-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Good old 94.7
- Thread starter Tom Decouttere
- Start date
Ahh, yes the Old KMET, with a Whoo-ya to-ya on Champagne Thursday... ( It was just yesterday that I was spotted wearing my classic upside down KMET blue t-shirt around town).
Oh wait, you are talking about The Wave? Oh.
I am just giving you a hard time since you already posted about this station just a few months ago.
Yes, I know about KMET and about it's demise as perfectly told in the book "KAOZ".
They transitioned overnight and that was not a nice thing to do.
But the change of format of KTWV to R&B was also not that nice a thing to do.
I hope with FMK I put a good time for the lovers of the former format.
tdc dot fm is just a cute shortcut to the station
The Los Angeles Times had a story on the coming change four days in advance:
THE KMET-FM STORY: REFLECTIONS ON A FALLEN FORMAT : 'Whole Thing Had to Go,' Says Program Director Frank Cody
It wasn't just the bad ratings that killed KMET-FM (94.7), the long-lived and long-loved L.A. album-rock station.
www.latimes.com
The station was 20th with a 1.6.
It was a very natural evolution. The music had grown stagnant and dull. The adding of R&B vocals from people like Anita Baker or Toni Braxton signaled that the format was changing. Between 2010 and 2013, there was a gradual shift, with more vocal and less instrumental. It was brilliant. And once again, for folks who love the classic music from the 80s, it's all available for personal playlists or tribute online stations. Just as the Ray Conniff, Mitch Miller, and Herb Alpert music is still available from the beautiful music era.
The entire KMET staff was fired on Friday February 6, 1987. No one was allowed to say goodbye to the audience, and several of the on-air staff went to the KLOS studios for some on air teeth-gnashing for their own plight and congratulations to KLOS for winning the "Rock Wars" that afternoon.The Los Angeles Times had a story on the coming change four days in advance:
THE KMET-FM STORY: REFLECTIONS ON A FALLEN FORMAT : 'Whole Thing Had to Go,' Says Program Director Frank Cody
It wasn't just the bad ratings that killed KMET-FM (94.7), the long-lived and long-loved L.A. album-rock station.
The station was 20th with a 1.6.
Meanwhile, on KMET, the station ran on autopilot, with the only announcements being this ominous voice and background music saying "Eight days", or afterwards, the number of days until Saturday February 14, in what some called the "Valentine's Day Massacre" (of KMET, not to be confused with any other massacres that might have occurred on Valentine's Day).
The reason the LA Times only got around to the story four days later was simple - the news broke late on a Friday, and radio coverage is not exactly at the top of any paper's priority list, so nobody got around to writing the story until staff came in again on Monday.
Being a teenager at the time who had grown up on what is now known as Classic Rock and especially KMET, I was crushed. To add insult to injury, with the changeover to "New Age" music, the station became the favorite of my step-mother and all of her westside chablis-drinking friends, who all took to it to show each other how sophisticated their musical tastes were. I was actually ok with a lot of the music, but the better-than-thou, nose up in the air "taste signalling" among the 40 year old female crowd was just too much.
Of course with the problems we have now, both in society as a whole and muscially on the radio, I now look fondly back at those times as the "good old days".
Last edited:
Now answer this, ChannelFlipper—-were you listening to KMET as much just before the staff got fired as you always had, or not?
Yes, without a doubt. I actually listened to just about every major English music frequency because I loved all types of music, but the core by far was Classic Rock. The only difference in February 1987, is that my "rock" listening was split between three stations instead of two (see below), so by that standard, no, but KMET was always my #1 station and I listened to it the most.
By far my favorite KMET "jock" was Paraquat Kelley. I put "jock" in quotation marks because really for most of the time he was there, he did only did the top of the hour news (He was Ace Young's replacement). I liked Paraquat because he was very funny and witty and could just ad-lib on the radio with the best. Somewhere in the summer of '86 or so, they put Paraquat on in morning drive. I was listening a lot to his show because I thought this was a great way to let his "talent" shine. And of course, this is why you don't go to high school juniors for radio consulting, because he BOMBED big time in the role. I remember Rick Dees taking a shot at him calling him "Cumquat Kelley" one day. I am able to describe that Friday of the announcement so well because I was listening to KMET when I got home in the afternoon and heard the ominous voice and knew something was up and flipped to KLOS to hear the KMET DJ sob-show over there.
OK, now for what really sunk KMET: Good old-fashioned radio competition. It is true they had been struggling for years, but it was actually the arrival of KLSX on 97.1 about five months earlier that really sank them. The article can say all it wants about the research and all, but the fact of the matter is, even in 1987, Los Angeles could not support THREE classic rock stations (KMET, KLOS, and KLSX). I knew as soon as KLSX signed on, that it would be impossible for all three to co-exist (and that KMET would probably be the odd one out, since it was already losing to KLOS). KLSX started cleaning KMET's clock because of the new presentation. KMET was struggling to find itself, trying all kinds of things like (gasp!) playing Cyndi Lauper records, while KLSX gave the audience exactly what they wanted - Beatles, Stones, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Boston, and so on; nothing but the classic cuts from the classic albums without any apologies and without feeling the need to try on the latest fashion. It was marketing genius.
I actually hated the term"classic rock" when KLSX introduced it because to me, it meant that "my music" was already past its prime and all the best music had already been made. Little did I know how accurate that was.
Last edited:
“The change of format of KTWV to R&V was also not that nice a thing to do”?
Can’t argue that KTWV championed a format that would take off in the 90s, earn strong ratings, bill decently, and still be able to maintain a spot on the dial long after smooth jazz died off and the station evolving into Hot 2.0, which has continued to bring some decent success.
I've done at least a dozen format flips on stations that had, at some point been successful. All were bleeding money or had horrible, declining ratings... or both. There is no "nice" way to flip a format.
When such a decision is made, management realizes that the existing format does not have enough listeners to be sustainable; as a consequence, there is nothing to be gained by having a goodbye party. In fact, there is a huge risk that one of the people being dismissed will say something that will cause FCC or legal trouble.
KTWV sort of evolved into a "quiet storm" type of r&b based gold station. It's not like adult r&b stations in much of the country, as it is aimed at Hispanics, Blacks, non-Hispanic whites and even first generation European immigrants such as Armenians and Persians. It's interesting that there was a Black station that used "no color lines" as a slogan nearly 30 years ago, and KTWV is, today, the perfect example of a station that appeals to a wide variety of ethnicities and colors.
When I was a kid, the #2 Top 40 station switched to MOR, following a recent power increase and had the oddacity to put up billboards that read, "Don't you wish your children listened to KYMN?"! It was a blatant sneer at the former format and its listeners and apparently, I'll never forget it!
I asked ChannelFlipper the question I did (and thanks for the answer) because I've seen this scenario play out time and time again with "heritage" stations changing formats:
Listener: "This is an outrage! K (three letters here) is an institution! A treasure!"
Me: "How often do you listen these days?"
Listener: "Well, um...I used to listen a lot. Lately I've spent more time listening to K (three different letters---usually a direct competitor). "
Me: "You and a lot of people. They're a popular station.
Listener: "Well, but K (three letters) is number one!
Me: "They haven't been number one in at least five years, or in the top ten the last three. In fact, they're barely in the top 20."
Listener: "Well, who IS number one, then?"
Me: "The station you switched to. That wasn't just you. That was most of K (three letters) audience".
The "Mighty Met" peaked around a 6 share in 1979. It was down to a 4.9 in the spring of '80, a 4.6 in the spring of '81, a 4.0 in the spring of '82, a 3.2 in the spring of '83, a 3.4 in the spring of '84, a 3.3 in the spring of '85 and a 2.2 in the spring of '86.
From there, a 2.0 in the summer of '86, and a 1.6 in the fall.
Unless you count the 0.2 gain between spring '83 and spring '84 (and David can tell you why 0.2 is margin of error stuff), the station had been in continual decline for eight years.
The glory years of KMET were great radio---but I gotta tell you, even in 1987, I was shaking my head at the outrage over the format change.
Listener: "This is an outrage! K (three letters here) is an institution! A treasure!"
Me: "How often do you listen these days?"
Listener: "Well, um...I used to listen a lot. Lately I've spent more time listening to K (three different letters---usually a direct competitor). "
Me: "You and a lot of people. They're a popular station.
Listener: "Well, but K (three letters) is number one!
Me: "They haven't been number one in at least five years, or in the top ten the last three. In fact, they're barely in the top 20."
Listener: "Well, who IS number one, then?"
Me: "The station you switched to. That wasn't just you. That was most of K (three letters) audience".
The "Mighty Met" peaked around a 6 share in 1979. It was down to a 4.9 in the spring of '80, a 4.6 in the spring of '81, a 4.0 in the spring of '82, a 3.2 in the spring of '83, a 3.4 in the spring of '84, a 3.3 in the spring of '85 and a 2.2 in the spring of '86.
From there, a 2.0 in the summer of '86, and a 1.6 in the fall.
Unless you count the 0.2 gain between spring '83 and spring '84 (and David can tell you why 0.2 is margin of error stuff), the station had been in continual decline for eight years.
The glory years of KMET were great radio---but I gotta tell you, even in 1987, I was shaking my head at the outrage over the format change.
KMET was an offshoot of KSAN in San Francisco. Tom Donohue convinced Metromedia to flip their LA station to rock based on the success he brought at KSAN. They agreed because they had also flipped their east coast stations to rock (WNEW, WMMR, and WMMS). But Donohue died, and his wife took over, and she was not the programmer her husband was. So Metromedia flipped KSAN to country in 1980. After that, Raechel Donohue moved to LA and oversaw KMET. But the self indulgence that worked in the 70s didn't have the charm in the 80s when it met real competition.
Close, BigA. KSAN and KMET were a package deal Donahue worked out with Metromedia based on his success with KMPX and KPPC.
Both KSAN and KMET launched in June of ‘68, but Metro hedged its bets by only allowing Donahue to hire one jock—-B. Mitchel Reed—-for KMET. Donahue recorded a separate show for KMET at KSAN and for years, the other dayparts were automated using KMET’s old beautiful music automation system.
KSAN launched live 24-7 with a full staff, including its own news department. KMET didn’t get a full live staff until 1972, and relied on simulcasts of sister KLAC-AMs newscast until then, as well.
When KMET was at its peak (‘77-‘79/‘80), KSAN was long past its.
Most of KSAN's staff came from KMPX, so that was easy.
In the meantime, Metromedia had already flipped it's east coast FMs to rock. Scott Muni was hired to run WNEW-FM in November 1967, a full half year before the flip at KSAN.
Right. They could have done the same with the staff from KPPC, but Metro only wanted BMR and Donahue. The fact that they didn’t turn off the automation and hire a full staff for four years at KMET suggests they didn’t think L.A. was likely to be as successful as SF.
In fact, the President of Metromedia describes the company as “not fully committed” to the format at KMET until L. David Moorhead was hired as GM.
Last edited:
This is so true. KMET always acted like it was still 1968 well into the 80's and by that time the political and social dynamics had completely changed. They kept talking about "giving it to the man" when in fact their audience of twenty-somethings in in 1968 were well into their 30's and 40's, had bought houses, had real jobs and families, plus some money in their pockets due to the Reagan economy, and in some cases had actually become "the man". My dad was a loyal KMET guy and this description fits him perfectly.
I've mentioned this before, but even as a teenager I thought it was ridiculous how Gonzer and Ladd, just to name a few, kept acting like Jerry Falwell and the Reagan administration were going to play the role of the preacher in "Footloose" and come down and close the station and bust them all for pot possession at any minute and "we all got to be in this together" to keep the scolds from breaking down the gates. "You can still come to Chicago and change the world, yada, yada..."
Last edited:
The reason why the same fate didn't happen to other Metromedia rock stations was they recognized that things had changed and they tightened up their playlists. Scott Muni was moved out of day to day programming and they hired an outside consultant who tightened playlists and DJ chat. Even then, they were being beaten by ABC's WPLJ. But somehow the tighter approach kept them in contention. Things fell apart in the 90s, as rock splintered into subgenres, and Metromedia completely missed the grunge thing, and WNEW flipped to hot talk in 1997.
- Status