With a Change at KZLA-FM, Country Radio Says Adios to Los Angeles [Country music too white?]

The NY Times ^ | August 19, 2006 | Jeff Leeds

[summer]

...The abrupt switch...left Los Angeles, the nation’s No. 2 radio market, with more than 10 million people, without an area-wide country music station, even as the genre remains a potent force on the Billboard sales charts. It joins New York, the biggest radio market, which has been without a major country station since 1996, and San Francisco, the nation’s No. 4 market, which lost a major country station in 2001.

Paradoxically, Los Angeles consistently ranks as one of the top two markets for country album sales (it accounts for roughly 3 percent of all country sales so far this year) and plays host to the genre’s biggest touring acts. Thursday marked the first night of a sold-out three-night stand by Mr. McGraw and Ms. Hill, country’s power couple, at the Staples Center arena.

But the station’s corporate parent, Emmis, which is based in Indianapolis, concluded that even having the city’s only country station — billed as “America’s most listened-to country station” — was no longer worth it, and that it could do better. The switch to what it calls “rhythmic pop contemporary” was dictated by economic common sense: a country station that draws predominantly white listeners aged 25 to 54 could no longer stay afloat in an ethnically diverse megalopolis. ...

“Country is a tough format to do in a market that is an ethnic melting pot,” said Rick Cummings, Emmis’s president of radio. “The appeal of the format is fairly limited when it comes to ethnicity.” In Los Angeles, he said, stations that cater mostly to white listeners are “playing for less than 25 percent of the marketplace on a good day.”...

[BurbankKarl]

I can't hear KFRG in the San Fernando Valley....

but I havent listened to KZLA since I bought XM radio three years ago....

what was the station on 94.3 years back? they had a repeater in the Valley....that was the best station souht of Bakersfield IMHO

[BurbankKarl]

I guess someone got their thong in a bunch listening to Gretchen Wilson's "California Girls"

[lainie]

Mexican ethnic radio is pretty limited, too. She said, sardonically.

Up here in the desert, we still have KTPI and KLOA (China Lake/Ridgecrest: Adelman Communications).

What lack-of-country-FM?

[Wolfstar]

I think XM radio will replace broadcast radio over time. I guess you can't get KFRG in the Valley because you're essentially in a huge bowl. Down here in the greater Torrance area, I get KFRG fine. No mountains to interfere with the signal.

[BurbankKarl]

Yes, a bowl of tortilla soup!

[Wolfstar]

Yes, a bowl of tortilla soup!

LOL!

[summer]

Interesting links. Thanks for posting.

[Revolting cat!]

Lesson of the day: Learn to speak Arabic with a Mexican accent, and you'll be all right! Allahu Fubar, Amigo!

[freedumb2003]

there's a rental house down the street that has turned the open garage door into a Mexican version of the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater - therefore, I only listen to Ranchero music these days.

That is a public nuisance. You can have them fined by the city and can take them to court for monetary damages of they persist.

[strategofr]

I am not familiar with Country Music but want to learn something about it, and we have no country station in Pittsburgh either.

What is the best magazine for me to buy? (We have no country music magazines on the racks in stores either!)

[summer]

Re post #52 - Check out Yehuda's link on post #47, and maybe Yehuda can recommend a magazine for you, too.

[StayoutdaBushesWay]

Very sad to read this. I worked for KZLA/KLAC from 88-93, it was a great place to work and the country music fans were the best as were the artists that came to the station.
I'm going to miss it :(

[SZonian]

...diverse...

How I hate that word and all of its variants!!!

Cheers,

SZ

[L.N. Smithee]

I drove a rented car from S.F. to SoCal for a friend's wedding a couple of years ago, and while I am not that fond of Bay Area radio, it kicks ascorbic acid all over L.A. radio if you don't speak Spanish. It was torturous trying to find decent rock-and-roll down there.

I arrived in L.A. county via I-5 in the late evening, and the only thing I could find that wasn't that accordion-and-acoustic guitar crap (you may dig it; I don't) was a station that played Big & Rich's "Save a Horse..." That might have been KZLA, for all I know. Fortunately, I brought an armful of CD-Rs to keep me from dying of boredom on the road. While in L.A., I kept the radio in my car untouched so I wouldn't lose the signal until word came that Ronald Reagan died. Then I found the news stations.

[summer]

accordion-and-acoustic guitar crap (you may dig it; I don't)

No, I am not into that, uh, whatever you called it. :)

[Republicus2001]

Buck Owens and Nashville West

[Republicus2001]

Charley Pride and Ray Charles

[strategofr]

Thanks!