Station-Sponsored Concerts Seeking to Increase Audience

It’s getting so that if you were to attend all the major concert festivals being put on by radio stations around the Southland this summer, you wouldn’t have much time to actually listen to the radio.

Frankly, the station managers don’t mind if you take time out from listening to attend their events. It’s worth it to them to make an impression in an increasingly tight, competitive and, with mega-mergers and huge sales of stations, expensive market.

What started a few years ago when KROQ-FM (106.7) spun off its successful Almost Acoustic Christmas concert at the Universal Amphitheatre with the summer Weenie Roast at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, showcasing acts that are part of its modern rock format in an all-day extravaganza, is this year exploding into a full-blown phenomenon, with many new entries and one returning one raising the stakes to a new level.

KKBT-FM (92.3) is back at Irvine Meadows as well with its Summer Jam, an urban pop and hip-hop answer to the Weenie Roast that has been held the past few years. This year KYSR-FM (Star 98.7) is planning a big concert for the end of the summer, KLYY-FM (107.1) is considering throwing its hat into the ring, and management of country KZLA-FM (93.9) is looking into holding a post-summer family festival in October.

And Spanish-language pop station KSSE-FM (97.5) will be hosting the Aug. 2 Super Star Blast at the Universal Amphitheatre. The eight-hour event will feature appearances by artists such as Patty Materola, Alejandra Guzman, Cristian and Jordi. The station will also co-sponsor a Father’s Day event intended to boost L.A. Zoo membership and will be part of September’s AIDS Walk L.A.

Elsewhere, KLVE-FM (107.5), KSCA-FM (101.9) and KTNQ-AM (1020)--all owned by Heftel Broadcasting--will team to reprise their popular Independence Day festival at the Hansen Dam recreation area on July 19. The free, daylong celebration--which last year raised $100,000 for the LAPD’s Jeopardy anti-gang program--will feature live music, food, rides and other activities.

The biggest impression this year, though, may be from pop leader KIIS-FM (102.7). The station has upped the ante, morphing its KIIS and Make Up concerts of recent years, also held at the 15,000-capacity Irvine facility, into Wango Tango, a massive event scheduled for June 13 at Edison International Field in Anaheim, with 40,000 people expected to see a lineup that includes such huge star names as Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Will Smith, Hootie & the Blowfish and Tom Jones.

“We’ve taken it to a new level this year,” says KIIS music director Tracy Austin. “We wanted to change the name and show people it was something new, the biggest thing we’ve ever done.”

But, more than that, the effort and expense of putting together such a massive event--partially benefiting the Los Angeles Institute for Breast Cancer Awareness in honor of Olivia Newton-John, a breast cancer survivor and a performer on the show--is an attempt to separate the station from the field, to make a big statement about its programming.

“We wanted to show how big KIIS is,” Austin says, stressing the spin that the station, rather than being oriented to a single format like alternative rock or hip-hop, plays the biggest hits from all pop formats. “The variety of music we play crosses all boundaries and we can put on a show that reflects that.”

The thinking’s no different farther down the ratings scale.

“We want to do a concert that will reinforce what the station does,” says Steve Blatter, operations manager of KLYY, known as Y107, which in the past two years since going on the air has tapped into KROQ’s Weenie Roast exposure by giving away tickets to its competitor’s concert. “We could simply put together a concert, but our competitor obviously does a big one and we don’t want to be looked at as doing what they’re doing.”

Elsewhere This Summer: Of course, not every radio activity tied to summer is such a big, showy event. And, though radio doesn’t go to reruns or new programs for the season like TV, there are some special on-air events planned for the time of year. Here are some of the summer radio highlights:

* KPWR-FM (105.9) is kicking off its summer with a June 10 Hip-Hop Summer Skool concert headlined by Bone Thugs N Harmony at a secret location, with tickets given out to listeners on the air. That will complement remote “Phat Friday” broadcasts weekly throughout the summer by morning deejay Big Boy, the “Saturday Night Get Down” events in which the station’s Big Ass Bus will cruise around music clubs and other locales, and the daily presence around town of an KPWR-sponsored ice cream truck giving away free treats.

* Santa Monica public station KCRW-FM (89.9) is holding its eighth annual Summerday fund-raiser on Father’s Day, June 21, at the Pacific Design Center, with an international wine, dine and travel auction and gourmet food and wine tastings.

* To kick off the summer season, classical music KUSC-FM (91.5) simulcasts with KCET-TV Channel 28 the traditional “National Memorial Day Concert” from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

* Commercial classical music station KKGO-FM (105.1) begins its all-weekend Memorial celebration Friday at 6 a.m. with the top 105 classical works as selected by its listeners. Regular programming will be featured between the selections. If you can’t wait to know, the top listener choice is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which will be heard toward the conclusion of the countdown, which ends Monday at 8 p.m.

“It’s always No. 1,” notes Saul Levine, KKGO’s president and general manager. “It’s the greatest music of all time.”

* Soccer’s quadrennial World Cup is the major event on the summer broadcast schedule in Spanish-language radio. The monthlong, 32-team tournament, which begins June 10 in France, will be heard live in Southern California on KWKW-AM (1330) and sister station KVCA-AM (670).

* Closer to home, on Sept. 13 KLAX-FM (97.9) will follow its enormously successful Cinco de Mayo event--which drew more than 100,000 people to the Coliseum for an afternoon of music followed by a soccer match between top Mexican clubs Chivas and Tecos--with another free concert and soccer match at Exhibition Park timed to the anniversary of Mexico’s war for independence.

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Times staff writers Kevin Baxter and Judith Michaelson contributed to this report.