Disney Sells 1110 KRDC to KWVE Owner Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

You might as well add Salem's KRLA 870 to the mix ...it may be officially political talk but it reeks of Evangelicalism.. After all the "name" of their political operations is called: "The Answer". During weekdays they sell a certain former politician as "the Answer", and on weekends they sell "snake oil" as the "nswer" to what ails you.

Yes. In Los Angeles, AM 870 used to be KIEV in Glendale. In about 2001, it changed and took on the call sign KRLA. As mentioned above, 870 is now KRLA. But it's nothing like the former rocker. Owned by Salem, it carries a conservative talk format called "The Answer", which features syndicated talkers like Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, Charlie Kirk, Brian Kilmeade, etc It's not evangelical preaching per se, but many of the hosts make reference to evangelical topics.

Calvary Chapel is a mega church which started in Costa Mesa, in Orange County, with Pastor Chuck Smith. They now have a network of churches under that name. They are different from Salem in name, but the same belief system.

Salem also has stations with the moniker "The Answer" in San Francisco, which is KTRB 860, and WIND 560 in Chicago, among others.

 

[Signal Geek]

Salem also has stations with the moniker "The Answer" in San Francisco, which is KTRB 860, and WIND 560 in Chicago, among others.

Salem has a lot of stations nationwide branded as The Answer. 1170 KCBQ/San Diego and 590 KTIE/San Bernardino are the closest ones to KRLA.

 

[boombox4]

You might as well add Salem's KRLA 870 to the mix ...it may be officially political talk but it reeks of Evangelicalism.. After all the "name" of their political operations is called: "The Answer". During weekdays they sell a certain former politician as "the Answer", and on weekends they sell "snake oil" as the "nswer" to what ails you.

There is a large difference between religious teaching programs and conservative hosts who may (or may not) be Christians. I don't know where Salem came up with "The Answer" for its political talk stations but I think many of their religious teaching stations are called "The Word."

 

[TomásEstefan]

There is a large difference between religious teaching programs and conservative hosts who may (or may not) be Christians. I don't know where Salem came up with "The Answer" for its political talk stations but I think many of their religious teaching stations are called "The Word."

Not surprising...they probably think "The Word" is "The Answer" for everything...or perhaps everyone must "Answer" to "The Word".

 

[boombox4]

Not surprising...they probably think "The Word" is "The Answer" for everything...or perhaps everyone must "Answer" to "The Word".

Obviously they targetted their brands but the brands apparently work. And being that Salem is into broadcasting religion, conservative talk, and CCM/Praise (the Fish, their mostly online Christian music station), it works. In some metros the religious stations go by "the Mission" and other similar monikers.

After all, it's just branding, right? No different from "the NEW 95.7" (when the station's been the same format for 15 years). Same general idea.

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

Add Jack Van Impe to that list also.

I work for Salem in the NYC market, and WMCA carries all of them: Van Impe, Stanley, and McGee.

Even one of our local shows features a preacher who "went on to glory" last year: Bishop Eugene Lawton of the Newark (NJ) Church of Christ.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

Add Jack Van Impe to that list also.

I work for Salem in , the NYC market, and WMCA carries all of them: Van Impe, Stanley, and McGee.

Even one of our local shows features a preacher who "went on to glory" last year: Bishop Eugene Lawton of the Newark (NJ) Church of Christ.

So..........when I look at the WMCA website, I see that the station is branded as "The Mission",as Boombox said, and that the shows are all reglious preaching. They don't carry political commentary from talkers like Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, etc.
It's amazing to me, that I never imagined that the big Top 40 rockers of the 70's and 80's would transform dramatically and would drop their music format. WMCA was a rocker powerhouse in NYC, nationally known. B. Mitchell Reed was a famous DJ at WMCA.

In radio, nothing ever stays the same. Formats and air personnel can change very fast. - D.

 

[TheBigA]

Formats and air personnel can change very fast. - D.

In the case of WMCA, it happened over 50 years ago. And B. Mitchell Reed has been dead for 40. Not that fast.

I'd think BMR was best known for his time in LA.

 

[davideduardo]

It's amazing to me, that I never imagined that the big Top 40 rockers of the 70's and 80's would transform dramatically and would drop their music format. WMCA was a rocker powerhouse in NYC, nationally known. B. Mitchell Reed was a famous DJ at WMCA.

WMCA's rock era was in the 60's. By 1970, after two years of adding talk segments, it went all talk.

As Arbitron took over the ratings, the expanded survey areas hurt those stations with lesser signals. Although it is on 570, WMCA is and was directional with just 5 kw and unable to compete with 50 kw signals like 660, 710, 880, 770, 1010, 1050, 1130 and 1560

WMCA (AM) - Wikipedia is one of the few Wikipedia station articles that is reasonably accurate about the station's earlier history. There are some errors, such as suggesting that WMCA was losing in Arbitron in the earlier 60's when Arbitron only rolled out in NYC in 1966 and was not widely accepted until the early 70's when it started to do "sweeps" simultaneously across the US.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

So..........when I look at the WMCA website, I see that the station is branded as "The Mission",as Boombox said, and that the shows are all reglious preaching. They don't carry political commentary from talkers like Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, etc.

Salem airs those programs on 970 WNYM in NYC. If they didn't own 970, a few of those programs would likely air on 570. That's how Salem programs in certain other markets where "The Answer" isn't on its own station. For example, in Boston, they have 15 or so hours a week of their secular conservative talk programs airing on their station branded as "The Word."

 

[Mark Roberts]

For what it's worth...1190 KXKS in Albuquerque calls itself "Albuquerque's Answer". It's a Wilkins station. Yet most Salem programming in that city is on 700 (formerly 730) KDAZ.

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

So..........when I look at the WMCA website, I see that the station is branded as "The Mission",as Boombox said, and that the shows are all reglious preaching. They don't carry political commentary from talkers like Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, etc.
It's amazing to me, that I never imagined that the big Top 40 rockers of the 70's and 80's would transform dramatically and would drop their music format. WMCA was a rocker powerhouse in NYC, nationally known. B. Mitchell Reed was a famous DJ at WMCA.

In radio, nothing ever stays the same. Formats and air personnel can change very fast. - D.

Our sister stations in Philadelphia, WFIL and WNTP (the former WIBG) have histories similar to WMCA.

On the note of branding, WFIL still uses it's own and not one of Corporate's brand names for the Christian Talk/Teaching stations. WNTP only began using "AM 990 the Answer" in the past couple of years; they were "NewsTalk 990" before that.

 

[kevtronics]

WMCA (AM) - Wikipedia is one of the few Wikipedia station articles that is reasonably accurate about the station's earlier history. There are some errors, such as suggesting that WMCA was losing in Arbitron in the earlier 60's when Arbitron only rolled out in NYC in 1966 and was not widely accepted until the early 70's when it started to do "sweeps" simultaneously across the US.

Wikipedia articles are only as good as the people who contribute to them. I've fixed errors in quite a few of them. Although sometimes the site's rules tend to perpetuate misinformation, because new edits providing correct information without a properly cited source are usually removed, while wrong information that has been there for years gets to stay by default, with only a little "citation needed" disclaimer attached to it.

 

[Marcos_C]

It's amazing to me, that I never imagined that the big Top 40 rockers of the 70's and 80's would transform dramatically and would drop their music format. WMCA was a rocker powerhouse in NYC, nationally known. B. Mitchell Reed was a famous DJ at WMCA.

However, WMCA became a talk station in 1970.

During the 1970s, I was an elementary school student who rode a school bus every day to go to school. One of my bus drivers played WMCA on the radio. I noticed that the people who were on that station were talking for long periods of time. I thought, "So, when is that station going to play music?" I waited and I waited, but the station never played a single song. That was my first exposure to talk radio.

 

[Weiserguy]

In the case of WMCA, it happened over 50 years ago. And B. Mitchell Reed has been dead for 40. Not that fast.

WMCA's rock era was in the 60's. By 1970, after two years of adding talk segments, it went all talk.

WMCA started playing Top 40 rock & roll in the late 50's. The Good Guys era ran from 1961 through 1970, with a break from the "Good Guys" branding in late '68 through early '69. Once they went talk, they never went back to music.

Salem airs those programs on 970 WNYM in NYC.

Which itself had a stint as 97 WWDJ, or "97DJ" from 1971 through 3/31/74. (And which, in a memorable bit of stunting, flipped to a religion format on 4/01/74, leaving the audience to initially think they were doing an April Fools Day stunt.) By the time they entered the scrum it was too late, and between 50,000 watt WABC and WNBC, and all the FM rockers (at least a half dozen coming off ESB, plus a few suburban ones), their pipsqueak signal was no match.

Our sister stations in Philadelphia, WFIL and WNTP (the former WIBG) have histories similar to WMCA.

So in both markets, Salem eventually got hold of a pair of former rockers, turning one into religion and the other into right-wing "Salem" talk.

So WMCA was rocking from, say, 1958 through 1970, roughly a dozen years, and then did their "Dial-Log" talk for another couple of decades (roughly). Salem has owned the station since the early 90's, meaning their religion format has existed for about the same length of time as the two previous formats combined.

(WMCA was my first and favorite music station in the early and mid 60's [till WOR-FM came along]. That's 60 years ago. Damn, I'm suddenly feeling old.)

 

[davideduardo]

Wikipedia articles are only as good as the people who contribute to them. I've fixed errors in quite a few of them. Although sometimes the site's rules tend to perpetuate misinformation, because new edits providing correct information without a properly cited source are usually removed, while wrong information that has been there for years gets to stay by default, with only a little "citation needed" disclaimer attached to it.

One of the reasons I spent over $40,000 so far this year on www.worldradiohistory.com is to provide some accurate information to support citations as well as to minimize totally false items on Wikipedia and fan-built tribute sites and the like.

Wikipedia is the worst. I did a random sample of of major market station Wiki entries, and found errors of significance in over 75% of the articles. The most common, of course, are station Wikipedia listings that ignore the earlier history of heritage stations. Even earlier (pre-late 60's) FM station articles are inaccurate in their vast majority.

While I did not do a true random probability sample of the universe of station listings, I convinced myself that inaccuracy and omission were prevalent. What triggered my interest and concern was the increasing frequency at which I fould people repeating... and believing... wrong data that they found online. In many cases, people would suggest strategies or promotional ideas or the like in memos and meetings that were based on lies, distortions or just poor research

My favorite example of how an overwhelmingly circulated inaccuracy becomes accepted reality is in the area of how radio stations in the period of the 60's well into the 80's where it's commonly believed that radio stations perused Billboard to decide what songs to play; the fact is that this was seldom done because we used Gavin, FMQB, Hamilton, R&R, Bobby Poe, and other "tip sheets" to see what was going on.

 

[davideduardo]

WMCA started playing Top 40 rock & roll in the late 50's. The Good Guys era ran from 1961 through 1970, with a break from the "Good Guys" branding in late '68 through early '69. Once they went talk, they never went back to music.

Remember, we had other AM stations doing Top 40 in that general later-50's to early 70's period, including 1010, 1050 and even, for a while, 1280.

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

So WMCA was rocking from, say, 1958 through 1970, roughly a dozen years, and then did their "Dial-Log" talk for another couple of decades (roughly). Salem has owned the station since the early 90's, meaning their religion format has existed for about the same length of time as the two previous formats combined.

Salem took over WMCA in September 1989, 34 years ago this month.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Wikipedia articles are only as good as the people who contribute to them. I've fixed errors in quite a few of them. Although sometimes the site's rules tend to perpetuate misinformation, because new edits providing correct information without a properly cited source are usually removed, while wrong information that has been there for years gets to stay by default, with only a little "citation needed" disclaimer attached to it.

In the earlier days of Wikipedia, I considered correcting multiple articles about Kansas City and Missouri broadcasting, where I had done quite a bit of research. But all my materials were offline - i.e., paper - and I was advised that only online references would be likely to be accepted. With that, plus the weird funhouse mirror politics of Wikipedia in general, I decided I didn't need the headaches. There are too many keyboard warriors primed to attack whatever you do there.

 

[TomásEstefan]

For what it's worth...1190 KXKS in Albuquerque calls itself "Albuquerque's Answer". It's a Wilkins station. Yet most Salem programming in that city is on 700 (formerly 730) KDAZ.

Just checked out the tech info on KDAZ. It looks like the power and coverage is essentially the same. What did the move from 730 to 700 actually do for them?