New competition for an old format

The new approach to adult standards that KLAC-AM (570) took to the airwaves Thursday may be fun and hip, but it’s not cool, according to a cross-town competitor.

KLAC flipped from all-talk to what management is calling a “martini format,” a recipe that mixes the likes of Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald with newer artists such as Norah Jones and Harry Connick Jr., performing their own songs as well as classics by Cole Porter and the Gershwins.

KLAC’s new incarnation, “the Fabulous 570,” launched at noon Thursday with Rod Stewart performing live at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills. The success of Stewart’s multimillion-selling new album, “It Had to Be You ... The Great American Songbook,” convinced executives at parent company Clear Channel Communications that the Southland was ripe for an updated standards format.

“My God, the music on a station like this speaks for itself. It’s great music,” said Roy Laughlin, vice president of Clear Channel-Los Angeles. “We don’t see ourselves as an oldies station, or a standards station, or a nostalgia station. We see ourselves as a completely new mix of music.”

But the mix is anything but new, nor the invention of Clear Channel, contends Saul Levine, who says it’s the same format he’s been broadcasting since March from “The Surf,” at KSUR-AM (1260) and XSURF (540).

KLAC had been airing standards until switching to talk last year, but had taken the more traditional approach to those songs -- with a “music of your life” format, for listeners closer to the end of theirs than young hipsters.

“There’s a substantial audience of people 50-plus who wanted to hear this and they dumped them. They decided to heck with it. There wasn’t enough money in it,” Levine said of KLAC’s decision to drop that format last year. Their backpedaling angers him.

“These people over there at Clear Channel, who are really beyond words, saw the possibility of the format and decided to come in and take it away from us,” he said, calling the situation a case of an “800-pound gorilla attacking L.A.’s last mom-and-pop radio station. I don’t like being threatened. I’m taking this personally. We’re going to let the people decide.”

“We’re going to do whatever it takes to let justice be done,” Levine said, including making his station commercial-free for at least the next three months. “It isn’t a matter of money for me. It’s a matter of principle.”

Levine added that his independence and his corresponding freedom to make such moves give him an advantage over a corporate behemoth such as Clear Channel, which owns more than 1,200 stations nationwide and the FCC maximum of eight in Los Angeles, including KBIG-FM (104.3), KHHT-FM (92.3), KIIS-FM (102.7), KOST-FM (103.5), KYSR-FM (98.7), KFI-AM (640) and KXTA-AM (1150).

Clear Channel has to make money and show a profit for stockholders, Levine said. “So they’ve got to run every last [commercial] spot that they can.”

But what Levine criticizes as size and muscle, Laughlin cites as an economy of scale that will help KLAC succeed. “We don’t have to make the station survive exclusively on its own,” he said, but can tout it on the company’s other stations, and bring to bear an army of advertising sales people, promoters and artists. “I have resources that a stand-alone station like this could never tap into. It would never have the kind of glammed-out, gakked-out presentation we can bring to it.”

For this battle, both sides have pulled out the biggest gun in the genre’s arsenal: Frank Sinatra. The new KLAC debuted on what would have been Sinatra’s 87th birthday, and planned 24 hours straight of his music after Stewart’s performance Thursday, while KSUR has been airing the top 100 Sinatra songs as voted by its listeners.

“They think they’re going to pick up a much younger audience, and they’re not going to get it. Younger people are not going to listen to music on AM,” Levine said, citing his own research: the tastes of his college-age son and daughter.

But Laughlin said the new KLAC is banking on attracting younger listeners, and believes that the swank, Vegas-style lounge trappings that the company is draping on the station will lure them in and that the music will keep them.

“It has to be so compelling that 35-to-44-year-olds say, ‘This is cool. Now that’s music,’ ” Laughlin said.

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Off the air

The format change at KLAC had one effect before it even took place. Southland talk-radio fixture Michael Jackson was off the air, again. The talk pioneer, who was at KABC-AM (790) for 32 years until he left in 1999 after being relegated to weekends, had his second station change formats out from under him in two years. After leaving KABC, he landed at what was formerly talk station KRLA-AM (1110), but was forced off when ABC/Disney bought it in 2000 and changed it to all-sports KSPN. He moved to KLAC and praised his colleagues there as he left the air Wednesday.

Talking to author Gore Vidal, his final guest, Jackson said he’d speak to him again on the air, “Lord willing.” Although he has nothing new lined up yet, Jackson scotched any suggestion that he’ll retire. “Yes, I need to work. Yes, I want to work. I’ve got so much more I want to do,” Jackson said after his final show. “I am yearning to get back on the air. I’ve been off for several hours now.”

He noted that with most talk radio hosts speaking from conservative viewpoints, the airwaves could use a more liberal voice, such as his -- especially with the looming prospect of war with Iraq. “Shouldn’t we -- even on just this one subject -- be hearing alternative views?” Jackson asked.

The only local talents on KLAC station were Jackson, morning drive host Gil Gross and evening host Leslie Marshall; the station’s other programs were syndicated. As yet, Clear Channel has no plans to move any of them to sister station KFI.

“They have a good fan base,” Laughlin said. “We’re still trying to find ways of incorporating them into the cluster.”

Jackson said he’ll keep fans apprised through his Web site www.michaeljacksontalkradio.com