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Shortest-lived formats

Best programming that station put out in its whole existence!

Perhaps in your (and your friends') collective opinion, but obviously management was far from thrilled, a mere six hours had little to no impact on listeners, and I bet the friends were blacklisted by the other broadcasters.

And, in keeping with the thread, a stunt like this, not sanctioned by management, technically was not a "format".
 
Perhaps in your (and your friends') collective opinion, but obviously management was far from thrilled, a mere six hours had little to no impact on listeners, and I bet the friends were blacklisted by the other broadcasters.

And, in keeping with the thread, a stunt like this, not sanctioned by management, technically was not a "format".
Actually, they both went on to have very successful radio careers. Both ended up as prime-time presenters on a competing station in the same market. In their later years, one ended up being a renowned lecturer on broadcast media at a number of universities, and the other a producer for sport on BBC 5 Live. Sadly one is now deceased. The other has retired.

I take your point that it was not technically a 'format' though it could be if someone wanted to adopt it... ;)
 
Country 1320 WGMA Hollywood, Florida blowing out the entire staff to become WADY "The Lady on 1320 For Singles Only". I was hired for 7p-Mid. When I saw what they planned I quit before going on. The music wasn't bad, basic Adult Contemporary you could hear on lots of better AM and FM signals. It was just the approach was much too sleezy for radio in 1979. 1320 went silent in about 3 months. Advertisers didn't want to be associated with it. The station was sold and came back as WLQY Lucky 13 playing Adult Standards.
So you're basically saying even the guys with shag carpeted-love rooms wouldn't listen to it.
 
ETA: Music on this format was mostly rap/urban. When I first heard about this long ago, I assumed it would be heavy metal...Live and learn.
Wouldn't surprise me if another reason why the format was short-lived is because they were receiving angry letters from metalheads who heard there was a station called "Hell" in town and tuned in excitedly, only to hear Snoop Doggy Dogg instead of Slayer.
 
Two months, Ted.

Here's the thread:



And really, anything shorter than that is going to fall into the category of stunting. And the grandaddy of them all was Jerry Clifton's "Porn Radio" at KFYE in Kingsburg, CA. It lasted about 10 days:

View attachment 11282

(The Fresno Bee, July 28, 2006)


The station had been Christian K-Love, so this was bound to raise a few eyebrows.

On August 3, Clifton launched the real format...Sexy 106.3...a rhythmic AC. He changed the call letters to KSXE on March 30 of 2007.

He sold it after less than a year and a half...it's since been rhythmic contemporary, back in K-Love's hands as an Air1 affiliate and for the last six years has been the United Farmworkers' La Campesina outlet.
This format wasn’t profitable?!
 
Took me a few minutes to find this, but I think this may top all the stories posted up to now.

We have an AM station at 1260 which, in its heyday, focused on the San Fernando Valley (where its transmitter site still is) as KGIL. It was one of the last stations owned by Buckley-Jaeger Broadcasting, and its last format under them was Talk, although it was best known for its years as a full-service MOR. It was originally named for Gil Paltridge, who was president and general manager of the company that put it on the air in 1947.

Longtime L.A. broadcaster Saul Levine bought the station at the end of 1992, and ended the 45-year run of the call letters and Valley-centric programming. Here is the timeline of all the format and call letter changes since Saul purchased it:

1993: Standards (as KJQI)
1995: News (as KNNS)
1997: All-Beatles (Jan-Aug) then Broadway Showtunes (both as KGIL)
1998: Music Of Your Life
2000: Jazz (as KJAZ)
2002: Standards (as KSUR)
2004: Oldies (as KKGO)
2006: Country
2007: Classical (Feb-Oct, as KMZT), then Talk (as KGIL)
2009: Oldies/Standards hybrid
2011: Classical (as KMZT)
2016: Standards (as KBOQ)
2017: Oldies (as KSUR)
2020: Classical (as KMZT)
2024: Classic Country (as KKGO)
2025: Classical (as KMZT) with occasional Smooth Jazz weekends

Saul has often been chastised by the armchair quarterbacks on the Los Angeles board over the station's frequent change in direction, but the underlying fact is that he has owned KKGO/105.1 from the day it began operation in 1959 and therefore has zero debt service. He paid cash for 1260 and it runs whatever he feels like hearing at any given point in time.

It's pretty much his own personal radio station. And he is still active in the operation of the stations, although his adult son and daughter handle most of the day-to-day routine stuff. I've met him and we also occasionally correspond via e-mail; when I met his son Michael at a local broadcasters' luncheon, Saul introduced me as "the person who writes such nice things about us" ... which is easy because I find him extremely likeable. He turns 100 this year.

The most amazing thing to me looking at @K.M. Richards' list was that all of the callsigns that Mr. Levine wanted for the 1260 AM station were available at the times he wanted them.
 
The most amazing thing to me looking at @K.M. Richards' list was that all of the callsigns that Mr. Levine wanted for the 1260 AM station were available at the times he wanted them.
Yeah, some of those were transfers from other properties that Levine owned or had owned at one point. I grew up in Monterey and in later years he owned a number of stations in that market. KBOQ came from longtime Classical K-Bach up there and KSUR came from a station in Big SUR (hence the call letters) that also was part of his Classical network - they either simulcasted K-Mozart or K-Bach to that area. Since there are not a lot of Jazz and Classical stations signing on and desiring those call letters, it was probably relatively easy to get KMZT back in circulation when he needed it (perhaps with KBOQ as a backup) and maybe KJAZ as well (that had been in the Bay Area, where Levine had another station or two at one time) - KKGO he already had on the FM so was able to easily get that for his AM when he wanted it. KGIL had heritage in the LA area and probably not a lot of station owners demanded that set of calls. The KNNS stood for "news" and was paired with KNNZ in Costa Mesa that had been on 540 and the 540 in Tijuana, Mexico (that I don't think Saul had any ownership in) also joined up for the trimulcast. Did Levine own 540 for a long time? It was KSHO at one time doing Show Tunes and it was licensed to Costa Mesa but I think the transmitters were in Hesperia which was 80 miles away - I don't have a lot of info on that 540 but it went off the air because of the 540 in Tijuana.
 
The KNNS stood for "news" and was paired with KNNZ in Costa Mesa that had been on 540 and the 540 in Tijuana, Mexico (that I don't think Saul had any ownership in) also joined up for the trimulcast. Did Levine own 540 for a long time? It was KSHO at one time doing Show Tunes and it was licensed to Costa Mesa but I think the transmitters were in Hesperia which was 80 miles away - I don't have a lot of info on that 540 but it went off the air because of the 540 in Tijuana.
Saul's 540 AM was approved as an extended band AM on 1650 in 1997, and under the provisions that allowed simulcasts initially in the X-band Saul had to either give up 1650 or take 540 permanently silent.The original CP made that a condition of the grant. Those calls for 540's are not right (they were KNOB, not KSHO, per the authorization).

Saul's 540 was directional protecting Mexico; 540 is a Mexican clear channel.
 


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