KOST 103.5

Hey Guys:

Does anybody know when did KOST go from Soft AC to AC?

Thanks

Tommy C.

DavidEduardo said:

It was a slow evolution, and, if there are any benchmark dates, they have more to do with refreshing the imaging than with the music itself.

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Is this a trend? KOIT in San Francisco had the same "evolution." It was very gradual. I recall hearing Born in the USA on the station about 2010, and remember going, "What???". But really, it took a few more years. Now I doubt they'd even play the Springsteen song, due to it's age. One of their benchmarks was dropping the "Light Rock/Less Talk" branding of 3+ decades, perhaps 2016 or so.

Hey Guys:

Looks like they modified the logo from KOST 103 FM Continous Soft Hits to KOST 103.5 FM Southern California's Soft Rock.... with less Talk in Late 1990. Was doing the Soft Hits thing in September 1990. That is probably when the change was complete. Like David said KOST has a gradual transition

I remember the gradual transition from Soft AC to AC at WLTW, KOST's NYC sister station. Over the early 2000s, the music started getting a little more upbeat. People were remarking that Ricky Martin, who was very popular at the time, had his upbeat songs playing on Lite-FM, such as "Living La Vida Loca." Then some gold titles from Bon Jovi started airing, such as "Living on A Prayer" that Lite didn't play when it was current but is playing now.

One day, we started hearing the DJs talking over the song intros. Lite would never do that before. Lite had always played three or four songs in a row, then would list them. That stopped happening too. Now, the DJ doesn't even tell us the song that's ending. But as David says, it wasn't all at once. It happened over a decade.

We can discuss WHY this is. Why do today's 25-54 adults want to hear songs being "talked up" when we didn't in 2000? Or why we are too impatient to hear the names and artists of songs we're listening to, when we didn't mind hearing a list of four songs a couple of decades ago. Or why we wanted wanted to hear ballads and quiet songs only a few years ago but we don't now.

I'm not saying today's 35 year old woman should listen to the Carpenters or Dionne Warwick. I'm wondering why she doesn't want to hear soft songs from today. Sade and Norah Jones have giant selling albums but Lite-FM doesn't play anything from them because they're too soft. A big artist like Madonna or Michael Jackson would put an album together that alternated uptempo songs with soft songs. We know them for plenty of upbeat hits. But they'd alternate what they released with "She's Out of My Life" or "Live to Tell." Artists don't do that anymore. What happened to the human brain that, in our ever faster and noisier and busier lives, we don't want to hear anything that's too soft, even on a radio station that calls itself "Lite-FM"?

Gregg. said:

What happened to the human brain that, in our ever faster and noisier and busier lives, we don't want to hear anything that's too soft, even on a radio station that calls itself "Lite-FM"?

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I think this is the "background vs foreground" discussion. The softer the music, the more it becomes background. That's not necessarily where most formats in radio wants to be. Even talk radio wants to be aggressive rather than simply informative. The NPR approach is seen as "sleepy."

Well, progressive rock radio and later album rock used backsell as well, sometimes to silly dimensions, where an entire half hour of music was read off. All the rock stations and soft rock stations did it. Meanwhile, some beautiful music stations would backsell the last quarter hour of music, but some would not. I think in NYC, WRFM listed what was played, but WPAT didn't, even though both had live announcers around the clock.

Now I think we've gone too far in the other direction. Often only one or two songs will be mentioned in an entire hour. Sometimes a DJ will talk over the end of a song and never mention it. If it's something we all know by a famous artist, OK. But even unfamiliar songs are often not announced. Usually if the DJ doesn't have anything special to say about the artist, he/she won't tell us the song. And this is true in nearly all formats. Has our attention span gotten so short, we don't even want to know the song that's JUST been played?

Gregg. said:

Well, progressive rock radio and later album rock used backsell as well, sometimes to silly dimensions, where an entire half hour of music was read off. All the rock stations and soft rock stations did it. Meanwhile, some beautiful music stations would backsell the last quarter hour of music, but some would not. I think in NYC, WRFM listed what was played, but WPAT didn't, even though both had live announcers around the clock.

Now I think we've gone too far in the other direction. Often only one or two songs will be mentioned in an entire hour. Sometimes a DJ will talk over the end of a song and never mention it. If it's something we all know by a famous artist, OK. But even unfamiliar songs are often not announced. Usually if the DJ doesn't have anything special to say about the artist, he/she won't tell us the song. And this is true in nearly all formats. Has our attention span gotten so short, we don't even want to know the song that's JUST been played?

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I think they figure that if you want to find out what songs were played, you will check the station's website. And with HD stations, most car radios now read out the song title and artist. It's my impression that with many, or perhaps most voice-tracked shows, the "DJs" (and I use the term loosely) are often not even aware of what music will be played. They are just filling in once per song set with a brief show-bizzy gossip piece, with what passes for a few seconds of "humor," or some announcement tailored to the market to make them sound local.

A few years ago, a website (Reel Radio perhaps) posted a historical memo from a Program Director of a Top 40 to his DJs to tell them specifically NOT to ID songs unless it was new, but promote the station instead, keeping their talk as brief as possible. IIRC, that memo was from 1260/KYA (San Francisco) in the mid 1960's.

LKellerIII said:

I think they figure that if you want to find out what songs were played, you will check the station's website. And with HD stations, most car radios now read out the song title and artist. It's my impression that with many, or perhaps most voice-tracked shows, the "DJs" (and I use the term loosely) are often not even aware of what music will be played. They are just filling in once per song set with a brief show-bizzy gossip piece, with what passes for a few seconds of "humor," or some announcement tailored to the market to make them sound local.

A few years ago, a website (Reel Radio perhaps) posted a historical memo from a Program Director of a Top 40 to his DJs to tell them specifically NOT to ID songs unless it was new, but promote the station instead, keeping their talk as brief as possible. IIRC, that memo was from 1260/KYA (San Francisco) in the mid 1960's.

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The idea of an actual DJ who cares about the music and actually spins it and listens to it with his audience such that the interaction that they have with each other is actually, you know, REAL seems so quaint these days. I guess if the music is plastic and interchangeable there is no reason the DJ shouldn't be as well. *Sigh*

ChannelFlipper said:

The idea of an actual DJ who cares about the music and actually spins it and listens to it with his audience such that the interaction that they have with each other is actually, you know, REAL seems so quaint these days. I guess if the music is plastic and interchangeable there is no reason the DJ shouldn't be as well. *Sigh*

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I think it was the concert promoter Bill Graham who said back in 1972 when he shut down his Fillmore venues on the East and West coasts that he felt the business had begun to change, that the music had become too commercial, and the artists were too focused on the money. I think he was right. Things had begun to change. It's not the 60s any more.

Here's a bit of what he said: “The scene has changed,” Graham said in a prepared statement for the daily press, “and in the long run, we are all to one degree or another at fault. All that I know is that what exists now is not what we started with, and what I see around me now does not seem to be a logical, creative extension of that beginning.”

This is not to say that musicians or radio DJs today aren't passionate about what they do. Most are, and most are very involved in the lifestyle of their favorite music. That doesn't mean they have to do things the way their parents did them 50 years ago.

ChannelFlipper said:

The idea of an actual DJ who cares about the music and actually spins it and listens to it with his audience such that the interaction that they have with each other is actually, you know, REAL seems so quaint these days. I guess if the music is plastic and interchangeable there is no reason the DJ shouldn't be as well. *Sigh*

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Granted, there was a time when DJ's could play what they wanted to a degree or have a show. Those were the fun days in radio. Can't say that's the case today, especially in the cities. And song overkill. You'd think many of these DJ's are sick of hearing much of what they play. I don't blame them.

oldies76 said:

Granted, there was a time when DJ's could play what they wanted to a degree or have a show. Those were the fun days in radio.

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Fun maybe in a self-indulgent way, but they weren't the radio stations that made hit songs that get played on classic hit stations today. Those stations were tightly formatted in the music they played and the amount of talk the DJs did. They called the format Top 40, but by the mid-60s, it was Top 20. And they played those same 20 songs every two hours over and over. And it worked. Tight playlists got great ratings and created songs that are still getting played 50 years later.

DavidEduardo said:

In the post-Freed era, I can't think of any significant Top 40 station that let the DJs pick their own music; at most, they could pick which of the "golden" songs that were "next up" fit best between the tightly scheduled mechanical rotations of the currents.

About the only place post-1959 where DJs picked the songs in significant markets was at the earlier progressive rock stations in the 1967-early 70's period. The development of Lee Abrams' Superstars format pretty much killed off the free-form rock stations, too. That left a few progressive rockers and then, later, a few KBCO-like Triple-A stations.

Even back when there was longer TSL due to lack of alternative entertainment sources, the average DJ worked two to three times the number of weekly hours as the average listener spent with their station... so of course they would tire of the songs much faster than the listeners. But they are not paid to like the music.

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Yeah probably less stations allowing their DJ's to pick and choose than I made it sound, but I sure remember Brian Beirne allowed to pick and choose those oldies records, in his mid morning show, oh so long ago. But that came to a screeching halt eventually, I heard.

I based my number on the WABC surveys posted at musicradio77.com. They show basically Top 20 song lists, with a handful of songs beyond that were either recurrent or "hot prospects," but not part of the standard rotation. For example, this one from 1968:

http://www.musicradio77.com/Surveys/1968/surveydec368.html

That dotted line at #14 probably indicated heavy rotation.