Change Was in the Air

A year ago, who could have predicted that Michael Jackson, the dean of L.A. talk radio, would be demoted to weekend duty?

That was just the tip of the iceberg of oddities in a year marked by unprecedented mergers and consolidations of station ownership, announcements that both the Dodgers and Angels would be leaving their longtime radio flagships, an ever-narrowing attempt by upstarts to attack “niche” appeal in music programming and the perhaps long-overdue flowering of the market’s Spanish-language radio that nearly parallels the range available in English.

It was enough to keep listeners in a button-pushing frenzy to find just that right array of things to meet their audio needs. After all, with the time we all spend in our cars, in L.A. more than anywhere else, you are what you listen to.

But it’s impossible for any one set of ears to keep up with everything up and down the dial. So here is our take on occurrences and developments that you might have missed--good, bad and sometimes very ugly:

The demotion of KABC-AM (790) host Jackson in July from his 30-year weekday morning show to the Siberia of weekends was not only the biggest talk radio story of the year but also clearly the largest loss to talk listeners. The intelligence of conversation and the caliber of guests were rarities on the Los Angeles radio dial. It’s too early to tell if ratings improved since his move. But his replacement, Ronn Owens, now doing a simulcast with San Francisco’s KGO-AM, with his propensity for McTopic and sometimes mindless chatter with callers, as well as his being shared in a two-city broadcast deal, has hardly replenished the landscape. Jackson, of course, handled the change with typical dignity.

Now, Children: The trumped-up verbal pugilism of KLSX-FM (97.1) turned into the real thing when Riki Rachtman punched fellow talk-jock Doug Steckler--just because Steckler said on air that Rachtman’s fiancee was an ex-porn star, which she is. The real mystery came, though, with the announcement that Rachtman was “at home with his staff of six,” cooking up a new venture. Rachtman needed a staff of six to do his show?

Video Love: While Rachtman was on the way out of KLSX, the proprietors of his former show, the frank sex-and-drugs call-in “Love Line” on KROQ-FM (106.7), made a long-delayed move to national television via a weeknight MTV slot, making reliable Dr. Drew Pinsky and quick-witted co-host Adam Corolla household faces.

Mind your Elder: Controversial KABC-AM (790) talk host Larry Elder saw his four-hour afternoon-drive show sliced in half six weeks ago to accommodate the arrival of Ed Tyll, who was given the higher listenership hours of 5 to 7 p.m. But Elder is closing out the year on a high note: This week he signed a deal with Synergy Broadcasting to syndicate the show nationally. How many stations Elder will eventually pick up remains to be seen but KABC will remain the flagship.

Not Too Groovy: Groove Radio (KACD/KBCD-FM 103.1) was unable to find a groove, first heaving its techno-oriented format for a pared-down playlist of more mainstream dance music before junking that for an even more mainstream dance approach, the latter heralded by several days of playing nothing but the Spice Girls’ line “Tell me what you want, what you really really want.”

Listeners told them exactly what they wanted, which was the old format. After being swamped with calls, Groove relented and went back to playlist B. Of course, none of the music was as entertaining as the war of words that went on between station owner Ken Roberts and fired program director Egil “Swedish Eagle” Aalvik about the changes.

Nighttime Sandbox: Thanks to KFI for Tammy Bruce (Mondays through Fridays, 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.) for giving late-night and sleep-deprived talk listeners an alternative to the outer-space, the-end-is-coming approach of Art Bell, who broadcasts from his remote lair in the Nevada desert. Bruce is down to earth, and her “sandbox” is at its core Los Angeles.

Long Gone: It seemed as if there were more people lamenting the February change of KSCA-FM (101.9) from adult alternative music to Spanish-language Mexican regional tunes than had been listening to the station. Actually, the format had not performed badly in L.A., hovering around a respectable, if unspectacular, 2 share. But if you were owners Gene and Jackie Autry, would you have turned down the $115-million offer from Heftel Broadcasting to take over the frequency? And while loyalists to the dumped programming protested that L.A. “didn’t need” another Spanish-language station, the results have proved otherwise, as the new KSCA soared to be the No. 2 draw in the market.

En Espanol: L.A.’s Spanish-language radio market, already the country’s largest, continued to grow in both size and diversity in 1997, with KSCA, KWNK-AM (690), KWIZ-FM (96.7) and KMIA-AM (1220) changing from English- to Spanish-language programming. Several already-Spanish stations switched formats as well, with talk, news and contemporary pop growing in popularity at the expense of regional Mexican music, the longtime staple of Spanish-language radio. Even the Arbitron ratings service got into the act, adding five new Spanish-language format classifications.

So Long: Two much-loved voices faded from oldies station KRTH-FM (101.1) with “The Real” Don Steele dying of lung cancer in August and the just-announced retirement of Robert W. Morgan, who had been on limited duty since announcing he was battling lung cancer. But neither’s impact will fade from the airwaves for a long time. Much of the very nature of L.A. radio today was shaped by Steele, who anchored the KHJ “Boss Radio” in the ‘60s rise of rock broadcasting, and Morgan, whose “good Morgan” a.m. signature is as much a part of the L.A. lexicon as a SigAlert. And just this week, onetime radio mainstay Roger Barkley died at 61 of pancreatic cancer.

Fairy Dust:It’s amazing enough that Phil Hendrie keeps finding new victims--er, callers--to fuel his evening charades on KFI-AM (690), in which he presents fake interviews and topical discussions via his often impressive vocal skills and quick banter. But the zenith of this frequently entertaining farce may have come in October, when he did two hours of “breaking news” coverage in which he and his “cast” purported to be reporting on the home invasion shooting death of the Tooth Fairy--and people called in believing that at least some part of the story had to be true. After all, they’d heard right there on the radio.

Welcome Back: It was oddly comforting to hear Jim Ladd--self-important musings and anachronistic musical tastes and all--back on the air at KLOS-FM (95.5) as part of the station’s long-overdue return to its classic-rock heritage. But Ladd, enough already with the old “Lonesome L.A. Cowboy” moniker and the promos using all those old macho blues references to yourself. You’re about as much a “hoochie coochie man” or “crawlin’ king snake” as Tara Lipinski.

Helping Hand: KLVE-FM (107.5) drive-time host Pepe Barreto has earned a well-deserved reputation--not to mention dozens of civic awards--for his service to the community, but he outdid himself last September when he spent 45 minutes on the air with an unemployed Orange County woman who had just given premature birth to triplets, one of whom had a kidney disorder requiring extensive surgery.

Barreto asked his listeners for help, and they responded, offering dozens of diapers, clothes, food, cribs and even job leads for the woman’s husband, who was laid off about the time the children were born.

“I come [to the station] to be a servant,” Barreto says. “I do my best to help.”

The Way Back: KCRW-FM (89.9) made a needed about-face when it restored its regular 7 p.m. rebroadcast of Warren Olney’s “Which Way, L.A.?” The hourlong public affairs show regularly airs at 1 p.m., but many of the town’s movers and shakers had been unable to tune in for nearly a month last spring during their evening commutes when the station replaced “Which Way” with a music show.

Seeing the Light: Spanish-language KKHJ-AM (930) found itself under fire as critics charged that much of the station’s “shock radio” programming pushed the bounds of decency, leading the National Hispanic Media Coalition to ask the government to deny the station’s license renewal. Three weeks after the petition was filed, KKHJ found the high road, ending months of planning by changing formats to become the nation’s only 24-hour Spanish-language news station.

That’s a Good One: A recent caller to Laura Schlessinger’s daily advice show (heard weekdays here on KFI) asked the hostess for an “unbiased opinion.” Must have been a new listener.

Low Blow: John Kobylt of KFI’s John and Ken hit bottom on the sensitivity meter last month when, after station colleague Bruce had fielded calls from a Ventura woman who had shot and wounded two people and then later committed suicide, quipped, “Now Tammy Bruce’s listeners are killing themselves.”

Look Who’s Talking Now: KWKW-AM (1330), beset by flagging ratings, dropped its Mexican regional music fare in favor of a talk format in August. The station was rewarded with an immediate bounce in the Arbitron ratings and, three months later, Lotus Communications, KWKW’s parent company, agreed to lease its other L.A. station--KVCA-AM (670), a tropical music outlet--to Miami-based Radio Unica, a Spanish-language network that specializes in--you guessed it--talk radio.

New Kid on the Block: KSSE-FM (97.5) program director Nestor Rocha, a newcomer from San Jose, has hit on a winning formula with his skin-tight playlist of youth-oriented pop music. Since going on the air in April, KSSE and its potent 72,000-watt signal have climbed to the No. 5 spot among Spanish-language stations, and anecdotal evidence suggests it has built those numbers by siphoning off listeners from adult-contemporary station KLVE.

Zoned Out: Mixed feelings about the creation (from the former KMPC-AM) and eventual demise of lifestyle-oriented, female-driven KTZN-AM (710), otherwise known as The Zone, and its reincarnation as KDIS, the L.A. outlet for the national kid-oriented Radio Disney programming. Female hosts discussing issues in daily radio are too few, and though it was nice having a home at KABC’s sister station, it did strike us as rather separate and unequal to have KABC, the primary station, given over to the guys while lower-ranked KTZN became the place for the women. Whoever decided that lifestyle was necessarily a woman’s primary interest anyway?