Head-Bangers’ Home Lives On --on the Internet

Who says computer guys don’t rock?

When hard-rock station KNAC was sold and became a Spanish-language station in 1995, Orange County fans of muscle-flexing power ballads and head-thrashing tunes were left hanging. Gone were the hard-livin’, hard-playin’ personalities like Long Paul, Nasty Neil and Eveready Ed.

But thanks to the Internet, nothing ever truly dies. Online radio has been grabbing listeners, generating a lot of excitement and, said KNAC.com founder Rob Jones, helping to revive heavy-metal rock.

“KNAC was about more than music. It was an attitude, a lifestyle,” Jones said. “But that lifestyle isn’t being served on FM radio today. And I didn’t think it should die.”

Jones, a fan of the station, was rocking in the music business and had some computer chops. He approached the radio station’s original disc jockeys and made a pitch to buy the KNAC name and relaunch the station on the Internet. They agreed, wrote up a business plan and picked up the online rights to the KNAC name and all that went along with it from Augusta, Ga.-based Keymarket Communications for an undisclosed sum.

Launched online in early 1998, Jones and the deejays used their own cash and online advertising revenue to pay for the equipment, Internet connection and rent on their offices in Long Beach.

Today, KNAC.com has a staff of 25. The site received its first round of investment funding in September. Financial details were not disclosed.

“We’re slowly becoming a Net portal for head-bangers,” Jones said. “People love us.”

Bumper stickers and T-shirts promoting the site are a hot property among students at local colleges such as UCLA and UC Irvine, who are tuning in and making instant online requests while studying for midterms. And the station averages more than 100,000 different listeners a month from 99 different countries, Jones said.

But like the competitive L.A. airwaves, the Internet is filled with rivals. HardRadio (https://www.hardradio.com), one of the Internet’s earliest radio stations, specializes in the heavy metal genre. And GameSpy Industries, the Costa Mesa-based entertainment portal with investment backing from Hollywood heavyweights Richard Wolpert and Michael Ovitz, recently launched an online radio site (https://www.radiospy.com) that allows computer users to find a variety of radio shows, including hard rock.