Eclectic Programming Is Mark of O.C. Station

First up was a love song with the usual laundry-load of sudsy sentiment and a little lust thrown in for spice.

Then came the hourly weather report, promising a day of bright, cloudless skies. Next was a public service announcement, then a traffic update and finally a segue back to the music.

It was just a typical morning’s programming for KWIZ-FM, 96.7 on the FM dial . . . and it was all in Korean.

For anyone who hasn’t yet noticed, KWIZ-FM, the Santa Ana-based radio station that served up adult contemporary music for more than 10 years, is now plying the airwaves with Korean-language programming.

Korean-speaking newscasters keep listeners abreast of international, national and local news. Well-known disc jockeys, lured to the United States from South Korea, spin the latest tunes from around the world. Sports announcers, with as much passion for baseball as the likes of veteran commentator Vin Scully, prep for live broadcasts of Dodger games. KWIZ broadcast its first Dodger game in Korean last September, its second on Sunday, and will broadcast several more from Dodger Stadium as the season continues.

This eclectic array of programming--riding on a signal that can be picked up strongly in both Orange and Los Angeles counties--is all part of an effort to transform KWIZ-FM into the official radio voice of the Southland’s Korean-speaking population, the largest concentration in the country.

“Including Orange County and the immediate Los Angeles area, there are half a million Koreans,” said Daniel J. Oh of Radio Korea U.S.A., the Los Angeles-based company that has been broadcasting its talk shows, music programs and news reports through KWIZ-FM since March 10. “I’m talking 100,000 living in Orange County alone.”

The switch from English soft rock to Korean variety came on March 10, making KWIZ the only FM channel in the nation to offer Korean broadcasting 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Under an agreement reached earlier this year, KWIZ sells its air time from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. to Radio Korea, which downloads its programming through telephone wires to KWIZ’s 3,000-watt transmitter and 200-foot antenna.

Headquarters for the Korean broadcasting group is a low-lying, red-brick building on the eastern edge of Koreatown in Los Angeles. Outside, a modest neon sign bears the company name. In the lobby, framed and autographed photos of Korean pop stars clutter the walls.

And in a side office sits marketing director Oh at a desk crowded with papers.

Oh, 43, who came to the United States in 1972 and has three children, explained that the majority of the Southland’s Koreans are like him: first-generation immigrants, in their 30s and 40s, more comfortable with their native tongue than with English.

Their burgeoning numbers have made native-language broadcasting an indispensable resource, and by last year Oh and his colleagues were already supplying 13 hours a day of Korean programming to KAZN-AM (“K-Asian”) in Los Angeles. But the signal did not carry well to Orange County.

Enter KWIZ-FM, which already had a history of ethnic programming with its successful Spanish-hits AM format.

“KWIZ was the only available station that would allow us to do 20 hours” of programming a day, Oh said. “We felt 7 to 9 a.m. was the busiest time for the radio, and we wanted to have that particular time, which we could not get with our AM station.”

KWIZ’s regular disc jockeys were replaced by famous radio personalities from South Korea, such as noontime deejay Seung Yun Cho. Songs by Phil Collins and Whitney Houston gave way to those by Korean pop stars Cho Yong Phil and Chu Hyun Mi, and even, surprisingly, French and Italian artists.

“That’s what they listen to in Korea,” Oh explained.

Since the broadcasting through KWIZ-FM began, hundreds of letters and phone calls from appreciative listeners have poured in to its office on Olympic Boulevard.

“We’ve received a lot of telephone calls, especially the people living in Orange County,” Oh said. “They really appreciate it. It’s part of their life now.”

Take the case of Sung-su Chang, a 55-year-old Anaheim retiree who immigrated to Southern California in 1989.

“I listen to it every day, maybe four or five hours,” he said one afternoon during a break from an English class offered by the Korean-American Assn. of Orange County. “I listen to it in the morning when I go to school, then at noon, then in the evening for two or three hours.”

Oh estimates that nearly 80% of the local Korean population tunes in to 96.7 FM at least twice a week. A telephone system used to monitor consumer response is routinely overloaded whenever disc jockeys announce that it is available for calls.

Radio Korea’s ultimate goal is to corner 100% of the market, especially as other Korean broadcasting companies develop competing programs. KOR-US Community Broadcasting Inc., a rival group, has already reached an agreement with Redondo Beach-based KFOX-FM to deliver Korean programming during daytime hours starting next week.

Oh hopes that an aggressive ad campaign in Korean newspapers and word of mouth will attract to KWIZ-FM those Korean-Americans who continue to turn to English stations out of habit.

“We’re targeting those people who still listen to American radio--like me,” he said with a laugh. “There are a lot of people like that. We’d like to capture those people. Instead of turning to 98.7 FM, why not turn to 96.7?”