Big Band Fans Turned Off After KABL is Tuned Out

Aug. 14–WALNUT CREEK — Big band staple KABL packed up and left local airwaves last month, leaving a Sinatra-sized hole in the hearts of the radio station’s largely AARP-aged audience.

The frequency that Clear Channel’s KABL, known for its ring-a-ding swing and classic crooning, has called home for the past year was taken over in late July by new owners, who have replaced the Rat Pack with the musical equivalent of the Brat Pack.

The new station, KKDV, markets itself as “Your Hometown Station,” with hyper-local content blending reports on Ygnacio Valley Road traffic jams and Walnut Creek weather with “adult contemporary” music. KABL broadcast its last show on July 26 and retreated to the Internet.

Walnut Creek resident Wiles Hallock, 87, tuned his radio to 92.1 FM one recent Sunday, expecting to hear the music he has listened to and loved all his life. Some Rodgers and Hammerstein show tunes, perhaps, or a sultry Ella Fitzgerald ballad.

“It wasn’t playing that kind of music at all,” said Hallock, who hasn’t really followed musical trends since Cole Porter faded from the scene. “I can’t even tell you what it was.”

Hallock’s musical tastes are eclectic — he estimates about a hundred CDs in his collection, ranging from classical to jazz — but they don’t extend to the vocal stylings of the likes of punk princess Avril Lavigne or pop idol Kelly Clarkson.

So these days, Hallock has to get his big band fix on television, through one of the all-music channels on the cable network.

KKDV owner and operator Coast Radio got a number of calls from confused KABL fans when KKDV first went on the air at the end of July, said general manager John Levitt. Recognizing that KABL’s music is “near and dear” to an entire generation, the station’s staff made sure to direct callers to KABL’s new Internet home.

“Those were the people who fought in World War II,” Levitt said of KABL’s demographics. “That’s a group we should honor and be respectful of.”

But the new format, with more modern music and a very local focus, is “meant to appeal to the largest group of people we possibly can,” Levitt added.

Rossmoor resident Andy Karr isn’t part of that group. Karr, — who, when asked about his age, would only say, “pretty old, but I love to dance” — was sorry to discover the demise of KABL because there aren’t any other radio stations around that play the kind of music that gets his toes tapping.

“My wife and I on occasion would dance on our tile floor in the kitchen” to KABL, he recalled.

Karr still heads out weekly to various community centers to get in his dancing but says the station’s new music isn’t going to inspire any impromptu two-step sessions at his house.

“The music they’ve got on the station now, it’s crummy,” Karr said.

KABL crew members heard from plenty of unhappy listeners when they announced the station was going off the air, said program director Clark Reid. “A lot of people are disappointed and upset, and so forth,” he said.

The staff learned of the sale this spring, but it had known for some time that the end of an era was approaching, as radio veteran and KABL DJ Jim Lange, whose long career has included stints as host of “Name That Tune” and “The Dating Game,” was set to retire.

The station is no stranger to change. KABL got its start in the late 1950s, broadcasting a brand of mostly instrumental scores known as “beautiful music.” A few decades and several format changes later, the station went to a big band play list in 1997, then dropped it three years later in favor of soft hits of the ’60s and ’70s. Listeners complained, and the original format was quickly reinstated.

Last fall, the liberal talk radio show Air America squeezed KABL off its spot at 960 AM, and it found a new home on the Walnut Creek-based station 92.1 FM. The signal doesn’t reach much beyond Contra Costa County, but KABL fans in the right ZIP codes were thrilled.

The reprieve was short-lived.

Coast Radio was approached about buying the station in April and closed the deal July 29, Levitt said. He and his brother, Jim, saw it as a perfect opportunity to expand their network of local stations such as the ones they operate in the Tri-Valley and in Solano County.

The brothers are following in the footsteps of their father, who started a San Jose radio station in 1929, and want to continue the tradition of “local, community-focused radio,” Levitt said.

KABL has disappeared previously from the airwaves, only to resurface in a different location on the dial, and Reid says the station is poised yet again to pull a similar phoenix act.

Details are still being worked out, and Reid declined to go into specifics until everything is official, but he said it looks like the KABL format will be broadcast for part of the day on a Bay Area-wide station, starting soon. The music will be back, but the DJs won’t — except Lange, who will be earning money for his green fees by recording some of the “liners” played during breaks between songs.

In the meantime, the Internet savvy can still get the music at kablradio.com. The station is also making a foray into Web radio, gadgets that plug directly into the phone or DSL line, and will allow listeners to get KABL without a computer.

The devices are now used mostly to broadcast online church services to shut-ins and aren’t available yet in stores, Reid said. But the station is negotiating with a Netherlands-based company to buy them in bulk and sell them to KABL listeners. They deliberately went for a simple, easy-to-use device to appeal to the tech-leery older generation, he said.

But not everyone may follow them into the new frontier.

“I probably wouldn’t do it,” Hallock said. “I’m not that technically with-it.”

Karr isn’t enamored with the idea of getting his tunes from the Internet instead of the radio, either: “You can’t dance to that.”

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