‘Breakfast with the Beatles’ dropping off KLSX’s menu

Fans who tune in Sunday morning at 10 to KLSX-FM (97.1) will hear the same mix of Beatles songs, history and trivia they’ve gotten used to during the 23-year life of “Breakfast With the Beatles,” radio’s longest-running show dedicated to the Fab Four’s music. But after that they’ll only have three more chances to hear it.

Come Sept. 10, for the first time in a quarter-century, “BWTB” will go off the air. Officially, it will be “on hiatus,” during football season, says KLSX program director Jack Silver. That’s a shift from previous years when the show moved to an earlier, abbreviated slot to accommodate football broadcasts at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. each Sunday.

Host Chris Carter says the program faces an uncertain future, with some of the time it now occupies due to be taken over by paid programming.

Silver said a commitment to advertisers prompted the change and that “hopefully there will be a spot for it somewhere else in the fall schedule, and if not, we hope it will return on the first Sunday in January.... It’s the only music feature we still have on the station. Chris is amazing, and fans of the station love it. I support it 100%.”

Unless a new slot on KLSX materializes or another station picks up the show in the next few weeks, Carter’s final Beatles show will be Sept. 3, the fifth anniversary of when he took over the program that started in 1983 on then-L.A. rock station KMET-FM and originally was hosted by Deirdre O’Donoghue, who died in 2001.

Carter said he hasn’t given up hope of finding a new home for the show, which has been supported with call-ins from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and George Harrison’s widow, Olivia.

“There are two words that describe the situation,” Carter said. “Howard Stern. What’s followed in the wake of Howard leaving is that a lot of things have changed, and the station has let go a lot of people. The guys at KLSX have been nothing but first-rate and cool. I’m in the big boys’ club, and we all understand radio. But I enjoy doing the show so much it kills me to even think of it.”

-- Randy Lewis