calguy said:
mostb1 said:
If I wanted to listen to music in a "natural way", I would listen to cd's. Toned down, he's almost eliminated the processing (and Jhani controls the minimal mic processing also). K-Earth was not overly compressed. In fact I don't feel it was compressed enough before Jhani came in (for the format). Right now, Jack is about the cleanest, loudest station on the dial (kudos to Scott Mason for that - too bad he can't get his old buddy Jhani Kaye to do the same on K-Earth). KIIS use to have the best processing but since Terry Grieger came in he's ruined the processing on all the Clear Channel L.A. stations. He should spend some time listening to Hot. The "noisiest" station in L.A.. Just listen when the music is low or their is dead air on Hot. Unbelievable it never gets cleaned up, year after year.
At KBIG, Jhani use to personally pre-process the music onto the Prophet system. Process the music BEFORE it went into the audio chain. How stupid was that? Thank goodness that practice ended when he was kicked out of the Burbank facility.
As for oldies, it is not just Movin. In the last year, 3 stations have added many of the same oldie titles to the competition in this market: Movin, V100 and K-Earth. And that's in addition to KJLH, KBIG and sister Hot, which shares in playing a number of the same titles with them.
Hot in its on air imaging is currently pointing out the fact there are now "immatators" to its format. Too many of them.
Top 40 was almost dead from the late 70's until late 1982/early 1983 so I wouldn't proclaim that as the savior for K-Earth. Not Top 40's best years for delivering hits between the death of disco and the beginning of the big years for KIIS and KROQ in this town.
The only time Jhani Kaye programmed a decent sounding station in this market was when he was pd of KBIG in the AMFM days. Since then, all he's done is ruin Los Angeles radio stations which is what he is currently doing to K-Earth.
I give K-Earth 2 or 3 more years, Then when they give it up, Saul will dump country on the FM and do oldies.
I can agree with you on many points, but I beg to differ that the only decent sounding station Kaye programmed was KBIG. While the processing at KOST has always been minimal, it sounded pretty damn good. Good enough to be number one in the city for more than two years back in the early 90's. But perhaps I'm confused, were you just talking processing only?
We also part company with regards to Top 40 being almost dead from the late 70's until late 1982/early 1983. Top 40 was doing fine in those years. For example, look at KFRC in San Francisco and in a multitude of other cities too. It may have had problems here and there as AOR was the king of the hill during those years, but almost dead? I think not...
Buy the way, Jhani's run at KBIG under AM/FM was pretty short. CC started making decisions not long after the merger was announced.
You must've worked at CC yourself as you seem to have a lot of inside info about the Burbank operation.
We're talking Los Angeles, not San Francisco.
Los Angeles had virtually no CHR during the period of time you listed. That was the anti-Disco and Urban Cowboy era. That was a time of movement of listeners from AM to FM. A time when Rick Carroll and Scott Mason were really cranking up the new wave format on KROQ. I would never compare San Francisco to Los Angeles or anywhere else in the nation from that time due to the unique problems FM had there with the terrain. KFRC was a great station at that time (I hold many airchecks from that era) but it didn't reflect the tastes in music in Los Angeles.
Storer Broadcasting sold Ten-Q and it went Spanish. Then they moved the format to FM as K-Hits 97 (dumping KGBS country) but Storer sold that to Greater Media and Bobby Rich under "Little Timmy Sullivan" had to change it to AC with Charlie Tuna in the am.
KHJ went from Boss to Hoss.
K-West 106, as a CHR under PD Chuck Martin (former KHJ) and Tim Sullivan as GM (former KHJ and KHTZ) never scored any ratings below the mid 1's. In fact, at one point they were a .7. Gee, sounds just like Movin 93.9.
KIIS went from dance to a Rock AC/personality format. That's when Dees started there. And Don Geronamo did a morning show from 7-12 Midnight. It was great (more CHR tunes were thrown in along with the regular format at night).
We lost Dance KUTE 102.
K-Earth was kinda CHR. A station with London & Engleman in the AM and Pat Evans at night playing Turning Japanese in 1980 must qualify it for being a quasi-CHR. It was live assist in the mornings and automated the remainder of the day, though.
KFI was CHR but never really got any ratings to write home about. Many good jocks and programmers went though there though, Jack Armstrong, Big Ron, Charley Fox, Lohman & Barkley, Doug Banks, Bobby Rich,..too many to list.
About all we had was Outlet Communications KIQQ (how could we ever forget the THANKS! blue and yellow bumper stickers). And that was pretty bad (they did have an adventurous and LONG current) playlist (sometimes more than 50 songs) but there were some good jocks there (Jay Coffey, Bruce Chandler Jim Carson), it was run by George Wilson and his wife Paula Matthews (along with Wilson's son G.W (double-ya) McCoy. That was the major problem.
KOST has flourished without Jhani (look at the numbers from the last book). Even with Spanish taking a huge share of the L.A. market today (vs. 15 years ago that you list), it's doing incredibly well without him and I am sure will continue to.
