Radio Bows to a Different World

All is change with time.

--Stevie Wonder

*

Popular as Stevie Wonder is, I doubt if many readers have heard the song from which I took the quote above. It’s called “All in Love Is Fair.”

Even in my own eclectic collection of phonograph records, tapes and CDs, I have only one version, on a jazz album by Carmen McRae and Cal Tjader.

Those words seem an appropriate way to comfort fans of popular radio station KSCA-FM (101.9), which last week became the most recent victim of Los Angeles’ changing demographics. It signed off the air, to be replaced by the city’s newest Spanish-language radio station.

Of course, the way local news media played the story, you’d have thought radio stations had never changed formats before. Many have, sometimes quite dramatically.

Take KFWB-AM (980), the city’s only 24-hours news station. It was once the rock station in town. In the 1950s, to hear the latest Elvis, Buddy Holly or Fats Domino hit, youngsters like me tuned to KFWB.

KFWB’s downfall as a rock station began in the 1960s, when a rival AM station, KHJ (930), got itself named the “official” outlet for an interesting new group called the Beatles.

But even KHJ’s reign as the top station in town ended, and a few years ago it became one of the first English outlets to switch to Spanish. Which brings us back to KSCA.

One reason for all the news coverage KSCA’s changeover got, I suspect, is the demographic profile of the station’s former listeners. It was a small audience, the station’s marketing director told The Times, but “very upscale .J.J. and virtually all white.” In other words, the kinds of folks who will express their displeasure when something they like is suddenly changed and who have the clout to make themselves heard--even if they can’t roll back the change that has them upset.

For weeks, loyal KSCA listeners have been sending letters of protest--not just through the mail but via computer--to the station. But its new owner, Heftel Broadcasting Corp., was not about to change its plans for KSCA. Heftel already owns the most popular radio station in Los Angeles, KLVE-FM (107.5), and wants to expand in the fast-growing Latino market.

“K-Love,” as its executives prefer to call it, features an easy-listening Spanish format, mostly romantic ballads by singers like Julio Iglesias. That makes it popular with enough Latinos to be the highest-rated radio station in Los Angeles, according to the Arbitron ratings service. But KLVE is not every Latino’s cup of te.

What is happening to Spanish-language radio here is what has long been the rule in the English-language market. A big population that looks homogenous to outsiders is really a collection of segments with varied tastes and interests. The new format of KSCA, for example, is what radio marketers call “regional Mexican.” I’d define it as Mexican country music. Many KLVE listeners probably think of it as the kind of music rural hicks listen to. But it will surely find an audience, as nine other Spanish-language radio outlets have in Greater Los Angeles.

I don’t want to seem unsympathetic to KSCA’s former fans. I live with one of them. My wife, Magdalena, is a rock aficionado and will miss what she calls the “smart, adult music” KSCA played. It was a mix of what she considers the best rock music of the past 20 years, featuring groups like U2 and vocalists like Sting.

So to empathize, let me relate a final anecdote about the one local radio format change that I did take personally. About the time the Beatles broke up, I became a jazz buff. I’d always liked big bands, having been raised by a mother who liked not just Latin American artists like Lola Beltran and Perez Prado, but also Count Basie. In the early ‘70s, I began listening to KBCA-FM, a jazz station that carried me from Basie to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and other great artists. I’ve never looked back, but have been forced to look for other stations.

After changing its call letters to KKGO-FM (105.1) a few years ago, my favorite radio station also switched formats, to classical music. According to news stories at the time, we jazz buffs have less attractive demographics than other radio audiences. So the only outlet that tried to pick up the slack was the radio station at Cal State Long Beach, KLON-FM (88.1).

Thankfully, KLON also hired my favorite KBCA deejays, and together they have carried on, albeit with a much weaker radio signal. Sometimes they’ll even play an obscure Stevie Wonder tune, as performed by Cal Tjader and Carmen McRae.