Ridin’ the Airwaves

Kimberley McGee

Thursday, March 11, 1999 | 10:07 a.m.

We've all grumbled as we punched the car radio buttons in search of a station playing something we want to hear.

Eventually, we mutter: "Las Vegas radio (fill in the blank)."

But Las Vegas radio is expected to become more diverse as more stations are bought by big corporations, splitting the market to cater to specific, smaller audiences that favor such musical styles as jazz, alternative rock and soul. It's not that there isn't a market for these stations, it's that the industry thinks they've been too small to explore -- so far.

However, radio experts themselves are split over the expected fallout. Some contend that the loss of mom-and-pop stations to corporate radio leads to generic formats and curtailed risk-taking. Others say it opens Las Vegas, one of the fastest-growing markets in the country, to a wide variety of "niche" marketing.

"In the old days, stations were country or pop," Ron Rodriguez, editor of Radio & Records, an industry newspaper, says, referring to the radio world a decade ago. "Now they go after a relatively small part of the audience because they can cover (all of the market) with five other stations."

But stations that niche program to a hot slice of the market pie leave some people cold.

"There is no humanism in radio anymore," Scott Gentry, general manager of Hispanic TV station KBLR Channel 39 and radio station KDOX 1280-AM, says.

Unless ratings point the way, corporate radio stations won't take risks, he says, so listeners are stuck as number-crunching corporations stay within a narrow parameter of acceptable songs.

"It's a recipe for disaster -- a recipe to get rich and destroy what I thought was a lot of free speech," Gentry says. "The license says, 'To serve the public,' but are they doing that?

"It's all generic radio," he says. "A small company has the desire to take risks, to be different than what is already out there, and that is what is missing from radio today."

Turn, Turn, Turn

Ask industry experts about Las Vegas radio and they paint a picture of a diamond in the rough, slowly polished by growing advertising dollars.

"Las Vegas is unusual in terms of a market because it gets more recognition than most," Rodriguez says.

Although Las Vegas is ranked 40th in the nation in radio markets, its popularity as a destination city makes it appealing to advertisers who may usually go only to the top 20 markets.

"Las Vegas (radio) has had tumultuous ownership over the last 10 years," Rodriguez says. "All of the big stations are locked up. (The companies) CBS and Jacor own a lot of stations and won the cream of the crop."

According to the fall edition of Arbitron, the bible of radio ratings, the stations owned by CBS Radio rated first (KLUC 98.5-FM), third (KMXB 94.1-FM) and fourth (KXTE 107.5-FM) among listeners 12 and older, the overall household rating before categories are broken down by age and gender, also known as "12 Plus." Jacor Broadcasting of Las Vegas owns the stations ranked fifth (KSNE 106.5-FM) and seventh (KWNR 95.5-FM) in 12-Plus.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the airwaves for companies to have up to four FM and two AM stations per market. Since then, they have abandoned commercial fishing for listeners for the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel method.

"Before, they had to throw the widest net possible with the one station they owned," Rodriguez says.

The big companies rely on the quarterly ratings lists from Arbitron. The list is so specific that it catalogs who is listening when and where, and for how long, as well as their age, gender and marital status.

Stations use the lists to program to a small section of the market -- say, men ages 18 to 54 who drive trucks -- so that advertisers looking for that audience will buy time from a station. If a company owns six stations, they can cover several niches in the market and scoop up the majority of advertising dollars.

Too much of a good thing

What isn't missing from this market is the adult contemporary (AC) format in its various permutations -- listeners are tripping over them: KLUC, KMXB, KMZQ 100.5-FM, KSTJ 105.5-FM, KSNE 106.5-FM and KXPT 97.1-FM slide in under the wide umbrella of popular music.

"We are over-radioed," Julie Neil, media buyer for Outback Media, says.

And it continues. In the past year, the Fifth Dimension was lifted up, up and away -- all the way off the air -- and replaced by Alanis Morisette as a programming staple when 105.5 changed its call letters from KQOL to KSTJ and its format from oldies to AC.

Barry Manilow is two-stepping into Tony Bennett's territory on the traditionally nostalgic KJUL 104.3-FM, a station which has squeezed into a market already overloaded with pop.

"People are their own best program directors, and the real goal of a radio station is to be on one of the five (buttons) on the car radio," David Allen, program director for KJUL, says.

The nostalgia station traditionally spun crooner classics and was No. 1 in its senior demographic. The only problem? "Each year, our audience is getting one year older," Allen says.

The station is now leaning a bit more toward AC, trying to capture a little of KSNE's younger female listenership with more Barbara Striesand and Michael Bolton mixed in with its usual lineup of Rat Pack favorites.

"This is one of the most fractionalized markets in the country when it comes to adult contemporary radio," Tom Chase, program director for KSNE, says.

"(AC) attracts such a valuable audience, the advertisers love it, so advertising dollars flow into that format, and other stations get envious and say, 'How can I have a piece of that pie?' " Chase says.

It's not just rock 'n' roll anymore. Highly-paid national consultants decide if rock should sway more than grind, and if roll should meander rather than rumble for a particular station.

"Sometimes it's good to have someone come in from outside the market and tell you what they think," Chase says. Visiting consultants marvel at the number of AC stations found on the dial here.

But the numbers keep adding up to the fact that this type of format -- with a female/male morning team, wide range of hits and popular songs from the '80s -- works so well that it's hard not to ask for a slice.

"The difference in music between our station and another may be subtle, maybe 10 percent (of different songs played)," Chase says. "So there has to be something special to make (listeners) passionate about your station."

Stations roll out creative contests, witty morning banter and gimmicks in an attempt to join the hierarchy of listeners' personal favorites.

"It's what's in between the songs that makes a station more popular than the others," Chase says, adding that they use disc jockey Melanie Smith on the "Melanie in the Morning and Tom," show to "create an aura around the station" -- set a tone, in effect -- that lasts throughout the day.

An AC bites the dust

KISF 103.5-FM, the not quite year-old urban AC station, featuring music of the Al Green-Chaka Khan-Barry White variety, was sold last week by owner George Tobin to Heftel Broadcasting Corp., the largest Spanish language broadcaster in the nation. Heftel owns local station KLSQ 1280-AM, the 14th rated station. Plans are to extend the KLSQ format to the FM station before the end of May.

KISF Program Director Brian White laments the loss of urban AC programming caused by the future format flip.

"There is a station or two out there that may do better if they were doing (urban)," White says. "I'd love it if they called me and said, 'Bring your crew over and lets do it.' "

(KCEP 88.1-FM, a publicly-owned station, currently offers an urban format, but is not rated by Arbitron.)

"I'm (not) surprised that George would sell the station," Adam Jacobson, associate editor of Radio & Records magazine, says. "But the urban format in Las Vegas, as well as the Spanish format in Las Vegas, are extremely under-served, and to abandon the urban format this early in the game is surprising. But urban in Las Vegas is not going to go away."

Filling the hole

There is a section in this musical maze that larger companies have yet to explore.

"The obvious hole in this market place ... (is) an FM Spanish station," Neil says. "(Advertisers) have been anticipating that ethnic group to grow to a point, but right now, at this level of 11 to 14 percent of our population (being) Hispanic, it is still very questionable from the advertisers' perspective."

Gentry will launch a Hispanic FM station in June. He won't divulge the specific format, except to say that it will be different than any of the other FM stations on the local airwaves.

"You are going to find (Hispanics represented) in other media without having to spend additional dollars to market specifically to them," Neil says. "What we encounter more than anything is getting a client to understand the selling process to the Hispanic community may take you a little longer. Once you get them as a customer, they are very, very loyal."

Jacobson says: "The time they spend listening is far greater (in Hispanic Radio).

And there are more rumblings about other stations making changes. One target of rumors is country station KFMS 102-FM.

"They don't have the number of artists hitting the charts that they used to," Neil says.

The songs of some country artists, including Shania Twain ("You're Still the One"), Faith Hill ("The Kiss") and LeAnn Rimes ("Blue") have overlapped onto the AC format.

Fall Arbitron ratings rank the other FM country station in town, KWNR 95.5-FM, in seventh place among listeners 12 and older in the valley. KFMS is 11th, beaten out by rock station KOMP 92.3-FM, and KISF.

Mike Ginsburg, vice president of Jacor Broadcasting of Las Vegas, which counts KWNR and KFMS among its six local stations, isn't shaking in his cowboy boots. He holds the reins in local country: If you're listening to country, you're listening to his stations.

"We are one-stop shopping for country," Ginsburg says, but when asked if KFMS will change formats, he adds: "It's radio -- never say never. ... This market is never dull. It's always shifting and changing."

But one radio veteran still thinks big business radio loses its purpose.

"I grew up with radio, I used to hide it under my pillow at night," Gentry says.

Remembering his days as a disc jockey in the mid-'70s, Gentry says: "Every day was different, it (was) fun to get up and go to work. Now it's limited to how long they can talk (before a commercial).

"Radio is a spontaneous medium," he says, "but the straitjacket has been pulled tighter."

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