KRTH-FM Goes the Safe Route in Search of More Profits
About your article on KRTH-FM (101) adding more titles from the 1970s (Around the Dial, by Steve Hochman, June 3):
As far as it goes, that move is typical of this and most all other big-city oldies outlets. Only what they consider “good testing” oldies get played. Thus we get common denominator, safe radio.
No chances are taken, no margin for the unusual, the delightful, the surprising or anything outside of the parameters set by “Unchained Melody” and “Every Breath I Take,” the safest of 400 or so songs, tops, out of the hundreds of thousands (and perhaps millions) released in the affected time period.
This is a scandal, but it’s also business as usual. It’s the way of avoiding the dreaded possibility of listener tune-out. It’s a way of maximizing profits on a radio frequency that we the public (through the Federal Communications Commission) grant at no charge to a Fortune 500 company so they can, in turn, buy and sell it for hundred of millions of dollars.
By the way, the disc jockey who hosts Legends of Rock is Brian Bierne, not Berns.
STEPHEN C. PROPES
Long Beach
How can they call KRTH an “oldies” station when they no longer play the great songs that started it all? And where is their loyalty and gratitude to those of us who grew up in that era and made their station what it is today--a perennial Top 10 station in the most competitive market in the U.S.? That’s no way to treat their longtime listeners!
FRED MILLER
Harbor City