100.3 The Sound of Silence

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It has been said those that find a job they love will never work a day in their life. Some, such as Dave Beasing, the first and only Program Director of 100.3 The Sound KSWD FM Los Angeles and Orange County, had the opportunity to experience this.

Beasing jokes that he has been a Program Director since the age of ten. “It was what I dreamed about as a kid, putting together radio stations with the talent and dreamed up what the news introduction would sound like,” Beasing said. “Eventually somebody started to pay me not very well to do it for real. I am really blessed and lucky that the pieces fell in the right places along the way."

As of October 2017, The Sound has been sold and will go off the air by the end of the month after a merger between CBS and Entercom, The Sound's parent company. The Sound will be replaced by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF), which plans to play syndicated contemporary Christian music.

The new station will be called K-Love, not to be mistaken for Univision's 107.5 K-Love FM, a separate station already broadcasting in Los Angeles, California. K-Love joins fellow contemporary Christian station KFSH 95.9 FM in the Los Angeles FM market.

The Sound is one of four radio stations in Los Angeles that focuses on classic rock, and has been on the air since 2008. The station has also given back to the community on multiple occasions by raising money for music in schools, for the families of firefighters lost to brush fires, and for the families of those who were killed by renegade police officer Christopher Dorner.

“We won a Crystal Award from the National Association of Broadcasters, it is a coveted award that they give out to about 10 stations a year for their community service,” Beasing said. “We really did take community service seriously.”

For some of The Sound's DJs, this station has been their favorite gig yet. 'Uncle Joe' Benson has been a DJ on The Sound for five years, having been on the air continuously since October 1968 and in Los Angeles since October 1980. “The Sound has given us the most latitude and my specialty is music, knowing the stories behind it," Benson said. "The Sound has been very great, having a vast library to deal with and playing something that makes sense.”

“We care about the music as much as they [the listeners] do,” said Gina Grad, another DJ and co-host of morning show "Andy and Gina." “That is what this station is all about, that’s the main character of the show… This community we’ve created and we’ve fostered all these years is 100 percent because of the love of this particular music.”

The Sound makes a clear effort to prioritize its listeners. “We care, we do. We care about music and we care about them [the listeners],” said Beasing. “It’s been really cool that by having this music in common, we’ve been able to be part of a community and bring people together… As this has been announced that we are leaving, the outpouring of love has really been touching. We will miss all of these people.”