New Station Aims to Give Pop Fans a Choice : Radio: FM 101.9 changes its format today from easy-listening music to an eclectic mix known as ‘Triple A.’

A new station will be hitting the Los Angeles airwaves today, playing an eclectic mix of contemporary rock artists and singer-songwriters with a smattering of folk, soul, blues, reggae and world music in a broadcasting style that hearkens back to the spirit of progressive, underground rock radio of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

The station will replace the easy-listening KLIT-FM and be located at 101.9 on the dial. (The station is currently in the midst of developing new call letters.)

The format of the station is known in the radio industry as “Triple A, “ or “Adult Album Alternative” rock, and there are a growing number--about 50--of these stations cropping up around the country.

“The best way to describe this is radio that has the spirit of early FM radio but sort of redefined for the ‘90s--adventurous, exciting, with a passion for music and a curiosity about new music,” said the station’s program director Mike Morrison. “It won’t be stuck in the past, not playing a bunch of old songs around in the ‘70s. There are hundreds of artists that are accepted by music fans around the world that are among the best making music today that don’t get any radio exposure. We’ll be giving them plenty of exposure.”

Examples of some of the new station’s core artists who get little or no exposure in Los Angeles include John Hiatt, Indigo Girls, Seal, Richard Thompson, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Cheryl Crow, Tori Amos and Shawn Colvin.

“Rather than playing it safe and avoiding unfamiliar sounds and artists that might be sort of alienating to the average person on the first listen, we’ll seek that stuff out,” said Morrison, who will also be a deejay at the station. “With virtually every other radio station being as predictable as night and day, Triple A is unpredictable: It’s diverse, you never know what you’re going to hear next.”

The station will also play a fuller repertoire of music by alternative or classic rockers whose airplay is currently limited to their big hits. Some examples of those include Los Lobos, Van Morrison, R.E.M., Counting Crows, the Cure, Elvis Costello and Tom Petty.

In the past couple of decades, radio station owners have played it safe, relying on research compiled by consultants to determine what music they will play.

“As soon as the consultants took over in the late ‘70s and research became the primary tool for choosing music, gut and passion for music fell by the wayside and FM radio became very boring,” the station’s Morrison said. “When we play bigger names like Van Morrison or Elvis Costello or Bonnie Raitt, we won’t be like the other stations playing three or four of their songs, the well-known songs. We’ll be tapping the vast libraries of their magnificent music.”

This is the first new contemporary rock format since the station attempted an alternative-oriented mix known as “the Edge” five years ago. The format was on the air only five months with virtually no promotion.

“(Then-program director and on-air personality) J.J. Jackson convinced (station management) to experiment a bit, but they were not behind the Edge,” said Morrison. “This is a different story. They are 100% committed to this format. The Edge was a little bit before its time.”

The station, which is owned by Gene Autry’s Golden West Broadcasters, had ranked 31st in the most recent Arbitron ratings, so it has almost nowhere else to go but up, say station officials. Still, they don’t expect this format to be the most popular in the city, but to attract a strong, loyal following, with plenty of discretionary income to attract advertisers.

The target audience for FM 101.9 ranges from 25-49, with greatest emphasis on baby boomers from 30-44, said General Manager Bill Ward.

“The demographic it appeals to is one that advertisers find very appealing for their education and financial status,” said Kid Leo, who developed progressive radio in Cleveland in the ‘70s and is now vice president of album promotion for Columbia Records. “Even if the station only gets a certain level of success, those people are the ones that advertisers really want to get to.”

Because it will provide the only Los Angeles outlet for many artists and musical styles, record executives are excited about the advent of Triple A in the nation’s top media market.

“There’s going to be a ton of support from record companies because a lot of our artists have not gotten exposure in L.A.,” said Atlantic Records’ promotion manager Bonnie Slifkin.

“It’s exciting, a format that hasn’t been around for a while and from the old deejay standpoint we need to have announcers associated with music again,” said Leo. “You have Howard Stern and the morning shows around the country that have nothing to do with music. These (Triple A) announcers believe in music.”

Of course, Leo has more than memories at stake in the station’s success--he has records to sell. The potential audience for FM 101.9 he says, is tailor-made for several of his artists, including Shawn Colvin, Harry Connick Jr. and singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley.

Colvin (whose new album, “Cover Girl,” will be released in August) responded to the news of the station’s advent with enthusiasm. “I love listening to Triple A, so that’s the best news about L.A. getting a station,” she said, adding, “No, the best news is that they’ll play me.”

Leo’s list of his Triple A artists covers a fairly wide spectrum. So does that of Atlantic Records executives Andrea Ganis and Slifkin, ranging from young alternative folk group Frente to singer-songwriter Tori Amos and country maverick Jim Lauderdale.

But all those artists have two things in common: Before the advent of Triple A they had skirted the existing radio formats and found airplay hard to come by, and their fans fit into the prized baby boomer demographic.

“Intelligent thirtysomething people want to discover new music badly,” said Will Botwin, who manages John Hiatt (whose “Perfectly Good Guitar” was the top-played album on Triple A stations in 1993), Los Lobos and Rosanne Cash--all artists who have tended to fall between radio’s cracks in the past.

But will a new station get the attention of those listeners in sensory-overloaded L.A.?

“In a city this size they’ll have to make some noise about coming in,” says Bruce Tennenbaum, MCA Records’ senior vice president of promotion. “You’re talking about an older demographic, so you have to go into their homes and get their attention and make sure they’re not just watching ‘NYPD Blue.’ ”

Puig is a Times staff writer and Hochman is a free-lance writer who contributes regularly to Calendar.