JeeperOne
Banned
To succeed this way, pm 94.1 they're going to have to use THE SAME setup Altitude 92.5 uses (Same site & EVERYTHING)
Otherwise, it won't work
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KOA - One of the Best Billing AM Stations in the U.S.
- Thread starter Gregg.
- Start date
Otherwise, it won't work
And I find it to be a mixed bag. Local news seems straightforward if a little fluffy at times. But the network news affiliation is Fox which, quite frankly, is lower quality than ABC or CBS. And this morning's marquee talk show guest is Sen. Ron Johnson. That says a lot to me right there and it doesn't leave me with a favorable impression. Also it's quite out of step with Denver generally.
I think ultimately they're going to have to go to a full-power FM. The 94.1 signal(s) is too spotty in some of the faster growing parts of Denver and I think the ordinary listener won't put up with it.
Hey, it's a dilemma for iHeart in Denver. Which FM do you sacrifice for a KOA simulcast? They can put it off only for so long. KOA outbills WGN Chicago, WSCR Chicago, KLAC Los Angeles, WWJ Detroit, etc. iHeart can't allow one of its best billing stations to sink into the AM radio quicksand.
As I said earlier, every year, the number of listeners who are willing to put up with AM radio decreases. Two 250-watt FM translators can only do so much in a spread out market like Denver. So which FM gets the ax?
KTCL Alternative Rock. .. #4
KRFX Classic Rock ... #5
KBCO Adult Album Alternative ... #9 tie
KDHT Top 40 ... #14
KWBL Country ... #18
As I said earlier, every year, the number of listeners who are willing to put up with AM radio decreases. Two 250-watt FM translators can only do so much in a spread out market like Denver. So which FM gets the ax?
KTCL Alternative Rock. .. #4
KRFX Classic Rock ... #5
KBCO Adult Album Alternative ... #9 tie
KDHT Top 40 ... #14
KWBL Country ... #18
JeeperOne
Banned
I think 92.5 is full power with its current setup, isn't it??
With a transmitting site north of Denver, KKSE is a C1 that does put a city-grade signal over much of the city. But it's not an iHeart property.
That's an easy question - the weakest cash flowing station would get the ax. Might be a couple years from now. Might be five years from now.
JeeperOne
Banned
Who says iHeart has to own the site?? I doubt even KSE owns the site
I certainly didn't. Reference was to ownership of the station; you asked about KKSE's coverage area, and I answered the question. I'm fully aware that most stations don't own their transmitter sites. Whether KKSE is relevant to KOA's future plans (which is doubtful) is a whole other question.
I think both KCBS and 10-10 Wins are probably amoung the best all-news stations on the air right now. If we went back 30 years I would also add KGO (5a-9a) to this list as well.
Does Denver actually have only 5 full market FM signals? Or are these just i Heart stations?
KGO was a talk station with some news blocks. It was never all news. But the news block was good, but it was more a magazine format than the "give us 20 minutes" of the KCBS heritage style.
Back around 1995 when I flipped KTNQ to all talk, KGO was one of the stations I liked monitoring as the format mechanics were outstanding, particularly in the area of branding, topic refreshing in each quarter hour and "stationality". Jack Swanson was a great PD in that era, and his GM Mickey Luckoff supported the format and the talent.
Indeed, KGO was never all-news. What I was referring to was the decades of Jim Dunbar & Co from 5-to 9. Jim never read any stories, he was the announcer/host who threw it to in-studio and in the field reporters, and dedicated traffic and weather people. He made us, the listeners, feel like we were really on top of things. A joy to listen to!
Actually, in all the years I've been in the Bay Area, KCBS has been on a one-hour news cycle, with repetition only for breaking news and for inherently repetitive elements such as traffic and weather. It's using basically the same clock as WBBM (traffic and weather on the 8's) and the one KTRH in Houston used starting in 1986 (I was there at the time) and continuing for most of its time as an all-news station.
I should also have pointed out that KGO did try what might be called an "all news some of the time" format roughly around 10 years ago. There was some effort put into it weekdays but weekends continued to have talk programming. There was also a heavy reliance on field reports from KGO-TV, which, by that time, was not under common ownership with KGO. There were some smart moves - for example, leading off the hour with local news and deferring ABC news to later in the quarter-hour. But, ultimately, Cumulus couldn't or wouldn't match the resources that KCBS could apply to its coverage. KCBS also had an FM outlet which KGO lacked. Then KGO went back to the talk format but a lot of former KGO listeners weren't ready to come back. I've felt, for decades, that AM stations can only lose listeners and can't gain them. KGO is a prime example of that.
But that was at least 5 or 6 years after they died a horrible PPM induced death. The PPM showed that they had no "shadow cume" or people who were light users who did not put the into diaries but did listen. Nope, none of those. And the real TSL was vastly less than the "9 AM to 5 PM" many wrote in diaries... about 60% less. So the station collapsed.
Efforts to revive it, in my opinion, were based on pure diary techniques and not on the new reality. The station became a 1-share operation and just never recovered. New ownership canned the former PD and GM (yeah, they said they resigned) and proceeded to make things even worse. Smart.
This is where the "deck chairs on the Titanic" comparison is made. KGO sunk faster; at least on the Titanic about a third of the passengers survived. By the time they tried talk again, it was too late.
Most people in San Francisco knew KGO as a talk station... and then as a talk station that lost the good talent and died. There was no way to recreate the "big KGO" 10 or 20 years later in a PPM world where AM talk listeners were all in their 60's and beyond.
I imagine a lot of the former KGO listeners started listening to KQED?
That would be an interesting research question. There were plenty of options, ranging from KPFA to KSFO. KQED-FM probably comes closest, but KALW has a few call-in shows, too.
Those were the days when Cumulus was making a lot of bad decisions.
That said, and this is an anecdote and not data, I can say that when I first moved to the Bay Area 24 years ago, I tried listening to KGO because I had heard so much about it. And I couldn't stand it. It seemed like a station old people called into for the purpose of airing their complaints, the newscasts came across as fluffy, and it seemed like its best days were past.
I would posit that KGO was going to sink anyway. They had a 55-to-death problem. The "all news some of the time" effort was an attempt to fight that off, but its execution was inconsistent albeit with some bright spots, and it came too late to have much effect. It should have happened when KGO was on top, but that particular goose was still laying precious metals back then.
I thought of KQED first, since that’s where former KGO host Michael Krasny went.
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