KCBQ: FROM COUNTRY TO OLDIES

SAN DIEGO —  The country radio wars are over at last.

After a five-year uphill fight against veteran country ratings leader KSON-AM/FM (1240 and 97.3), KCBQ-AM/FM (1170 and 105.3) finally gave up Wednesday, and switched to rock and pop oldies.

“This market can’t support four country radio stations,” said Simon T, president of Eric-Chandler Communications, owner of KCBQ. “Country listeners in San Diego are more than served by two stations, and we saw an obvious void in the market for a format that appears to be a much better alternative.”

The 8-month-old San Diego broadcasting firm headed by Simon T, 35, first contracted to buy the KCBQ combo from Infinity Broadcasting of New York in April. The deal, in which the two stations exchanged hands for $12.2 million, closed Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., and by 6 the new format was in place, kicked off by the Rolling Stones’ 1965 classic, “Satisfaction.”

“I made the decision to change formats six weeks ago,” Simon T said. “But I was restricted by the seller from saying anything until the deal closed, so I even had to order the records through a third party, just so no one could trace them back to me.

“The only reason we didn’t make the change sooner is we didn’t take over the station until now. If we would have closed the deal two months ago, country would have been gone two months ago, too.”

The battle between KSON and KCBQ began in 1981, when KCBQ quit playing Top 40 tunes and adopted the same country format that KSON-AM had had since 1963 (KSON-FM came along in 1976).

Almost immediately, the local country audience--which had previously belonged entirely to KSON--began to seesaw from one pair of stations to the other.

It was a question of who would blink first. Management at both combos agreed that San Diego wasn’t big enough to support four country radio stations; at the same time, neither side was willing to give in.

Then, two years ago, KSON began consistently outdistancing KCBQ in the quarterly Arbitron ratings, and local radio observers speculated that it would only be a matter of time before KCBQ conceded defeat.

But as recently as September, KCBQ general manager Charlie Ochs was saying: “We are here to stay, we are doing country, and we’re very serious about it . . . in spite of all the rumors.”

When the change did come, Ochs was one of the first casualties. Next went program director Gary (Fuzzy) Herron, two top sales executives and two support personnel.

Simon T, a former executive with the ABC Radio Network and, before that, album-oriented rock station KLOS-FM (95.5) in Los Angeles, takes over the general manager slot himself. John Forsythe, formerly of classic hits stations KLZZ-AM/FM (600 and 106.5), is the new program director.

“The people who we let go were not let go because of their performance,” Simon T said. “It’s simply a matter of the format change--if you have a football team and then all of a sudden decide you’re going to play basketball, you’re going to have to change the players.”

Perhaps no one is happier with KCBQ’s format change than the staff at KSON.

“It’s been a long, hard fight,” KSON program director Mike Shepard said. “While there has been some shifting back and forth (by listeners), for the last couple of years we’ve definitely had the upper hand.

“We committed ourselves to staying in this format, knowing full well that there wasn’t enough room for both of us, so naturally we’re happy with the way things turned out.”

Jim LaMarca, program director of oldies station XTRA-AM (690), expressed the opposite sentiment. His station was the first to bring back the oldies format in August, 1984; since then, he said, six other stations have followed suit.

“It’s a shame to see people can’t be creative and find something new,” LaMarca said of KCBQ’s new management team. “But now that they’ve done this, I don’t think it’s going to hurt us.

“The audience that listens to oldies is very loyal, and from the looks of recent ratings, we’re doing better than we did when we were the only ones.”