• 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

Mt. Rushmore of L.A. Stations

B

briancraig

The discussion on the Yacht Rock thread of KHJ, KMET etc. got me thinking about what would be the 4 most important radio stations in Los Angeles in the post golden age, network radio years.

My list would be:

KHJ—changed top 40 more than any other station. Almost every radio format to this day borrowed concepts from Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs.
KROQ- invented the modern/alternative format and paved the way for what will probably be the last important movement in rock music.
KMPC- while MOR stations don’t get the same historical love that top 40 does, 710 from the late 50s to the early 70s set the standard for MOR radio as the Station of the Stars.

The 4th one is a little harder for me. Contenders would be KIIS, for long time success, KPWR, for being one of the first big Churban stations, KABC, for pioneering the talk radio format. Maybe one of the Spanish language stations, KLVE or KLAX for instance. I don’t know enough about Latin music formats to know who the pioneers were but KLVE was the first major signal and KLAX the first to be top 5.

We play this game at work a lot when we are having to do mundane tasks like mass mailings. Recently did the Mt. Rushmore of L.A. rock music. 3 were easy, Beach Boys, Doors, Eagles. Finally went with Van Halen as number 4, but lots of spirited disagreement.
 
briancraig said:
Recently did the Mt. Rushmore of L.A. rock music. 3 were easy, Beach Boys, Doors, Eagles. Finally went with Van Halen as number 4, but lots of spirited disagreement.
Click to expand...

It's hard to ignore the Byrds. Not just for themselves, but also their influence on others. There's a BBC documentary called "From The Byrds To The Eagles."

For me, it's hard to settle on four radio stations.
 
No doubt the Byrds created the L.A. country/folk rock scene that led to the Laurel Canyon scene.

We went with the Eagles to represent that sound due to their massive popularity.
 
briancraig said:
The discussion on the Yacht Rock thread of KHJ, KMET etc. got me thinking about what would be the 4 most important radio stations in Los Angeles in the post golden age, network radio years.

My list would be:

KHJ—changed top 40 more than any other station. Almost every radio format to this day borrowed concepts from Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs.
KROQ- invented the modern/alternative format and paved the way for what will probably be the last important movement in rock music.
KMPC- while MOR stations don’t get the same historical love that top 40 does, 710 from the late 50s to the early 70s set the standard for MOR radio as the Station of the Stars.

The 4th one is a little harder for me. Contenders would be KIIS, for long time success, KPWR, for being one of the first big Churban stations, KABC, for pioneering the talk radio format. Maybe one of the Spanish language stations, KLVE or KLAX for instance. I don’t know enough about Latin music formats to know who the pioneers were but KLVE was the first major signal and KLAX the first to be top 5.

We play this game at work a lot when we are having to do mundane tasks like mass mailings. Recently did the Mt. Rushmore of L.A. rock music. 3 were easy, Beach Boys, Doors, Eagles. Finally went with Van Halen as number 4, but lots of spirited disagreement.
Click to expand...

For me, there would be a tie for fourth place between KNX (Los Angeles' first all-news station and still going strong) and KWKW (Los Angeles' first Spanish station and still going strong).
 
briancraig said:
The discussion on the Yacht Rock thread of KHJ, KMET etc. got me thinking about what would be the 4 most important radio stations in Los Angeles in the post golden age, network radio years.

My list would be:

KHJ—changed top 40 more than any other station. Almost every radio format to this day borrowed concepts from Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs.
KROQ- invented the modern/alternative format and paved the way for what will probably be the last important movement in rock music.
KMPC- while MOR stations don’t get the same historical love that top 40 does, 710 from the late 50s to the early 70s set the standard for MOR radio as the Station of the Stars.
Click to expand...

KHJ, absolutely.

KROQ, certainly.

KMPC, less for the reason you cite and more for pioneering comprehensive traffic coverage. KABC was the first to put a helicopter in the sky in late 1957, but got cold feet after the engine failed and it crashed just eight months in.

The pilot, Captain Max Schumacher and reporter Donn Reed, were the owners of Airwatch and were injured. When they recovered, Gene Autry bought Airwatch from them, and eventually assembled a fleet of two helicopters, a fixed-wing airplane and six radio-equipped mobile units.

No other station even tried to match KMPC's resources for traffic until the 80s, when computerized traffic information and KMPC's tightening resources leveled the playing field.

My fourth would have to be KNX. 57 years of all-news and still in the format and (as proven in recent months) still relevant to Southern California listeners.
 
ted chittenden said:
For me, there would be a tie for fourth place between KNX (Los Angeles' first all-news station and still going strong) and KWKW (Los Angeles' first Spanish station and still going strong).
Click to expand...
XETRA was LA's first all news station, dating back to 1961 as "Extra News over Los Angeles". And that was thanks to Gordon McLendon taking a vacation in free-for-all Havana, Cuba, and hearing Goar Mestre's all news "Radio Reloj" which had been on the air since the late 1940's!

LA had a lot of Spanish programming before KWKW, including every morning on KPOP (later KGBS and then KTNQ) and several of the brokered stations. Richard Eaton also did mostly Spanish on KALI earlier than KWKW did under Howard Kalmenson.
 
Robnoxious said:
While it has seen better days over it's 100+ years in existence, there's no denying KFI deserves a seat at the table or at least top of mind in discussion.
Click to expand...

In absolute terms, yeah. But in terms of ratings KFI was an also-ran, apart from Dodger Baseball, for most of the 60s and 70s. The flip to Top 40 in 1977 bought them a couple of years of competitive numbers outside Lohman and Barkley in mornings, but only that, and they were back in the ratings basement until David G. Hall flipped the station Talk in the late 80s and added Rush Limbaugh.

That's a long gap between periods of prominence.
 
Last edited:
michael hagerty said:
In absolute terms, yeah. But in terms of ratings KFI was an also-ran, apart from Dodger Baseball, for most of the 60s and 70s. The flip to Top 40 bought them a couple of years of competitive numbers outside Lohman and Barkley in mornings, but only that, and they were back in the ratings basement until David G. Hall flipped the station Talk in the late 80s and added Rush Limbaugh.
Click to expand...
I can't emphasize enough the importance of program directors. Starting with David Hall and continuing with Robin Bertolucci, we have seen almost 40 years of talk radio total dominance in LA.

It's not just the signal or the band or the dial position, it is the PD.
 
I pick "94.7...the Waaaaave". A pioneer of the NAC format, which would morph into Smooth Jazz. The Wave was even a syndicated/satellite radio service for several years.
Because of KTWV, smooth jazz would become a part of the radio landscape in just about every top-50 market between the early '90s and mid '00s, and many smaller markets too via Jones Radio Networks. It led to the success of stars like Dave Koz, Kenny G, Rick Braun, David Benoit and David Sanborn, as well as increased the popularity of Al Jarreau, Sade, Anita Baker and Bobby Caldwell. Smooth jazz became THE at-work station in doctor's offices, shops, and many thousands of cubicles throughout the U.S. Then the demos changed, and smooth jazz went from common to very niche (WSBZ Miramar Beach/FWB/Destin is one of the last left).
 
crainbebo said:
I pick "94.7...the Waaaaave". A pioneer of the NAC format, which would morph into Smooth Jazz.
Click to expand...
The Wave was the originator of that format, although it borrowed some elements from those earlier "Quiet Storm" night shows. And the term "Smooth Jazz" was discovered in a research project by Owen Leach, half of the team that created The Wave in LA.
crainbebo said:
Because of KTWV, smooth jazz would become a part of the radio landscape in just about every top-50 market between the early '90s and mid '00s, and many smaller markets too via Jones Radio Networks. It led to the success of stars like Dave Koz, Kenny G, Rick Braun, David Benoit and David Sanborn, as well as increased the popularity of Al Jarreau, Sade, Anita Baker and Bobby Caldwell. Smooth jazz became THE at-work station in doctor's offices, shops, and many thousands of cubicles throughout the U.S. Then the demos changed, and smooth jazz went from common to very niche (WSBZ Miramar Beach/FWB/Destin is one of the last left).
Click to expand...
That is a good profile of its artists and history.
 
Radio formats are probably going to be fragmented all over the place down the road. Take, for example, Top 40 formats from 60s onward. Nowadays you could take that format and split it into a soft-rock type format, classic rock, etc. Country now consists of pop-country music, regular country, classic country and stuff that once would have been considered country-ish now down at the far left end [non-commercial] of the dial, Bluegrass, Americana, etc. Same could be said of R&B, hip-hop and so on. Who's to say what formats may come in the future?
 
KNX definitely has to be one of the 4 carved on that radio Mt Rushmore. For spoken word radio in LA, hands down a winner. For its longevity in the all news format, and overall success. In fact, they are stronger now than ever with the addition of FM.
 
Apparently, the early days of The Wave were not the usual David Sanborn/Sade segues. There was a lot of singer-songwriter and jazz fusion stuff in the playlist. KEZX-98.9 in Seattle had a similar approach, closely related to adult album alternative, and they ironically would become a very popular smooth jazz station (which this poster grew up with regularly in Seattle's northern suburbs). I recall my family had David Sanborn's "Time Again" CD on the rack. My eclectic father was a HUGE Jeff Beck fan (even saw him at the Puyallup Fair...and had me in the stroller, I think I was 2 years old), but didn't mind some of the more "mature" instrumentalists on KWJZ as well. He couldn't stand Kenny G. To this day, the average Joe thinks of smooth jazz as "sleepy elevator music" that Kenny G mastered.
My dad was also a big fan of 88.5 KPLU's Saturday night Blues show. I'm happy to see that John Kessler is still doing the show on Saturday and Sunday night at what is now KNKX. I can still remember the John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughan CDs...he LOVED all of these artists! (Way off topic)

Before the PPM, KTWV, WQCD, KWJZ, WNUA, KKSF, and other smooth jazz stations were often in the top 5 in Arbitron ratings (sometimes even #1). When the PPM was introduced, the ratings dropped like a rock, and smooth jazz faded quickly from FM airwaves.
 
crainbebo said:
Before the PPM, KTWV, WQCD, KWJZ, WNUA, KKSF, and other smooth jazz stations were often in the top 5 in Arbitron ratings (sometimes even #1). When the PPM was introduced, the ratings dropped like a rock, and smooth jazz faded quickly from FM airwaves.
Click to expand...
The format was pretty much dead before the PPM arrived in 2009.

Yet a couple of stations that adapted by changing the focus of the music and the blend prospered... KTWV being the best example.
 
crainbebo said:
Apparently, the early days of The Wave were not the usual David Sanborn/Sade segues. There was a lot of singer-songwriter and jazz fusion stuff in the playlist.
Click to expand...
There are a few You Tube videos where we can hear The Wave after it first debuted. KTWV proudly declared it had no DJs. In some cases, the artists themselves recorded an intro for their latest song. Radio & Records called the format "NAC." NAC stood either for "New Adult Contemporary" or "New Age/Contemporary". The format description NAC was eventually dropped, replaced by Smooth Jazz.

A cast of actors did scripted mini-plays to mark the beginning of each hour. A member of Manhattan Transfer was hired to sing the top headlines of the past week every Friday in a segment called "Lady Sings The News."

Sting and Peter Gabriel were as likely to be heard as Anita Baker and Sade. But over time, KTWV and other smooth jazz stations began modifying to a mix of Smooth Jazz and as David says, a Quiet Storm playlist of vocals. The New Age titles were dropped.
 
Gregg. said:
There are a few You Tube videos where we can hear The Wave after it first debuted. KTWV proudly declared it had no DJs. In some cases, the artists themselves recorded an intro for their latest song. Radio & Records called the format "NAC." NAC stood either for "New Adult Contemporary" or "New Age/Contemporary". The format description NAC was eventually dropped, replaced by Smooth Jazz.

A cast of actors did scripted mini-plays to mark the beginning of each hour. A member of Manhattan Transfer was hired to sing the top headlines of the past week every Friday in a segment called "Lady Sings The News."

Sting and Peter Gabriel were as likely to be heard as Anita Baker and Sade. But over time, KTWV and other smooth jazz stations began modifying to a mix of Smooth Jazz and as David says, a Quiet Storm playlist of vocals. The New Age titles were dropped.
Click to expand...
BTW, according to the Research Director, KTWV is #3 in the 18-34 demo and #5 in the 18-49 demo in the latest LA ratings.
 


Back
Top Bottom