The Good K-Earth: L.A.’s Rock of Stability

It’s the first day that a new, all-digital Audio Vault system is in use at KRTH-FM (101.1), and veteran deejay Brian Beirne is having a little trouble adjusting.

“When I started, even the commercials were on 16-inch discs that we had to cue up by hand,” says Beirne--who’s known as Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll--shaking his head at the new system, which replaces the manual loading of CDs, records and tapes with a point-and-click computer system in which the music and commercials are stored.

“Well,” he says, pausing at both a loss for words and a loss for what to do with his hands. “Quite different.”

Beirne, 50, can be forgiven for being a little unsettled about this new system. It’s not that he’s a Luddite. He just hasn’t had to deal with a lot of change in his day-to-day job at the station, where he’s been a mainstay for more than 21 years.

That’s simply the way it is at the station that is generally viewed as the top purveyor of oldies rock ‘n’ roll in the business. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this month, KRTH has been a rock of stability--at least on the airwaves.

When it went on the air in 1972, it played the time-tested hits of the ‘50s and ‘60s, from Elvis and Chuck Berry to the Phil Spector-produced girl groups, Motown and the Beatles. Today it still does, having expanded the time frame of its playlist only up to 1974 with such compatible hit-makers as Elton John. Even the call-letters jingle--the perky, sing-songy burst of “K-Earth 1-0-1!”--hasn’t changed, and remains perhaps the most recognizable in town.

“Any time I meet someone and they ask me where I work,” says Pat Murphy, the station’s vice president and general manager, “when I say ‘at KRTH,’ it’s amazing how many of them immediately sing the jingle to me.”

That steadiness has remained through several corporate ownership changes (it became part of the CBS radio empire earlier this year). It’s gone on through the death in August of L.A. radio favorite the Real Don Steele and the restrictions of duties by another fixture, Robert W. Morgan, due to his fight with lung cancer.

It’s also abided numerous changes in radio competition and in pop culture in general. When it started, there were no other oldies stations on FM, then largely the domain of upstart, loose-ruled rock stations and sedate classical outlets. Now it’s surrounded by other stations mining the past. There’s classic rock on KCBS-FM (Arrow 93.1) and dominating the playlist of KLOS-FM (95.5). There’s classic R&B; on KACE-FM (103.9). And even the so-called modern rock playlists of KROQ-FM (106.7), KLYY-FM (107.1) and KYSR-FM (Star 98.7) contain a hefty amount of hits from 10 or 15 years ago. Yet through it all, KRTH’s oldies never seem to get old.

After a quarter of a century of playing the same songs it was playing when it went on the air, KRTH is one of the great success stories of radio. And that’s not just in Southern California, where it has consistently ranked No. 1 with listeners in the 25-54 age demographic among English-language music stations, but also nationally, where it has the highest advertising revenues of all music stations. Last year the station had ad billings of $34.5 million.

“Guess what? You do it right, and you get paid,” says Frank Maniaci, radio editor of Radio & Records, a trade weekly.

KRTH management learned its lesson after one brief period when the formula was tampered with.

“When I arrived here in 1990, the station’s ratings had fallen to 1.8,” says program director Mike Phillips. “They had tried to get too broad, literally going from the Carpenters to Foreigner. So we cut off the fringes, and the ratings went up immediately. When you’re in the mood for any particular kind of music, you have to know what to expect of any given station.”

The format is not entirely static, he says, but changes are now made with great caution.

“When we’ve made adjustments, it’s either dropping or reducing play of some songs from the ‘50s that test with the listeners as marginal. Some of the ‘50s songs we played six years ago are dwindling now.”

Even more caution is applied on changes on the other end of the KRTH time line. Much of the ‘70s pop catalog is identified with classic rock, not strict oldies. There’s some overlap, but not much--KRTH plays songs by such classic-rockers as the Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival, for example, but not Led Zeppelin or even the Eagles.

Still, as more and more people raised on ‘70s pop (or later) join the audience, Phillips says there has to be some thought given to moving the cutoff point for the playlist.

“We’re considering it, but it’s tough,” he says. “There was a lot of mediocre music made in the ‘70s.”

Beirne, who’s been a full-time professional deejay since he was 17, has no problem with playing the same songs over and over--even via a new digital system. Asked if there was one song that would make his head explode if he had to hear it one more time, he said he honestly could not come up with one.

“I’ve been playing these same records all my life,” he says. “I played them when they were new, and when the oldies format came in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I went with it. This music is truly timeless.”