Jazz Station Trumpets Its New Name

Ask Prince, or the Soviets, or the fan of any radio station that has flipped formats: A name change usually heralds even greater upheaval.

But at public station KLON-FM (88.1), the name shift a week ago to KKJZ merely reinforced what it’s been playing since 1981: jazz.

“Any time there’s change, people worry. They shouldn’t be afraid,” said Judy Jankowski, general manager at KKJZ, which is owned and operated by California State University, Long Beach.

“Now we get instant recognition. Southern California has a full-time jazz station, and most cities don’t,” she said. “We’re making it easier for people to find us.”

KLON went on the air in 1951 as a service of the Long Beach Unified School District, with the call letters denoting its city of origin, Jankowski said. Thirty years later, the university took over the license and immediately started playing jazz.

“We have always wanted to have ‘jazz’ in our call letters, but the call letters have to be available,” said Jankowski, general manager for eight years. The right letter combinations were always in use or only available for a steep price. “We’re a public radio station. We don’t have that kind of money.”

Then in February, KKJZ, a smooth jazz station in Portland, Ore., changed its format to “lite rock” and its call letters to KLTH.

“Let’s grab ‘em,” Jankowski said, and she made the pitch to the station’s board of directors and Cal State Long Beach administrators. After their approval and a petition to the Federal Communications Commission, the change was made.

“Now if anybody comes to L.A., they’re going to see KKJZ and know what we play. I think it shows our commitment to this wonderful art form,” she said.

Observers say the change makes sense, identifying the station’s unique format rather than where the signal happens to originate.

“I like the name K-Jazz. It tells the whole story,” said Willard H. Murray Jr., a retired state assemblyman from Paramount who, during his tenure, worked to create the California Institute for the Preservation of Jazz, based not coincidentally at Cal State Long Beach because of the station’s presence and the school’s jazz education program.

The institute was formed in 1994 to “preserve and promote the great American cultural heritage and social history of jazz music.” But Murray is concerned that the decline of jazz clubs, lack of music education in schools and dearth of other outlets for Louis Armstrong, Diana Krall and others will push jazz to the margins.

“I look around and I don’t see anybody under 40” at jazz concerts, Murray said. “They don’t attract what these other genres do. People fill up stadiums who I’ve never heard of.

“I would equate it to opera and classical music. It represents a high level of creativity and performance,” Murray said. “And jazz, especially, is an American art form. That’s why it’s worth preserving. It’s historically significant.”

Although she too bemoans the lack of outlets for the music, Jankowski is optimistic about the future of jazz and of K-Jazz. When she joined the station, its audience averaged 45 to 55 years old. Now the typical listener is a 39-year-old male. “Boy, isn’t that a nice demographic?” she said.

KLON spent 20 years making itself a brand name for lovers of jazz, with programming that includes Latin and lounge, bebop and blues, swing and straight-ahead, and with sponsorship of such events as Jazz at the Bowl, twilight dance concerts on the Santa Monica Pier, and the Long Beach Blues Festival.

“It’s a great jazz station,” said John Sutton, a 35-year radio veteran and contributor to All About Jazz, a print and online magazine. “They certainly know the music.”

Led by Chuck Niles, who anchors middays Wednesday through Sunday and whose 45 years in radio netted him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the station’s lineup features DJs intimate with the music, whether by playing it, studying it or living its history.

“You need to know about [Thelonious] Monk and ‘Trane [John Coltrane] and Dixieland and blues and Medeski, Martin & Wood, which is the new stuff. You really have to be immersed in the music,” Sutton said, and not simply read from a press release the record company sends with the disc.

Yet even with the track record KLON established with fans, the name change probably won’t thrill them, Sutton said.

“Your jazz audience is akin to the classical audience--the call letters could be about anything. If they like the station, they’ll identify with it,” said Sutton, who coincidentally worked at a Denver jazz station called KKJZ in the early ‘80s.

On the other hand, the new letters will help attract anyone not already familiar with KLON, Sutton said. “They say to you, ‘This is the jazz station.’ ”

“It wasn’t a decision we made lightly,” Jankowski said.

“We’re certainly proud to be in Long Beach,” she added, but the benefits of the new name outweigh the 50-year tradition of the KLON moniker, “especially when we talk about serving the world.”

In addition to broadcasting to Southern California, KKJZ streams its signal on the Internet, is available nationwide via cable and satellite, is heard overseas on Armed Forces Radio, and is the only public radio station carried in Japan on DirecTV, all of which, Jankowski asserts, makes KKJZ “the most listened-to jazz station in the world.”

Closer to home, though, folks need to adjust to the change.

“We’re all slipping up. It’s kind of fun, and we apologize to our listeners,” Jankowski said. “At a board of directors meeting yesterday, one or two times I called ourselves KLON, and they all laughed.

“There will be some transition,” she added, with a van to be painted and signs to change. “We have a whole bunch of old stationery to use up, because we’re public radio.”