Kmpc

It is clear that Larry Stewart is very excited about the arrival of KMPC's all-sports format. For the last couple of weeks, rumors about who the station might hire have dominated Larry's column. But Larry and the rest of the Southland press have missed one very important point. Unlike New York's WFAN or San Diego's XTRA, KMPC is owned by California Angel owner Gene Autry's Golden West Broadcasting. Has anyone gotten assurances from Mr. Autry that the station's talk show hosts and analysts will be allowed to honestly criticize Angel management or players?

General Manager Roger Nadel was among KMPC 1540 employees who lost their jobs Wednesday, although the all-sports radio station for now will remain on the air. As has been the case the last couple of weeks, all the programming will be provided by the Sporting News Radio network. That includes Tony Bruno and Mark Willard in the morning, Dave Smith in midday, Arnie Spanier in the afternoon and David Stein overnight. All those network shows originate from the KMPC studio in Santa Monica.

NBC-TV offered Los Angeles viewers a nice pregame show Sunday. All that was missing was the game. It really didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but NBC decided Los Angeles deserved a pregame show even though the Raiders' playoff game against New England was blacked out. John Rohrbeck, Channel 4's vice president and general manager, said Sunday that the network asked his station on Friday to run the pregame show and he agreed to do it.

Stanley L. Spero, a longtime executive at radio station KMPC who in 1961 helped Gene Autry quickly assemble a professional baseball team called the Los Angeles Angels, has died. He was 86. Spero died Saturday of complications from a blood disorder at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, his wife, Harriette, said. From 1960 to 1998, Spero was involved in the Angels' everyday operations as the ad sales and general manager of KMPC and KABC, which broadcast Angels games.

In the wacky world of sports-talk radio, you just never know what will happen next. Word came late Thursday that KMPC has fired midday hosts Brian Golden and Doug Krikorian. It's the second sacking for both. They were also fired last June in an apparent money-saving move by the station, but both ended up back on the air. This time, they apparently were let go for something as trivial as not showing up to test drive a sponsor's car at Willow Springs Wednesday.

The Clippers not only got three No. 1 draft choices Wednesday, they also switched radio stations. The Clippers, formerly on KRLA, have signed a three-year contract with KMPC. "Considering the promotional aspects, this is an ideal situation," said Andy Roeser, the Clippers' executive vice president in charge of business operations. Roeser said the team, as it did with KRLA, will buy the air time and sell the advertising, thus ensuring KMPC of a profit. "KMPC is guaranteed to win," he said.

With an overload of programming, it sometimes gets confusing which events are carried on all-sports radio station KMPC and which are farmed out to sister station KLITE-FM (101.9). Thursday night, the UCLA-Washington game was on KLITE, the Clippers and Chicago Bulls on KMPC. KMPC General Manager Bill Ward said program director Len Weiner got together with the American Network Group, the UCLA rights-holders, and the Clippers before the season to work out a schedule where conflicts existed.

The sale-demise of KMPC is certainly no surprise to the longtime L.A. radio listener. I can sum it up in one word: Boooo -ring (sing it out a la Joanne Worley). Only Jim Healy was a consistent high spot. Doug Krikorian had a little pizazz, but he was eventually pushed out. The political correctness of having Paola (uh uh uh) Boivin was greeted with disinterest by the average beer-guzzling sports fanatic, like myself. So long, KMPC sports talk. You won't be missed. VINCE McDONOUGH Costa Mesa

This was not a good week for KMPC to change to a sports format, as it turns out. Those aren't games they are playing in the streets. But games were what Bob Rowe and Steve Yeager were talking about late Wednesday night after fires, looting and rioting had erupted. On this night, the questions had nothing to do with sports. But Rowe and Yeager and, amazingly, their callers, carried on about the Dodgers and Angels and other baseball matters that suddenly seemed trivial.

Pro football--The Raiders' flagship radio station is KFI, not KMPC, as was listed with the NFL schedule that ran in Friday's editions.

Mark Blinoff, 70, an award-winning program director for KMPC-AM radio during the 1970s who became an elementary school educator after leaving the broadcast business in 1989, died May 19 of lung cancer at his La Crescenta home. Blinoff became assistant program director at KMPC in 1968 and program director in 1972. He initiated format changes to appeal to a younger audience, playing less Sinatra and more Beatles, and brought in new personalities to give the station a more contemporary face.

Tony Bruno is returning to L.A. sports talk radio. Beginning April 4, he'll be the host of the morning show on KMPC (1540). Mark Willard, who took over when Roger Lodge left the station in a salary dispute two months ago, will be Bruno's co-host. The plan is to begin syndicating Bruno's show on the Sporting News radio network in three to four months. Bruno, whose syndicated Fox Sports radio network morning show was heard in L.A. on XTRA Sports, left that job in August.

KMPC gave Southern California the Angels and the SigAlert, but the memories at a staff reunion Wednesday night were of the talents -- on- and off-air -- that made the station a fixture on L.A. radio dials in the 1960s and '70s. Before singing cowboy Gene Autry sold the station to ABC in 1994, 710 on the AM band was where listeners could get "a little happiness, a little news," according to former general manager Stan Spero. "We tried to be everywhere anything happened.

Cornerbacks are supposed to have short memories, but Kevin Arbet cannot help recalling what happened when USC played at Stanford last season. The Trojans lost on a last-second, 20-yard touchdown pass to Jamien McCullum--the receiver Arbet was covering. The junior can still see that football sailing over his outstretched hand. "I replay it in my head," he says. "Not as much as I used to, but I still do."

USC has a new radio home, KMPC (1540), which means that XTRA (690) is out of the USC picture, and so is football play-by-play announcer Lee Hamilton. A five-year agreement between the school and KMPC was announced Thursday, ending a three-year relationship with XTRA. The call letters KMPC invoke memories of a radio station that was once the dominant sports station in Los Angeles, one that had the Rams, Angels, UCLA and Jim Healy.

The Kings' game tonight at Staples Center against the Dallas Stars is significant for two reasons. It is the second-to-last game of the regular season and may determine who the Kings' first-round playoff opponent will be. Also, Coach Andy Murray has agreed to wear a microphone, and some of his comments may be used live by Fox Sports Net. The key here is, Murray doesn't curse. "At least not very often," he said.

Larry Stewart (May 1) was off base in his strong criticism of KMPC. What we did not need was yet another station adding to the media circus. Using Stewart's logic, The Times sports pages should have been devoted to hard news. Stewart blew it, not KMPC. DON SLADE Los Angeles

Chuck Ashman, one of the country's first hard-hitting TV and radio personalities, returned to Los Angeles radio over the weekend with talk show programs Saturday (3-8 p.m.) and Sunday (2-6 p.m.) on KFI (640). The controversial Ashman was last heard in the L.A. market on KMPC in 1981.

Bill Bradley, 82, radio disc jockey in Detroit, New York and at KMPC in Los Angeles. Born William Silbert in Detroit, Bradley began his career there. He went on to New York and radio station WMGM, where comedian Milton Berle gave him his professional name. He originated a televised dance show for teenagers presented weekly from Palisades Park in New Jersey. Moving to Los Angeles, he was a disc jockey at KMPC and later a radio advertising salesman. On Friday in Palm Desert.

At 21, she was Maureen O'Connor Reilly, separated from her husband, a single mother with a year-old son. Having dropped out of a local college, where she had been an English major, she moved back home with her parents and started looking for a job. She answered an ad for a post in the billing department at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey "but it was filled. They said, 'Well, we have something open in traffic in the radio station.' I figured it was traffic reporting--'I can do that.'