100.3 'The Sound' classic rock radio station in Southern California going off the air today at 1PM

Very sad to see a great station shut down that served its loyal LA fans wonderfully for 10 years.
It's been sold and is being replaced by a Christian station (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

 

As long as it's not an all sports channel. Those things were popping up all over the dial and it really pissed me off. There is no one on the face of the planet with less interest in professional than me.

 

It will be a Christian station named K-LOVE. Three radio stations were purchased at the same time by the same group. I believe they're going on the air immediately.

 

You mean the same nickname like the Spanish station at 107.5?
I could care less about another Christian station, I'm out of touch with that genre, what I hear on the air bugs me after a while.
Then again, I only listened to The Sound sometimes, though I do like Uncle Joe. Too much the "classic" playlist, kinda like Ozzy's Boneyard on SiriusXM. I want more adventurous programming! But my yearning is no doubt doomed to eternal disappointment in this focus-grouped, researched, psychologized "Corporate America" where the FCC abets by spreading its (our!) legs for every whim of the whatever MegaBroadcastCorp is petitioning them that day...

 

I couldn't agree more.....

 

Perfect.

 

Hopefully none of my local ones will be going off air anytime soon.

 

Jeez. That's a chain or network, not what the call letters will in any way change to. They gobble up stations everywhere like a piranha in the industry. I think I first heard of them in 2005 when Kilgore College sold out the station I used to work for, KTPB, to them.

 

I will miss The Sound. It was my yard work radio station.
Granted the playlist was kind of the SOS, but at least the
station had some character and personality.

Much better than 95.5 KLOS these days. Aside from the fact that
they still broadcast Breakfast With The Beatles on Sundays which I love;
they are a worthless waste of FM airspace.

 

Time to go to the far left side of the dial and find your local commercial-free stations. Donate to them when they have pledge drives, if you like them. They will play your favorites and things you only read about on the Hoffmam forums.

So many times I'll be driving in a new region and hear FM crap, then I find a signal around the 89.1 to 91.7 range and they're playing Buck Owens or Grateful Dead or free jazz. Bless 'em.

 

Wasn't there a famous duo FM classic rock radio DJ's that were very popular during the 70's, 80's and the 90's in the LA? I think they were in the morning hours. Are they retired now? Anyone recall their names?

 

Yes it is.

 

Mark and Brian. They are retired, though Mark had a solo morning show on the station we're mourning as recently as 18 months ago.

 

What is the slogan "Different strokes for different folks" I love sports and watching college & pro football and good sports talk shows on the radio & TV. 100.3 wasn't a real classic rock station anyway.

 

Jonesy's Jukebox is the best thing on ANY radio station!

 

Truth.
But there has been a few times I've tuned in when he has
a guest and it has been more talk than Jukebox.
But I dig the music he plays.

 

As far as classic rock radio goes, I think The Sound was a bit more adventurous than most. I don't live in the area anymore, but radio is pretty dire in Southern California.

 

What do classic rock stations have in common with Christian ones, they both preach to the choir.

 

K-LOVE is simulcast on over 440 radio stations across the U.S.

 

Thanks for the answer, Elliott Marx! While I was living out there in 1989, I won Rolling Stones's and The Who tickets at the LA Coliseum from that station. Great concerts too!

 

Where are people going to go to hear Hotel California 5 times a day?

Seriously, the Sound was really dull and bland. Peace, Love and Sunday Mornings was cool. And the jocks were talented. But the playlist was the same overplayed stuff. They acted like they were KMET, but they were basically Arrow 93, if you remember that bore-fest.

KLOS, while suffering some of the same repetition during drive-time, and featuring a god-awful trashy morning talk show, has always been better. They have had Bob Coburn, Jim Ladd, and now Steve Jones all doing freeform on a daily basis. Steve Jones' show is, as another poster noted, the best show on the radio.

Hopefully some of the former KLOS jocks like Uncle Joe and Tony Scott will go back to KLOS now that the Sound is gone. If Uncle Joe could bring back the "7th Day" (seven albums played back to back Sunday nights) that would be......awesome.

 

Aside from BC, Jim Ladd, Steve Jones and Chris Carter,
KLOS is a corporate shell of itself.

 

The Sound of silence: Classic rock station The Sound FM 100.3 played its final songs and left the air on Thursday
By PETER LARSEN | [email protected] | Orange County Register
PUBLISHED: November 16, 2017 at 1:19 pm | UPDATED: November 16, 2017 at 1:59 pm


When most radio stations get sold, change formats, or otherwise go away it’s usually a sudden switch. One minute you’re listening to eclectic rock and and roll, the next there’s a Spanish-language broadcast in that spot on the dial.
So listeners and employees of The Sound had it better than most when after the classic rock station at 100.3 FM was sold in September to a Christian broadcaster it was allowed to stay on the air for weeks, giving everyone a chance to make peace with its departure, say their goodbyes, and on Thursday morning pick the final songs The Sound would ever play.

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When The Sound 100.3 FM goes off the air soon its DJs, many of them longtime presences on Southern California airwaves, will at least temporarily be without an on-air home. Seen here, left to right, are Cynthia Fox, Mimi Chen, Uncle Joe Benson, and Rita Wilde. (Photo by Keith Weiner/The Sound)

The switch got flipped at 1 p.m .Thursday, which meant longtime DJ Uncle Joe Benson got to host most of the final shift, though almost all of the station’s on-air personalities and DJs were in the studio at some time during the morning. And from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., the time when Benson would traditionally pick and theme for the segment the 10 at 10, most of them took a turn picking a final favorite or meaningful song to play.

Morning hosts Andy Chanley and Gina Grad went early in the hour, Chanley picking Neil Young’s “Thrasher” — “But me I’m not stopping there / Got my own row left to hoe / Just another line / in the field of time” — while Grad chose Three Dog Night’s “Shambala,” a song she said never failed to make her feel happy from its first notes.

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After Mimi Chen, host of “Peace, Love & Sunday Mornings” who had Benson play a Crosby, Stills and Nash cover of the Beatles’ “In My Life” came Cynthia Fox, who along with Benson and fellow Sound DJ Rita Wilde, has been playing classic rock on Southern California radio since it was just plain old rock and roll.

“The song I selected I’m going to play as a tribute to my dad who gave me the gift of music,” Fox said. “It’s such a gift. He really believed in the power and the importance of music in our education and I’ve been able to carry that on.
“I feel lilke this song really captures the power of music to heal, transform and inspire the community,” she said, and then stepped aside for the Who song “Pure And Easy,” with its refrain, “There once was a note / Pure and easy / Playing so free, like a breath rippling by,” to represent her last cut.

Wilde, whose love of Bruce Springsteen is maybe only equaled by her love of U2, went with the Boss for her final track.
“Life is about choices and chances, opportunities and gratitude,” she said. “Life changes, things happen, things get torn down. but you’ve got to remember the good things, the memories.

“This is a song that Bruce Springsteen played last time he played the Sports Arena, before they tore it down,” Wilde said. “It’s called ‘Wrecking Ball.’ It’s not a sad song, you get to get up and dance. Just remember, be grateful, be thankful and be good to each other.”

Benson followed, wrapping up the 10 at 10 as 11 a.m. arrived, like those who preceded him talking about how wonderful it had been to work at The Sound, then reading a quote from the Beatles’ song “The End,” and finally, with a simple request — “Turn this sucker up” — playing Led Zeppelin’s “Rock And Roll.”
The next 90 minutes passed with a selection of symbolically chosen songs — “The Sky Is Crying” from Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, “Once In A Lifetime” by the Talking Heads, and “Waiting For The Sun,” by the Doors — among the tracks Benson played.

And then a little after 12:30 p.m., the station handed the microphone back to Chanley with an announcement that “Ten years ago (he) was our first DJ, 10 years later he’s our last.”

“We always pretty much shut up and let the music talk,” Chanley said of how The Sound always dealt with the sad news of the world that bubbled up at times over the past decade, and how amid the sadness of these farewells they’d do the same now.
“There are 11 words at the end of this album side that say a lot,” Chanley said. “This is how KMET shut down, right, Cynthia? (Fox had been at that much-loved station when it closed in 1987.)

“We’re going to play one last album side and then sign off at the top of the hour: Side two, the Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road.'”

And then, with a vinyl LP on the turntable, pops and hisses occasionally in the mix, they shut up and let the music do the talking: “Here Comes The Sun,” “Because,” the medley of “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “The Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and finally, “The End,” with the 11 words Chanley had mentioned 20-some minutes earlier: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

The needle lifted and Chanley returned with another 19 words of his own: “This has been KSWD Los Angeles. This is The Sound. And this dream will self-destruct in three, two –”

Silence.

 

I think "a bit more adventurous" is a fair summary, such as the "roll the dice" programming where after rolling they'd play that number of songs by the artist in question (would go on for a couple of hours).

However, they had a blind spot for grossly overplaying some songs, like Magic Man by Heart -- once we heard it three times in a weekend, and there is no excuse for more than one (and in fact, that song could be retired).

During their last week or so the programming was fantastic, mostly playing very deep cuts and it was a breath of fresh air.