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The Sound of KABC

david

david

New imaging on KABC as of today (1/7/19). Far superior to what the station has been cobbling together in recent years. New voice sounds much more major market.
However, the sound fidelity of the traffic reports (piped in from Texas?) still sounds tinny and lacks the full breadth of audio quality one would expect from a major market station.
If Drew Hayes wants to truly try to reestablish KABC's cred, he needs to focus on sound fidelity, voice quality (new imaging is a good checking of the box here), compelling hosts, and reclaiming weekends away from the throw away long-form crap currently occupying nearly all of Saturday and Sunday's schedule.
One more tip to Drew Hayes - Ben Shapiro, who now occupies PM Drive, is interesting when part of a team. His solo shtick grow old fast and is hard to digest for long TSL. Consider urging Cumulus to team him up with someone(s), as he had when on KRLA's Morning Answer.
 
david said:
However, the sound fidelity of the traffic reports (piped in from Texas?) still sounds tinny and lacks the full breadth of audio quality one would expect from a major market station.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you're talking about. Just heard a great traffic report from longtime reporter Bill Thomas. Didn't sound tinny at all. What makes you think he's in Texas?
 
Wont work. Nothing they do will work. Why doesnt cumulus just do the inevitable and flip it. Flip it to this what 1 guy suggested. See below...



KABC Panacea

“I made a New Year’s resolution for KABC but, unfortunately, I have no power to put it into effect. If I was running the station, I would change the format to MOR and Adult Contemporary hits of the 1950s through the 1980s: Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Pat Boone, Al Martino, Jack Jones, Tony Bennett, Herb Alpert, Andy Williams, Anne Murray, Nat ‘King’ Cole, the Carpenters, the Lettermen et al.

Call the station ‘America's Best Crooners, ABC 79’ or ‘America’s Biggest Classics, ABC 790.’ Instead of playing hundreds of versions of standards, ABC 790 would play only songs that were chart hits. With no competition on AM or FM, such a format would likely get much higher ratings than the talk and brokered programming.” – Steve Thompson
 
TheBigA said:
What makes you think he's in Texas?
Click to expand...

Several years ago Cumulus' in-house traffic service known as "Right Now Traffic" was installed in Cumulus's top 50 markets, reported at the time sourced out of Texas. This past August Cumulus inked a Traffic Deal With iHeart’s Total Traffic, so not sure if Bill is local here in the LA DMA or elsewhere.

Regarding tinny.....listen to sound fidelity of the traffic reporter vs. the in-studio host. There is a noticeable disparity (versus KNX and KFI and KRLA where the sound quality of the traffic reporter matches the in-studio host).
 
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david said:
This past August Cumulus inked a Traffic Deal With iHeart’s Total Traffic, so not sure if Bill is local here in the LA DMA or elsewhere.
Click to expand...

They have a pretty substantial facility in Burbank, so I'd imagine that's where Bill is.
 
david said:
Regarding tinny.....listen to sound fidelity of the traffic reporter vs. the in-studio host. There is a noticeable disparity (versus KNX and KFI and KRLA where the sound quality of the traffic reporter matches the in-studio host).
Click to expand...

As I said, I didn't notice any "tinny" sound. He sounded fine, and even played some music during his cast, which also sounded fine.

I did a search and Total Traffic LA is based in iHeart's Premiere Radio office in Sherman Oaks. Bill has been doing traffic in LA for a long time.
 
TheBigA said:
There's only one station that gets worse ratings than KABC. It's KSUR that plays Oldies.
Click to expand...

There are a couple of lower rated stations that are home to the market:

KYLA, KWKW, KHJ, KTNQ, KPFK,
 
david said:
Several years ago Cumulus' in-house traffic service known as "Right Now Traffic" was installed in Cumulus's top 50 markets, reported at the time sourced out of Texas. This past August Cumulus inked a Traffic Deal With iHeart’s Total Traffic, so not sure if Bill is local here in the LA DMA or elsewhere.

Regarding tinny.....listen to sound fidelity of the traffic reporter vs. the in-studio host. There is a noticeable disparity (versus KNX and KFI and KRLA where the sound quality of the traffic reporter matches the in-studio host).
Click to expand...

Right Now Traffic was part of Navteq/traffic dot com which became US Traffic Network which pretty much went defunct not long after Entercom and Cumulus pulled out. https://www.rbr.com/ustn-to-cease-operations-following-cumulus-defection/

Entercom and Cumulus moved to Total Traffic.

As for the fidelity of the codecs they use? It all depends upon whether they're doing a live hit with an IP codec or they're FTP-ing a recorded report to them. The recorded report will be cleaner. The IP codec will be on par with a Zephyr - you can tell if you're listening really closely that there's less low end, but it sounds way better than a phone line.

Pretty much every traffic report on an iHeart station is recorded and dropped into RCS and that's why it's cleaner than a live hit.
 
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