Radio Waves Podcast #360

Radio Waves: November 4, 2022

SoCal Sound Changes

Apparently 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)

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