I did not take a screenshot if their announcement and I can't find it now so I'll take my lumps for not getting proper documentation. That's my fault.
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What is kroq gonna do?
- Thread starter hotpatrick2004
- Start date
Not attempting to be hostile, just as a KEXP donor I don't recall ever seeing that and it would have been a surprise.
It's a good reminder for me that if I see something that might be important later to screenshot or otherwise document it. Not a big deal.
Here's a question, stay with me... I've read about Elvis Duran's 25th year at Z100, and KROQ's demise post Kevin & Bean. My question is, do or should morning show's have a shelf life? If a show is high rating, what would force a station to take a risk in order to secure a stations future success?
If I'm reading your question correctly, there is no real motivation to take a risk. That's why previous management kept K&B on even as they knew it was deteriorating. When they hired Kevin Kline, my first thought was he was being brought in as the new morning show, but that didn't happen. They waited for Bean to retire, and then went another 10 months before finally pulling the plug. By that time the damage was done. Should a show have a shelf life? Ask the staff of Rush Limbaugh's show.
The reason I ask the question is because as part of the radio industry here in Australia, the company I work for made two drastic changes to their top rating Breakfast shows in the 1 and 2 markets. These host changes actually breathed life and increased figures. Plus it lowered our listening age, which is a challenge for any talk station.
I get that it’s a risk, but the the payoff could secure a better future, if done right.
I agree, and this was a similar situation, in that the audience was aging.
Of course, this is similar to Rick Dees leaving KIIS.
Rick Dees had run his course at KIIS, it wasn't really a risk getting rid of him, rather it had become clear to everyone he had to go. And getting rid of K&B or M&B after their 25+ year runs is a less of a risk.
But if you want to man up and put your career on the line, go ahead and take those teams off the air after 10 years of building a loyal audience and start over from scratch. I think that is an excellent strategy for exiting the industry very quickly. In Mark and Brian's case, KLOS was still willing to keep paying them both the big bucks to stay, It was Mark who finally had to put an end to it. In K&B's case, it was Bean who did basically the same thing.
It is a funny thing about money - after you have cashed so many six and seven figure checks, it doesn't have the same motivating effect any more, especially when your job involves getting up at 3:00 in the morning and you are expected to be *entertaining* and generate ratings that will carry the station starting at 6:00. It wears on you, ask any of 'em. And the rule still holds true, the easier the host(s) make it look, the harder the work and preparation it took going in to make it that way.
So what are the factors that would cause management to move to drop a long standing, high rating show, aside from talent pulling the pin? Reading the Matty In The Morning story out of Boston, my first thought is that he was out of step with his audience. If I were a programmer, I would be alarmed that my major talent was dragging down a section of the audience. Is there a point where programmers actually say "X is too old for our target audience?"
I believe age is a state of mind. I've worked with talent who stay in touch with the target demo, who watch the same TV shows, who listen to the same music, and those folks never get too old for the target. But when you use your platform to criticize someone in front of their peers, you set yourself up for being seen as out of touch. So I'm sure they had a conversation, and I hope he at least looked at the social media to see how the audience itself reacted.
Dick Clark was always Amerca's oldest teenager. It's just that eventually he became KOST's oldest teenager.
But kost ain't what it used to be. They turned in the Barbra Streisand and Phil Collins years ago for maroon 5 and bon jovi and dua lipa.
It was the way KROQ handled the morning transition last year that will go down as one of the biggest LA radio bungles of all time. To fire the morning show at the start of the pandemic, while simultaneously switching up its music mix, had the affect of alienating almost all of its audience. Even if both things needed to be done, why rip the Band-Aid off in this environment? You may never win people back that way. Instead, keep the team that listeners know and trust to help champion the new music. Kevin Ryder had a year left on his contract, take that year and proclaim it the farewell year for him and the K&B team. (I'm sure Bean would have made cameo appearances.) Use that year to also prepare listeners for the transition to Stryker & Klein. There was such a cleaner, more classy way to do this that wouldn't have turned so much of its loyal audience against KROQ. (Unless the goal was to completely clear out the old audience and try to recruit a new one. Which I say, good luck doing that on radio in 2021.)
How long do you say goodbye? They had already spent a year saying goodbye to Bean. Then Kevin was there for 6 months. They could see the erosion taking place during those 6 months. People were turning out already, so prolonging it wasn't going to help. At some point it's time to cut your losses.
They hired Kevin Klein two years ago, so he was already familiar to the listeners, and Stryker had been there for years. Everybody knows him. It's not like they imported some brand new show from some other market.
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It was two and a half months. They launched the new show in January and pulled it in early March. It still had a solid fan base. Why anger a huge chunk of your listening audience, and also then put your replacement show in that awkward position? Come up with a transition plan, and do it right. This was sloppy, horribly executed and as we can see from the past year of ratings, a disaster.
Bean left in November after a long goodbye. The ratings were already declining. All the evidence was there. Any change was going to hurt ratings, regardless of when it happened. Waiting another 6 months just prolongs the agony. They had a transition plan ready. That's why they brought in Kevin Klein. It takes a while for the changes to find their audience. In the meantime, that same company has 3 stations in the Top 5, so they're covered.
Then why did they go through the motions of even launching the "Kevin in the Morning Show" in January? If that was the plan, why not end the show when Bean left? Launching a new show in January, hastily yanking it two months later and shoving Stryker and Klein in, at the start of the pandemic, when they couldn't even work together because of COVID, was pure sloppiness. This was not a transition plan. A proper transition would have been a big send off at the end of 2019 when Bean left, not this mess. And it's not like they saved money by doing this in March, they still had to pay Kevin Ryder out through 2020 anyway.
They wanted to give him a few months. They had the big send off when Bean left. How many big sendoffs do you want? Kevin should have left with him. The party was over then. Kevin made the mistake of thinking he could go it alone. He could not. The station cut their losses, and pulled the plug.
There wasn't a big send off when Bean left, there was a single show. Two months of Kevin in the Morning, and at least the ratings were holding. If you're KROQ, when you're already testing new music, why do you also decide to drop the Kevin & Bean audience that was still propping the station up? (Most, not all, but most had stuck around for Kevin in the Morning.) Yes, you prepare to move Stryker & Klein there, but you have a plan. Instead, they left Stryker and Klein to have to build an entirely new audience from scratch. KROQ could have transitioned the K&B/KITM audience to Stryker & Klein, but instead they lost that audience. They're angry and they're not coming back.
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