Swing Time

The folks at KLAC-AM (570) have been trying to put more bounce and swing into the music programming, shifting from the bland, syndicated “Music of Your Life” pop standards content to snappier, swingin’ sounds hosted by real local personalities, anchored by Charlie Tuna in the morning drive slot.

Now they’re going to be doing it with other programming as well. With the National Basketball Assn. back on track after its labor lockout, and with the station just having picked up the baseball Angels for the season--including all spring training games--it means that the new push on the music of Frankie and Louis has to compete for air time with Chick and Shaq and Mo.

Is that any way to introduce a new radio lineup? Next week it switches full time to the new on-air roster, with Johnny Magnus named as the afternoon host--with exhibition games for both sports just around the corner.

It certainly goes against the grain of the broadcasting business these days, with stations dumping sports in order to let their full-time formats gel and find an audience. That was the idea last year when talk-oriented KABC-AM (790) let the Dodgers go to all-sports KXTA-AM (1150), and it’s the reason the Angels were even available, having been let go by KRLA-AM (1110), which has just installed its new talk format.

“It’s increasingly rare for music stations to have sports,” says Ron Rodrigues, editor in chief of Radio & Records weekly. “You almost can’t do that these days, interrupt the specialized flow. With pre-game and postgame shows, it takes up at least a four-hour chunk of time. And here on the West Coast, when games are in the East, that means they’re on in the afternoon. That sounds like it would be great, but it really clears out a lot of key time.”

KLAC officials, though, couldn’t be more delighted to get the balls bouncing.

“People are excited that we turned the corner and brought back the personalities of people like Charlie Tuna,” says station sales manager Jeff Federman. “And we’re confident people will be patient with us. Our audience is used to taking a break from the music.”

And it’s not like the station has been entirely free of sports for the last few months. On weekends it was carrying the San Francisco 49ers football games.

“We never got calls during games from people saying, ‘Where’s Sinatra? Where’s Armstrong?’ ” he says. “And having those games worked out well while we didn’t have the Lakers, gave us a reason to talk to advertisers about sports.”

And the games are certainly more compatible with the music than was Don Imus, whose New York-based morning show was a big sore thumb for the station, turning off listeners geared to the smooth standards and never really attracting new ears for the station. Imus has now moved to the new KRLA, where his presence makes more sense.

And though it’s increasingly rare these days, the whole thing makes sense to Rodrigues, at least for this station.

“KLAC is one of the great signals in the area, strong and clean,” he says. “And the station gets good enough ratings. But that format is not one of the big money-making formats--not to say they don’t make money. Sure they do. But the income-to-ratings ratio tends to be on the low side. So having baseball and having the Lakers back could help make up for that.”

And it’s also a good way to attract some new listeners to at least give the tweaked format a try--especially some younger ones who might be already attuned to the current swing revival.

“We’re playing [such younger acts as] Brian Setzer and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies at night in what we’re calling the Swing Lounge,” Federman says. “And we’re starting to go out and do promotions in clubs. So we can’t wait to get [the sports fans] to hear what we’re doing.”

*

News Break: There are still billboards around town touting the all-news format on KKHJ-AM (930), but the real news comes after you tune in: The station has switched back to music.

After 14 months as Southern California’s only Spanish-language news station, KKHJ abruptly--and quietly--changed directions at midnight Monday, adopting a format of Mexican ranchera music and ballads by the likes of Vincente and Alejandro Fernandez and Ana Gabriel. “Radio Noticias” is now “La Ranchera.”

Andy Mars, general manager of the Liberman Broadcasting station, said the decision was primarily a financial one. KKHJ’s ratings remained low--in the most recent quarterly Arbitron survey, its audience share was 0.6%--despite recent news events such as Hurricane Mitch and the impeachment hearings.

“There was just no bounce in the ratings,” he said. “Maybe it was a format that was ahead of its time.”

As “La Ranchera,” KKHJ will feature a mix of old and new music as well as hourly news updates and traffic reports. Under its news format, the station’s traffic reports earned a reputation as being among the most complete in Southern California.

Spanish-language talk and news stations, such as KWKW-AM (1330) and KTNQ-AM (1020), are suffering despite the overall popularity of Spanish radio in Southern California, Mars says, suggesting the problem lies not with language or audience size but in the formats. Mars said the station began researching programming alternatives even as it was putting up billboards lauding its news format.

“We had to make some changes,” he said. “We felt that a straight-music station would do better. When the ratings came out last week, it gave us no reason not to do it.”

*

Trial Run: We’ll give the benefit of the doubt to management at Santa Monica public station KCRW-FM (89.9) for saying they’ll postpone the fund drive scheduled for next month if the Senate’s trial of President Clinton is still going. Obviously it’s a practical matter--the station is carrying the proceedings gavel-to-gavel. But let’s assume the decision was also made for propriety’s sake.

The last time there was an overlap of a KCRW pledge drive and a major world news event was during the 1991 Gulf War, and the station went ahead, playing off the war coverage in its pitches for listeners to send donations, leaving a rather unfortunate impression of the exploitation of a serious event for gain. Yes, the comprehensive, noncommercial coverage is worthy of support, and listeners taking advantage of it without contributing should be impeached themselves. But let the history play out before turning it into pitch fodder.

Times staff writer Kevin Baxter contributed to this article.