AM Reception Problems Plague KKJZ; KLON and KUCR to Discuss Power Dispute

When KKGO-FM (105.1) went all-classical on Jan. 1, abandoning a jazz format that had been in place for over 30 years, many of the station’s loyal fans were faced with a formidable problem: They couldn’t pull in the music on KKJZ-AM (540), which took over KKGO’s programming.

“I can’t get it,” says bandleader Bill Holman, who lives in the Hollywood Hills.

“I can hear it very clearly in Hawthorne, Gardena and Torrance, or on the Harbor Freeway, south of downtown, but near LAX I lose it,” says musician Pat Britt, who listens to KKJZ while on the road. “And when I get to Westwood, I lose it completely.”

“God, it sounds awful,” says another listener.

One listener who’s extremely concerned about KKJZ’s hard-to-get signal is Saul Levine, owner/president of Mt. Wilson Broadcasting Inc., which operates both KKGO and KKJZ.

“We understand that people are upset, we’re unhappy about it, and we’re doing all we can to improve the AM signal,” Levine says. KKJZ currently operates from 5 a.m.-midnight out of KKGO’s studio and facilities in Westwood and then is beamed, via a microwave link, to its transmitter in Hesperia.

Levine cites a number of factors that are preventing people from picking up the station’s signal, which is transmitted at 25,000 watts during daylight hours and is reduced, in accordance with a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) directive, to 3,000 watts at sunset.

“It’s hard to get people used to tuning into the AM band,” he says. “And another problem is that people who have poor AM sections in their radios are not getting us very well. I’m finding that American-made car radios have better AM reception than foreign-made radios. A decent radio can pull us in in 90% of the Los Angeles area when we are operating at full power.”

Some listeners are satisfied, Levine contends. “I have been getting calls from people from as far away as Thousand Oaks telling me they hear us perfectly.”

Levine admits that, due to reception problems, KKJZ is generating “very little” in advertising dollars. “Some advertisers are coming with us, others are waiting to see what happens,” he says. “Right now, classical (from KKGO) is carrying the jazz and we’re absorbing the losses. But as far as I’m concerned, KKJZ is going to work and we’re prepared to keep this going indefinitely.”

Levine says that some of the possible options to improve the KKJZ signal include moving the station’s transmitting towers closer to Los Angeles and relaxation of the FCC’s ordinance that the station reduce power at sunset.

A more direct means of receiving KKJZ would be to purchase what Levine is calling a “Jazz Box,” a receiver of sub-carrier frequencies that plugs into home stereo systems.

“(In addition to broadcasting KKJZ on AM), we’re currently transmitting our jazz programming from our studios over a 105.1 FM sub-carrier, such as is used by Muzak (Corp.) to broadcast into stores and restaurants,” he says. “And by purchasing a ‘Jazz Box,’ which we’re selling at our cost of $150, plugging it into an auxiliary input on your home system and adding an FM antenna, you can receive KKJZ in true FM stereo.” For more information, call KKJZ at (213) 478-5540.

In other radio news, the general managers and engineers of Long Beach-based KLON-FM (88.1) and Riverside-based KUCR-FM (also 88.1) are meeting Thursday to discuss a possible accommodation agreement that would resolve the stations’ dispute over KLON’s proposed power increase.

Five years ago, KLON, the all-jazz non-commercial station that operates from the Cal State Long Beach campus, applied to the FCC for a power increase from its present 1,200 watts to 30,000 watts. KUCR, a student station at UC Riverside that operates at 30 watts, filed a counterproposal, asking that KLON’s power increase be limited to 8,000 watts while KUCR be allowed to change its frequency to 88.3 and increase its output to 550 watts. Last September, KLON filed another counterproposal, asking that it be allowed a power increase of 30,000 watts north and south from its transmitter on Signal Hill, with an increase to 8,000 watts east and west. KUCR rejected this proposal.

If an accommodation agreement is not reached Thursday or in the near future, says KUCR general manager Louis Vandenberg, the two stations will have their case decided by the FCC in hearings to be held in Washington this summer.

Composer/keyboardist Clare Fischer, who suffered a serious head injury in a fall last July, makes his return to live playing with a concert Sunday at the Student Union of Cal State Northridge.

Fischer, 61, who has been recuperating at home after a lengthy hospital stay, has found that the accident and his recovery from it have greatly changed him. “This has been a growing experience of superb proportions. I feel like I’ve come into being,” he says. “Recovering has been a long, slow process, sometimes so slow it was hard not to despair. But I found out I have a lot of friends out there and I am extremely grateful for their letters and phone calls.”

Fischer’s current ailments include reduced energy--”I go out and take a long, hard walk and I have to sleep for two days,” he jokes--short-term memory loss and a slight reduction in his hearing ability. “My doctor recommended I learn how to read lips, but instead I have been gobbling up Beethoven jokes,” laughs the artist, whose Concord Picante debut, “Lembrancas,” has just been released.

Though he hasn’t been playing in public, Fischer has been working at home, doing orchestral background parts for new films by Prince and Spike Lee.

Music, as well as his friends, got Fischer through this crisis, he says. “Some people believe in religion, I believe in the musical sounds in my head,” he says. “If I hadn’t had those in my head, I would have gone crazy years ago.”