Ricky” Irwin. The man who gave me and uncounted others world-wide over a quarter century of camaraderie and friendship thorough what I consider the best website ever conceived. Rest in peace and without pain, Uncle Ricky, you will be missed.

Radio Waves Podcast #224

Radio: June 8, 2018

Big news for former KRTH (101.1 FM) afternoon drive personality Shotgun Tom Kelly: not only has he been selected to lead the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters as the organization’s president effective September, 2018, he’s also landed at SiriusXM and will be hosting afternoon drive on channel 6 -- Sixties on Six.

Kelly will begin his new show in “about a week,” he says.

Kelly is the perfect person to lead the PPB. With an extensive radio and television background in both San Diego and Los Angeles -- I grew up listening to him on the legendary KCBQ/San Diego -- as well as an amazing head full of broadcast trivia and information, he fully represents the goals and ideals of the PPB. I look forward to his presidency.

Ratings troubles

As previously reported, ratings company Nielsen removed four households from the Los Angeles ratings pool and is retroactively recalculating the ratings for the region going all the way back to October, 2017.

The company still refuses to state exactly what was found to be wrong, but issued a statement stating that the homes “did not meet our data quality and integrity standards.”

My hunch would be that at least one person in each household either did something to help raise ratings of their favorite station -- on their own or influenced by someone or something -- such as to play a radio on a particular station as the Portable People Meter “listened” in order to help calculate ratings, or someone in each household was directly or indirectly connected with a station.

That is just a guess of course ... I honestly have no clue. But the change did affect the ratings of some stations in the first month of revisions released in late May. In the revised March ratings, ver half of the top-20 stations in town gained a tenth of a point, while KLAX (97.9 FM) lost a full point, causing it to drop from its original 9th place finish to 15th.

The revised 2.4 share is consistent with the 2.5 share the station earned in April, a month when the suspect households are assumed to have already been replaced.

KLAX owner Spanish Broadcasting System was quick to respond to the revised ratings. “SBS, and other Spanish-language broadcasters, vehemently object and protest such unilateral, and seemingly, discriminatory actions taken by Nielsen,” said SBS General Council Richard Lara, “which unfairly and disproportionally exclude Hispanic-listener households from the ratings methodology. The restated ratings and rankings reports are, in SBS’s view unreliable.”

It would be helpful if Nielsen explained exactly why the households did not meet its quality and integrity standards. But more important than that should be the frightening fact that four households in a city as large as Los Angeles can cause a 29 percent change in ratings for one station.

In other words, regardless of what happened, SBS is right, though not in the way it is trying to argue. Essentially, Nielsen’s system is flawed so badly that the ratings indeed are unreliable. Not just in the restated numbers, but in all numbers. Four households should not make a 29 percent difference in a city with over 11 million listeners aged 6 and over.

Something is just not right.

In History

57 Years ago last week, the first approved FM (multiplex) stereo broadcasts commenced. At midnight Eastern time on May 31/June 1, 1961, WGFM/Schenectady began broadcasting in stereo. At midnight Central time it was WEFM/Chicago. And in Los Angeles at Midnight Pacific time it was KMLA (now KKLQ, 100.3 FM). Those three are “officially” the first stations in the United States to broadcast in stereo after the FCC set June 1st as the day when multiplex broadcasts were authorized. 

But there may be one more. According to a story in industry newspaper Radio World, KCFM/St. Louis broadcast in stereo at the same moment as WEFM, using a stereo generator designed and built personally by station Chief Engineer Ed Bench.