Spokane broadcast production company Talk Radio West is taking over four hours of daily morning radio time at KJRB 790-AM with talk-radio programs to target baby boomers, many of whom might have listened to the station in the 1960s and 1970s when it was a Top 40 music station.

Kent Adams, executive producer of Talk Radio West and longtime Spokane-area broadcast industry veteran, bills the morning block as Boomer Radio.

Adams says he and Talk Radio West’s seven other program hosts will provide alternatives to political, sports, religious, and syndicated programming for people born roughly between 1946 and 1964. 

The baby boomer programming will start July 14 and will run in hour-long segments from 8 a.m. to noon Monday through Saturday. 

The boomer block will have its own format and will include a number of programs.

“It’s a change in format for the four hours we’re on,” Adams says.

Outside of the boomer broadcasts, KJRB, also known as the Eagle, will maintain its classic country format, which the station converted to last year from an all-news format.

In a nontraditional arrangement, Talk Radio West is buying its airtime from the station’s owner, Monterey, Calif.-based Mapleton Communications LLC.

“We will own the time, and it’s up to us to do the advertising,” Adams says. “It’s a departure from what’s done on most stations.”

Adams says he anticipates that Talk Radio West will be profitable by winter.

“We’re starting out with a positive group of advertisers,” he says.

He contends baby boomers are largely neglected by national programmers and advertisers that tend to target an audience aged 18 to 49.

“That might have been valid 30 years ago,” Adams says, adding, however, that today the baby boomer age group controls most of the personal financial assets and account for most consumer spending in the U.S.

“Only 5 percent of advertising is focusing on where the money is,” says Adams, who was born in 1946 and describes himself as one of the first boomers. “Just selling to my kids is missing the boat,” he says.

Adams says many radio stations have gone away from large blocks of local programming.

“It’s labor intensive and a lot of work,” he says, adding that it’s easier for radio stations in smaller markets to fill programming through satellite feeds than it is to provide original programming.

“We’re big enough and we deserve to have local talk other than politics, sports, and religion,” he says.

Talk Radio West will produce hour-long live programs on weekdays and will rebroadcast some programs on Saturdays, Adams says. 

Programs will include “Business Talks,” hosted daily by Adams and featuring local broadcast personalities Julie Humphreys and Tom McArthur on different days.

West says Humphreys also will host a one-hour program named “Better Health Together” three days a week.

Personalities on the broadcast schedule also include Debra Wilde, who will host “Young at Heart” two days a week, and Susan Neilson, who will host two separate weekly programs, “Tastes & Trends” and “Community Talks.” 

Former TV news anchor Lucinda Kay will host “Let It Shine,” a weekly self-help and motivation program.

Other weekly programs will include a comedy program and a program that focuses on nostalgic music.

Talk Radio West is a division of Half Round Productions LLC, through which Adams and McArthur have been producing “Business Talks” and five other programs in half-hour weekly recorded segments on another Mapleton Communications-owned station here. 

The programs will move to KJRB under the live hour-long format, Adams says.

Mapleton Communications owns more than 40 radio stations in midsized markets in Washington, Oregon, and California, including three AM stations and four FM stations in the Spokane area.