What's happening at KTWV "The Wave"?

[955wdhf]

I'm noticing that The Wave is playing more crossover music e.g. Sting's" "Fields of Gold"; Phil Collins' " One More Night"; Terence Trent D'Arby " Sign Your Name"; Christopher Cross " Sailing" and Steve Winwood's "Higher Love" just to name some of the titles. I've also noticed they've removed the smooth r&b from their home page before 94.7 The Wave. Could this mean they're headed back into a more AC direction under their new PD Ralph Steward? I'll stay tuned.

 

[32james]

In a David E. Voice.

"It's easy to understand, the music selections were not testing well with the direction the audience wanted KTWV, to go with, hence you are seeing a more "soft AC" approach now.
Remember the listeners chose what direction the station goes in, just like KRTH, if no 70's, based artist tested well on KRTH, they would not play them.

 

[Thomps2525]

Thank you, "David E." I foresee a resurrection of the "Quiet Storm" format that aired on the old KUTE from 1983 to 1987 and featured urban adult contemporary along with pop artists such as Billy Joel, David Bowie, Linda Ronstadt, Hall & Oates, and the Police.

 

[Groove1670]

The format still has a (pop) R&B lean. A smooth jazz cut appears every once in awhile. The crossover cuts added fit the direction of the station.

 

[SuperRadioFan]

Thank you, "David E." I foresee a resurrection of the "Quiet Storm" format that aired on the old KUTE from 1983 to 1987 and featured urban adult contemporary along with pop artists such as Billy Joel, David Bowie, Linda Ronstadt, Hall & Oates, and the Police.

That was a pretty good station... Where I first heard artists like Whitney Houston and Anita Baker. The Quiet Storm also played songs like "Captain of Her Heart"-Duo (a Swiss group IIRC), "These Dreams"-Heart (played wayyyy before it became a pop hit), and "Your Latest Trick"- Dire Straits from 'Brothers in Arms' in addition to a lot of Stevie Wonder from his current CD at the time ~1985-1986.

 

[TheBigA]

To be honest, I don't see The Wave going in an Urban AC or Rock & Soul direction in LA. It's an audience not worth fighting for now. I sense it's more of a Fresh/Jack/Wave thing.

 

[Thomps2525]

SRF, Captain Of Her Heart was by Double (pronounced "doo-blay"). I have most of the weekly music lists that KUTE published. I just grabbed one at random. It's from March 24-30, 1984, and their top album was Touch by Eurythmics. The rest of the top ten, in order, was Rockwell, Culture Club, Luther Vandross, Patti LaBelle, Lionel Richie, John & Yoko, Michael Franks, Jeffrey Osborne and Kool & the Gang. KUTE was also playing Carole King, Kim Carnes, Melissa Manchester and the Yentl soundtrack along with Bobby Womack, Dennis Edwards, Evelyn King, James Ingram, the Pointer Sisters, et al. BigA, you don't think an updated version of that format would work today?

 

[TheBigA]

BigA, you don't think an updated version of that format would work today?

It sounds too much like a zebra to me. But I'll watch where the new guy takes it. It's definitely a heritage station, and if he can find a way to retain some of that heritage while adapting it to the changing audience, he's going to be a hero.

 

[SuperRadioFan]

Thanks for the correction on Double Steve. Michael Franks was another cool artist that I enjoyed- Popsicle Toes, Your Secrets Safe with Me, etc..
Ironically, as much as I liked The Quiet Storm, the format that replaced them the old KMPC-FM with a rock/AAA format was one of my all time favorite stations.

 

[Lester_the_NightFly]

The days when chances were being taken.

 

[TheBigA]

The days when chances were being taken.

Would YOU be willing to risk your own personal money on it?

 

[davideduardo]

Ironically, as much as I liked The Quiet Storm, the format that replaced them the old KMPC-FM with a rock/AAA format was one of my all time favorite stations.

How the market changes... KSCA, with it's AAA format did not do much more than a very low 1 share. Ownership blamed the signal. It switched to Regional Mexican and got a high six share.

Fifteen years later, the market is even less likely to support that sort of format.

 

[SuperRadioFan]

How the market changes... KSCA, with it's AAA format did not do much more than a very low 1 share. Ownership blamed the signal. It switched to Regional Mexican and got a high six share.

Fifteen years later, the market is even less likely to support that sort of format.

Why bring up KSCA in their AAA days? I was talking about KMPC-FM (later briefly known as The Edge)which probably got fewer listeners than the format that followed K-Light. Gleason, long time posters must be wondering why you need to flog FM 101.9 every chance you get.

 

[K.M. Richards]

How the market changes... KSCA, with it's AAA format did not do much more than a very low 1 share. Ownership blamed the signal. It switched to Regional Mexican and got a high six share.

Fifteen years later, the market is even less likely to support that sort of format.

Why bring up KSCA in their AAA days? I was talking about KMPC-FM (later briefly known as The Edge)which probably got fewer listeners than the format that followed K-Light. Gleason, long time posters must be wondering why you need to flog FM 101.9 every chance you get.

All right, everyone brace yourselves, because I am about to disagree with David.

I was about to go to work for J.J. Jackson at KEDG in 1989 when GM Bill Ward announced the flip to K-Lite. (And he even had the indecency to announce that on my 33rd birthday.) And I always disagreed with his decision -- and would have, even if I hadn't been "waiting in the wings" when Ward made it -- because the station was just beginning to catch on.

April, 1989 was the first month that KEDG's commercial inventory was completely sold out, a fact mentioned by J.J. during the final broadcast (my copy of which is available for listening at ReelRadio). It had an audience that listened for long periods of time ... if Arbitron's PPMs had been around then, they would have thought they were malfunctioning because of the lack of "20-minute" listeners. The Edge was an intelligent redo of the old free-form progressive rock format; J.J. found on-air talent that knew the music and could put together music sets without a pre-programmed playlist. Small wonder, then, that I jumped at the chance to come on board (I was going to coordinate production and remotes and be the utility jock).

KEDG was proving one point that David alludes to in a sideways fashion: KEDG never "blamed the signal". Everyone knew that 101.9 had reach, even then. It reached all the way to Ventura back then, before 101.7 in Carpinteria went to a B1 signal, and had been successful in the 1970s as "The Album World of KUTE-102" and as "The Quiet Storm" in the early 1980s before going AOR as KMPC-FM. Bill Ward simply fell into the same trap that KKDJ's general manager did 15 years earlier ... letting their personal tastes dictate what kind of station they wanted to manage. (KKDJ's billings were at a high point when they became KIIS-FM as well.)

Ward, to his credit, recognized his mistake after a few years, but made a bigger one in the process. Instead of going back to what worked, he tried to do the "mellower" version of AOR ... AAA. And there I have to agree with David. "Channel 101.9" was doomed from the start, because too much time had passed since the original AAA, KNX-FM had passed from the scene (it is also my opinion that once CBS changed 93.1 to KKHR, they would never be able to regain their old status, which is a big part of why the attempt to bring KNX-FM back from the dead failed, the other being a failure to properly recreate the old atmosphere).

Here is where my friend David errs. The AAA format on KSCA was not the same as the AOR format on KEDG, and therefore using the subsequent success of Regional Mexican on that frequency as an argument against KSCA (although true) is a confused argument against what SRF had said. (Maybe you shouldn't have used the phrase "rock/AAA" to describe KMPC-FM, as that seems to have been the point of confusion.)

 

[ChannelFlipper]

All right, everyone brace yourselves, because I am about to disagree with David.

I was about to go to work for J.J. Jackson at KEDG in 1989 when GM Bill Ward announced the flip to K-Lite. (And he even had the indecency to announce that on my 33rd birthday.) And I always disagreed with his decision -- and would have, even if I hadn't been "waiting in the wings" when Ward made it -- because the station was just beginning to catch on.

April, 1989 was the first month that KEDG's commercial inventory was completely sold out, a fact mentioned by J.J. during the final broadcast (my copy of which is available for listening at ReelRadio). It had an audience that listened for long periods of time ... if Arbitron's PPMs had been around then, they would have thought they were malfunctioning because of the lack of "20-minute" listeners. The Edge was an intelligent redo of the old free-form progressive rock format; J.J. found on-air talent that knew the music and could put together music sets without a pre-programmed playlist. Small wonder, then, that I jumped at the chance to come on board (I was going to coordinate production and remotes and be the utility jock).

KEDG was proving one point that David alludes to in a sideways fashion: KEDG never "blamed the signal". Everyone knew that 101.9 had reach, even then. It reached all the way to Ventura back then, before 101.7 in Carpinteria went to a B1 signal, and had been successful in the 1970s as "The Album World of KUTE-102" and as "The Quiet Storm" in the early 1980s before going AOR as KMPC-FM. Bill Ward simply fell into the same trap that KKDJ's general manager did 15 years earlier ... letting their personal tastes dictate what kind of station they wanted to manage. (KKDJ's billings were at a high point when they became KIIS-FM as well.)

Ward, to his credit, recognized his mistake after a few years, but made a bigger one in the process. Instead of going back to what worked, he tried to do the "mellower" version of AOR ... AAA. And there I have to agree with David. "Channel 101.9" was doomed from the start, because too much time had passed since the original AAA, KNX-FM had passed from the scene (it is also my opinion that once CBS changed 93.1 to KKHR, they would never be able to regain their old status, which is a big part of why the attempt to bring KNX-FM back from the dead failed, the other being a failure to properly recreate the old atmosphere).

Here is where my friend David errs. The AAA format on KSCA was not the same as the AOR format on KEDG, and therefore using the subsequent success of Regional Mexican on that frequency as an argument against KSCA (although true) is a confused argument against what SRF had said. (Maybe you shouldn't have used the phrase "rock/AAA" to describe KMPC-FM, as that seems to have been the point of confusion.)

Wow, KMR, this is one of your most enlightened posts in, well,...ever. Thanks for posting.

David has made a lot of people money by programming the most successful formats (with the tightest playlists) to the most demo-friendly and growing segments of the population. So then he gets to crow about hammering his predecessors on the same frequency later, when they were targeting a shrinking, less demo-friendly audience, thus there really is no apples to apples comparison to be made here. While I will not take any of his accomplishments away (as I have said before, they are impressive and well-earned), it is a much harder task to do what JJ Jackson did with the frequency, and KMPC-FM/KEDG was a creative success story and given time, would have been a commercial one as well. It was one of the last strikes for intelligence in local radio, and it doesn't matter if only a dozen people were listening, that in and of itself would still be an accomplishment, but the kind David wouldn't care about.

The fact that in less than two short years, facing staunch competition from KLOS, KLSX, and KROQ, all of which were well established success in their own right plus KQLZ "Pirate Radio" at or near the height of its popularity, JJ grew the station from nothing to getting respectable ratings is in fact a tremendous accomplishment in its own right. I think KMET was down to a 1.3 - 1.4 when it went off the air, and KEDG was at or near those levels too, only KEDG was on the upswing and KMET when it died (on 2-14-87, not that I remember or anything) was on the downside, loosing badly and needed to be put out of its misery.

I agree with everything you said about David not really knowing or caring about the difference between AOR and early AAA. However, I felt that KEDG was not really all that AOR either. KLOS was and (still pretty much is) what I would call your textbook AOR with its Zeppelin, Skynerd, and AC/DC playlist. KROQ was still entirely New Wave at the time (Nirvana had not hit yet) and KEDG fit comfortably between the two. I know the trades had to call them something and they weren't about to create any hybrid format names for such a unique station, but in my opinion, to refer to KEDG as an AOR station is simply not accurate as it doesn't really convey the wide playlist KEDG had.

OK for all of you true fans out there who remember, and I know there are only but a few... "be the fourth caller and we will see, if you can be the one to do the midnight legal ID".

Cheers.

 

[davideduardo]

Why bring up KSCA in their AAA days? I was talking about KMPC-FM (later briefly known as The Edge)which probably got fewer listeners than the format that followed K-Light. Gleason, long time posters must be wondering why you need to flog FM 101.9 every chance you get.

... because it was the same management team.

I sat in Bill Ward's KSCA office, ironically located on Forest Lawn Drive, and heard him tell me and two other "suits" from Hispanic Broadcasting Corp. that the station had failed repeated times but it was due to the signal. He specifically also mentioned the "wonderful programming" on K-LIT (with the hyphen, always) that would have made it, too, were it not for the signal.

I bring up the AAA format on 101.9 because it, in its GWB English incarnations, shows how a competent broadcast company can be totally oblivious to the changes in a market that they are supposed to know and where they had a long heritage of ownership and operational experience.

It's not unlike the comment made to L.A. Times radio reporter Kevin Baxter around 1996 by Clear Channel manager Roy Laughlin who said he could not understand how KLVE could be #1 in the market as he "didn't see that many Hispanics here". I was asked to comment, and said, "you probably don't see that many if all you do is commute between Bel Air and Burbank, with an occasional detour to The Ivy".

 

[davideduardo]

So then he gets to crow about hammering his predecessors on the same frequency later, when they were targeting a shrinking, less demo-friendly audience, thus there really is no apples to apples comparison to be made here.

Sure there is... the issue is not a comparison but the fact that GWB management was oblivious to the changes in the market and did the classic dance of the insane: they did the same thing, over and over, hoping for a different outcome. In this case, what they repeatedly did from the time KUTE was morphed into a thing of Ward's creation, was change format from one unsuccessful iteration to another.

KMPC-FM/KEDG was a creative success story and given time, would have been a commercial one as well.

I don't think more time would have made any difference. There was not room in the market for the format, no matter how much dedicated listeners, as you appear to have been, say to the contrary.

I really don't know how to evaluate the creative success of a station that gets a 0.6 share and makes no money. Commercial radio is not comparable to, let's say, the Impressionists. They would eventually be successful, but they were also, coincidentally, all dead when success arrived. Monet and Pissaro and Gauguin hang in the best collections. Old formats are barely even remembered.

It was one of the last strikes for intelligence in local radio, and it doesn't matter if only a dozen people were listening, that in and of itself would still be an accomplishment, but the kind David wouldn't care about.

Damn right I don't. The objective of broadcasting is to reach a broad, large audience. When that does not happen, the only appropriate term is "failure".

At one point, I thought there was an opportunity to create a station for intelligent, educated listeners. I put a brand new FM on the air, complete with a very nicely done classical format with BBC news and lots of local cultural inserts, both long and short form. Unfortunately, I found my pocket had a hole in it, and money was spilling out... the hole was that beautiful but so highly niche as to be unsalable FM. I changed format to Album Rock and started to make money.

The fact that in less than two short years, facing staunch competition from KLOS, KLSX, and KROQ, all of which were well established success in their own right plus KQLZ "Pirate Radio" at or near the height of its popularity, JJ grew the station from nothing to getting respectable ratings is in fact a tremendous accomplishment in its own right.

I'm looking at the ratings... and I don't find 1 shares or thereabouts to be particularly respectable.

I think KMET was down to a 1.3 - 1.4 when it went off the air, and KEDG was at or near those levels too, only KEDG was on the upswing and KMET when it died (on 2-14-87, not that I remember or anything) was on the downside, loosing badly and needed to be put out of its misery.

101.9 averaged a 1.4 in 1886, and a 0.7 in 1987. In '88 it had a 4 book average of 0.8 and then a 1.1 the next year. In it's last year, KMET averaged a 1.9.

I agree with everything you said about David not really knowing or caring about the difference between AOR and early AAA.

Actually, I had a good teacher about all things AAA in Bob Greenlee, who was in a small group of independent stations that exchanged operational tips of all kinds each month and held regular meetings. That took me back nearly to the birth of KBCO, in fact.

But the issue here is not the mix, the blend, the flavor of rock or the name we put on it. It's the fact that GWB just seemed to mess up every attempt at a format, and then they ended up blaming the signal for it all... I was told that we would do no better, in fact, because of that signal issue.

 

[davideduardo]

KEDG was proving one point that David alludes to in a sideways fashion: KEDG never "blamed the signal". Everyone knew that 101.9 had reach, even then. It reached all the way to Ventura back then, before 101.7 in Carpinteria went to a B1 signal, and had been successful in the 1970s as "The Album World of KUTE-102" and as "The Quiet Storm" in the early 1980s before going AOR as KMPC-FM. Bill Ward simply fell into the same trap that KKDJ's general manager did 15 years earlier ... letting their personal tastes dictate what kind of station they wanted to manage. (KKDJ's billings were at a high point when they became KIIS-FM as well.)

One thing that was probably the biggest mistake made at 101.9 was moving to Wilson with less than 1000 watts. They had a barn-burning signal from Flint Peak, quite capable of doing the job... particularly three decades ago. Although they eventually got to 4,800 watts, the period while they ran that signal that looked a lot better on paper than in reality was very detrimental to any format they tried.

In the course of doing due diligence on KSCA, I saw the historical billings, and in that Edge period they may have been sold out, but they were not billing very much. I think that they were pricing the station in accordance with the sub-1 shares and were likely getting very low rates.

Ward, to his credit, recognized his mistake after a few years, but made a bigger one in the process. Instead of going back to what worked, he tried to do the "mellower" version of AOR ... AAA. And there I have to agree with David.

Ward may have been good at running the AM for years, but the FM had a definite disconnect between management and programming. I agree that there was a window of opportunity for the station with the original format... but I think Ward did not see it and didn't recognize that the weak signal could have been more of a factor than the format... he blamed the format and the signal overall.

Here is where my friend David errs. The AAA format on KSCA was not the same as the AOR format on KEDG, and therefore using the subsequent success of Regional Mexican on that frequency as an argument against KSCA (although true) is a confused argument against what SRF had said.

I likely did not clarify my point enough. GWB tried assorted formats, with and without hyphenated call letters, and did not do well. My intent was not to criticize AAA or the Edge or K-LIT or even KUTE but to show that management simply did not see what was going on in the market.

(Maybe you shouldn't have used the phrase "rock/AAA" to describe KMPC-FM, as that seems to have been the point of confusion.)

In the evolutionary period of AAA, there was such a difference between the successful stations that I find the whole AAA term to be vague... I likely should have just referred to the station names or calls.

 

[K.M. Richards]

But the issue here is not the mix, the blend, the flavor of rock or the name we put on it. It's the fact that GWB just seemed to mess up every attempt at a format, and then they ended up blaming the signal for it all... I was told that we would do no better, in fact, because of that signal issue.

With Bill Ward at the helm, I have to agree with you on that point, David. The recollection of your meeting with him right before the sale proved he was well past his prime as a manager at the point Golden West acquired 101.9, and he proceeded to prove that, over and over.

 

[Gregg.]

Today KSCA 101.9 has a 4800 watt signal on a 2830 foot tower. At one time it only had 640 watts on that same tower. KSCA's coverage might not be as good as stations like KBIG (65,000 watts at 3045 feet) or KLOS (61,000 watts at 3130 feet).

But several of the Latin stations also have limited coverage. KXOL is 6600 watts on a 1300 foot tower. KLAX is 33,000 watts on a 600 foot tower. And the K-Buena stations are 3000 watts at 465 feet, 6000 watts at 465 feet and 6000 watts at 85 feet. It seems over the years in LA, FM stations with powerful signals stayed in English-language formats. Those with limited signals went with Latin formats, figuring I suppose that Hispanic listeners looking for music and DJs with Mexican roots will seek out and put up with less optimum reception.

There are exceptions. Spansish AC KLVE has a powerful signal, 29,500 watts at 3000 feet. And one of CBS's most profitable stations, Alternative Rock KROQ, is only 5500 watts at 1400 feet. Isn't it odd that all the major FM stations in cities like New York and Chicago are fairly equal, but LA's (and San Francisco's) FM stations are all over the place?