You can't blame the new owners of KJUL for aggressively marketing their return of adult standards to Las Vegas' radio dial. After all, since you have to play the hand you are dealt, you might as well pretend it's a good one, or, even better, that you chose it.
Owner Scott Gentry told the Sun he'd been given the call letters by the company in Utah that bought them after the original KJUL recently went country and changed to KCYE ("Coyote Country"). His brother and partner, Kurt Gentry, told the Review-Journal that they paid for the letters. And by the time the story was formalized into the station's press release, the brothers had "aggressively went after FCC rights to use the KJUL call letters." Good for them, because if you believe the press, KJUL isn't a company, it's a cause.
The original KJUL died last month when Beasley Broadcasting Group flipped the station at 104.3 from adult standards to country music. This sort of thing happens all the time, and protests are to be expected. In this case, the protest, in fact, seemed particularly small for a market as large as Las Vegas: About 25 people gathered in front of Beasley's offices and 50 people held a rally at Sunset Park. Even a petition circulated to demand the return of the format seems to have only had around 1,000 signatures. But these are unusual times for radio, and the fact that the demographic for KJUL was largely seniors managed to bring a lot of negative attention to Beasley's decision. The reaction was as if this was not commercial radio at all but a government program being sliced—a seniors advocacy group, for example, circulated the petition. And yet it all worked, right, because KJUL is back on the air?
Not exactly; 104.3-FM is still Coyote Country. The protests made no difference to Beasley Broadcasting Group's programming decisions.
However, Beasley's decision to flip to a country format had a huge impact less than a notch up the dial, where the Gentry brothers, owners of 104.7-FM, had since July implemented a country format. The Gentrys had spent years—two years according to what they told the Sun, or three according to what they told the Review-Journal—researching the market, deciding on a country format as the best approach and then launching the station. Now, suddenly, there was Beasley Broadcasting with a country station just transforming the entire market. The Gentrys' Summit American company now faced a battle for listeners and advertisers with the giant Beasley Broadcasting Group—and their 104.7-FM is at a disadvantage by being available, according to the Sun, in about 80 percent of the Las Vegas Valley. So, for example, in my Henderson apartment, 104.3-FM has country music coming in loud and clear, but I get only static at 104.7.
So the Gentry brothers took the road less traveled and picked up the discarded adult-standards format, returning it to the air this week with the Carpenters' "Yesterday Once More."
So, while it makes for a cool story that a bunch of seniors got together and used their marketing muscle to—excuse the Cher reference—turn back time, that is not exactly what happened.
Radio has never had much use for older listeners based on the cliché that they have already made their brand decisions and don't get swayed by advertising. And, in some ways, the effort to get the old KJUL call letters for this entirely new station seems to underline that point. But, as with the recording industry a few years ago, technological innovation (in the form of satellite and Internet radio) has been taking away the younger audience that radio has always craved. Older listeners, however, are not flocking to satellite radio—that alone should make savvy broadcasters stop writing them off and start wondering if, after all, there isn't a way to market to them. Otherwise, commercial broadcast radio may also soon be looking to retire.
Richard Abowitz is a Weekly contributing editor. Reach him at
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