When The Walt Disney Co. decided to retire the call letters of legendary area radio station KRLA last fall, Dave Armstrong knew he had to have them. “So when they became available, we got them,” said Armstrong, who was then general manager of Glendale radio station KIEV. The rechristening of the former KIEV into the new KRLA 870-AM became official on Jan. 1 and the station’s fortunes have been headed north ever since. “It’s not just because of the call letters, but the fact that people are responding to our programming,” said Armstrong, general manager for KRLA and its sister stations, KKLA and KFSH, all of which are owned by Camarillo-based Salem Communications Corp. KRLA’s new all-talk format and the addition of longtime radio personality and former television talk show host Dennis Prager from KABC-AM have pushed the station’s ratings to double its previous average as KIEV at the end of 2000. The station had been mired near the bottom of the ratings heap, with an average .6 rating, according to the Arbitron ratings service, when Armstrong and his staff set about turning the old KIEV into the new KRLA. Today the station sports a 1.3 rating, double its numbers of a year ago, and has moved up to the middle of the pack, ranking 25th out of 43 radio stations in the Los Angeles market. Don Barrett, former KIQQ Radio general manager and local radio watcher, says he’s not surprised. “KRLA is a historic radio station that a lot of people remember from their youth,” Barrett said. A pioneer rock and roll radio station in the 1950s and 1960s going so far as to bring the Beatles to the Hollywood Bowl in 1965 and 1966 the station went on to become an oldies music station featuring legendary rock deejay, Dick “Hug-gy Boy” Hugg. “People in Los Angeles have a good feeling when it comes to KRLA and we wanted to take advantage of that,” Armstrong said. After the Walt Disney Co. acquired KRLA last November and agreed to change its call letters to KSPN to reflect its ESPN Radio Network affiliation, Armstrong filed a successful request with the Federal Communications Commission to use the famed call letters and replace the venerable KIEV with the former rock station moniker. “KIEV had been around since the ’30s, but we found out that it didn’t really stir any emotions in people Not the way that KRLA did,” Armstrong said. As KIEV, the station was a Glendale mainstay that served for decades as the radio home for famed personalities like comedian Don Rickles, who got his start on radio, Dick Whittinghill and Sam Benson. What had evolved into an oldies station became all-talk after Salem acquired it in 1998. The station’s power output doubled to 20,000 watts last year and its talk format began reaching a larger audience just as its new call letters became official, Armstrong said. Nearly nine months since the changeover, KRLA’s revenues are up by 60 percent, Armstrong said, citing the popularity of Prager’s show and the station’s increased efforts to market itself as the “New KRLA.” With the addition of film critic Michael Medved and outspoken former newsman and radio personality George Putnam, the station has gained a solid foothold among local radio listeners, Armstrong said. As the station’s listeners grew, its demographics changed. A year ago, 75 percent of the audience was over the age of 65. Today, Armstrong said, 65 percent are between 35 and 64. “We were very lucky to get Dennis from KABC (radio), and that his audience followed him over,” he said. Prager, whose program is syndicated nationwide, said KRLA was the ideal situation for him after years with KABC-AM. “It’s a national program, but I feel very free to discuss the Valley’s issues and not just the news and other issues that come up, and that has improved the show considerably,” Prager said. The former television talk show host said he left KABC after the station insisted he keep his station locally-oriented. “KABC said ‘OK, we would like you to stay here, but we don’t want any daytime syndicated shows,'” Prager said. “I thought it was beyond foolish because the average listener doesn’t care if there were other listeners in other cities.” Armstrong said advertising revenue for KRLA averages more than $300,000 per month. Salem Communications, which owns KRLA and 80 stations around the country, projects revenue for this year at about $138.5 million for a 25.8-percent increase from the $110.1 million in 2000. On billboards and in bus ads and newspaper advertisements, the company has touted its star attractions: Prager, Medved, Putnam and former Ronald Reagan advisor Hugh Hewitt. But ever-mindful of marketing efforts, Armstrong insists most effective has been its community involvement, lending KRLA’s name to efforts to aid the homeless and to keep a battered women’s shelter from closing earlier this year. “We told them we wanted to get involved and asked how much it was going to cost to keep it open,” Armstrong said. “They said $320,000 and in two months we raised the $320,000.” With the help of its on-air personalities touting the campaign, the shelter stayed open and Prager and his colleagues soon realized the power of talk radio. “It gets people involved in their community. It’s not just radio to them,” Prager said.
