‘Two Chicks With an Opinion’ Make Waves at KTWV : Radio: ‘Keri and Sheryl Show’ cuts music for talk. And some listeners are angry.

Not since it replaced hard-rocking KMET seven years ago has mellow KTWV-FM (“The Wave”) been awash in as much turbulence as it was this week.

The new age jazz station abruptly changed its morning-drive format Sept. 30, dropping its gentle musical strains for the bantering of hosts Keri Tombazian and Sheryl Bernstein--”two chicks with an opinion,” as Tombazian puts it.

The first week of “The Keri and Sheryl Show”--the first FM morning show in Los Angeles hosted by a pair of women--generated nearly 1,000 calls to KTWV (94.7), general manager Chris Claus said, with the overwhelming majority lamenting the loss of “The Wave’s” trademark soothing tunes.

“I thought I had turned on the wrong station,” said Sukhi Amberg, a computer programmer. “There were these two women talking and giggling. They were talking about Nordstroms and how much a blouse cost. They would talk about the kind of guys they like. That’s what I would talk to my friends about, but I don’t want to hear it on the radio. My main reason for listening to the station was for the type of music they play. I really cannot stand this idle chitchat.”

Claus acknowledged that there are many displaced music fans but defended the change as necessary for the station’s long-term health. In the most recent Arbitron ratings covering last summer, KTWV ranked 18th in the morning-drive period--radio’s prime time. Without more listeners between 6 and 10 a.m., Claus said, the station could face a wholesale format change.

“It’s very difficult and very painful to deal with all the negative calls, because every one of these people have been loyal listeners and it’s regrettable we’ve upset their routine,” Claus said. “We don’t do this lightly. It’s a dramatic step for ‘The Wave’ and a complete departure. Now we play two or three songs an hour, when we used to play 10 or 12. But what I’m doing is making a calculated risk that this will generate more listeners in the morning, make the station more competitive, generating more revenue for the radio station and ensuring that I keep the station going for the long haul.”

Tombazian and Bernstein seem to be taking the angry reaction in stride. Tombazian has been an on-air personality at KTWV for the last five years. Bernstein is a comedian and actress.

“Of course there are going to be those people who say, ‘I want my music,’ and they’re not going to listen--and there’s not a thing we can do about them,” Tombazian said. “Our hope is that people will change with us, that they will understand that we are putting forth the same kind of essence as the music. You could describe the music as interesting, different, stimulating, entertaining, soothing. It is our hope that we are all those things as well. And funny. But we’re just one choice on your dial. Give us a chance.”

And they have received some positive response, they point out.

A listener named Jan Jensen wrote: “Dear Dynamite Duo! I love your new morning show! I don’t ever listen to talk shows and specifically chose ‘The Wave’ because of the great, creative, inspiring music. But you two obviously are great friends and have such fun talking about an incredibly wide range of topics. It makes me chuckle often.”

“Just a note to say it’s refreshing to listen to a woman in the a.m.,” wrote Mark Morgan, another listener.

Although the pair is on weekdays from 5:30 to 10 a.m., the final hour is mostly music. Up until 9, however, they discuss “everything from relationships to money to entertainment to traffic to homeless people--things that people see in their daily lives,” Bernstein said.

“We’re not out to be rebels or rabble-rousers, but we even think it’s arresting to hear two women on radio in the morning,” she said. “We’re not abusive. We don’t swear. We don’t do anything totally shocking.”

Claus said the show’s goal is to attract female listeners who will find their conversation compelling and male listeners who want to learn how women think.

“Like every radio show,” he said, “sometimes it’ll be very interesting and other times it’ll be stupid and trite. . . . It’s going to take some time for the two women on the air to get particularly comfortable with each other as a team.”

On Thursday morning, a week after their debut, the duo covered such topics as “the perfect man,” aging gracefully, pregnancy and the mind’s role in illness. They read a fax from a man who was in the throes of a divorce and wondered if it was “ethical” to have sexual relations with a woman he met recently.

“I think it’s too soon after your marriage,” Bernstein advised. “Give yourself some distance.”

Later, Bernstein asked Tombazian if she would ever have plastic surgery. “I’d have liposuction in a second, baby,” Tombazian said.

They got into a heated argument about the extent to which emotional and psychological factors affect physical illnesses.

“You show me some scientific proof of this,” Tombazian said. “I just think it’s dangerous to say to a person, ‘Well, you’ll only get sick if you’re not clear or you hold on to anger.’ ”

The exchange went on with Bernstein accusing Tombazian of being “a little like June Cleaver” and Tombazian saying Bernstein reminded her of “somebody named Crystal who’d wear Birkenstocks.”

Bernstein: “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me.”

Tombazian, as she segued into “Lagrimas” by the Gipsy Kings: “Let’s have a musical interlude, shall we?”