Radio Tunes In to the Office Set : Broadcasting: Southern California stations have taken the lead in getting people to listen while they’re at work. Some employers aren’t too thrilled with the idea.

To the dismay of some bosses, who say radio listening during work can spark disputes, offend customers and hurt productivity, radio stations across the country have begun campaigns to encourage workers to stay tuned in at the office.

Using everything from telemarketing and contests to deejay appearances and even office facsimile machines, radio stations from Baltimore to Los Angeles are attempting to capitalize on a decline in daytime television viewing brought about by the migration of American women from the home to the labor force.

“Stations right now are fighting for your desk; they’re fighting for your office, which has become the new marketing battlefield for radio,” said Walter R. Sabo Jr. The New York-based radio consultant and former ABC Radio network executive is one of the leading proponents of radio’s charge into the workplace.

The recently completed 1989-90 network TV season was the least-watched in history, according to Nielsen Media Research. The number of homes using TV during the day dropped 7%, compared to a 2% decline in prime time.

Nielsen’s figures are disputed by the networks. But experts agree that daytime TV viewing has dropped significantly in recent years. Some radio station owners think workers may be willing to substitute a radio at work for soap operas and other daytime TV fare they once watched at home.

Nowhere is radio’s push into offices more evident than in Southern California, where soft-rock station KOST-FM has replaced top-40 dance station KPWR-FM as the No. 1 station by promoting itself as “the one radio station that everyone at work can agree on.”

Because of its success, KOST has found its competition growing. Several Los Angeles radio stations, including KBIG-FM, KXEZ-FM and KLIT-FM, are vying for a larger daytime audience by offering a similar mix of soft-rock songs and promotional gimmicks directed at offices. Similar campaigns have been launched in Baltimore, Chicago, Trenton, N.J., and dozens of other cities

Although soft rock, or so-called adult contemporary radio stations--such as KOST and KBIG--have been among the most aggressive in soliciting office listeners, other stations--such as urban contemporary KKBT-FM and new adult contemporary KTWV-FM in Los Angeles--have also gone after the office audience:

* To drum up listener support, KBIG has sent its announcers to large Los Angeles companies such as Allstate Insurance, said Carolyn Aguayo, the station’s operations coordinator. KBIG has also bought catered breakfasts for Southland offices and awarded prizes to workers who keep their office radios tuned in, she said.

* WKXW in Trenton hired a telemarketing firm to call 5,000 businesses in New Jersey this spring to plug a contest that awarded a listener $1,000 if he called in after hearing his name broadcast by the station during work hours, said Jay Sorensen, WKXW’s program manager.

* KOST seeks listener loyalty by encouraging workers to fax in jokes to the station, which airs them during the morning. KOST also runs a contest called 9 to 5 in which listeners can win a trip to San Francisco, according to station manager Howard Neal.

The battle to win office listeners is fueled not only by demographic changes but by a search for programming that can produce more advertising revenue outside radio’s traditional prime time, the morning and evening rush hours, when commuters listen in for news and traffic reports. Significant increases in daytime listeners can mean big bucks.

KOST last year had the biggest percentage gain in advertising revenue of any Los Angeles station. It leapfrogged KISS and KPWR to reach the No. 2 spot in advertising behind KABC-AM, according to James Duncan, an Indianapolis-based publisher of books about the radio industry. KOST’s ad revenue jumped 25% to $28.8 million from $23 million in 1988, he said. (KABC achieved its top ranking because of the extra ads it gets from live sports broadcasts, Duncan said.)

KOST, KBIG and their competitors have cultivated an office following by playing ballads and soft-rock from such artists as Richard Marx, Phil Collins, Linda Ronstadt and Diana Ross. They have also emphasized low-key deejays with soothing voices instead of the brash gags aired by some youth-oriented top-40 radio stations, such as KIIS-FM and KPWR-FM.

KBIG-FM ranks 14th among Los Angeles-area stations in the latest spring ratings. But between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., its share of the radio audience jumps nearly 30%, tying it with No. 6 KXEZ. KOST’s share of the daytime audience also increases--by 20%. An estimated 75% of those who tune into either KOST or KBIG at midday say they are not in their car or home. Most likely they are listening in their office, said Jim Peacock, Arbitron’s research director.

“I think we have all become more concerned about reaching the workday audience,” added Bob Moke, program director of WLIF-FM, which recently abandoned its all-instrumental-music format in favor of soft-rock songs to reach younger, workplace listeners.

In going after office workers, however, radio stations have run afoul of people who don’t believe, as KOST contends, that there is “one station that everybody at work can agree on.”

At Irvine-based Allergan Inc., for instance, Brooke Moeller’s portable radio stands silent because Moeller and two colleagues can’t agree on what station to listen to.

“We don’t have the same musical tastes,” declared Carol McCraven, an information specialist who shares Moeller’s cubicle along with Jennifer Brown. “I listen to classical, Jennifer listens to (KTWV-FM) and Brooke listens to KLSX.”

Yet the trio has handled their differences with less strife than others.

Marjorie Lakin Erickson, assistant regional director of the Federal Trade Commission in Los Angeles, said she once had to dismiss a secretary because she played the radio so loud through her earphones that Erickson had to shout to get her attention.

“I don’t think it’s particularly productive to listen to radio at work,” Erickson said. “I usually don’t complain because sometimes it helps boost office morale.” But the earphone-wearing secretary, she said, “got out of hand.”

Eva Brown, a training specialist at AT&T;, had to ban radios from an office of 60 employees after two sales representatives had an argument over their station preferences. One salesperson preferred listening to rap groups while a co-worker wanted to hear country and western music.

Several large Southland companies contacted by The Times say they have no policy on radios in the workplace. But at Atlantic Richfield Co., spokesman Albert Greenstein said listening to the radio “is not an acceptable practice” at work in most instances.

Bram Goldsmith, chairman and chief executive of City National Bank in Beverly Hills, agrees.

“If I have to listen to . . . some jive radio station, I’d be rather annoyed,” Goldsmith said. “It creates interference with your own conversations and offends the customer who doesn’t like the station you are listening to.”

Some advertisers, too, are leery of radios at work.

“It’s more important to catch working women and men on their way to the office, when they are really listening to radio,” said Lisa McClarron, broadcast advertising manager for Nordstrom, a Seattle-based retailer that is a heavy radio advertiser. She noted that “in some kind of jobs, it’s difficult to listen to the radio and do your work. The radio is there for background and ambience, but it is not something you are really focused on.”

But William B. Davis, coordinator of undergraduate studies in music therapy at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, says music, whether rock ‘n’ roll or instrumental, can be beneficial in the workplace.

Davis said music seems to improve productivity in environments where workers are engaged in jobs that require repetition and little concentration. In addition, he said, he is conducting studies that suggest that music improves muscle coordination and reduces stress in all work environments.

Improved profits rather than improved morale was what prompted consultant Sabo as far back as 1980 to advise radio clients to seek office listeners. Radio’s campaign for office listeners really took off about three years ago when Arbitron, the New York-based ratings service, changed its survey methods. It found that more people were listening to radio outside their homes and cars during the day than previously thought.

In the wake of the study, a stampede of stations has defected from mostly instrumental easy-listening programming to soft-rock and promotions aimed at office workers, experts say.

Since Christmas alone, 34 easy-listening stations across the country--citing the difficulting of attracting advertisers to a music format that appeals mostly to older listeners--have switched formats, according to Billboard magazine. Many of those stations have adopted formats that mimic KOST, KBIG and other soft-rock stations aimed at office workers, said Jim Opsitnik, president of Northbrook, Ill.-based Bonneville Broadcasting System. The easy-listening music programmer has lost several radio station clients to the soft rock format.

“Stations are making the switch, in some cases, believing that they can keep the same (old) audience and add new young office listeners with the soft-(rock) format,” Opsitnik said. “But these are compromise stations. What happens is a young person really would like to listen to a KIIS-FM but can’t do it in the office because his boss complains. But when the kid gets in his car to go home, he starts rocking out” with KIIS.

Yet KOST and KBIG have been so successful in recent months that KJOI-FM, once a top-10 easy-listening station--and the only one in Los Angeles--abandoned its franchise and became soft-rock KXEZ-FM. It dropped out of the top-10 stations briefly after the change. But in the lastest spring ratings it roared back to No. 6.

The format of “easy listening was not showing any growth,” said Bob Griffith, the station’s vice president and general manager. The younger, working baby boomer audience that his station seeks “prefers vocal music to instrumental music. And we think eventually we’ll attract more of those listeners.”

In making the switch, Griffith is not only going up against KOST, KBIG and KLIT, but his station--as well as others targeting office workers--will be competing against background-music services that pipe dreamy instrumental music into office buildings.

Leslie Ritter, marketing manager for Seattle-based Muzak, the leading marketer of such music, said background music is more suitable for the office than the “distracting” sounds of radio. She added that Muzak’s talk-free format of soothing instrumentals “increases productivity, improves error rates in the business environment and lowers peoples’ blood pressure.”

Yet radio’s inroads in the office have sparked changes even in Muzak’s musical formula.

The company recently began offering its 150,000 subscribers around the world a choice of contemporary soft-rock vocals instead of instrumental standards. It also has started offering an advertiser-supported music program that is broadcast in subscribing supermarkets and other retail outlets.

“Our traditional customer (has been) the office and workplace environment,” said Ritter. “Radio stations think they can reach offices, but we’ve been at it longer and we understand the environment better.”