Radio Waves Podcast #329

 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 

Radio Waves Podcast #328

 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.

///

Radio Waves Podcast #327

 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.”

Radio Waves Podcast #326

 .....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.

 1. 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)
 11. 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)
 22. 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)
 33. 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.