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Sad news for fans of old school jams: HOT 92.3 FM is now a hip hop station. What will we do without the Art Laboe Connection? We're not sure, but we might need a support group.The new radio station helmed by iHeartMedia Los Angeles is now dubbed as REAL 92.3. The tagline is that it's "the new home of Hip-Hop and R&B for Los Angeles." Doc Wynter, iHeartMedia’s Senior Vice President of Urban Programming told REVOLT TV, "It's what L.A. listeners have been waiting for."
However, we do have to say we already have a hip hop station in Los Angeles—and that's Power 106. REAL 92.3 launched last Friday, and with their kickoff, they're promising 10,000 songs in a row, commercial-free, of tracks from artists like Drake, Nicki Minaj, Usher, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Chris Brown, which is basically stuff we can also hear on stations like KIIS 102.7 and 97.1 Amp Radio. What we'll be missing are our old school jams and R&B hits.
The change seemed to quietly happen over the weekend. And it wasn't one of those memorable handovers like with San Francisco's Latino Mix 105.7, which played Nelly's "Hot in Herre" last March for three days straight before switching over to a new English-language pop music station.
Some fans are up in arms about the loss of their old school station. Cindy Garcia started a Change.org petition asking to bring back Hot 92.3, according to OC Weekly. It's already garnered nearly 8,000 of the 10,000 signatures Garcia hopes to get. Garcia wrote on the petition:
Los Angeles has been robbed of part of their old school music culture the morning of 2/6/15 at 9:23am. Hot 92.3 the original home of old school was replaced with another mainstream hip hop and r&b radio station called The Real 92.3. There are several stations in Los Angeles that dominate the crowd The Real 92.3 aims to target. Given that fact, there's NO reason there should be another station that plays the exact same genre of music. LA does not want all of their radio stations to sound alike.
As for Art Laboe, we won't get to hear his silky smooth voice in Los Angeles for some time. The closest radio station where we can hear the iconic 89-year-old radio host's syndicated show—which had been connected to Hot 92.3 and its predecessor Jammin Oldies 100.3 FM since 1997—is in Oxnard on Old School 95.9 FM. Not all is lost though as our old school hero is working with iHeartRadio and other radio stations to find a new home to his show. There is a glimmer of hope.
