No, Rush Limbaugh killed Michael Jackson 30 years ago.
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Richard Wagoner latest take on KABC AM
- Thread starter 34james
- Start date
I’m never going to say college hoops will impact the ratings, but having LeBron James‘ son playing basketball on your station should provide a jump up in listenership and could be a cash cow
There aren't many good reasons why USC should want Trojans football on KABC, but there is one. It won't mean anything to the radio geeks that frequent this board but it does mean a lot to the USC sports department. It is this:
KABC's coverage area covers most of the areas locally from which they recruit, mainly in the Crenshaw district, South Central LA, Inglewood, Compton, and the south bay.
Both. When KFI began its rise, KABC was a ratings leader in LA. KFI made just as significant moves in AM Drive, Afternoon Drive and in the Dr Laura portion of Middays.
Michael Jackson was stale, but he declined because the mood of LA had changed from conciliatory to confrontational and KFI reflected one side of that; KABC did not speak for such a group.
But those are not areas with college sports listeners. Those are areas where kids who want to go pro begin.
That is not the way radio audiences are measured or the way stations become listener favorites.
TV sells by program segments, by hours and half hours. Radio sells by days and dayparts. And in huge markets like LA with a whole bunch of colleges and teams, college sports is not going to look good when broken out of the ratings of a very low rated station.
Right, and thank you for proving my point.
And they are areas where nobody, but nobody, is going to listen to an old white men's talk station.
When USC Football is on, it is not a white man's talk station, it is the voice of a very small handful of outstanding local football players hoped for future (that the sports department desperately wants to reach).
You keep making my point and missing it all at the same time.
Huh? California (Los Angeles/Orange County alone) produces the most college football athletes across all levels.
I’m not implying young student athletes are going to listen to kabc to tune into games. They WILL tune into hear Trojans specific content that can’t be heard elsewhere. I’ve said for the last 10 years, Kabc is in prime position to become a strong sports outlet in the market. Cumulus distributes cbs sports radio. If not an all-out flip to sports, use Cumulus’ resources, to add sports content. For years everyone has diagnosed Kabc but never coming up with a real, viable solution - now, 790 is literally sitting on it right now
I don’t think the mood of KABC listeners in general and Michael Jackson listeners in particular changed all that much—-but that just highlighted how insular the appeal was.
Rush didn’t steal listeners from Jackson. He had a signal that made him available to a larger audience, and the farther you got from the Westside, the more Rush resonated with people who couldn’t hear Jackson clearly and didn’t want to hear him in the first place.
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So, you’re suggesting that KABC also not stream, then, right?
Because if you offer any alternative access to that content beyond an AM radio, young student athletes will use that instead.
My apologies for not being specific they along with fans who follow a well-run athletic department that competes for championships will tune in. Streaming or AM. I don’t understand how adding sports programming that relates to Angelinos won’t work, but, doing the same thing they’ve been doing since Larry Elder got axed will work?
Nobody is saying that what they’re doing is working.
Not one person.
Anywhere.
That doesn’t mean that literally anything would be better, though.
We said the same thing about KFWB many years ago. Their sports format had good ratings. Arguably, CBS could’ve hung onto the station, if they waited a year before the sale to Audacy.
You should read this:
Hoffarth: What killed ‘The Beast 980’? The nature of the radio business
The beauty of “The Beast 980” crossed paths with the nature of the beast that is the business of radio. It happened on Wilshire Boulevard this week, just down the street from the La Brea Tar Pits.No one comes out smelling…
www.dailynews.com
Key paragraph:
“A year ago, KSPN was cutting staffers and leading the L.A. sports-talk format with overall ratings at 1.3, well ahead of KLAC (0.6) and KFWB (0.2, last among the 41 stations monitored by Arbitron). ”
They managed a 1.2 in one book.
And that would be higher than the ratings than the other sports stations in town (and would be better than what Kabc is doing now). I’m sure them having the Clippers allowed Kfwb to cash in and billed well.You should read this:
Hoffarth: What killed ‘The Beast 980’? The nature of the radio business
The beauty of “The Beast 980” crossed paths with the nature of the beast that is the business of radio. It happened on Wilshire Boulevard this week, just down the street from the La Brea Tar Pits.No one comes out smelling…
Key paragraph:
“A year ago, KSPN was cutting staffers and leading the L.A. sports-talk format with overall ratings at 1.3, well ahead of KLAC (0.6) and KFWB (0.2, last among the 41 stations monitored by Arbitron). ”
They managed a 1.2 in one book.
We are talking about listening to college sports on the radio. On AM.
We are not talking about college enrollment, endowment, alumni contributions, or anything else about the business of college sports.
No sport gets good listening on radio in LA. Major league sports make money for a couple of stations, but in most cases now the teams own the rights and buy brokered time on stations (or buy a half-interest in a station like KLAC) to promote themselves.
College sports, except in a one-college town like Tallahassee or Austin or Tuscaloosa, does not make much money for the station unless there are a group of alumni supporters with businesses who advertise so that their college friends can be impressed. And there is certainly not enough interest or advertiser money to sustain a station for 7 days a week based just on one very limited interest team.
If I recall correctly, the Clippers bought brokered time on KFWB and produced their own broadcast and sold radio as part of the full sports sponsorship package that included a lot more than the radio play by plays.
The station did not bill "well" by LA standards.
And the Clippers are not a college team.
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