A brief occupant of the 1260 slot on the Bay Area AM dial, KXLR came into being on July 16, 1985, replacing KOIT. Barely six months later, the call letters were shifted back to KOIT.
In between, owner Bonneville International decided to try something new: “Trendformation”. Broadcasting magazine reported it was conceived by Bonneville executive Jack Adamson and executed by consultant Norm Woodruff, who’d previously worked with KCBS and KXRX, among other stations.
What exactly was “Trendformation”? It wasn’t all-news, and it wasn’t music. It was some of both. The format featured information on news events and emerging trends, mixed with a combination of “light jazz” and “new age” music. Listeners could expect to hear short news items, six-minute interviews, and 20 minutes of music an hour. Whatever its merits as a viable format, it was cheap to produce compared to high-budget all-news or news/talk operations.
Adamson told Broadcasting that “Trendformation” was inspired by the notion that baby boomers were getting into the corporate mainstream “and are looking for information that will affect their lives and careers.” He added that KXLR was the pilot for a tight, lean-budgeted information station that could be sold in combination with an FM music station (such as Bonneville’s San Francisco property KOIT-FM).
The audience never materialized. And when Bonneville brass told general manager Chuck Tweedle to shut the thing down in early 1986, he and consultant Woodruff couldn’t even agree on what the station was. “This was the equivalent of National Public Radio on commercial AM radio,” Tweedle told the Oakland Tribune. “Actually, we were more like the BBC or CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) than NPR,” said Woodruff.
Tweedle went on to say, “We’ll be glad to pass on our data to any other station anywhere that wants to try Trendformation.” It doesn’t seem that there was a rush to accept his offer.
