Any Oahu music fan who has tuned in to get some smooth sax from Grover Washington Jr., David Sanborn or Gato Barbieri this week must have gotten quite a jolt, after what George Hochman did during his Super Bowl Sunday.
He changed the format that airs on 101.5 FM from "Hawaii’s Smooth Jazz" to "Honolulu’s Real Rock," and branded it "K-Rock," similar to one of his stations on Maui.
It "will be the loudest and hardest-rocking station in Honolulu," Hochman said. "The smooth jazz format "didn’t get the advertiser support that I wanted, and at the end of the day, it is a business," he said.
The smooth-jazz programming has moved to KPHI-AM 1130 and FM 96.7 nightly from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. During the day, KPHI airs a contemporary Filipino format.
Hochman predicts the rock format will do better than did the smooth jazz, and thinks his format, which he calls more edgy than Honolulu’s other rock stations (KUCD-FM 101.9 and KPOI-FM 105.9, for instance), will carve out its own niche among listeners.
The target demographic is 18- to 40-year-old men, but it’s not as if lots of women don’t also enjoy head-banging, face-melting music from time to time — or always.
"From Crue to Foo," a station announcement says.
You’ll hear bands from AC/DC to the Black Keys, Red Hot Chili Peppers to Green Day, Judas Priest to Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam to Metallica and Led Zeppelin.
The identical thing happened on Honolulu’s FM dial in the early 1990s. One moment your columnist was parking at Kailua beach with the radio tuned to smooth jazz. A few hours and coats of sunblock later, the same frequency in the now really hot car was blasting something branded as "Z-Rock."
Some of Hochman’s "K-Rock" rock programming comes from Dial Global Radio Networks, which he carries in exchange for airing national commercials, and he’ll air the Eddie Trunk show from 9 p.m. to midnight Sundays. Trunk is known as the host of "That Metal Show" on VH1.
The Dial Global programming is a way for Hochman to tap in to "national contests" that will give listeners a chance to win trips to festivals and concerts, he said. "It’s a bigger presentation," he said.
The station also will originate some of its own programming, including a 7-to-9 p.m. call-in request show hosted by Roy Dackerman Mondays through Saturdays, and before Trunk’s show, another "metal" show from 7 to 9 p.m. Sundays hosted by Hochman’s son, who goes by the name "G3" on the air.
Based on Kauai but also on Oahu most days of the week, Hochman operates 12 stations’ worth of radio programming across the island chain. His is not a huge, publicly traded corporate entity as the owners of most Oahu radio stations either are or have been.
"I may not be the biggest broadcaster in town, but I can safely put myself in the ‘most unique’ category," he said.
To wit, his ethnic programming includes the Filipino AM and FM stations; the J-pop, or Japanese popular music format of 97.1 FM, and K-pop, or Korean popular music format on 107.5 FM on Oahu; country stations on Kauai and Maui; an "island" music station on Kauai; an oldies station and rock station on Maui and mainstream hit music stations on Kauai and Oahu.
All the stations also are streamed over the Internet, where his largest listenership — in Japan — clicks in to the J-pop station.
Why?
"In Japan, radio stations are run like TV stations. They don’t have formats; they have programs," he said. So his email feedback indicates people in Japan click in via the Web and listen "all day long."
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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
