We get email … .

“Here’s a radio station that’s low powered and plays the music I like that other stations gave up a long time ago. I just heard The Beatles’ ‘This Boy’ followed by David Bowie’s ‘Rebel, Rebel’ and now ‘Our Day Will Come’ by Ruby and the Romantics. Now how cool is that?!!? You’ll also find some familiar DJs like Rick Dees in the afternoons and weekdays, The Real Don Steele doing his ’60s shows on Saturday afternoons, and my favorite DJ, Von Hot Rod on Wednesdays at noon. That guy rocks!!! This is an Inland Empire gem so you can’t get on your radio out there in L.A. Check it out on the web! Take care.”

— Jaime

Jaime is referring to KQLH (92.5 FM), a low-power FM station serving Yucaipa. Available for online listening via various apps and at KQLHradio.org, the station airs an eclectic mix of music from, as they say on the website “the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and beyond.” This includes big bands and “rock not heard otherwise.”

There is also public affairs programming as well as community information and announcements of events of interest to residents. Catholic Mass? They have that too, on Sunday mornings at 8, followed later by MG Kelly’s “Back to the ’70s” at noon.

Perhaps my memory is failing me, but wasn’t there a KQLH playing hot adult contemporary music from the IE on a full-power signal back in the 1990s?

•••

“Where is KABC (790 AM) ranked? I listen to it every day, and the station always seems to have plenty of callers. My favorite program is the John Phillips show with Randy Wang. Why doesn’t the station show up in the ratings? Love your column, read it each time it is in the paper. Thank you.”

— Steve Keller, Mission Viejo

KABC no longer subscribes to Nielsen and hasn’t for a while, so they won’t show in the ratings reports. Same goes for KSPN (710 AM) and — for a month last holiday season, as Meruelo Media negotiated their agreement with the ratings company — Power 106 (KPWR 105.9 FM) and KDAY (93.5 FM) and Cali 93.9 (KLLI).

In the past — at least in the days of handwritten diaries, where those chosen to help calculate the ratings would literally write down their daily listening — Arbitron (which was bought by Nielsen) would still include the numbers in the calculations, and the earned ratings would be reflected (as missing) in the totals.

For example, if a station did not subscribe back then but earned a 5 share, the total of those that were listed would only add up to 95%. Today, with the measurements being made electronically by a meter, a nonsubscribing station would just be ignored because it would not be sending out the special signal that the meters decode.

To this day, no one at Meruelo can say exactly how their stations did in that holiday book because they lapsed while negotiating.

Also interesting, because some say the signal is degraded by the encoding used by the ratings meters, nonsubscribing stations could theoretically sound better than subscribing stations. I’m not sure I could tell, but those with better ears say the encoding is very noticeable. Regardless, if I had to pick a number, I’d guess KABC at about a 0.8 share.

Random thoughts

Did you notice in last week’s ratings roundup that Go Country (KKGO 105.1 FM) did better over the holiday season by playing country as normal with an occasional holiday tune, rather than going all Christmas? On the other hand, I did enjoy the holiday tunes on the K-Mozart app as well as 105.1 HD2. We’ll have to see what happens next year … .

Will apps take over the AM band? With property values often outpacing station values, transmitter sites are vulnerable, especially for lower-rated stations. And this doesn’t even take into account the electricity required to run a transmitter’s full power of up to 50,000 watts. Can apps make the difference? Doesn’t seem likely in the short term, but there are many who believe it is radio’s future. You certainly can’t complain about the sound quality; it’s often much better than a typical radio’s.

In addition to acquiring his recent afternoon duties on KLOS (95.5 FM), Nik Carter is taking over for longtime “Off the Record” host Joe Benson, who stepped down last month. The program airs on KLOS at 9 p.m. Sundays and is available on many stations throughout the country. It’s an information/interview show, going in depth behind the scenes to tell the stories about creative artists and their music. I believe it is the longest-running radio program of its type, being started by Mary Turner back in the mid-1970s; Benson has hosted, if memory serves, since the early to mid-1990s. The question that remains unanswered, because the memories of those involved are hazy, is: Was there another host, possibly between Turner and Benson?

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in Southern California. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com.