Ten Years Ago: 7-31-03

KCBQ-FM: Modern Oldies from the 70's and 80's.

The frequency of 105.3 (before Compass moved to 102.1 in 1996, letting the present-day Rock handle move in) had a new kind of oldies: not your father's oldies...yours!

The concept, playing the top 30 oldies from each year from 1970-1989 was positioned to be a midway point between stations that played newer music (B100, Q106.5, etc) and stations that played old music (KBest 94.9, KGB, KCLX 102.9). Shotgun "Tom" Kelly came aboard from 94.9 to do a shift, and the morning team was I belive Royce Blake and the World Famous Goat Boy, whoever he was famous for. Kelly also produced six five-minute segments covering the subject of San Diego radio history that aired on 105.3 that have been chronicled on a CD called "Great Radio Stations of the Past" that was sold by Kelly, now at K-Earth 101.1 Los Angeles, in 1999. On the CD, he briefly covered the histories of six legendary radio stations: KOGO 600 (in its first incarnation before the Jacor resurrection), KDEO 910, now a Family Radio outlet, KPRI-FM 106.5 (1967-83), now a Spanish language station, Boss Radio 136 KGB, that competed with KCBQ-AM 1170 in the glory days of Top 40 radio. KGB would have been #1 in any other market, but KCBQ-AM's mixture of new music, consisting of rock, pop, soul, and even country, which was also the basis of the 70's half of the Modern Oldies format of 1993, beat out KGB in all but one book. Also covered were B100 (1975-94, it became Star 100.7 in June 1994), and of course, KCBQ 1170.

The format generated a ratings boom at first, but as people tired of the same songs over and over again after less than a year, listeners were going back to KKOS 95.9 when it was an AAA station, Star 100.7 when it was launched in June 1994, KGB-FM, KBest, and others. KCBQ-FM, in late 1994, had something like a $20,000 contest (it ran twice) where it (aside of nearly bankrupting the owner Compass) asked the listeners to guess the code of the bank vault that will unlock it in order to win the big sum of money. My sister won the first $20,000, which helped her to pay off the student loan debt (colleges are so outdated and expensive these days, why do they still exist?)

But the bump in the ratings for these contests were short-lived, and KCBQ-FM's ratings sank when the contests were over. Meanwhile in late 1994, KCLX reformatted into a 70's oldies format called KKBH The Beach, then in 1995, KKOS moved to 95.7 and was rechristened the New KUPR: Music First, taking away more listeners from KCBQ-FM, and so many from The Beach that it reformatted into a soft pop station called K-Joy in early 1996, and so many from KCBQ-FM that in November 1995, they reformatted into Sets, playing newer music in sets of 2, 3, and 4. And that was the end of classic rock on 105.3 and 102.9, but after that, 103.7 reformatted (after KYXY owner SFX purchased it) the station into Rock Mix playing classic rock from 1972-82, and that format was changed to Classic (rock) Hits 103.7 The Planet a year later.

In early 1996, Compass sold KCBQ-AM and FM (and two other stations in Phoenix) to then-owner Par Broadcasting, and bought the cheaper 102.1 station from Oceanside to put "Sets" there. The KCBQ-FM calls were gone. The KIOZ calls moved to 105.3. And 102.1 became KXST, whatever that meant. Nowadays, what used to be KCBQ-FM is now thriving as, ironically, as a radio station with a set of legendary call letters representing a progressive rock format KCBQ-AM never really competed with: KPRI.

Meanwhile, classic rock on KGB and KPLN are still making the same mistakes today as they did years ago, treating the genre as a period piece, rather than as a format that should transcend five decades of rock and roll, what classic rock really is, and perfectly suitable for adults with money to spend on new CDs of new music by the latest from the artists they grew up with, as well as by the newer adult-style classic rock artists such as Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews Band, bands KPRI 102.1 plays regularily.