Previous Format: Classical KFAC
New Format: Rhythmic AC “92.3 The Beat” KKBT
Date & Time Of Change: September 20, 1989 at 2:00pm
More Info: Wikipedia
KFAC Signs-Off
Previous Format: Classical KFAC
New Format: Rhythmic AC “92.3 The Beat” KKBT
Date & Time Of Change: September 20, 1989 at 2:00pm
More Info: Wikipedia
Jess R. Hernandez
One of the more sadder moments in L.A. radio history. The station did not become “92.3 The Beat” until March `90. For the first six months, it was “Rock With a Beat,” and a strange mixture of Top 40, oldies, and AOR. Comedian Paul Rodriguez was it’s morning DJ. But when the ratings got even worse, they fired many of DJ’s, including Paul, and went full urban. I have the full last hour of KFAC, the first half hour of the heartbeats with music snippets of their format, and the debut of the new station at noon the next day.
Alex
Jess, are you going to submit the debut of The Beat to FCA?
Work Avoidance Log
The Log cannot decide if the bleed-through of “Dick Clark’s Rock Roll and Remember” that’s so clearly audible during the “60 seconds of silence of respect and admiration” for the end of classical KFAC is ironic or just sad.
Anybody know which station that was? It’s so loud that the heartbeat effect that’s supposed to signal the imminent arrival of KKBT has to fight its way through for the first couple of seconds.
As a sapling in college, The Log and one or two others from our student radio station visited the KFAC AM & FM studios, then located in what amounted to a very long hallway on the ground floor of Prudential [now Museum] Square on Wilshire Boulevard. We were there to ask KFAC to waive its market exclusivity for Mutual Broadcasting System newscasts. As a form of assistance to the student station and the college’s Journalism School, Mutual had agreed to allow the station to air newscasts and use actualities from news feeds–but required that its only LA affiliate, KFAC, sign off on the deal. And the network made us do the asking; it would not approach KFAC on our behalf.
We saw no reason for KFAC to object: KFAC aired no Mutual newscasts on either AM or FM, and a week’s worth of listening showed that the clear-your-throat-and-you’ll-miss-them rip-and-read newscasts that KFAC aired sporadically didn’t include any actualities at all, network or local. As for the competitive angle, the student station–a carrier current AM (the web was still more than a decade in the future)–could be heard only on campus, and even there only in the dorms and one of the cafeterias. And it programmed free-form rock’n’roll.
Of course KFAC objected. Not sure KFAC management even gave a reason. They just said no.
Today, a Baja Fresh occupies KFAC’s former space on Wilshire Boulevard, and Mutual slid into irrelevance a decade before it aired its last newscast in 1999.
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