KFAC CHANGES HANDS AFTER 20 YEARS

The new owners of Los Angeles radio stations KFAC-AM and KFAC-FM say they don’t plan to alter their classical music formats.

They are contemplating other changes at the stations but declined to discuss them, citing rules set by the Federal Communications Commission.

“It would be premature to discuss specifics. We can’t say what we’re going to do at this point because we do not control the stations,” said Edward Argow, KFAC executive vice president. He expects the FCC to approve the sale in a few months.

Argow and Louise Heifetz, a KIIS sales executive, bought KFAC-AM (1330) and KFAC-FM (92.3) on April 8 from longtime owner ASI Communications, a subsidiary of McGavren Guild Radio in New York, for $33.5 million.

“Los Angeles is the most exciting radio market in the country and we are very excited to operate the most successful classical music station in the country from a programming and profitability point of view,” Heifetz said.

The radio advertising veterans, doing business as Classic Communications Inc., began to negotiate with Ralph Guild, KFAC’s majority stockholder, last fall.

“I’ve owned those stations for 20 years and I thought that at my age it was time to do it,” Guild said in an interview. The 57-year-old broadcaster said that “anyone who would change the format is insane.”

The cash purchase will be financed in association with T A Assn., a venture capital organization in Boston that specializes in communications purchases. T A Assn. will not be involved in the stations’ daily workings, according to the owners.

The two-station price tag seems low in comparison to other stations that have been sold recently. KJOI-FM (98.7) was sold to Cleveland-based Regency Broadcasting for $44 million in October, 1985. Gene Autry’s Golden West Broadcasters bought KUTE-FM (101.9) for about $15 million and Malrite Communications Group in Cleveland purchased country stations KLAC-AM (570) and KZLA-FM (93.9) for $43 million in August, 1985. Spanish-language KTNQ-AM (1020) and KLVE-FM (107.5) were sold to Hawaii-based H&W; Communications Inc. for $40 million in March, 1985.

Neither KFAC outlet has fared well in the Arbitron listener ratings in recent years, though its core audience of relatively affluent, upper-middle-class, older listeners has remained fairly stable.

The station’s competition for classical listeners in the Los Angeles area is KUSC-FM (91.5), a public radio station whose mix of news, Mozart, Rachmaninoff and other composers has steadily eaten away at KFAC’s audience. KXLU-FM (88.9), the public station broadcast from Loyola Marymount University, also has classical music programming from 6 to 11 p.m. weekdays.