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KQIE. 104.7 flips to Rhythmic oldies

Gregg. said:
I suppose a true Rhythmic Oldies station would play more titles that never crossed over to the pop charts, while nearly all vocals on The Wave did.
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Good supposition ... which is why Hot 92.3 was never a pure Rhythmic Oldies format. As David has pointed out numerous times, the Black population of the Los Angeles market is a single-digit percentage and a format built around R&B songs that never crossed to the Hot 100 would not appeal to the Hispanic audience that was their audience. (Just ask Art Laboe.)

One of the realities in this market is that the Hispanic population -- regardless of language spoken -- is roughly half of the radio audience. Every format, no matter how "white", has to take that into account.

I am pretty sure the last R&B format that played a lot of non-crossover gold was the "Dusties" format on KGFJ/1230 ... and that was thirty years ago.
 
Gregg. said:
Wasn't the flip of KHHT from Rhythmic Oldies to Urban Contemporary prompted by iHeart's hiring Big Boy? They figured he's an important enough LA radio personality that they'd take their least performing FM and build a new Urban station around him. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Perhaps if Big Boy weren't available, KHHT would have gone on as Rhythmic Oldies, earning $20-something million per year, as David tells us.

The format seems to be successful in other West Coast markets as a draw for Latina women in their 40s. For a short time, San Diego had three stations in the format, XHRM, KSSX and KIFM, although KIFM is now Very Soft AC. While KSSX isn't doing that great, XHRM is always top 10, year after year. (KSSX leans more Rhythmic, while XHRM leans more Pop.) KISQ is often around #10 in San Francisco and the same is true for KHYL Sacramento.

And isn't KTWV almost a Rhythmic Oldies station with an occasional Smooth Jazz instrumental? About 80% of The Wave playlist are songs that would fit on a Rhythmic Oldies station. The difference is most of those same songs were vocals we heard on The Wave when it was Smooth Jazz: Sade, Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie. I suppose a true Rhythmic Oldies station would play more titles that never crossed over to the pop charts, while nearly all vocals on The Wave did.
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At the moment KTWV is classified as an Urban AC with a few smooth jazz instrumentals. They're kind of what KJLH used to be back in the 90's and early to mid 2000's because KJLH did play jazz artists like Norman Brown, Gerald Albright (especially his collaboration with Will Downing called "Pleasures of The Night" and their remake of "Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart), Kenny G, Boney James hits "Sweet Thing", I'll Always Love You which featured R&B group Shai, "It's All Good (R&B Radio Remix featuring Eric Benét) "Are You Ready", Kirk Whalum f/Wendy Moten "All I Do", George Howard "Midnight Mood" in addition to their R&B currents by Brandy, Toni Braxton, Monica, D' Angelo and Boyz II Men, R, Kelly, Gerald Levert, Anita Baker, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Tamia, SWV, Zhané. That's the direction that KTWV seems to be going into at the moment. Here I go posting my analysis about how radio used to be in the past when this clearly has nothing to do with this thread.
 
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Reading Bran's earlier post ("at the moment" ... a good choice of words under the circumstances), and thinking in the context of my earlier post that part of the problem may have been changing the format direction so many times while maintaining the "Wave" brand got me thinking: How many incarnations of the "Wave" have there been?

Obviously, the most successful run was as "Smooth Jazz", which fairly quickly replaced the original New Age concept, and there was that period when they were practically trying to out-"soft hits" KOST, and that mish-mash which preceded the current Urban AC format. But I've lost track of how many other variations on a theme have been tried.

KJLH is lucky in that they have always maintained an image of being a community station, else all of their tweaks would have been similarly dizzying.
 
I agree with K.M. that a pure r&b oldies format will not attract many Hispanic listeners. I assume that's because today's older Hispanics did not listen to current r&b when they were in their teens, 20s and 30s. Most of the songs that KRLA played in the mid-1990s were r&b songs that were also big hits on the Hot 100. Technically the format was r&b oldies but many of the biggest artists who had few crossover hits---if any---were pretty much ignored: Dinah Washington, B.B. King,Chuck Willis Ruth Brown, Rick James, Melba Moore, Bobby Bland, Joe Turner, Little Walter, Zapp, Parliament/Funkadelic and several others. KGFJ's "Dusties" format included all those artists and I enjoyed listening. When I was in elementary school, a classmate told me one day, "I discovered a station that plays a lot of the songs KFWB and KRLA is playing." It was KGFJ. I didn't know about the station. Hey, I went to an all-white school! But I became a KGFJ listener at an early age.

Greenfield/Milwaukee has a new oldies station, WZTI The Party 1290/100.3. It's described as "rhythmic oldies" but in the past hour they've played Love Child, Le Freak, Boogie Fever, She's A Bad Mama Jama, I'll Take You There, Could It Be I'm Falling In Love, Gloria Estefan's 1-2-3, Da Ya Think I'm Sexy, Build Me Up Buttercup, Huey Lewis's Workin' For A Living and Fine Young Cannibals' Good Thing. Somehow it reminds me of KKBT's original "rock with a beat" format. You can hear The Party at http://player.listenlive.co/36701
 
K.M. Richards said:
Reading Bran's earlier post ("at the moment" ... a good choice of words under the circumstances), and thinking in the context of my earlier post that part of the problem may have been changing the format direction so many times while maintaining the "Wave" brand got me thinking: How many incarnations of the "Wave" have there been?

Obviously, the most successful run was as "Smooth Jazz", which fairly quickly replaced the original New Age concept, and there was that period when they were practically trying to out-"soft hits" KOST, and that mish-mash which preceded the current Urban AC format. But I've lost track of how many other variations on a theme have been tried.

KJLH is lucky in that they have always maintained an image of being a community station, else all of their tweaks would have been similarly dizzying.
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From sampling The Wave for many years and looking at their old playlist in the R&R books.

They were NAC/Smooth Jazz for much of the 90's until 2010. They were Smooth AC from 2010-2013 then in late 2013 until today they are classified as Urban AC but they are more jazz leaning than 102.3 KJLH.


As for KJLH; has always been an Urban AC even though they were classified as Urban in the early 90's (from 1992-95) because R&R didn't have an Urban AC panel until 1995. During that time period, the station was branded as RHYTHM 102.3 KJLH from April 1993 to the March 27th 1998 issue (maybe before that issue) coming from my knowledge from reading the old R&R books on americanradiohistory.com. Go on the website, it tons of R&R books from that time period aforementioned above.
 
Bran1993 said:
... coming from my knowledge from reading the old R&R books on americanradiohistory.com. Go on the website, it tons of R&R books from that time period aforementioned above.
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Trust me, I know David's site well. Some of the scans there are of publications I loaned him for same, and I made extensive use of the site when I was helping Clarke Ingram put together the "History of UHF Television" website.

The thing is, just using the R&R charts (even augmented from your personal sampling) doesn't give a complete picture of KTWV's history. Especially in recent years, there have been so many tweaks made that there were times the station didn't really fit any categorization.

I'm sorry now that I asked.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Trust me, I know David's site well. Some of the scans there are of publications I loaned him for same, and I made extensive use of the site when I was helping Clarke Ingram put together the "History of UHF Television" website.

The thing is, just using the R&R charts (even augmented from your personal sampling) doesn't give a complete picture of KTWV's history. Especially in recent years, there have been so many tweaks made that there were times the station didn't really fit any categorization.

I'm sorry now that I asked.
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There's no need to apologize for asking me when I should be the one to apologize. My previous post wasn't relevant to this thread. It's now a question of who will be willing to tweak to a Rhythmic Oldies format since the urban contemporary format resurfaced at 92.3. I'm 21 years old and I barely listen to the radio anymore with the exception of KJLH or KDAY. I usually listen to the music that I downloaded on my iPod touch 9 times out of 10.
 
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Well, nobody enjoyed The Wave more than me, in its first incarnation as New Age with some Soft Rock and Contemporary Jazz, then the move to Smooth Jazz. Unfortunately, time moves on. Today's young adult doesn't want to hear any instrumental format, be it Classical, New Age, Smooth Jazz or Contemporary Jazz. Even AC and Classic Hits stations cannot play instrumental songs anymore, even if they were hits. We could debate why that is but I don't think this thread is the place.

As to The Wave's current format, it may be classified as Urban AC but it's really not. I don't know of any Urban AC stations that play Santana, Adele, Selena and Justin Timberlake, which The Wave played in the last hour, along with Al Green, Brenda Russell and The Temptations, all of which would be too old for today's Urban AC format. I suppose there's no Smooth AC classification anymore, so Urban AC is where The Wave winds up.

Let's hope enough of KHHT's former listeners move over to 94.7 to give the current Wave a boost.
 
Gregg. said:
Well, nobody enjoyed The Wave more than me, in its first incarnation as New Age with some Soft Rock and Contemporary Jazz, then the move to Smooth Jazz. Unfortunately, time moves on. Today's young adult doesn't want to hear any instrumental format, be it Classical, New Age, Smooth Jazz or Contemporary Jazz. Even AC and Classic Hits stations cannot play instrumental songs anymore, even if they were hits. We could debate why that is but I don't think this thread is the place.

As to The Wave's current format, it may be classified as Urban AC but it's really not. I don't know of any Urban AC stations that play Santana, Adele, Selena and Justin Timberlake, which The Wave played in the last hour, along with Al Green, Brenda Russell and The Temptations, all of which would be too old for today's Urban AC format. I suppose there's no Smooth AC classification anymore, so Urban AC is where The Wave winds up.

Let's hope enough of KHHT's former listeners move over to 94.7 to give the current Wave a boost.
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I heard Adele "Rolling In The Deep" on KJLH for awhile in 2011-2012. I also hear Santana's hits such as "Maria, Maria" and Justin Timberlake's songs from his last two albums (Pusher Love Girl, Take Back The Night, Suit & Tie) on KJLH.
 
Bran1993 said:
KTWV might get a boost in listeners if they go to Rhythmic Oldies. We have KDAY but their emphasis is on old school rap.
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Both are stations in trouble. And both are unlikely to flip immediately.

KTWV is owned by CBS, which rarely makes fast moves to fill holes created by iHeart. Its troubles have been well chronicled in various threads here.

KDAY is just starting its second year of being co-owned with channel 22. It has been doing the "old school rap" thing for most of the past 11 years and has pretty much stayed flat in the ratings near the bottom of the market. That makes for a very difficult position for them, ad sales-wise. However, their current owner was a fan of the original KDAY (1580) growing up and will cling stubbornly to the format until his wallet can't stand it anymore.
 
I assume Laboe is still trying to find a new radio home in Los Angeles and/or Orange County. He's now heard on twelve stations. One of them is iHeartMedia's KXEW, a tejano music station in South Tucson. Am AM station. Wow!

http://artlaboe.com/Radio.html
 
Thanks for posting the link the OP didn't, Steve.

I was about to expand my inquiry to include the 104.7s in Planada (near Merced) and Cutten (near Eureka), but thought better of it.
 
K.M. Richards said:
I was about to expand my inquiry to include the 104.7s in Planada (near Merced) and Cutten (near Eureka), but thought better of it.
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Do any of them have larger playlists than KRTH?
 
DavidEduardo said:


K.M. Richards said:
I was about to expand my inquiry to include the 104.7s in Planada (near Merced) and Cutten (near Eureka), but thought better of it.
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Do any of them have larger playlists than KRTH?
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The Merced station appears to be a CHR/R, so I doubt it.

The Eureka station is freeform, which sort of fits the lifestyle of Humboldt County. (Lots of ex-hippies.) Might be a good place to test that "every song is someone's favorite" theory ...
 
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