They went from directional to non-directional, which meant they could demolish all but one tower in the array, and (presumably) sell the excess property.
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Disney Sells 1110 KRDC to KWVE Owner Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa
- Thread starter Ryan Williams
- Start date
It let them go ND with one tower. They were having major copper theft problems from one of the two towers for 730. The site is in a part of the South Valley that can be a little ragged. Aside from that, I think they're far more interested in their FM translator.
Okay, so I was off by four months, call me a pisher. (A decidedly non-Christian expression.
)Let me clarify what I was trying to say. I realize that sounds ridiculous, especially since WMCA left the Top 40 format half a century ago, and DJ Mitch Reed (R.I.P. ) passed 40 years ago.
I think I meant that I am always surprised when a format change happens, and stations can change formats very fast without much fanfare. For ex example, as a listener, I was stunned when 93 KHJ changed formats in 1970. I thought they would be “Boss Radio” forever. From reading the trade magazines, I knew that Bill Drake had programmed them, and I had always assumed that his influence would be eternal.
I missed reading the trades the week that KHJ changed, so it came as a surprise.
This is off-topic from talking about churches that purchase a group of radio stations, but sometimes listeners don’t realize right away that a station has changed. (Writer Don Page for the L.A. Times was pretty good about covering the latest news, and so was Cashbox Magazine, but I was still caught unaware sometimes). -Daryl
"KHJ was a top 40 station from 1965 to 1980. The station switched to a country music format in 1980 and back to pop music in 1983" (Wikipedia is right on these dates)
I can't imagine how it'd be to return to a top 40 format on AM during the mid 80s. What was their target audience? Young people who didn't have FM radio in their cars? People in their thirties who grew up listening to the original format and still enjoyed modern pop music?
WNBC NY was still Top 40 until 1985. WABC was still Top 40 until 1982. They each suffered huge declines in audience because of FM competition.
Maybe on paper they were still called Top 40, but in their last few years playing music, WABC was essentially a Hot AC format; only about 40% of their playlist consisted of current hits. And WNBC transitioned from Top 40 to "Adult-leaning Top 40" to AC to nearly all Oldies by the end, amongst an increasing amount of talk and sports programming.
Well, KHJ didn’t go full-on Top 40 when it came back from Country in 1983. It was really a Gold-heavy station whose currents were really recurrents. All very familiar stuff.
XETRA-AM (The Mighty 690) stayed CHR until 1984, KFI sorta slow-morphed from CHR to AC in ‘82/‘83 and in 1984, KIIS felt there was enough of an FM void, especially in cars, to flip its adult standards AM first to a shadowcast of KIIS-FM, then, when the rules allowed, to an outright simulcast.
The other thing to keep in mind was that there weren’t that many other formats for AM. KABC owned talk at the time. KMPC, which failed at talk, locked up the standards format, and KLAC had Country (though that was sliding away to FM).
So, absent anything else compelling, the best move until a more drastic format move, a sale, or both, was just to play the hits.
Thanks for the info! Don't ask me why, but it really intrigues me how the transition of modern pop/rock music from AM to FM was handled... I take no big market AM station was playing CHR consistently after 1985/86?
It wasn't done as a "transition." It was hard fought competition. The AM stations didn't just give up or quietly move their content to FM. The AM stations did everything they could to keep people listening to them. There were ownership rules, and a lot of the AM stations didn't own FMs. The AM station was all they had. The audiences made a conscious decision to stop listening to AM stations because the sound quality was notably better on FM and there were other musical choices. The AM audiences just kept dropping. But I'm sure there were some AMs that continued to pound away into the 90s.
Hi David, yes of course that is correct. I meant 1980. I'm sorry. I was surprised that they ever would switch formats. Somehow, I imagined that they would stay Top 40 for about the next 100 years. I thought the same thing about KFWB when they switched to all-news in 1968. But I understood that they had struggled in the ratings for awhile. -- D
The biggest incentive for listeners too move to FM as the 70's opened up was the almost uniform limit by the new FM Top 40's to run just 8 minutes of spots an hour. The difference between around 16 minutes on most Top 40 AM stations to just 8 minutes or less on an FM was a huge incentive to move.
The sound quality was just an added benefit.
Here's an aircheck of KHJ's "Car Radio" format (in Kahn/Hazeltine AM Stereo!) on December 31st, 1984:
How could FM stations afford to play only 8 minutes of commercials per hour, as opposed to 16 minutes for AM stations? That's why they could play long tracks from albums ( like the dance mix of "Light My Fire", which ran on and on), but didn't they lose money from advertisers? Or were the FM DJ's paid less, because they didn't have to do so much patter? (so an FM station's labor costs and overhead would be lower?)
They were losing money. The reason they did it was because it was so new, and they weren't really geared up to sell more than 8 minutes. There was a time just a few years earlier that owners were turning in their licenses because they saw no future in FM. In fact the Washington Post donated their FM station to Howard University in 1971. A few years later, that was one of the biggest stations in DC. The change was very fast. This is why the progressive rock era didn't last long. By around 1973, the owner of WNEW-FM walks in to the station and tells the staff he wants to increase the number of spots and tighten up the playlist. He could see that other FM stations were starting to make money, and he didn't want to miss out.
No, they weren't. I did a number of stations in that era of early AM to FM transition and used cost-efficient management and a sales approach that even agencies understood about fewer ads. I even launched a new AM in a top 20 market in '75 with 4 two minute stops an hour and went to #2 in first book with that approach.
We could have sold 20 minutes an hour if we wanted to, but did not. Our pitch included "better environment" at only a slightly higher CPM.
That was during the 50's when FMs went from about 1000 in 1950 to the mid-700's by 1960. When FM stereo came on, followed by the prohibiting of simulcasting, FM count increased to nearly double by 1970.
And Storer sold all its FMs then. Storz never applied for any. And so on. On the other hand, folks like Cecil Heftel´, Bartell and Art Kellar snatched them up at cheap prices.
That was one station. In 1979 I flipped market 14's Beautiful Music station to contemporary with 8 minutes an hour and soon nearly everyone on FM in the market was doing the same.
Not just one station. I'm talking about rock stations owned by Metromedia. You knew John Kluge. In 1973 he told all of his FMs to tighten up the playlists and increase the spotload. That's when some of the more offbeat DJs left. The same thing was happening at the ABC owned FMs. RKO was already ahead of the game in NY.
Thanks a lot! I loved this aircheck. I take ratings for this format weren't great, thus the change in 196ish? Judging by the music style, hey didn't have problems playing lively pop music but probably steered away from harder songs?
Sorry, I meant 1986-ish 😸
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