Fabulous 690, L.A.’s AM haven for the lounge lizard set, will soon be history more victim to a new interpretation of U.S. broadcast ownership rules than a lack of loyal listeners and advertisers, according to station officials.
XETRA-AM, which transmits from a tower in Baja, is controlled by Mexican broadcaster Xetra Communications, but Clear Channel Communications Inc. has a one-third stake and handles the station’s programming from its Burbank studios, home to eight other Clear Channel stations.
Under an original interpretation of the Federal Communications Act of 1996, that type of shared ownership with a foreign broadcaster didn’t count toward the eight-station limit for a single market. But earlier this year, U.S. regulators informed San Antonio, Texas-based Clear Channel that the rules had changed, and it would have to divest at least one of its nine L.A. stations or face sanctions.
XETRA has a relatively small audience, so there was little incentive for Clear Channel to move the Fabulous format to one of its other stations. (Earlier this year, the Clear Channel standards station already moved from the 570 spot, which is now home to all-sports KLAC-AM.)
While Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. remain 690’s mainstays, the playlist also features more contemporary artists such as Lyle Lovett, Harry Connick Jr. and Diana Krall, who were youngsters at best when the Rat Pack ruled.
“I have a lot of different music programmed on my radio, but when I want my Sinatra fix, I want my Sinatra fix,” said Eleanor Brooks, a Sylmar marketing consultant who says she is heartbroken by the pending loss of the station’s format. “I love that 690 also plays new artists doing the old standards.”
Program Director Brad Chambers noted that a recent station-sponsored road trip to Las Vegas included a couple in their early 20s and another in their 80s. DJs range from Mel Torme’s daughter Daisy to legends such as Gary Owens of “Laugh-In” fame and Charlie Tuna, who programs a short weekend show at Fabulous when not headlining KBIG-FM 104’s weekday drive-time show.
“This music is really more a lifestyle soundtrack for our listeners,” said Chambers, host of the “Martini in the Morning” weekday show.
Pop star Rod Stewart, who has several successful standards albums, has such a close relationship with the station that he nick-named it KROD. “They’re contemporary, hip, cool people who like to drink martinis, go out dancing, take in a live performance,” Chambers said of the listeners.
Madrid-based Grupo Prisa has agreed to buy Clear Channel’s one-third share, and pending approval by Mexican regulators, 690 will likely change to another format, yet to be announced.
Web News
KCBS-TV (Channel 2) and the Los Angeles Times are adding several high-tech toys and other interactive features to their respective Web sites in an effort not only to drive more traffic to the sites but also build audience loyalty for their traditional media outlets.
The Viacom Communications Inc.-owned CBS affiliate recently devoted 90-second segments during the evening newscasts to promote each new feature of cbs2.com. The traffic page, for example, can send alerts to a user’s cell phone.
The new online format is being rolled out by other Viacom TV stations nationwide, but customized for each market, according to senior executive producer Jason Ball, who plans to include more video segments from the station’s newscasts. Last week, the site was scheduled to offer an extensive sneak peak of the Marilyn Monroe exhibit, scheduled to set to open at the Queen Mary in Long Beach on Nov. 10.
Also featured are blogs by news anchor Kent Shocknek, sports anchor Alan Massengale and meteorologist Josh Rubenstein. Ball said that Web traffic was up 93 percent the week of Oct. 19, the first full week after the launch.
Latimes.com also is wading into the largely un-moderated blogosphere with a growing slate of weblogs written by both staff and freelance writers.
Business section columnist Michael Hiltzik last week launched a blog he will update several times a week, in addition to the twice-weekly Golden State newspaper column that Hiltzik also has been recording as a podcast.
James Gilden, whose “Internet Traveler” column appears in the Times’ Travel Section, has launched a “Daily Traveler” blog. There’s also a blog tracking the Lakers that’s co-authored by brothers Andrew and Brian Kamenetzky, regular contributors to ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. A new Times’ sister site covering the entertainment awards season, TheEnvelope.com, will include an Oscar-centric blog by former Premiere magazine writer Steve Pond.
Blog-tracker Peter Hirshberg says he’s been impressed by how quickly newspapers and television stations have embraced a format they scorned less than two years ago. “They’ve realized that blogs not only drive readers to their sites, but also make the main news product more relevant,” said Hirshberg, executive vice president at Technorati Inc. in San Francisco. “It’s real-time interactivity and feed-back that they’ve never received before.
Saatchi Celebrates Deals
M & C; Saatchi’s two-year-old Los Angeles office, which hosted the ad agency’s 10th anniversary celebration at an annual meeting the week of Oct. 24, was able to boast two new deals: a marketing and advertising program for Los Angeles-based City National Bank and a tourism and economic development advertising campaign for the State of New Mexico.
Huw Griffith, chief executive of the Los Angeles office, has been with Saatchi since 1995 and came to Southern California after stints opening offices in Singapore and Malaysia.
“We’re sort of a grown-up startup,” said Griffith, referring to Saatchi’s model of treating each office as its own independent practice. “We have the years of experience in our personnel, but we’re also able be more nimble than some of the large holding companies we’re up against.
This and That
Nearly two dozen editors who provide closed captioning services for broadcast and cable television have voted to authorize a strike if negotiators can’t work out a better contract with the National Captioning Institute Inc., which is based in Vienna, Va. and has offices in Burbank. Local 53 of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, which represents the closed-captioning unit, said it has been negotiating since May over the institute’s demands for a wage freeze along with a three- to four-time increase in daily production output The Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN2 channel will be the official broadcast partner for the inaugural Amgen Tour of California in February 2006. It’s the first time the Thousand Oaks-based biotech giant has sponsored such an event, which is modeled after the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong’s Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team is among 16 international teams competing across 700 miles of California from San Francisco to Redondo Beach.
Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232, or by e-mail at
[email protected]
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