At KFOX-FM, Daytime Will Belong to Korean Radio

Beginning April 15, Redondo Beach-based radio station KFOX-FM will turn over practically all its daytime programming hours to Korean language news and entertainment shows, a station official said Thursday.

KFOX general manager Tom McCollough said the 3,000-watt station had sold the hours between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday to KOR-US Community Broadcasting Inc. The company plans to air a wide range of programs and to employ a Korean disc jockey, he said.

KOR-US officials could not be reached Thursday for comment.

KFOX operates from offices on the Redondo Beach pier. It reaches an audience stretching from Malibu to Laguna Beach, and inland as far as downtown Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and Pasadena.

During its 12-year existence, the station has earned a reputation for its eclectic array of programming, with shows on such topics as horse-race handicapping, psychic phenomena, holistic healing and handwriting analysis.

The station is one of four radio stations in the Southern California area that offers what is known as block programming, according to McCollough. Time is sold for a specified fee to programmers who handle their own content and advertising.

McCollough would not divulge how much money KOR-US is paying KFOX. He said rates paid by programmers vary depending on such factors as the time slot requested and the day of the week.

McCollough said representatives from KOR-US approached KFOX and inquired about buying the large block of time. He said the company plans to air news and information programs as well as music. One of Korea’s top-ranked disc jockeys will be used in some of the programming, he said.

“They really have a professional approach to this and have invested a great deal of money,” he said.

KOR-US now airs a daily program on the station from 6 to 8 a.m.

McCollough said KFOX’s decision to sell so much time to KOR-US was in keeping with the station’s tradition of selling time to ethnically diverse groups.

That tradition began as an experiment eight years ago, when a small block of time was bought by a group that broadcast a program in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran.

Since that time, McCollough said, the Farsi program has been expanded to three hours a night Sunday through Friday. In the interim, programs have been added in at least seven other foreign languages, including Samoan, Indian and Armenian, he said.

McCollough said the various programs provide listeners who hail from countries outside the United States the “opportunity to connect with their homeland.”

“We may be tiny in size, but certainly not in coverage,” he said. “. . . The fact is, (Los Angeles) is the No. 1 melting pot in the country, if not the world.”

Moon Lim, who heads the news department at Radio Korea USA, a company that operates both AM and FM Korean language stations in the Los Angeles area, estimated that there are 600,000 Koreans living in the Los Angeles area. He said his company’s stations reach about 400,000 listeners.

Despite the size of the local Korean community, it may prove difficult for his stations and KOR-US to coexist, he said. “The market is so small, there’s a big problem. . . . One station is enough.”

McCollough said the decision to sell so much time to KOR-US will affect nine or 10 shows that now air on KFOX. Most of those shows have either been given different time slots, or have moved on to other block programming stations, he said.

The producers of two shows--one dealing with animals, the other with sex--have elected to discontinue broadcasting for the time being, he said.

“There isn’t anybody that is being displaced that doesn’t have the option to be on the air someplace else,” he said.

The programming change means one of the station’s most popular shows, an astrology program with Farley Mallours as host, will be moved to Friday nights between 9 and 11 p.m. The show now airs Monday through Friday from noon to 1 p.m.

McCollough said the station will continue to broadcast country music seven days a week from midnight to 7 a.m.