KIFM’s Jazz Format, Plus Female Factor Times Three, Equals Double the Ratings

During the early 1970s, women working in radio were about as scarce as stations devoted to jazz. Fifteen years have changed that tune. Today in San Diego, three women have established one of the hottest station’s in town by featuring contemporary jazz 24 hours a day.

Broadcasters Lee Mirabal, Mary Sorrentino and Nikki Mike broke all the rules in July, 1986, when they took over KIFM, becoming the first women to own and operate a San Diego radio station.

KIFM’s ratings have doubled since the trio enhanced the popular evening Lites Out jazz program by dumping the daytime adult rock format, which featured artists such as the Carpenters, Three Dog Night and John Denver.

Going all jazz was a risk that paid off. By September, three months after the women’s first day on the job, KIFM’s audience had increased almost twofold, according to quarterly Arbitron ratings.

“We went to all jazz late at night, with the thinking that, if listeners went to sleep with us, they’d wake up with us,” said Sorrentino, who serves as KIFM’s program director.

Sorrentino and her colleagues, all novice managers, decided KIFM should be a trend setter rather than a trend follower.

Despite their success, the female partners won’t manage KIFM forever. The Federal Communications Commission has granted them only a temporary license while it decides which of 40 applicants will become the permanent owner. The former owner, a Cleveland lawyer, lost his license in 1983 when the station failed to provide enough news and public-affairs programming. The FCC does not accept applications for permanent ownership from interim operators.

With 40 years of broadcast experience between them, Sorrentino, Mike and Mirabal have engineered more than a hit radio station. Local jazz aficionados say KIFM’s programming has been a boon to live jazz in San Diego, already one of the nation’s largest markets for jazz record sales.

On any given night, KIFM sponsors a Lites Out jazz concert somewhere in the county. The station continues to work closely with Humphrey’s, sponsoring its popular Concerts by the Bay series; the Catamaran and Hilton hotels on Mission Bay; and Embassy Suites in the Golden Triangle. And the Bacchanal, formerly a rock-only venue, has plunged into the jazz frenzy, scheduling several jazz gigs in recent months.

KIFM’s latest coup is a summer concert series at Sea World’s Nautilus Amphitheater, thanks to Mike, who orchestrates the station’s special events.

The success of the three is no small feat in a fickle business that has not been kind to women. Female deejays were rarely heard before 1970, although a handful landed coveted on-air jobs. Like businesswomen locked out of the board room, female broadcasters found themselves on the outside of the sound room door.

That attitude did not hold much career promise for a teen-ager such as Mirabal, who kept three radios in her bedroom.

“I was a radio freak,” said Mirabal, now 45 and president and station manager of KIFM. “I used to have all three radios tuned to different stations--rock ‘n’ roll, country and Western, jazz. My parents were concerned. Very concerned. They were almost ready to bring in the psychologists.”

But Mirabal didn’t need therapy; she needed a job in radio. Thanks to her deep, resonant voice, she got on-air time voicing commercials when she wasn’t typing public-service announcements or selling ads.

When she was 20, she started working her way through radio stations across the country from North Carolina to Iowa, Jacksonville, Fla., to Detroit. In 1971, she arrived at San Diego underground rock station XHIS. By 1978, she had landed an afternoon talk show spot on KSDO-AM, then worked as a deejay at KIFM after her three-year KSDO stint.

Eventually Mirabal met Sorrentino, who had completed a similar tour of duty through the corridors of San Diego stations. Her rounds included at least one job she would rather forget: playing tapes of Jimmy Swaggart sermons on a local Christian station.

A contemplative woman with a hard-core yen for rock, Sorrentino, 37, became a jazz expert accidentally. As a student at San Diego City College, her only chance to get on the air was at the campus station--a jazz station.

“At first they had to drag me kicking and screaming to jazz. I was a real rock ‘n’ roller,” she said.

It wasn’t long before her jazz collection rivaled the stack of rock albums that fill her living room. She became operations manager at KSDS JAZZ 88, where her student staff called her “The Enforcer,” a nickname that stemmed from her penchant for forcing the fledgling deejays to play the music of traditional jazz artists like John Coltrane as well as more contemporary cuts by Pat Metheny, Earl Klugh and Chick Corea.

“What they didn’t know is that, when I went home, I listened to Pat Metheny and Earl Klugh,” she laughed.

At KIFM, Sorrentino is just as picky, reigning over the rotation list like a queen bee.

“If Mary hears a song she doesn’t like, it’s outta there,” said Mirabal.

In 1984, the pair joined Mike, now 39, who was working in Los Angeles at classical KUSC, and the three applied for a temporary license to run KIFM. They negotiated a $700,000 loan to buy the station after the FCC selected them from 20 groups who applied.

Although they felt confident about their broadcasting experience, community involvement and financial backing, the women had doubts that the FCC would select them.

“But, as soon as we sized up the other applicants, we knew we were with the front-runners. We couldn’t believe it!” said Sorrentino.

In its first year under the new partnership, KIFM collected $2.1 million in revenues but sustained a net loss of $46,500. The women were overjoyed, despite the small loss.

“We had to generate cash flows from Day 1. We had no receivables to use,” said Mirabal.

When the station is sold to permanent owners, Mirabal said, she and her partners expect to leave. They’re already looking at new radio properties, both in and outside San Diego.

Listening to Sorrentino and Mirabal discuss possible capital gains, ratings and format trends, it’s easy to forget they are broadcast women , that they are a female phenomenon--the first female radio managers in one of the nation’s largest radio markets. It’s a distinction they do not ignore.