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94.7 the KOST, er, Wave

C

ChannelFlipper

I'm only an occasional listener to 94.7 the Wave, so have only been following the incremental changes Jhani has been making on a limited basis. As has been noted here, a few months ago I also noticed the change to much less instrumentals and the more AC playlist and approach. But I tuned in for awhile a few days ago and could not believe what I was hearing. The imaging, playlist, format... all reminded me of KOST. I literally had to check my dial several times to make sure I was indeed on the 94.7 frequency.

With the exception of a very small kernal of the former Smooth Jazz format, the format has been completely changed to the KOST AC format. People say that LA is one of the few markets where smooth jazz is succeeding. I would say that Smooth Jazz, based on what I heard at least, does not exist in LA either. LA has another AC station obviously taking dead aim the market leader, KOST. I would be interested to hear what more regular listeners of the Wave think.
 
Funny thing about the "Broadcast Architecture" approach to smooth jazz / new age / contemporary instrumental format, when they started to re-define the local approaches on such stations at KTWV and San Francisco's KKSO in the 1980s, and tried to make it a more universal syndicated format "for the little people out there in Columbus," etc:

I think they should have **avoided** playing artists like Kenny G. Or at least so much of him. There was always plenty of melodic, rhythmic, and even electronic music that worked in the format without resorting to the bloodless "fuzak" of certain artists. What would it have sounded like if, instead, they mixed in some more mainstream jazz, instrumental soundtracks, and the more interesting new age music (probably more of that at night, anyway). I think the low-balling of the format is a big part of what drove some of the potential targeted audience of "educated, sophisticated" listeners away - there was too much stuff that sounded like the crap you had to endure in supermarkets and certain elevators. Heck, even KKSF in its heyday under Brown Broadcasting could have replaced 30% of its playlist and added more Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Pat Metheney, and Mark Isham (all artists they did feature from time to time). What ended up instead in many markets was a lowered denominator of "jazz" aimed at people whose favorite music stations were probably country-western! How sustainable is that??
 
I touched on the whole KOST going down, KTWV going up thing a month or so back and looking at the numbers that came out today/yesterday it's obvious that while the programming honcho at KOST has been making a lot of mistakes, the PD of the WAVE has been making a lot of the right moves. I think most of those in the know in the LA market knew exactly what Kaye would do, and he hasn't disappointed. While I think it's great that the WAVE is doing better, I find it sad that CC has messed up so much with what was one of LA's more enduring properties.

I don't blame KOST's PD Stella Prado. No, the responsible party here is KBIG PD Andrew Jeffries. What many people don't know is that she has to take her orders from him. Why? Who knows, but he's the guy who instituted the changes like the abundance of sweepers cluttering up the format. Add to that the horrible jingles he switched to and you can start to see what's wrong. But there seem to be many other areas that KOST has made changes with like the music. Rotation's are tighter than ever and the song selection itself is suspect. What makes even less sense is that changes were made when KOST was flying along pretty high. Why fix what wasn't really broken? They threw the stationality that's been built up for so many years away. But you know, PD's like to change things to put their mark on a property and in this case they were all the wrong moves. If the WAVE beats KOST, it's because CC let it happen.
 
Goldilocks94941 said:
What ended up instead in many markets was a lowered denominator of "jazz" aimed at people whose favorite music stations were probably country-western!
Click to expand...

can you point out one of the "country-western" stations? lots of "country" out there...but "western"? no so much...
in fact...many country stations have a very AC presentation and sound.
 
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