Disc Jockeys

Cheryl Bess leaned toward the microphone to let radio listeners know whose horn was blowing. "From David Sanborn to Norman Brown, keeping you jazzed, KSBR-FM," Bess said coolly while preparing for the next round of songs in a small booth at Saddleback College. Bess, 25, hopes to follow in the path of KSBR-FM alumni who dot the Southern California radio landscape with success. "The deejays on the air are students, but they sound like professionals," she said.

A Spanish-language disc jockey pleaded not guilty in a Burbank courtroom Friday to charges that he sexually assaulted two 14-year-old girls he met through his radio show. Firmo Martin Rossetti, the on-air morning host on Century City-based KLYY-FM (107.1), entered his plea during formal arraignment on two dozen felony counts of child molestation, rape and oral copulation. Rossetti is being held on $1.5 million bail.

Still basking in the afterglow of her successful campaign, county supervisor-elect Maria VanderKolk breezed into a Ventura radio station at 6 a.m. Monday to play her favorite tunes, chat with the disc jockeys and thumb her nose at the political Establishment. "My generation is going to have to deal with some of the problems that have been created over the last 20 or 30 years," VanderKolk, 25, told the listeners of classic rock station KZTR-FM.

Three KROQ-FM disc jockeys who masterminded a much-publicized on-air murder confession hoax last summer have been temporarily suspended, station sources said Thursday. The suspensions came the day that a Times article revealed the hoax and more than a week after station management acknowledged the stunt in a letter to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

With the recession jitters on everyone's mind, many Orange County residents may be doing their New Year's Eve celebrating closer to home. Some hotel and restaurant operators interviewed Thursday said reservations for New Year's Eve dinners and parties are down from last year. And limousine companies, disc jockeys and other service providers who are usually in high demand this time of year say their business is also suffering.

Disc jockey "Kaptain Kaos" is taking radio station KIEV-AM (870) to court, claiming his late-night radio show was canceled because of his decision to play a new recording by Pope John Paul II, his lawyers said Monday. Kaos, also known as Paul Volpe, played the pope's top-10 "Abba Pater" album in apparent violation of a station policy prohibiting airing of any foreign-language music, according to his attorney, Cary W. Goldstein.

It's 3 p.m. on Tuesday, time for the weekly "Club Doug" show on Saddleback College's student-run public radio station. "This is KSBR, 88.5 on the FM dial. Let's get the afternoon rolling, and if there's something you want to hear, give me a call," says the program's host, Doug Wells, settling down for his three-hour shift.

In the world of hip-hop, Power 106 is about as big as, well, the 400-pound man who is driving the morning show. With annual revenue of about $40 million and one of the largest outdoor advertising campaigns among Los Angeles-area radio stations, KPWR-FM (105.9) is being powered to even greater heights by the growing popularity of morning drive-time disc jockey Big Boy. "Big Boy has truly become a big personality in the marketplace," says Don Barrett, publisher of LARadio.

Jamie White, the more effusive half of the KYSR-FM (98.7) morning team of Jamie and Danny, was so nervous in front of the cameras in her small part as an MTV-esque reporter in the new Mark Wahlberg-Jennifer Aniston film, "Rock Star," that she took it upon herself to stop the action when she wasn't happy with her scene. "She was acting-challenged, if you know what I mean," says the film's producer, Toby Jaffe, laughing. "She got so embarrassed, she decided she was going to say 'cut."

A Baldwin Park man, apparently distraught over marital problems, killed himself after he called a country radio station and threatened suicide if a disc jockey did not talk to his wife, authorities said Tuesday. Baldwin Park police said the 63-year-old man shot himself in his living room Monday after allegedly pointing a gun at a police officer who then fired a shot at the house. Police had been alerted by the radio station and were attempting to persuade the man to drop his .