That’s true, but the way Poorman told it, he said that Rick told him he thought that talking about golf on the air would make him sound “old”. But he also should’ve known that you don’t tell Poorman, “Don’t talk about (fill in the blank) on the air”, because he probably won’t be able to help himself. After all, Poorman’s admitted that the first time he got in trouble at KROQ was for mentioning a Rolling Stones concert on air that hadn’t been announced yet.
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Richard wagoner plans on a new feature in the Los Angeles daily news
- Thread starter 34james
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Some of my favorite stations from the 80's that are no longer with us: KIQQ, KNOB, KNX-FM (93.1), KMET, KUTE, KACE, KMPC
A notorious loose cannon (Poorman) and a millionaire 50-year-old CHR disc jockey who wants to sound like a man of the people.
What could go wrong?
I've personally dealt with Poorman and loose cannon is putting it mildly. However I still enjoy listening to him from time to time on KOCI online.
You can add KEZY and KWST to the list. KLOS, KRTH, and KROQ are still around but nothing near their former glory!
KRTH is in its best ratings position ever in the last year.
I mean, honest to God---how do you get "nothing near their former glory" from a station that's been #1 for four months and is currently number one in 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54?
And not to start a whole new thing, but do you realize how rare it is to be number one in 18-34 and 25-54? For a long time, that was two very different audiences---an AOR and an AC.
Time does not stand still. People get older, music changes, and tastes change. The population of LA has changed in the last 30 years. You can't expect radio to stay the same when the environment changes around them.
Michael... I surmise by "former glory" he is referring to when KRTH was very much a loving recreation of Boss Radio KHJ, with many of the same air talent that worked at 930. For some, the jettisoning of the music of the 1960s is the demise of the radio ("glory") they cherished.
BTW... it could be somewhat similarly stated that KLOS is seeing heights in 6+ it has rarely seen during its 50+ year legacy run... so is its glory era then (Mark & Brian, Jim Ladd, Uncle Joe, Geno Michelini...) or is it now?
Add my vote to citing KEZY 1190 as a station lovingly remembered... and I would love to see it honored in one of Richard's upcoming columns.
Fine. But let's look at that era---Bill Drake consulting, Robert W. Morgan in mornings, The Real Don Steele in afternoons. It lasted from late August of 1992 until Steele got sick in the spring of 1997 and Morgan less than a year later, so about four and a half years.
The best book in that whole run? A 4.4 in the fall of 1992. Fourth in the market 12+. It was sixth in men 18-34, tenth in women 18-34, fifth in men 18-49, seventh in women 18-49, and fourth in both men and women 25-54.
And that was the BEST book in that "golden era".
It dipped as low as 10th place with a 3.2 in the spring of 1994. In that book, it did not make the top 10 in 18-34 (either gender), or in men 18-49. It was 10th in women 18-49, 7th in men 25-54 and 5th in women 25-54.
Today? #1 overall with a 6.8 (a larger share of a significantly larger city now), #1 18-34, #1 18-49 and #1 25-54.
KLOS is tenth with a 3.0 right now. It's done better than that many times in its history---but given how low it got the past decade or so, a 3.0 looks pretty good.
What I mean is from a quality standpoint, not ratings. Perhaps they're hitting the mark by playing "Take On Me" several times a day, and just a few hundred songs that tested the best in those groups to a lesser extent, while ignoring many thousands of other worthy songs. I'll bet that the numbers of AM/FM listeners in total are way down from what they used to be because listeners are choosing to pay for alternatives such Sirius/XM and streaming services that didn't used to exist instead of what's now over the air. A 6.8 share of a small number is still a lot less than a 3 or 4 share of a large number.
To set the record straight, KRTH plays around 600 total songs, and they play them in proportion to their "popularity" or, in radio terms, average scores and scores in all the valued subsets. Some play several times a day, others once or twice in a 10-day period.
If, out of those "many thousands", the rest are hated or at least disliked by anywhere from everyone to a big percentage of the audience, they don't get played as every time a "bad song" is played, all those listeners who hate it are prone to going away and not coming back.
There are no other "worthy" songs. Every other song from the era they select from tests dangerously and negatively.
Now you are deflecting from the quality of the KRTH playlist and talking about radio in general. Irrelevant.
But, to give you actual facts rather than "internet misinformation", 20 years ago, 94% of all people in LA used radio every week. Today, among adults over 35 (the target for KRTH) it is around 85%. Yes, they listen less but that is because there are so many options, not because KRTH is bad.
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Translation, Only 600 songs are deemed playable due to testing negatively by an unspecified percentage of those tested in a desired demographic.
How often every week? Of those people who listened to radio in any given week, did many choose to listen for a good part of each day or for just a few minutes while they were driving to or from somewhere?
And when KRTH had a looser playlist, they were 15th with a 2.5.
For that matter, when KRTH had a much tighter playlist, under Jay Coffey in the mid-aughts, they were 15th with a 2.5.
It's about the RIGHT music.
The target audience in Los Angeles in 2023 has no issue with KRTH's quality. It's clearly delivering on their desires and expectations.
The number on the right ("cume") is the total number of listeners to each of these stations in a given week:
That's every radio station in Los Angeles getting a 1.1 or better. KRTH not only has the highest share, it has the highest cume of any station in the market---218,500 more listeners than the second-highest coming station.
It's okay to not like KRTH. It's okay to not understand what KRTH plays, or why it's successful with it. But the fact of the matter is that in its best book of the Drake-Morgan-Steele "golden era", it had a weekly cume of 1,477,710. Today it's 2,321,300.
Krth 101 dominated when it comes to numbers. There hardly a shell of there former self they are bigger and better then ever when it comes to ratings. Who cares if they don't play 50s or 60s. I don't care for there predominantly 80s heavy format I prefer current tunes but apparently alot of people dont agree with me and that's fine
No, you are wrong again. The 600 or so songs are the ones that are universally acceptable, liked or loved by the station's target listener group.
Ranges from an hour or two to over 100 hours. Wide range.
In most major markets, average commutes are a half hour or more. That alone is 5 hours or more a week, and less than half of radio listening is in the car.
You guys know that after a certain point in time, regurgitating all of these same KRTH talking points (regardless of their accuracy or lack thereof), book after book, year after year, gets quite tedious, right?
If it is tiring to you, it is even more tedious to a moderator. I've spent 22 years building my own website to try to show people who have accumulated a collection of false data that things are not how they wish they had been.
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