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Post by amanuensis on Dec 26, 2018 14:10:23 GMT -6
I wish they didn't have the Unforgettable branding. That just screams Old Folks Station to me. And since I am just 52, I don't view myself in that demographic yet.
Is it a coincidence that KLO and 99.1 switched to Soft AC at almost the same time? I'm skeptical.
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Post by oldiesfunhouse on Dec 26, 2018 17:52:13 GMT -6
I heard "Chances Are" by Johnny Mathis which came out in the 50s and I don't think Easy 99.1 would play that. They talk about Sinatra but I haven't heard him played yet. I haveheard two Barry Manilow Tunes. (Sorry if I'm spelling any of these wrong.) They played "Cherish" by the Association. "The Hill Street Blues" theme. So I think it's heavy on the Soft AC with a few borderline "standards" thrown in but I don't think you'll hear any big band. I don't know if there are any satellite formats left doing a true "standards" format.
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KLO flips
Dec 26, 2018 18:11:45 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by David on Dec 26, 2018 18:11:45 GMT -6
I wish they didn't have the Unforgettable branding. That just screams Old Folks Station to me. And since I am just 52, I don't view myself in that demographic yet. Is it a coincidence that KLO and 99.1 switched to Soft AC at almost the same time? I'm skeptical. There's a grundle of stations across the U.S. that have switched to a soft AC format in the past couple months. In fact, of the list of stations flipping formats post-Christmas published on RadioInsight this week, at least six stations have recently flipped to some variant of a soft AC format. Soft AC formats were all the rage 20-25 years ago, so apparently everything old is new again. I get what you're saying about the "Unforgettable" branding. I think a better choice would have been "Lite 1430" or "Easy 1430", but I'm going to enjoy the music on KLO regardless of what they're calling it. The new format beats endless repeats of Mike Gallagher's show ANY day of the month!
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Dec 27, 2018 4:25:50 GMT -6
I agree with David that it's best described as a soft AC. A few songs are more on the AC side of the spectrum, but whatever. I have an idea about what the Unforgettable branding might be a reference to. Maybe the Nat King Cole song? That would fit right in with the format and these songs are mostly songs that were very big but a long time ago. I do agree that with no context just hearing the name could easily make someone think of a nostalgia format though. At this point it's pretty irrelevant since nobody is going to hear the positioning without either stumbling onto the station (which would immediately reveal the type of music they play, obviously) or someone talking about it where the format would almost certainly come up. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but they need to be advertising NOW to get a sense of whether this is going to take off or not. If it shows promise (and especially if it starts taking off in more markets around the country) I wonder if they might end the agreement on 103.1 and simulcast or move the Unforgettable format there. That's premature, but worth watching in the future. David is right that soft AC has been popping up all over the place. It started really with a surprise out in San Francisco back in April and that station quickly moved up to the #3 or 4 station in the market every month. That got everyone's attention and has become the flavor of the month. Think of the spread of Jack-FM across the country or Jammin Oldies before that. Nobody wants to be second guessed if this turns out to be a format that sticks and does really well. There's not a lot to lose for either KLO or K257GJ. KLO has been getting numbers that couldn't get a whole lot worse and K257GJ wasn't even on the air and was about to lose its license if it didn't do SOMETHING. Both had little to lose and possibly a large gain, so in that sense they were related, just not directly.
I do have to disagree a bit on the timing of when soft AC was the rage. From my recollection it was in the mid to late 90's that soft AC went out and moved into mainstream AC. There was a definite movement to soft AC back in the 80's as the easy listening stations got a little harder and became soft AC. The trend repeated, moving a little harder 10 years later and over the last 10 years or so even mainstream AC has started sounding more like hot AC and sometimes bordering on CHR.
Speaking of timing and what currently on KLO, it does seem like the age of the songs is centered around the 70's with some appropriate 60's and 80's thrown in, but there were two songs I heard on Wed that were much newer. They played "A Whole New World" from Aladdin (1992) and "My Heart Will Go On" from 1997. Both definitely fit the format and didn't sound out of place at all, but it seems to show that the programmers aren't artificially limiting the playlists which is a good thing.
Can't wait to see what the ratings do. The next release is December (Nov 8 - Dec 5) which is not going to say anything. That should come out very soon. The next one is Holiday (Dec 6 - Jan 2) and that is going to say little. The big test is the January report which we'll probably get somewhere around mid to late February.
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Post by levoix on Dec 27, 2018 9:18:39 GMT -6
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not sure about ownership) but I thought Capital tried soft AC with KSQN 103.1? Why would they think ratings would be any better on AM?
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Post by oldiesfunhouse on Dec 27, 2018 9:52:47 GMT -6
This will probably be considered "geeking out" but since I think some of you have an engineering background, you might be able to give some advice on who to contact as a listener to, hopefully, get this problem corrected. I don't know if it's coming down from the satellite this way (I've never been able to find a station that streams this network in stereo and I haven't checked to see if this problem exists on other streams like KRKK in Rock Springs etc.) or if the problem is on KLO's end but we are only hearing what I believe is the right channel on stereo tracks. On most songs you can't really tell but it was the most obvious when they played "I Say a Little Prayer for You" by Aretha Franklin. You could barely hear the background vocals. There were some guitar parts that were buried in "Cherish" by the Association. I played a bit of both songs on my Apple Music and the background vocals on "Prayer" and the guitar parts on "Cherish" were both in the left channel. I'm sure if I called the switchboard at Capital and mentioned this, they'd think I'm nuts. (Maybe you guys do too.) Would I just ask to speak to KLO's engineer or, in your opinions, is this an issue that no one in the world is going to care about but me? Any thoughts would be appreciated. As far as the last question, maybe the ratings on Sunny 103.1 were better than KLO's as a talk station and so they thought it would be better than what they had. I imagine it's a pretty easy (no pun intended) format to run. You just set your automated system to play the local spots, the news, and the local drops from the network and ... it probably pretty much runs itself. Not that the talk format was hard but someone would have to set up the automation to move the feeds each time a show changed. As far as the branding, they were called "Unforgettable" before they switched to talk and when I called Capital to thank them for the new format the lady said they were going "back to their roots". I'm blind so I don't know but maybe they've gone back to their old logos and stuff they had when they were "Unforgettable" before. I haven't heard any of their old audio imaging but that could have had a little to do with the name choice. I'm just totally speculating here, though. But that's what we do here, right?
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KLO flips
Dec 27, 2018 20:03:59 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by David on Dec 27, 2018 20:03:59 GMT -6
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not sure about ownership) but I thought Capital tried soft AC with KSQN 103.1? Why would they think ratings would be any better on AM? Sunny 103.1 was closer to Mainstream CHR or Adult CHR than soft AC, and it was targeted towards a much younger audience than the Westwood One format. The 1950's & 1960's pop hits of "America's Best Music" would never have aired on Sunny 103.1--their slogan was "The best variety from the '70's to now." KLO's format is clearly targeted at the 45-65 demo that grew up listening to Top 40/Pop hits on AM radio. Oldiesfunhouse, when you're hearing what sounds like only one stereo channel on some songs, it's not a defect in the recording or an engineering problem. Some of the early stereo recordings had very extreme stereo mixing, which placed almost all the vocals on one channel and the instruments on the other channel. It's most noticeable on KLO's over the air signal because AM radio is mono. The station's online feed is in true stereo, so you'll hear both channels clearly if you listen on the World Wide Web.
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Post by CAwasinNJ on Dec 28, 2018 5:26:56 GMT -6
David's right. Sunny 103 was an AC format, though there were a few soft AC selections in there. There was a playlist that seattlefollower posted at the time in the thread at talkingutahradio.proboards.com/thread/1291/103-1-format-change . Even if it was the same format, there's a big difference. KLO is on AM and the expectations for ratings on AM are lower and the demos are higher. You can get away with stuff on an AM that you couldn't on FM. It's also true that failing at a format doesn't mean the company won't try again. Look at Cumulus with alternative. Depending on how you keep score, this is at least the 3rd go-around for alternative on 101.9 that they're trying. Still not working. As for the stereo problem, I'm sure the switchboard operator isn't going to know anything. That person isn't likely to be a radio person but probably could refer a message to the PD or someone else in charge. What I'd personally probably do would be to contact them on their social media platforms. Their website (http://www.kloradio.com/) advertises their Facebook and Twitter accounts rather prominently, so I'd guess they pay pretty good attention to them. There's also a studio phone number listed. I would guess THEY care even if others don't. A couple of times in my life I've run into people who have had stereo problems but just didn't know why and didn't know what to do to fix them so they just lived with it. One case was my dentist where they had one channel running in the back office and the other one out in the waiting room. Drove me nuts, so I offered to fix it for them. I showed the receptionist the stereo/mono button and told her to make sure it was in mono and everything would be fine. She was very grateful, though I did still have to pay for my procedure. Another time I was visiting a friend of mine and it was very obvious immediately that the speakers were wired out of phase. Flipped the wires and it was so much better. To David's point about the AM broadcast being mono, it's irrelevant. At some point in the audio chain there are going to be two channels that must be mixed down to one if you're broadcasting in mono. Whether that's coming out of the downlink receiver or when it enters the AM transmitter, that just has to be done and it's trivial to do and well known. It's completely possible that the audio board only ever had one channel hooked up out of it going to the processors and STL and out to the transmitter and nobody thought to rewire it. When you're doing that big a change there are a lot of balls in the air and sometimes things get missed. It happens. It just needs to be tweaked.
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Post by friendlee on Dec 28, 2018 10:52:06 GMT -6
......One case was my dentist where they had one channel running in the back office and the other one out in the waiting room. Drove me nuts, so I offered to fix it for them. I showed the receptionist the stereo/mono button and told her to make sure it was in mono and everything would be fine. She was very grateful, though I did still have to pay for my procedure. Another time I was visiting a friend of mine and it was very obvious immediately that the speakers were wired out of phase. Flipped the wires and it was so much better...... Same here, restaurants and retail establishments are the primary offenders - it's especially noticeable with discrete stereo (read "almost anything from the late 60's") recordings. Sorry you didn't get that free root canal but at least you weren't wanting one after being forced to listen to only one channel! Restaurants will often spiff me a meal for my efforts!
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Post by michaeljwyo on Dec 31, 2018 12:02:12 GMT -6
I am 49 and I actually like this format as well. So much that I got KRKK's smartphone app for my phone so that I could listen via bluetooth in the car. That's where I first heard it. Was happy when I was in Rock Springs a few months back and heard it. It's funny someone mentioned them when talking about the "missing one channel" thing since when KRKK was oldies, they ran it with only one channel for years. I happened to know the engineer (Dennis Silver) and he finally went up there and fixed it. Their Audicord board in the studio was a stereo board and it had a channel amp bad. He finally fixed it and it sounded perfect after that. Right now their on-air feed is still perfect with a downmix of both channels. I haven't been able to tell with KLO because I haven't had the chance to listen long enough to tell. I can pick them up here in Evanston but not very good. I know that back in the days when I worked there for a little while (1991...Len Allen was still there) their main studio board was a big RCA board that was mono but I believe could be configured for stereo (it had 3 meters on the front of it). That was when they were in the Eccles building in downtown Ogden. KSOS 106.9 (Brent Larson) had the same board in their studios in the Layton Hills Mall. When KLO moved to the Aerospace Center up by Weber State I visited and that board was gone and they had a newer stereo board. I would imagine whatever they are using is stereo. So it could be post-board (only one channel going into a mono processor) or even only one channel being wired into the STL sending the signal out to the tower. Not even sure how they are getting the signal from downtown to the transmitter. Pretty sure there's not line-of-site from downtown to West Kaysville/Layton. I know back in the day stations used to get a "dry pair" from the phone company. Not sure if Ma Bell still provides those. Would be interesting to find out on all this stuff. Don't know who their engineer is, though. KRKK feeds mono to their app and internet feeds. Usually those are fed with a line out from the board or maybe post-processing...which would make sense for KLO's true stereo there...so...probably not pre-board...it's probably coming in to the board in stereo. And it is possible that in the downmix, discrete channel things are "lower" because they are mixed into mono. Will give it a listen when I can and see. I know most of these songs from playing them hundreds of times in the past 30 years and always being a huge stereo fan, I can tell ya if a channel is missing. Kudos to KLO. I love the soft-ac format. I run it on my little station here and I play about 90% of what they play. I really think lite-ac is more appropriate than Nostalgia. But I guess to be branded lite-ac you'd have to also be playing current songs from the last 30 years that are 'softer' songs. Hence, the nostalgia branding I guess. Maybe they need to create a new branding called "lite oldies" ?
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KLO flips
Dec 31, 2018 19:05:48 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by David on Dec 31, 2018 19:05:48 GMT -6
LOL . . . I remember seeing that big old RCA board when KLO had their studio in the Eccles Building in downtown Ogden! My friend Joan did the news reports on KLO the first year after she graduated from the broadcasting program at WSU, and she invited me to see the studio and meet Len Allen one day during Christmas break. Joan said the board looked like World War II surplus, and I don't think she was very far off. That RCA board looked like it had been in KLO's studio since Len started working there in 1947! Good memories for sure.
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Post by michaeljwyo on Dec 31, 2018 22:22:44 GMT -6
I could have one if I wanted it. There is an identical RCA board (I think it may even be the actual one from KSOS) sitting on the enclosed porch at the old KEVA building. I think it was brought there when David B. Smith passed away. His son and I are really good friends and worked together there. He brought it and set it out there...said I could have it if I wanted it. I just didn't have room for it. But it's probably still there. Pretty clunky but nostalgic nonetheless. I wonder what KLO ever did with theirs? Probably in storage somewhere. Radio stations tend to do that. I think in the storage shed outside KEVA there's an old OLD teletype machine, old automation systems...cart machines...reel machines...racks...records. Most of it is probably trashed by now. KSOS also had a McMartin 5-pot stereo console. That one was also given to me and I have a friend storing it for me. Cool cool stuff. Miss those days.
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KLO flips
Jan 2, 2019 11:08:59 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by dxlistener on Jan 2, 2019 11:08:59 GMT -6
I for one, only listened to klo to hear jim rome. Guess it's back to iheart radio to find him. He's on a station from Anchorage Alaska that streams on iheart
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KLO flips
Jan 2, 2019 17:16:46 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by David on Jan 2, 2019 17:16:46 GMT -6
It's somewhat ironic that Rome's list of radio affiliates has finally been updated to include KLO now that they've dropped the talk format. I'm really surprised that neither KZNS or KALL has picked up Rome's show yet. I suppose it's also possible that KLGN might become the new Jim Rome affiliate in Utah, but most of their programming appears to be Fox Sports shows.
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Post by seattlefollower on Jan 2, 2019 20:56:45 GMT -6
I for one, only listened to klo to hear jim rome. Guess it's back to iheart radio to find him. He's on a station from Anchorage Alaska that streams on iheart DXListener, we carry the show live through 102.9 and 750 the Game, KXTG in Portland. I'm sure they'd love to have another online listener. 10 am to 1 pm Mountain every day (except 2 days a year during March Madness initial matchups - LOL) KXTG Portland (also on iHeart Radio app and website)
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