KFI Major Schedule Change Starting Tomorrow

[davideduardo]

People who are 30 now will listen to kfi in 20-30 years.

No, they won't. The problem with traditional talk formats is that the whole approach does not appeal much to those under about 40 to 45.

Am isn’t just going to “die.”

It's not "going to die". It already did. Except for a few markets with sports only on AM and a few smaller minority group and religious formats, there is nothing left on AM in most markets.

There will always be a need for am talk.

There will always be a need for spoken word programming. That is all that podcasts are about, too. But AM as a band will last a decade or two more based only on service to some very small minority groups (Hispanics use AM less than any other definable group) and a couple of declining talk, news or sports stations.

New generations of people will always listen.

Not to AM. Looking at a couple of random markets, AM listening among 18-34's is under 1%.

There’s no need to flip any of the i heart FM stations to sports or talk in la. They will be fine.

The reason for not flipping any AMs to FM is that every one of the FMs is top 10 in 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 and every one is a major biller.

 

[henry]

People who are 30 now will listen to kfi in 20-30 years. Am isn’t just going to “die.” There will always be a need for am talk. New generations of people will always listen. There’s no need to flip any of the i heart FM stations to sports or talk in la. They will be fine.

AM is already dead in most of the country.
Ever flip around the dial in any market smaller than a Top 10? It's a snoozefest. Good stations have found their FM simulcast and they are buying the station time.

 

[davideduardo]

AM is already dead in most of the country.
Ever flip around the dial in any market smaller than a Top 10? It's a snoozefest. Good stations have found their FM simulcast and they are buying the station time.

And in a huge percentage of cases, the AM is only kept on the air to sustain a translator on FM which is where the listening and revenue come from. Were translators associated with AM stations allowed to turn in the AM and keep the FM license, probably around 60% or more of US AM stations would disappear.

 

[Yabadabado1]

Years ago I was on my way to Indiana and in western Ohio I was dialing around the AM dial and no less than 8 stations [all within listening distance of each other] had Rush Limbaugh on, 3 stations on FM had him going. I was thinking "What a waste of frequencies." Most of the FMs were country. I found one FM station that had a music format that held my interest....classic rock/newer rock and some classic hits tossed in. Didn't come across any good stations till I made it into Fort Wayne. I wish I had time to go visit the station I had applied at in the mid 80s but just couldn't find the time.

 

[michael hagerty]

People who are 30 now will listen to kfi in 20-30 years. Am isn’t just going to “die.” There will always be a need for am talk. New generations of people will always listen. There’s no need to flip any of the i heart FM stations to sports or talk in la. They will be fine.

Loverofradio, that's just not true.

Ten years ago, KFI had a weekly cumulative audience of roughly 1.5 million people.

Today, it's 623,100.

Now add up the weekly cumulative audience for all the rated AM stations in Los Angeles (regardless of language) that don't also have an FM simulcast. Put together, it's 2,087,800---meaning K-BIG, KOST and KRTH individually all have cumulative weekly audiences bigger than the total number of people listening to stations you can only get on AM.

 

[michael hagerty]

Years ago I was on my way to Indiana and in western Ohio I was dialing around the AM dial and no less than 8 stations [all within listening distance of each other] had Rush Limbaugh on, 3 stations on FM had him going. I was thinking "What a waste of frequencies." Most of the FMs were country. I found one FM station that had a music format that held my interest....classic rock/newer rock and some classic hits tossed in. Didn't come across any good stations till I made it into Fort Wayne. I wish I had time to go visit the station I had applied at in the mid 80s but just couldn't find the time.

Try DXing after midnight now. You'll lose count of the number of frequencies running George Noory.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Ever flip around the dial in any market smaller than a Top 10? It's a snoozefest. Good stations have found their FM simulcast and they are buying the station time.

Not just in markets outside the top 10. Even in New York and Chicago, AM band listening is very low, despite having several good signals.

KFI is probably the most successful AM station left in the country today, now that WINS is on FM.

 

[davideduardo]

Not just in markets outside the top 10. Even in New York and Chicago, AM band listening is very low, despite having several good signals.

KFI is probably the most successful AM station left in the country today, now that WINS is on FM.

If we look at audience share, which is market-size-agnostic, then there are quite a few more successful AM talk stations such as WSB, WBZ, WWL KSL, KFKBK, WTMJ, KMOX, WTAM, WBT, WTVN, WISN, and WLW to name just a couple. They have higher 12+ shares than KFI. In sports, we have KIRO.

After that batch, I can not find any AM talk or sports station with a higher 3-book or quarterly average share that beats KFI. So it is in a tiny group.

 

[michael hagerty]

If we look at audience share, which is market-size-agnostic, then there are quite a few more successful AM talk stations such as WSB, WBZ, WWL KSL, KFKBK, WTMJ, KMOX, WTAM, WBT, WTVN, WISN, and WLW to name just a couple. They have higher 12+ shares than KFI. In sports, we have KIRO.

After that batch, I can not find any AM talk or sports station with a higher 3-book or quarterly average share that beats KFI. So it is in a tiny group.

Yeah, but, David, PTBoardOp was talking about standalone AMs like KFI. A chunk of the stations you listed are AM/FM simulcasts (I don't have time to look them up---but most or all of them).

 

[hotpatrick2004]

So has anyone else listen to Mo Kelly's new show on Kfi and if you did what did you think?

 

[hotpatrick2004]

Patrick, you gotta know when they are trolling you!

You are correct sir. Silly me

 

[sdwulfdawg]

Jay has made a wonderful living by not overthinking issues.

My favorite is still the time some out-of-town morning radio team got his home phone number and woke him at 6:00 a.m. about 30 years ago.

"Hey, Jay! It's (name) and (name) from (call letters)!"

"Oh----two guys sharing a brain cell."

Only Mo Kelly would ask such a stupid wannabe virtue "I'm so educated and sophisticated" signaling question like that. Kelly has this very interesting complex that bubbles up regularly trying to prove to his audiences that he somehow smarter than he actually is.


I believe that is the crux of why he is repelling and grating so many of his potential listeners.

 

[michael hagerty]

Only Mo Kelly would ask such a stupid wannabe virtue "I'm so educated and sophisticated" signaling question like that.

Like what? There isn't a quote from Mo in what you replied to.

 

[asugeorge1]

So has anyone else listen to Mo Kelly's new show on Kfi and if you did what did you think?

I have listened the first two nights and I have decided that I will probably skip most of his show UNLESS he does what he did at the beginning of yesterday’s show which was, as he put it, “preempt the regularly scheduled programming” to continue Tim Conway’s discussion about the incoming “Pineapple Express” storm. It only lasted for the first hour of the show before reverting back to the entertainment / comic book talk. If he would actually talk about local news topics, then I would probably continue to listen, but that is not the direction the show is going to take unless something BIG is happening.

 

[michael hagerty]

I have listened the first two nights and I have decided that I will probably skip most of his show UNLESS he does what he did at the beginning of yesterday’s show which was, as he put it, “preempt the regularly scheduled programming” to continue Tim Conway’s discussion about the incoming “Pineapple Express” storm. It only lasted for the first hour of the show before reverting back to the entertainment / comic book talk. If he would actually talk about local news topics, then I would probably continue to listen, but that is not the direction the show is going to take unless something BIG is happening.

Well, yeah. Would you really want him to pre-empt if something big wasn't happening? What's the upside, other than a fourth hour of Conway hosted by someone who's not Tim?

 

[henry]

If we look at audience share, which is market-size-agnostic, then there are quite a few more successful AM talk stations such as WSB, WBZ, WWL KSL, KFKBK, WTMJ, KMOX, WTAM, WBT, WTVN, WISN, and WLW to name just a couple. They have higher 12+ shares than KFI. In sports, we have KIRO.

After that batch, I can not find any AM talk or sports station with a higher 3-book or quarterly average share that beats KFI. So it is in a tiny group.

And it's important to reemphasize in the case of KSL that nearly all of the listening is on 102.7 FM and not 1160. (They really don't promote 1160 anymore). Being able to push a preset on the same car radio band is important. Not to mention, the AM sounds crappy.

I don't have numbers, but I'd say streaming (Alexa, etc.) exceeds the AM audience now in most markets.

Absolutely positively KFI would be on FM now if iHeart had a station to throw at it. Thankfully, everything is doing really well. But if these were the old days of pre-MYfm KBIG or Hot 92.3, you can bet something would be sacrificed for it.

 

[henry]

People who are 30 now will listen to kfi in 20-30 years. Am isn’t just going to “die.” There will always be a need for am talk. New generations of people will always listen. There’s no need to flip any of the i heart FM stations to sports or talk in la. They will be fine.

I'm nearly 38. I feel like the youngest KFI listener in California.

My peers slightly younger than me (with kids) never listen to talk radio at all. It's non-radio podcasts. For music, they listen to an AC or Hot AC station, babbling John Tesh as background noise — simply because they cannot be bothered to Bluetooth their phone on shorter trips around town.

Now, what happens when Android Auto inevitably becomes automatic? Like, you jump in the car is it POPS on and starts playing Spotify all by itself? Radio for anyone under 40 will be in real trouble.

This is why iHM is pushing podcasts so much. The key takeaway from KFI this week has been "It's okay your show is on earlier. You can still stream it anytime you want." It's brilliant because I realize that I can still listen to Conway on demand as always, but now the episodes will post earlier.

 

[michael hagerty]

Now, what happens when Android Auto inevitably becomes automatic? Like, you jump in the car is it POPS on and starts playing Spotify all by itself? Radio for anyone under 40 will be in real trouble.

In a growing number of new cars over the past three years, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto has been available. Set it up exactly once and it activates from then on. We're already there technologically. The cars just have to get into driveways.

 

[wadio]

I'm nearly 38. I feel like the youngest KFI listener in California.

My peers slightly younger than me (with kids) never listen to talk radio at all. It's non-radio podcasts. For music, they listen to an AC or Hot AC station, babbling John Tesh as background noise — simply because they cannot be bothered to Bluetooth their phone on shorter trips around town.

Now, what happens when Android Auto inevitably becomes automatic? Like, you jump in the car is it POPS on and starts playing Spotify all by itself? Radio for anyone under 40 will be in real trouble.

This is why iHM is pushing podcasts so much. The key takeaway from KFI this week has been "It's okay your show is on earlier. You can still stream it anytime you want." It's brilliant because I realize that I can still listen to Conway on demand as always, but now the episodes will post earlier.

"Live and Local" used to be the buzz-phrase for talk radio.

To me, local isn't very important because I'm interested in what's going on in other parts of the country. I live on the east coast and I've been listening to John and Ken for many years. Why? Because they're informative, entertaining and fun. They were talking about the border well before it became a national story.

But LIVE is a big deal, IMO. There's a certain connection a listener experiences when listening to a show that's happening in real time vs. a podcast. It's hard to define and probably doesn't show up in the stats of the bean counters.

Now, when it comes to age, there are old folks who think young and people who can't let go of their high school years. For example, they're stuck listening to the music of that era.

Age, when it comes to radio, is more about attitude than a chronological age. Don't forget, radio is "Theater of the Mind" -- we don't actually see the hosts. If I didn't know better I'd guess that John and Ken are in their 30s or 40s and Charlie Kirk is in his 50s or 60s!

I was curious to know Mo Kelly's age but apparently that's a secret so I'll assume he's "over the hill." I think KFI has made a very bad decision in terms of it's current lineup.

 

[TheBigA]

Age, when it comes to radio, is more about attitude than a chronological age. Don't forget, radio is "Theater of the Mind" -- we don't actually see the hosts. If I didn't know better I'd guess that John and Ken are in their 30s or 40s and Charlie Kirk is in his 50s or 60s!

People of a certain age have young children and talk about them on the radio. People of a certain age engage on Instagram and other social media all the time, and talk about it on the radio. Then people of another certain age talk about a completely different set of subjects and activities. That's how you determine the age of the host. You don't have to see a picture. Just listen to the subject matter. If the host starts talking about the 1970s, he's probably over 50.