KBET Radio Tries Program Trading to Stay on Air

The only radio station in the Santa Clarita Valley, which was late in debuting on the air a year ago, is now battling against an early exit.

KBET, beset with financial and legal problems, last Tuesday indefinitely laid off its five on-air personalities--without pay--and temporarily changed its programming to air only Beatles songs, said Carl Goldman, a consultant brought in to oversee the station’s restructuring.

Meanwhile, the station’s owner, Canyon Broadcasters Inc. in Canyon Country, is negotiating to sell the 1,000-watt station to an unidentified party, said Paul Rossilli, one of the company’s investors.

Until its switch to Beatles music a week ago, the station (1220 AM) offered a combination of contemporary music, news and other programs with on-air personalities such as “Barry and the Beast,” two morning broadcast disc jockeys.

But the format “was not getting enough advertising support” and KBET “was definitely losing money,” even though the station was an alternative to the otherwise bad radio reception that the valley’s 150,000 residents receive, Goldman said.

One problem: The station decided the adult contemporary music it played failed to enlist a strong following because it was too broad, including everything “from Bon Jovi to Chuck Berry,” Goldman said.

The station is now playing recordings of various artists while it decides whether to go with a narrower adult contemporary program, oldies or country-Western music. Once that’s decided, KBET will decide which of its on-air personalities will be called back, Goldman said. Five other KBET employees have continued working.

KBET hit the airwaves June 28, 1989, more than six months behind schedule. It was a contentious debut because Larry Bloomfield of Canyon Country, who tried for years to establish the station, was fired as KBET’s president two months earlier by the station’s other owners.

Eventually, Bloomfield and Canyon Broadcasters filed suits against each other in Superior Court, claiming the other was responsible for cost overruns and delays in the station’s start-up. Canyon Broadcasters is hoping to quickly resolve the suits before the station is sold, Rossilli said.