First Listen: The CHR Battle For L.A.Entry by Sean Ross Feb. 24, 2009 Permalink When former FM talker KLSX Los Angeles debuted as Amp Radio 97.1 last Friday (20), it wasn’t the tween format that CBS had run for a year on L.A.’s KCBS-HD-2. It wasn’t exactly the “all the hits” mainstream CHR that 48 hours of advance publicity had suggested. It was, instead, aimed squarely at Top 40 rival KIIS with an elbow also extended toward Hip-Hop KPWR (Power 106). Amp’s music was Rhythmic Pop (Britney, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake) and the pure pop on its immediate right (Katy Perry, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift), Hip-Hop/R&B (Beyonce, T.I.) and a smattering of teen punk (All American Rejects, Paramore). What’s missing is the handful of Modern AC songs that KIIS has successfully sat out in recent years — Jason Mraz’s “I'm Yours” or the Fray’s “You Found Me.”

That doesn’t mean there were no differences between the stations. You can’t deny the excitement of a well-produced new station playing 10,000 songs in a row when the other guy is doing three breaks (two, four, and five minutes respectively in the hour I heard). And because Amp is programmed by Kevin Weatherly, whose team at Alternative KROQ finds its own hits, Amp signed on with a new Kanye West song (“Paranoid”) and had a second brand new title (the new Ciara & Justin Timberlake) on within an hour. Some locals told me they heard more tempo than KIIS and also more ’90s/early '00s Hip-Hop, although the latter has been part of KIIS for a while, according to Mediabase.

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