RADIO STATIONS SWITCH DJS--EVEN CALL LETTERS

“I followed him since the ‘60s, when he was on KHJ. Darn it, man. I got nobody to listen to now,” James Marr moaned Thursday morning.

The 38-year-old printer, and Robert W. Morgan fan, spoke as if he had just returned from his best friend’s funeral but it was only his own personal Angst after his discovery that the veteran Los Angeles radio personality was no longer on the air.

Morgan, who has been fired from or has quit a bevy of stations since the 1960s, was simply one of the latest victims of the routine bloodbath that haunts Los Angeles radio after the release of the quarterly Arbitron listener ratings. When the ratings dip, formats, deejays and even call letters simply change overnight.

This week’s upheaval did seem especially brutal, even by radio’s harsh standards:

KMGG-FM (105.9), where Morgan held forth as morning drivetime host since June, 1984, was summarily fired Wednesday, along with four other station staff members, including general manager Don Nelson.

Beginning Saturday, the station will shift from its Top 40 playlist to an urban/contemporary format. Station management is seeking a call letter switch which would turn “Magic 106” into “Power 106.” It has filed papers to switch its call letters to KPWR, effective Saturday, according to documents on file with the Federal Communications Commission’s Mass Media Bureau.

KHTZ-FM (97.1) has already switched its call letters, format and deejay lineup--though not as drastically as KMGG.

The station became KBZT (K-BEST) as of this week because the station was considered a haven for bubble-gum pop music, according to program director Mike Wagner.

Wagner said that KHTZ conducted its own survey and found that listeners believed the station played teen hits instead of adult contemporary music, Wagner said. KHTZ changed to a Top 40/Oldies format a year ago, climbed briefly in the ratings and fell back once again recently.

“This showed that people tuned in, checked you out and didn’t like the programming,” Wagner said. “Our survey made one thing clear: people don’t like all new music or all soft music over and over. So we just take the best of everything and shuffle it up.”

Though the name and music has changed, KBZT’s deejays remain substantially the same, with morning drive personality Charlie Tuna still holding down the 5 to 9 a.m. slot, sans his quippy featurettes, such as his regular trivia quiz.

KNAC-FM (105.5) quit its long-promoted role as “the rock and roll alternative” to become a heavy metal station.

“I listened to them at work and I loved them,” said Brad Taylor, a 35-year-old Century City computer operator. “It was my station. They would never play anything that would send me frothing at the mouth to another station. I’m really disappointed.”

But Taylor and apparently dozens of other KNAC loyalists frothed Thursday. The receptionist at the Long Beach station wearily asked if it was another listener complaint when a Times reporter called to ask why program director Jimmy Christopher was forced to make the format change.

The receptionist said Christopher was not at the station, but KNAC General Manager Gary Price was. Price said former KLOS-FM (95.5) programmers Jeff Pollack and Tommy Hadges are now helping KNAC’s Christopher in the new format changeover.

Both KLOS and KMET-FM (94.7) have been the traditional “album rock” stations in Los Angeles, but Price said they have both left a void when it comes to heavy metal rock acts like Van Halen, Twisted Sister and Led Zepplin.

The new KNAC is moving away from new wave music from Lepeche Mode and the Blasters to fill that void, he said.

Afternoon drivetime deejay Roland West and evening personality Bill Scott were fired and replaced by Sam Freeze (2 to 7 p.m.) and Rick Stewart (7 p.m. to midnight), respectively, Price said. Both Freeze and Stewart were previously employed at KROQ-FM (106.7).

Just down the dial at KROQ where the Blasters have not been banished, deejays gleefully welcomed “all the new listeners” Thursday morning that used to listen to KNAC.

“It (KROQ) is all we have left and it ain’t much,” muttered ex-KNAC listener James Foster.

Foster told The Times he is so embittered by the format switch that he plans both a boycott and a petition campaign to reinstate the old KNAC format of new wave album rock.

“Imagine my shock when I got up this morning and heard Lynard Skynard (a hard rock band whose personnel were killed in a plane crash a decade ago),” Foster said.

Longtime participants in the Arbitron game of musical chairs were relatively calm about this week’s shakeup. The fate of KMGG is no more shocking to those who regularly witness the overnight executions that characterize big market radio broadcasting than a big layoff at an aerospace company following the loss of a major defense contract.

It just happens.

Jeff Smulyen, president of Indiana-based Emmis Broadcasting which owns KMGG, said: “The decision to make the changes came in the last couple of weeks after a lot of soul searching. They were made because we have been leaders in other markets but that hasn’t been the story here.”

Other Emmis stations include KSHE, St. Louis; WLOL, Minneapolis; and WENS, the flagship station in Indianapolis. Whereas they are all “very successful,” the Arbitron ratings released this month show that KMGG did not even finish in the Top 20 stations in Los Angeles.

Smulyen, who has owned the station for two years, said the sour rating was the major reason for the KMGG shake-up. Emmis spent about $1.3 million last year in one of the biggest bumper sticker promotional campaigns in radio history. Though the Arbitron numbers went up for a while, they soon sank.

“Every market is competitive,” Smulyen said. “You try to do the best job you can but we like to win. We think that this radio station can be a top radio station with this new format.”

When asked about the mass firing at KMGG, ex-general manager Nelson would only say, “Amazing, isn’t it?”

Morgan, who is under contract with the station until June, had no comment.