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What format *should* KABC-790 have
- Thread starter radiocph
- Start date
Cumulus seems to hold on to the fantasy they can salvage the titanic of talk radio. Newflash aint gonna happen..
Get w the program cumulus flip it
Get w the program cumulus flip it
What happens when the audience for talk radio becomes so small and super-elderly that national advertisers decide it isn't worth their support anymore? The only other formats that seems to work on AM now are all-news and sports, and that's only in markets where the sports station hasn't already moved to FM, and all-news is prohibitively expensive for any market in which it isn't already entrenched since decades ago. . So what's left but ethnic? I know, I know ... ;50s-'70s oldies, the greatest music ever, the songs that will never die, yada yada. Nope, that ship sailed to FM years ago and is now being scrapped.
Will the pullout of national advertisers from talk programming be the impetus that drives even big companies like Cumulus to run up the white flag and pull the plug on AM, letting even the 50kw signals go dark?
I think part of the reason behind these changes is to try and bring down the age a notch if they can. At some point, talk has to reinvent itself.
I think they'd rather go 100% syndicated like KEIB than brokered ethnic.
But KEIB actually covers most of the market, while KABC does not.
Russian, Armenian, Thai, Tagalog speaking audiences are unserved. The Simi Valley Farsi station has a limited signal, as does the Santa Ana based Vietnamese one.
There is certainly no need for another 0.2 to 0.3 share Spanish language AM. Hispanics in the Southwest use AM even less than non-Hispanics in markets where there are FMs in Spanish, so there is no opportunity there.
Are there still brokered ethnic stations in LA now? I can recall at least two that operated years ago
KMAX-107.1 - mostly Asian languages (Japanese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, I think they had Korean too) and Persian, IIRC. Usually about an hour per week for these. It also did some religious programming in English (African-American/Gospel) and Spanish.
Switched to all-sports in the mid-1990s, I think it's currently Spanish now.
KTYM-1460 out of Inglewood. Similar to KMAX, but with European language brokered programs (German, Italian, etc.) along with the mostly African American gospel music and preachers. Now Catholic programming in Spanish.
There were one or two others. I remember a station out of Long Beach(?) that had a German music program, French, Armenian, and some other languages.
The only one I know now is KALI-900, the former KGRB out of West Covina. Mixture of Spanish religious, Chinese, and Gospel (the latter on Sundays, with the same on-air staff that used to be on KMAX).
Nowadays, many of these languages have at least one, if not more, full time stations. Some other languages/formats are available thru Internet streaming or HD Radio, making a single hour on a brokered time station seem quaint, antiquated, and unnecessary....
I don't know the business models of every station, but there are a number of stations that broker in blocks or "rent out" stations totally. The Arthur Liu stations are all based on the brokered model. KVNR in Santa Ana is brokered to Vietnamese programmers. KGBN in Anaheim is listed as brokered to Korean programming providers.
Here are Liu's stations:
KAZN-AM 1300 kHz Mandarin www.am1300.com
KAHZ-AM 1600 kHz Simulcast of KAZN-AM
KMRB-AM 1430 kHz Cantonese
KYPA-AM 1230 kHz Korean
KBLA-AM 1580 kHz Spanish/Various
KALI-AM 900 kHz Spanish/Various
KALI-FM 106.3 Mhz Vietnamese
Didn't it try to do that, and fail ignominiously, with "hot talk"? Talk radio has basically lost TWO generations, in spite of everything it's done to become relevant to them. Could it be that under-55 Americans just don't care about news/opinion programming on radio and the ones who are still using radio use it only for music -- and they want as little gab on those stations as possible? So if talk radio can't reinvent itself, whither ancient modulation? Will the FCC, terrified of losing licensing revenue, allow all AMs in every market to have FM translators, regardless of spacing? Or will AM simply die?
This list represents most (but not all) of the foreign language radio (other than Spanish) in So. Cal...
KAZN-1300 - former KWKW (Spanish), which moved to 1330 (1330 was KFAC classical, which sold its AM transmitter.)
KAHZ-1600 - former KWOW Pomona (oldies) which became KMNY ("Money Radio" financial programming) around 1986. Switched to Chinese around 2000 or 2001
KMRB-1430 - former KWIZ out of Santa Ana, several formats including talk, music, etc.
KYPA-1230 - former KGFJ in LA. Mostly African American formats (soul, disco, r&b oldies, and eventually gospel), and then a with a format of motivational tapes, before it became Korean.
KBLA-1580 - former KDAY (originally this was a daytime-only signal, due to its use of a Mexican clear channel). Originally rock-and-roll, was one of the premier r&b/hip hop stations until 1991. After that, financial talk for a few years. Now Spanish Religious
KALI-900 - former KGRB out of West Covina. Mostly big band/standards, then talk. The KALI callsign was moved from another station
KALI-106.3 - former KYMS, with Contemporary Christian music. Switched over to Vietnamese in 1995.
You are missing Farsi programmed KIRN 670, Vietnamese KVNR 1480, Korean / Christian KGBN 1190, Korean KMPC 1540, Korean 1650 KFOX, 104.7 Korean LPFM KQEV-LP, Asian 101.5 KQSG-LP.
However, the original question is whether there are brokered foreign language stations, and not all of these are brokered with KIRN, KMPC and KFOX being examples of stations that create their own fulltime formats.
No, its that younger Americans have better things to do than sit around and listen to or watch Sean Hannity. TV ratings in the demo for the cable news nets are in the toilet, too.
Keep in mind, Fox News's and MSNBC's typical viewers are way over age 54. 84% over in Fox's case, 83% over at MSNBC. CNN is quite youthful by comparison, with only 70% of its viewers over age 54. Based on Nielsen prime-time averages for last week (Jan 7-11). Both of all those are declines from a year ago, when Fox and MSNBC had 20% of their viewers in the 25-54 demo.
And it's worth noting that there aren't very many bigtime opinion hosts online either. The highest viewership I could find on YouTube was for the daily Ben Shapiro podcast, which was typically getting about 250,000 views.
Bur NPR would appear to have talk more likely to appeal to younger demos, at least as far as politics is concerned. But NPR's numbers, I recall reading, are top-heavy with geezers, too. Of course, that doesn't matter because there are no youth-obsessed advertisers to kowtow to and seniors with a lot of leisure time to listen to radio are often reliable donors. Taking the right-wing talk format in the opposite direction, or even in a centrist or even nonpolitical directions, hasn't worked at all, for a variety of reasons. That CNN's audience is -- woohoo -- 30 percent under 55 is nothing to be proud of.CNN is also third in the cable news ratings and even if all of its viewers were to support a local radio station with a center-left outlook, that still wouldn't mean success.
So, once again, everyone talks about what's wrong with AM talk and agrees that it must reinvent itself or die. But other than turning the talk to music, acquiring a translator network and pretending that the AM doesn't exist, how is that to be done?
Correct. NPR went so far as to crow in a press release in 2017 that their "All Things Considered" earned an aggregate 0.8 AQH Share in the 25-54 demo in the early months of the Trump Administration. A zero point eight share!! NPR is probably in a somewhat better position with their podcast platform.
I'm resigned to AM stations dying off. There are so many better ways to get content today. But I do think it is worth a final effort across the industry to try shaking up their news/talk formats and see what falls out. Cumulus sure won't lose anything by experimenting on KABC, WLS, and WABC!
I agree. The presentation ignores not only everyone under 55, but everyone over 55 who doesn't like conservative politics.
That's correct. My question is how many young people do you HEAR on the radio?
You want young people to listen, you have to give them people their age to listen to. Kids don't want to hear grandparents on the radio.
Since you quoted CT's comment about NPR:
NPR has heard this loud and clear, and they have had a serious youth movement recently. Rachel Martin and Noel King (ME), Ari Shapiro and Audie Cornish (ATC), Joshua Johnson (1A), and Megna Chakrabati (On Point) are between 35 and 40. David Greene and Mary-Louise Kelly are in their 40s. Several of the new weekend shows are hosted by young-ish hosts too.
Has it helped attract younger listeners? I don't have any evidence that it has.
NPR has heard this loud and clear, and they have had a serious youth movement recently. Rachel Martin and Noel King (ME), Ari Shapiro and Audie Cornish (ATC), Joshua Johnson (1A), and Megna Chakrabati (On Point) are between 35 and 40. David Greene and Mary-Louise Kelly are in their 40s. Several of the new weekend shows are hosted by young-ish hosts too.
Has it helped attract younger listeners? I don't have any evidence that it has.
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