Stale … or irrelevant? Does it really matter?

I got into a minor disagreement with my podcast partner and friend Michael Stark over a recent column in which I was trying to clarify something and perhaps ended up making things murkier. It all had to do with the the word “stale” and radio station KABC (790 AM).

Going back a couple weeks, I had mentioned that KFI’s (640 AM) recent changes had a lot to do with not becoming stale, as KABC had become. What I meant to reference was the mid 1980s, when KFI was moving to the talk format, and was able to overtake KABC relatively quickly due to sounding young, hip, and modern … while KABC was holding on to the old guard and had become somewhat stale in comparison. 

It was not a direct judgement of KABC’s programming then or now, and often sounding fresh isn’t so much the talk programs themselves, but how they present themselves. What music  they use coming out of breaks, and more. A station that doesn’t evolve is likely to die due to a lack of new listeners. Done right, and a station thrives.

A perfect example of that is KRTH (101.1 FM) … diehard oldies fans lament that they no longer play songs from the 1950s and ‘60s, but as KRTH has moved into the ‘80s and even the 1990s — still a longer period back than when it launched in 1972 and played music from 1955 and up — it has gained new listeners and remained one of the areas top-rated stations.

My partner Stark believes I was too easy on the current KABC program lineup. It is stale, he says. I’m not sure that is the correct word, but I understand where he is coming from. Indeed, if KABC was playing something people wanted to hear, they would not be among the lowest-rated full-power stations in town. My choice of word to describe KABC: irrelevant.

I think that the real problem with KABC is that it isn’t offering much to attract listeners, and they aren’t really even trying. The station is mostly repetitive conservative programming, basically preaching to the choir, with no promotion at all. Two of the shows are essentially replays of podcasts, and outside of midday host John Phillips and (another disagreement with my friend Stark) Ben Shapiro, the shows are not even really fun nor all that informative. Just kind of a rehash of negative political news.

So what to do? The way I see it there are two choices. Either build around Philips and go live/local all day with people who can relate to local audiences and get out of the political gutter, or drop talk altogether and play music. Find a format for an audience that isn’t served by existing stations … such as oldies (new or old) that KRTH or KOLA (99.9 FM) doesn’t play, metal, or progressive rock. I guarantee any of those moves would do better than now, and may even bring a few younger listeners back to the band.

You Know That …

It’s funny how certain stories get told, and I suppose when they get told often enough they become “fact.” But many “facts” about radio are more legend than reality. Here are but a few examples:

You always heard that KHJ (930 AM) used a cappella jingles when they launched the Boss Radio format in 1965 because there was a musicians strike. Sound reasonable, except that it’s not true. Oh, there may have been a strike — I didn’t check — but station consultant Bill Drake had already been using similar jingles at previous stations he consulted or programmed, including KGB in San Diego (now KLSD, 1360 AM) among others.

Speaking of KHJ and KGB, it was actually KGB that launched “the Drake format” roughly one year before KHJ. They didn’t call it Boss Radio, but the elements were all there – quick jungles, fast moving format elements, and the top-30 records. The success of KGB helped pave the way for its implementation on KHJ.

You know that Rick Dees came to Los Angeles to work at KIIS-FM (102.7), right? It must be true, as I even read it in an LA Times retrospective of Dees’ career and how his arrival at KIIS led immediately to the rise of the station to the top of the ratings.

Except it wasn’t that way at all. Dees arrived with his “Cast of Idiots” to work at a revitalized KHJ (can’t get away from that station today) in 1979; he didn’t move to KIIS until 1981. And KIIS didn’t switch to a true top-40 format until a while after Dees’ arrival. Had they kept playing the sleepy “adult contemporary” format they ran when Dees first arrived, KIIS-FM would never have set records for ratings earned in the mid 1980s.

Of course you know that AM radio broadcasts always sound awful and it is due to the AM transmission system. The only way to get good sound on the radio to listen to FM.

Wrong again. While Edwin Armstrong, a key developer of AM, hated the sound or AM broadcasts so much that he invented FM, it wasn’t due to what we consider AM’s lack of fidelity. It was the interference. AM radio, due to the frequencies it uses, is prone to interference from natural and man-made sources: lightening, automotive ignition systems, computers, dimmers, and more. But Amplitude Modulation itself is not inherently bad — it was used for the video portion of television broadcasts prior to the switch to digital … which is why you could sometimes get a picture before the sound on distant stations in the old days  — AM travels further than FM.

Radio manufacturers handled interference by reducing the audio bandwidth on AM radio broadcasts. Made it easier to listen to, but it cut sound quality dramatically. From a technical standpoint, analog AM broadcasts can actually have a greater bandwidth — the frequency response spread from the lowest notes to the highest — than FM stereo (20 Hz to 20KHz vs 20 Hz – 15KHz). 

With modern circuits, it is relatively easy to design a great-sounding AM receiver; Carver, Denon, and a few others made great AM stereo receivers as far back as the 1980s. It just costs a little more, and the companies want to keep costs down. Too bad, actually … some AM stereo stations sounded better than their FM competitors, but few people had the right radios.

Have any similar stories? Send them over – I’d love to hear them.

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