When KAMP (Amp 97.1) Los Angeles launched last year, it was possible to respect the station’s initial success and still believe that it had left an open format hole. With Top 40 powerhouse KIIS having successfully leaned rhythmic for so many years, it was disappointing that Mainstream Top 40 wasn’t finding any takers, despite its growing success in once unlikely markets from Miami to Seattle.

A year and a half later. Amp has plenty to be proud of; it’s third in the market and has done a lot better than most of the stations cloned from it. But in July, KIIS was No. 1 in the market with a 6.7 – the market’s highest PPM-era share outside the special holiday report. And while the KIIS of 18 months ago was clearly mass-appeal, the current KIIS is a lot broader musically. It’s telling of the new direction that Nielsen BDS shows KIIS as the station that has given Taylor Swift’s new “Mine” its second-most airplay of any station at this writing—and more than any Country station.

Did KIIS broaden because Amp was crowding them on the rhythmic side? Or did they just follow Top 40 music where it was going? Either way, the station that once ruled the market with a 10-share in 1984 is now posting the kind of overall numbers that Mainstream CHR wasn’t expected to see again – particularly one that has a viable in-format competitor.

One other note about KIIS. When I listened to the following midday stretch, it was very adult in one regard—it edits the implied extreme language in songs more thoroughly than most other Top 40 stations. Listen to “Sexyback” on KIIS and you would have no idea what kind of people “don’t know how to act”; several words, not just the one at issue, are edited out. And Eminem & Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” has its third and darkest verse excised—no punches are leveled, even at the drywall. Here’s KIIS at 10 a.m. on Thursday (12):

• B.O.B, f/Hayley Williams, “Airplanes”
• Ne-Yo, “Miss Independent”
• Dirty Heads f/Rome, “Lay Me Down”
• Taio Cruz, “Break Your Heart”
• Eminem & Rihanna, “Love The Way You Lie”
• Justin Timberlake, “Sexyback”
• Nicki Minaj, “Your Love”
• Killers, “Somebody Told Me”
• Iyaz, “Replay”
• Mike Posner, “Cooler Than Me”
• Enrique Iglesias f/Pitbull, “I Like It”
• Mary J. Blige, “Be Without You”
• Usher f/Pitbull, “DJ Got Us Falling In Love Again”
• Train, “Hey Soul Sister”
• Taio Cruz, “Dynamite”
• Chris Brown, “With You”