What really happened to the radio station KZLA?

Question

why did they go off the air without any notice & where are they now?

Answer 1

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 18 — When Kathy Schneider turned on her favorite radio station, KZLA-FM, on Thursday morning, she heard the usual mix of Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney and other country artists. Two hours later, when she returned to her car, the song playing at KZLA’s spot on the dial was one she did not recognize. It was not an unfamiliar country tune, but a different genre altogether.

At first she thought something had happened to the transmission tower, but the pop and R & B hits kept pumping out of her speakers. Then an announcer welcomed listeners to the re-engineered station, now known as Movin’ 93.9.

“The frustrating part was that everything seemed fine at 20 minutes before 10, then you get back into your car, and they’ve changed everything,” said Ms. Schneider, 38, a customs broker from the Northridge section of Los Angeles. “I’m not only angry at the change, but how they changed it.”

The abrupt switch — Keith Urban’s “Tonight I Wanna Cry” followed by a brief silence and the rising beat of the Black Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get it Started” — left Los Angeles, the nation’s No. 2 radio market, with more than 10 million people, without an area-wide country music station, even as the genre remains a potent force on the Billboard sales charts. It joins New York, the biggest radio market, which has been without a major country station since 1996, and San Francisco, the nation’s No. 4 market, which lost a major country station in 2001.

Paradoxically, Los Angeles consistently ranks as one of the top two markets for country album sales (it accounts for roughly 3 percent of all country sales so far this year) and plays host to the genre’s biggest touring acts. Thursday marked the first night of a sold-out three-night stand by Mr. McGraw and Ms. Hill, country’s power couple, at the Staples Center arena.

But the station’s corporate parent, Emmis, which is based in Indianapolis, concluded that even having the city’s only country station — billed as “America’s most listened-to country station” — was no longer worth it, and that it could do better. The switch to what it calls “rhythmic pop contemporary” was dictated by economic common sense: a country station that draws predominantly white listeners aged 25 to 54 could no longer stay afloat in an ethnically diverse megalopolis. KZLA’s ratings and ad sales had been declining, and a $2 million marketing blitz last spring had not reversed the trend.

“Country is a tough format to do in a market that is an ethnic melting pot,” said Rick Cummings, Emmis’s president of radio. “The appeal of the format is fairly limited when it comes to ethnicity.” In Los Angeles, he said, stations that cater mostly to white listeners are “playing for less than 25 percent of the marketplace on a good day.”

And while country music may draw a more diverse audience in cities like Houston, he added, it simply does not in Los Angeles, where Latino listeners have a wealth of choices for entertainment in both English and Spanish.

But that is little consolation to fans like Karen Oliver, 41, a merchandise manager at DreamWorks Studios. She had her alarm set to the station and listened all day at work at her desk and on the way home. “Personally, right now I’m at a loss,” Ms. Oliver said in a telephone interview from her office. “I don’t even have CD’s spinning; I’m too upset.”

Music industry executives lamented the loss of their primary outlet for promoting new country music to fans in what has been a huge country market in terms of CD sales. The Country Music Association released a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” about the switch, and expressed hope that another radio company might turn an existing station to the format.

Joe Galante, who runs the Nashville division of the music giant Sony BMG Music Entertainment, said labels could continue to promote music in cities without country stations through cable outlets like Country Music Television and various Internet sites. “I honestly think it’s unfortunate for this to happen,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s a serious blow against the format. We have survived it, for as many times as it’s happened.”

Answer 2

Sadly It Is long gone from a individual who is aware of approximately radio's and radio stations. im unhappy to mention it's long gone similar to they took off ninety three.a million and switched to JACK(a**) FM. But There are regrettably not more nation radio stations in Los Angeles cept for San Diego CA ninety seven.three If That continues to be nation. KSON and San Diego isn't hereall the time

Answer 3

If you are talking about the last country music station in Los Angeles, I read in the paper that they changed their format to Hip Hop/ Pop, or something like that. They decided that there was no market for country in LA anymore and went where the money is at.

Answer 4

they turned it off cause it sucked