So why do they have two other radio stations, KSFO and KTRB, pushing syndicated, non-local, conservative talk in a liberal city like San Francisco?
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A Change Coming to KGO
- Thread starter atthestars
- Start date
KSFO is Conservative talk, I think. I think KTRB is Salem's Bay Area station and they lean conservative. They probably have that market fairly well wrapped up. I mean, yeah, the Bay Area is liberal, but it's the #4 metro region in the US, and there are still a lot of conservatives in the region, probably enough to support at least one station. About 23% of ultra liberal Seattle is conservative. That's just shy of a million people, depending on how you count people in the metro area.
KIKK-FM disappeared from the Houston airwaves 20 years ago, but the call is still on longtime sibling 650, as it has been for almost 60 years. Amusingly for this discussion, 650 is now running……BetQL.
From someone who lives here (Sacramento), worked for KFBK (2014-2020) and works for KXJZ (2020-present):
KGO and KFBK are very different animals.
'BK does two news blocks (morning and afternoon drive). The success of both of those blocks has been enhanced by long-tenured name personalities as anchors. Kitty O'Neal is a Sacramento treasure, who just celebrated 35 years with the station and I think is right around 30 years anchoring the afternoon news. It was an honor and a pleasure to be her co-anchor for my last three years at KFBK.
Currently, Cristina Mendonsa, who anchored evening newscasts on ABC10 for 25 years or so, and Sam Shane, who was at CBS13 locally and before that at MSNBC anchor mornings. They're about four years into their run.
The rest is conservative talk, and it's also deeply consistent. Limbaugh worked there for three years before going national and was a continuous presence in his time slot until he died (Travis and Sexton are in the slot now). Tom Sullivan followed Limbaugh as a local host, and as with Rush, KFBK was a charter station of his syndication effort. He's still on. For more than 10 years, the former Sheriff of Sacramento County, who is very popular with local conservatives, has done an hour from 3:00-4:00 p.m. daily.
Until 2013, KFBK carried Sean Hannity in evenings. Then-PD Ken Charles moved that show over to KSTE to give popular sports guy Pat Walsh (who's also been with the station 30-ish years) his own general interest talk show.
There has been no "reforming", as Y2K calls it. Travis and Sexton are the only on-air change (apart from my departure in the 2020 layoffs, which simply returned Kitty to solo anchor of the afternoon news), in four years (since Cristina and Sam came aboard). The last substantive change before that was nine years ago.
The station is a consistent #1 or #2 in 6+ (the only numbers I can talk about)---and in the ratings that came out on Thursday, they're #1 with an 8.9.
About the only things KGO and KFBK ever had in common were monster AM signals and ABC network affiliations (very much an off-and-on thing for 'BK, which has also cycled through FOX and CBS in the last ten years).
As to 'BK "having to respond" to us at CapRadio (KXJZ), I mean...maybe. Again, completely different animals with a completely different audience.
I'm anchoring the news in the same time slot I did at KFBK (Kitty and I are now opposite each other). When my hiring was announced, we got a bit of response from people saying nice things about having been listeners before, but for the most part, I was the new guy. I'd argue that almost as many people recognize my voice in Reno-Tahoe on our signal there from my days in Reno radio and TV (1977-84) as do in Sac from listening to both KFBK and CapRadio.
All the major metros have conservatives, which makes one wonder why the news has to find an obscure diner in West Podunk, Iowa to find and understand the "elusive Trump voter"
KGO was by no means conservative talk radio. It may not have been as outright progressive as it was in the glory days (the failure of Air America and the fact that KQED had cornered the market on a liberal audience might have made them a little gun-shy), but by the standards of the day, the hosts on KGO the last six years have been about as center-left as you'll find on a commercial AM talk radio station.
And conservative talk radio has made consistent money for Cumulus for close to 30 years now at KSFO. No, the numbers aren't any better than KGO's, but it and KTRB (as someone else noted, that's a Salem) station, are two places for an advertiser to reliably reach conservatives in the Bay Area.
It helps to remember that San Francisco is a city and county with about one million people but the Bay Area is a nine-county area with 7.75 million people. Registered Republicans as of 2021 (newest I could find) make up 6.75% of San Francisco County voters, but 11% of Alameda, 13% of Marin, 14% of San Mateo, almost 17% of Santa Clara and Sonoma, almost 19% of Contra Costa, and 22% of Napa and Solano.
Given that the statewide average for GOP registration is 23.9%, some of those places aren't far off.
If call letters are available, you can put them on anything. KRLA, originally on 1110 and revered by L.A. boomers before KHJ went top 40, is now on Salem's talk station at 870 on the dial. KMPC, originally 710, which was Gene Autry's palace for personalities and news, went to an expanded band (1640) station in rural Texas before returning to L.A. on 1540. It's now Korean-language.
KGO wasn't a conservative talk station. KSFO is.
Although there's nothing on KQED that sounds anything like Air America. I'd describe KQED is articulate talk.
Thank you I knew something was there and was missing some details in the argument. This is given that I have some familiarity with the Sacramento radio market and the SF Bay area radio market.
Kitty O Neil I remember some of her former Co-anchors, news staff members later moved to the Bay Area like Jeff Bell, Chris Filipi at KCBS and Nikki Medoro to the now former news/talk station KGO.
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That is about the dumbest headline I’ve seen. Not Peter’s fault. Headlines are written by other staffers. But really, it‘s like saying “Queen Elizabeth was only in her early 70s 22 years ago. How could she die of old age so quickly?”Peter Hartlaub did what I’d consider an appropriate eulogy to KGO’s talk format. He doesn’t cite the lack of preparedness for the PPM and stagnant nature at the tail end of ABC ownership but you can clearly infer it from how Cumulus repeatedly struggled to revamp the station.
KGO was once a local talk radio juggernaut. How could it die so fast?
KGO was the pinnacle of local radio from 1978 to 2009. Now the news talk format has been...www.sfchronicle.com
The San Francisco Chronicle, of all papers, should have been…um…chronicling…the decline of a Bay Area institution for the past two decades. This was a car crash in excruciatingly slow motion.
You may notice from the sentence construction I used that i didn’t link KQED (a success) and Air America (a failure), other than citing them as two possible separate motivations for KGO’s less openly-progressive approach the last six years.
I can guess where that 22% figure for Solano County is from the current voter stats and also I remember hearing a few times that certain industries would vote a certain way like defense contractors and members of the Air Force would vote and donate to Republican while other industries vote Democrat. I can get how conservative radio would get a niche audience in places where that would otherwise be mentioned as Democrat majority media markets like San Francisco and Sacramento. Note the radio signals that do reach Solano are KSTE Sacramento, KSFO San Francisco only if we are talking about conservative talk radio specifically. But if one is asking for all the News/talk, All News, Sports/talk stations excluding KGO-AM that reaches Solano County they are KXJZ Sacramento, KFBK-AM/FM Sacramento, KQED San Francisco, KCBS-AM/KFRC-FM San Francisco, KNBR AM/FM San Francisco, KGMZ San Francisco and KTHK Sacramento.
Defense contractors ramp up donations to GOP election objectors
What I should have taken issue with was your use of the word "liberal." There's nothing particularly liberal about KQED, and no liberal talk shows with a host taking only one side of an issue. There's also no real study that says the audience for KQED is liberal. However, NPR has done studies about the education level of its audience, and they tend to be more educated. Which, by the way, might also describe the general population of the Bay Area. That's why I described KQED as "articulate talk."
I'll also point out that KQED was one of the first NPR stations in California, and has been airing NPR programming since 1971. That overlaps the glory years of KGO.
That’s fair.
Y2K, let me see if I can help make your life a little easier.
Stop guessing. Stop remembering. The same device you use to post these can be used to look up current, verifiable facts. Do that, then post.
I just found the 2022 voter registration data. Sacramento is not a "Democrat majority media market". Seven counties make up the metro---Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, Yolo, Yuba, Sutter and Nevada:
Sacramento County:
Democrat: 46%
Republican:25%
NPP (no party preference): 21%
Placer County:
Republican: 40%
Democrat: 32%
NPP: 19%
El Dorado County:
Republican: 40%
Democrat: 32%
NPP: 20%
Yolo County:
Democrat: 51%
Republican: 19%
NPP: 23%
Yuba County:
Republican: 39%
Democrat: 29%
NPP: 21%
Sutter County:
Republican: 40%
Democrat: 31%
NPP: 12%
Nevada County:
Democrat: 39%
Republican: 32%
NPP: 15%
If we broaden it out to the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto media market for television, we add Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Plumas, Sierra, Colusa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus, as well as the eastern part of Solano. We'll leave Solano out because there's no reliable data broken down for the county by east/west.
Amador County:
Republican: 47%
Democrat: 27%
NPP: 17%
Calaveras County:
Republican: 46%
Democrat: 27%
NPP: 17%
Tuolumne County:
Republican: 43%
Democrat: 29%
NPP: 19%
Plumas County:
Republican: 44%
Democrat: 28%
NPP: 19%
Sierra County:
Republican: 44%
Democrat: 27%
NPP: 19%
Colusa County:
Republican: 40%
Democrat: 32%
NPP: 22%
San Joaquin County:
Democrat: 44%
Republican: 28%
NPP: 21%
Stanislaus County:
Democrat: 39%
Republican: 34%
NPP: 19%
There are only three counties in the state with higher Republican registration percentages than Amador and Calaveras---Lassen at 56%, Modoc at 55% and Shasta at 50%, and only two other counties outside the Sacramento media market with GOP registrations higher than 39%. It is absolutely not a "Democrat majority media market."
SFGate, owned by the same company as the Chronicle, but with a separate staff, got the story right, and the headline (though maybe not the subhead):
'Steady decline for years': On-air hosts reflect on KGO's closure
Bay Area talk radio station KGO abruptly went off the air last week. Current and former hosts reflect on its closure.
www.sfgate.com
Somehow I missed this paragraph until just now. That's true, but KQED grew during the period that KGO weakened.
R&R didn't list KQED in its ratings summaries until 2008, but here's the trend in that summary (this is shown as PPM):
November 2008
KGO: 6.3
KQED: 5.4
December 2008
KGO: 6.1
KQED: 5.2
January 2009
KGO: 5.5
KQED: 5.3
KQED was there as KGO lost altitude. It is reasonable to think that some of KGO's erosion over the years (remember, they were in the high 8s at their peak) was to KQED's benefit and that KQED was the default choice for some younger (30-something) listeners who, a decade or two before, might have gravitated to KGO.
And in 2011, when the bloodbath came, it's also very reasonable to assume that KGO listeners in search of articulate talk migrated to some degree to KQED---which in the past decade has seen 8 shares.
I think that was a Nielsen thing, not an R&R thing. I recall some change in how Nielsen listed non-com radio around that time.
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You know, I really never understood the obsession with Spotify and other streaming apps. If I want to listen to something, I can always just listen on YouTube. My significant other really wanted me to try Spotify, but I usually just end up listening to the radio anyway. It feels way too impersonal and I never hear anything different.
Good point. I remember this was considered the tight congressional race in California which covered Sacramento area suburbs.
Tight race between Bera, Ose for 7th Congressional District
The race between Republican Doug Ose and incumbent Democratic Congressman Ami Bera for the 7th District remains too close to call.
www.kcra.com
California US Reps. Issa, Bera in tight races to hold seats
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Ami Bera held narrow leads in California congressional races Wednesday, while two imperiled GOP House members emerged with victories. Democrats had a 39-14 advantage in the state delegation going into the election and hoped that antipathy...
apnews.com
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