‘Gay Radio’ Will Focus on O.C. Scene : Airwaves: The locally produced, weekly program debuts on KWIZ-FM in March with news and entertainment.

“Gay Radio,” a locally produced, weekly gay-oriented program, will make its debut March 6 over commercial radio station KWIZ 96.7 FM, which broadcasts throughout Orange County.

The program will run Saturdays from 7 to 9 p.m., followed by an “After Hours” installment, also weekly, from 1:30 to 3:30 a.m. It will feature news, interviews with prominent homosexuals and lesbians, segments on entertainment, such issues as AIDS, legal and financial matters, some music and listener call-ins.

“Gay Radio” will focus on life in Orange County and Long Beach, where KWIZ’s signal is strongest. (The station’s current owners have offices in Pasadena, but its transmitter remains in Santa Ana, where KWIZ was headquartered for decades.)

It will be the only gay-oriented program on commercial radio in Southern California, said “Gay Radio” creator and producer Chris Creem, an Irvine Valley College marketing student and owner of Sign Images, an Irvine sign company.

“We’re also going to have some adult humor,” Creem said, adding that the show will be much “less raunchy” than that of controversial shock radio deejay Howard Stern.

Other local gay-oriented radio programs have come and gone, including the short-lived “OUTlook,” produced in late 1991 by K. Bradley Hudson. Hudson, a former county resident, canceled the show to avoid competing--particularly for advertisers--with a similar endeavor on another station.

Creem said he’s confident about “Gay Radio’s” success largely because he has a “large sales force” of eight people to sell spots to advertisers. Response from gay businesses and organizations has been good so far, he said.

“Our program is also on an FM station,” unlike gay radio show predecessors, Creem said, “so it has very good signal quality, and we are also going to be more entertainment oriented.”

The program will include live broadcasts from gay nightspots, he said. KWIZ, predominantly a talk radio station, also broadcasts Wally George’s live radio show.