Today, Variety magazine published an article about KROQ, a once-obscure but eventually highly influential radio station in the Los Angeles area.
https://variety.com/2020/music/news/...ne-1234609654/
KROQ is an alternative music station. Prior to the early 1980s, it was small and mostly unknown. They went to a "Rock of the Eighties" format in 1980, which mixed punk and new wave, and it quickly became very popular with Los Angeles area audiences.
As the 1980s wore on, KROQ became the most influential alternative music station in the country, bringing the alternative format into the mainstream, as contradictory as that sounds.
Many on-air personalities went on to much greater fame. Jimmy Kimmel got his start on KROQ as "Jimmy the Sports Guy", for example. Dr. Drew Pinsky and Adam Carolla also originated at KROQ, as did Carson Daly, Shadoe Stevens, Richard Blade, Swedish Egil, and Rodney Bingenheimer, the latter three all hosting alternative shows on Sirius-XM today. Ralph Garman of "The Ralph Report" podcast also began on KROQ.
KROQ was also the originator of the highly popular Loveline program, which was developed accidenally.
At the time, radio stations were required to devote a certain number of hours per week to "public service" programs. As these programs rarely fit in with the format of music stations, they would usually be placed during the dead-zone hours of very late night or early Sunday morning.
A KROQ engineer and sometimes-DJ named Scott Mason volunteered to a dating call-in show called "Loveline" in 1983, in order to meet the public service requirement. Believing that it might actually have some moderate potential to generate okay ratings, they placed it on Sunday night, which is still a fairly dead time for radio, but not as bad as super-late-night or weekend mornings. At first, the show was hosted by Mason and another DJ named Swedish Egil, but the show was boring and bland. The morning surf reporter at KROQ named Jim Trenton was invited to co-host Loveline one night. Trenton brought a fun, outspoken, and cool vibe to the formerly monotone show, and it quickly took off.
Within a year, Loveline became one of the most popular shows in the country. Finding himself unable to answer serious medical questions related to STDs and similar matters, Trenton was looking for a doctor to co-host with him. He met a young medical student named Drew Pinksy at a party, and offered him a position on the show as "Dr. Drew". That's where Dr. Drew got his start.
Ten years later, on Trenton's 40th birthday, morning host Bean played a prank on him, where they sent an assistant to walk into one of Trenton's unlocked doors of his house, wake him up, and broadcast his reaction on air.
Trenton was angry about this, feeling his privacy was violated. Rather than complain to station management, he invited all of his listeners that night to a "midnight party" at a certain address he gave out over the air. It turned out that it was Bean's home address. Bean was terrified by the mob in front of his house, especially after some of the people started to vandalize his property and demand he come out. The LAPD was called to break it up.
Trenton was fired for this, and his career never recovered. Dr. Drew, his best friend at the time, promised at first to resign if they wouldn't hire Trenton back, but later thought better of it and stayed on. They first hired MTV VJ Riki Rachtman to take Trenton's place, but when Riki sucked, they replaced him with Adam Carolla. That's where Carolla got his start.
Loveline eventually syndicated and had a slot on MTV, with Carolla and Dr. Drew hosting. Most people outside of LA never realized that it was actually Trenton who created the show. Trenton attempted to sue KROQ twice for this, and lost. He remains bitter about it to this day. Personally, I thought the show sucked once Trenton was fired.
Morning host Bean had his own controversy. In 1990, a person called into the "Kevin & Bean Show" and confessed on-air to having committed a murder. The LAPD spent a lot of man hours investigating this murder, only to later find out that the entire thing was a hoax. They almost fired Kevin and Bean over this, who were relatively new at the station, but they stayed on.
Kevin and Bean remained until 2019, when Bean retired in November. Co-host Kevin Ryder remained on, with two new co-hosts joining him.
That was the beginning of the end. Influential and highly-paid program director Kevin Weatherly had been at his job since 1992, and was told in late February his pay was going to be cut by 30% if he stayed on -- kind of a soft firing. As expected, Weatherly quit. (Weatherly also created the popular and budget-friendly "JACK-FM", which runs with no DJs, and plays classic rock with snarky voice-over clips in between.)
Some felt that Weatherly's pseudo-firing was deserved and necessary. He seemed to have gotten bored of KROQ, and was spending more time on other projects over the last several years, which coincided with various strategic mistakes that hurt ratings.
The new program director started demanding they play pop music, such as Post Malone, which had never before been played on the station.
In March 2020, they fired Kevin after a long trend of plummeting station and show ratings. KROQ has trailed its Los Angeles alternative competitor "Alt 98.7" for years now, and it looks like they've finally given up on the format -- and their longtime morning show.
KROQ is on its way out as an alternative station. If there were never a KROQ, it is unlikely that alternative music -- the genre which eventually gave rise to Coachella and Lollapalooza -- would have any more than a niche following.
RIP KROQ
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Originally Posted by MrTickle
