KZLA’s Recipe: Grits and Glitz

A little bit of country congeniality and a little bit of Hollywood pizazz.

That’s the new theme at KZLA-FM (93.9), which believes it’s qualified to deliver both qualities, due to its position as the only country-music radio station in the world’s entertainment capital.

Spearheading the station’s latest campaign is the new morning team of Jim Duncan and Wendi Westbrook. The high-energy duo (simply known as Jim and Wendi to listeners) can be heard weekdays between 5 and 10 a.m.

While KZLA’s chat-to-music ratio continues to tilt heavily toward the country tunes, Duncan and Westbrook are determined to bring a heightened sense of folksy fun and Hollywood glitter to the station’s previously colorless morning hours.

“It’s like we’re finally bringing the personality back to country radio in Los Angeles,” says Duncan, previously a weekend and fill-in disc jockey at KZLA and a 30-year veteran of country radio. “There’s been personality radio in country radio for years. You’ll hear that if you go across the country to Texas and Nashville. But we’ve become so sterile here in this market in the last 10 years. It wasn’t a fun radio station to listen to. Now the fun’s back.”

Shortly after Duncan and Westbrook began their morning show in mid-September, the duo decided to “hijack” the KZLA Winnebago. Originally scheduled for a promotional visit to the Los Angeles County Fair, the vehicle was redirected to Las Vegas by the station’s two fun-loving personalities. Broadcasting from the road, Duncan and Westbrook made stops in various Southern California communities to greet fans and give away prizes.

While such promotional ventures may be traditional aspects of many music radio stations, they’ve been largely absent from KZLA’s identity in recent years. Without any direct competition in the Los Angeles market--KIKF-FM (94.3) and KHAY-FM (100.7) do offer country-radio alternatives in the Orange and Ventura county areas, respectively--KZLA isn’t under the gun to do any heavy-duty marketing and promotion. It appears to possess a loyal following that traditionally generates solid, if unspectacular, ratings for the station.

(KZLA does boast that it attracts more listeners than any other country station in America. But this is due in part to the enormous size of the Los Angeles market and the lack of direct competitors.)

“[Promotional activity] wasn’t ignored before; it just wasn’t a priority,” says Marida Petitjean, KZLA’s interim operations manager. “Now we’re really looking to be more proactive with things like community events and cross-promotions.”

“We would love to work with celebrities to help promote their charities and to have more celebrities interviewed during our morning show,” says the station’s vice president and general manager, Dave Ervin. “We want to reflect the community we live in--and we live in a show-business community.”

Pushing Positive Community Values

Pushing positive family and community values is another goal of the station. Later this winter, the morning show will begin acknowledging local residents who have made special efforts to help others or the community.

Ervin also believes that some of KZLA’s advertising and promotional work is being done, in a sense, by other Los Angeles radio stations. In recent years, numerous songs by country artists--such as Shania Twain, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood--have been featured on adult-contemporary and pop radio. Most of these tunes are pop-oriented confections that possess minimal stylistic connections to traditional country music.

Still, Ervin says this type of mainstream exposure is helping KZLA attract new listeners.

“This is one of the first times that a whole lot of country music is being played on adult-contemporary and pop radio,” Ervin says. “When that phenomenon happens, it usually leads to audience growth for the parent format, which is ours. Even [country trailblazer] Merle Haggard and [pop/folk singer] Jewel recorded a song together recently at the CMA [Country Music Assn.] Awards. Some of those old [negative] stereotypes [about country music] have gone away. I think the audience for country is expanding whether we want it to expand or not.”

Several years ago, KZLA began interspersing country-tinged rock acts like the Eagles in its predominantly contemporary country format. This programming strategy was designed to lure older rock fans put off by the hard-boiled rap and the more abrasive punk and alternative rock of the day. It was a short-lived experiment that failed to significantly broaden the station’s audience.

Now KZLA is making more of an effort to pepper its programming with classic country cuts. The station occasionally plays songs by the likes of George Jones, Patsy Cline and Waylon Jennings, in part to help plug a new Sunday-evening show hosted by country-pop singer-songwriter Mac Davis. Though some contemporary country artists are featured, “The Mac Davis Show” is devoted largely to legendary figures. The personable Davis is even apt to play an early “Sun Sessions” song by Elvis Presley, who helped create rock ‘n’ roll by combining country, gospel and blues influences.

“I was introduced to Mac on a golf course,” Ervin explains. “He looked me in the eye, and in a very funny way started to get on my case about the fact that we never played anybody over the age of 40 and that we didn’t play other types of country music [except the less twangy contemporary country]. I said, ‘Mac, why don’t you come on out one Sunday night and just play any old thing you want?’ He took me up on it [in August] and he’s been back ever since! He’s having the time of his life. He basically plays the Mac Davis record collection.”

KZLA also brought back tradition when it recently rehired disc jockey Shawn Parr. Parr was the morning host at KZLA for six years before being fired a year ago. He is currently manning KZLA’s 2-7 p.m. weekday time slot.

“The station made a huge mistake [by letting go of Parr],” Ervin says. “He has such a warm, sincere spirit. You meet him once and you feel like you’re his best friend.”

However, KZLA’s desire to merge country tradition with the energy and sparkle of Hollywood is best reflected in the morning show.

“I would keep an eye on Jim and Wendi,” says Petitjean. “Jim has been in country music for many years. Wendi is [younger and is] just a ball of energy. She’s like, ‘I want to do this and that, and I want to be involved with these charities. . . . She’s very community-oriented. So we’re like, ‘You run and we’ll try to keep up with you.’ ”