Letters: Corrected Info on KKOS History (November 21, 2005)

D.T.: [now let me get this history straight]. The country stunt was actually in 1996-early 97, just after Halloran ended his short run at KUPR.

Clark: Right. Nationwide pulled the plug the week of Thanksgiving, 1996.

D.T.: [KKOS was] 1968-79 was a MOR as KARL.

Clark: Right. Live-assist automation in the daytime, full-automation at night, with some weird experiments playing KNX-FM style album cuts after dark.

D.T.: 1980-93 was AC and CHR (not sure what year CHR came on).

Clark: I went back into my playlist files to refresh my memory :) The station was AC, consulted by Tom Churchill until late 1985. We took programming local around Halloween, '85 and flipped to Hot AC officially in January of 1986. By January of '87, we'd morphed into a full-on CHR, running Top 40 in the daytime and extended dance mixes after PM drive. By mid-88, we'd gone back to Hot AC fulltime. In '92, we flipped to "Mellow Rock" to capitalize on the death of KNX-FM in LA, with a very slow rotation of currents and lots of old album cuts. We were live in the daytime and then took the bird after 7PM, running Transtar's "Niche 29" format. This was a bad time - we did no local programming at all. I had to mirror Transtar's music library locally so we could run live in the daytime, but the music logs came off the satellite each night. Hell, I don't even have playlists from 1992! This was the programming that eventually became KKOS's AAA format. By March of '93 we'd rebelled against the stale satellite format, although it provided us a good launching ground for the AAA. It wasn't really a launch... more of a soft slide. RKO's Phil Hall (former KRTH and KFRC PD) was consulting us, and he suggested adding currents that fit with the album gold format. It worked, and we started reporting to the trades again, and were charter members of the AAA panels for R&R, Gavin and Billboard. It was pretty cool. And of course, you know the rest of the story.

D.T.: I think Cox San Diego picked up this station for FM cable for a while until 1989. I remember tuning in and hearing some Spanish announcers with a cuckoo (KuKOoS) bird once or twice every hour. I'm thinking that's where the calls came from. I'll have to google deep to see if that's accurate.

Clark: That's a weird one. We never had any Spanish on the station, ever. The KKOS calls, by the way, came about from an on-air contest when Jeff Chandler bought the station. Station staff came up with the "KK" and a listener contributed the "OS" - KKOS... chaos... get it? Awful, but true.

OK. So now you know. Any more radio history from any radio station anybody cares to share?

Letters: Free-FM (November 21, 2005)

From Joseph Vick: Who needed Planet-FM anyway? It's been a month since the station flipped to talk (yawn) and in the past three years since I got XM radio I never bothered to return to classic rock again. Forget KGB and KPRI. I like Deep Tracks on 40, and when I'm in the mood for classic rock, there's XM 46, and both without commercials. Now this is heaven.

From Steven: What happened to Shannen Doherty's page on myspace.com? I had her bookmarked and she disappearred yesterday (Saturday). She's one of my faves of all time. (editor: she deleted her page. So did Alyssa Milano, Jennifer Aniston, and Holly Marie Combs. Clear Channel bought them up and flipped them all to La Preciosa fan pages in Spanish. That's a joke, sir.)

From Ash: Tracy Johnson's career is toast. Jack-FM isn't any different than shuffling the hits heard between XM channels 6 through 9. He blew it big time. Ratings are tanking. His station has lost 2/3rds of the audience Star 100.7 once had in 1996-7. Now it's a CHR version of Planet-FM. Totally disappointed in the music selection. It's aimless, personalityless, and lifeless.

From Gary: I love ipartyradio.com's dance music on the Internet. Wish 100.7 would put this music on instead of old rock.

From Byron: Wuff. Wuff wuff wuff wuff. Wuff. Wuff. (he says that dfsxradio.com rules.)

Survey Sez... (Nov 19, 2005)

Dance/Electronica  10 (59%)
Comedy/Novelty      2 (12%)
Adult Contemporary  2 (12%)
Jazz                1  (6%)
Classic Rock        1  (6%)
Oldies/Nostalgia    1  (6%)
Top 40/CHR          0  (0%)
Alt/Modern Rock     0  (0%)
Urban/R&B/Rap       0  (0%)
Country             0  (0%)

The Wires (Nov 19, 2005)

FMQB:Sen. Feingold Introduces Payola Legislation. The Wisconsin Democrat today introduced the "Radio and Concert Disclosure and Competition Act of 2005," which sets to clean up "abuses within the radio and concert industry.

Radio Briefs (November 18, 2005)

91X has a change in the lineup for their "Nightmare Before X-Mas" concert Dec 12. One of the members of the Misfits discovered his visa could not be extended in time for the concert... so they are out. Playing in their place is another pioneer punk band...The Germs.

KSON is giving someone a chance to ring in the New Year with Brooks & Dunn and Big & Rich in concert! Visit kson.com for details.

Sirius Canada says no to Howard Stern because the Canadian equivalent of our FCC, the CRTC, would force Sirius to take Stern down due to the government's own restrictive broadcast standards.