Yes, that's right. Shamrock and later Chancellor owned a country combo with KSAN and KNEW
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Bloomberg 960 ending October 1
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Yes, that's right. Shamrock and later Chancellor owned a country combo with KSAN and KNEW
Actually, the Denver version calls itself "Freedom": shows with Glenn Beck, Clay Travis/Buck Sexton, Sean Hannity, Jesse Kelly, Dave Ramsey, George Noory.
The only rationale I could see for iHeart going back to talk would be to get clearances for what otherwise isn't cleared in the market. While iHeart has BIN in the market, that's a different kind of business model, to which an extreme-right approach would not be complementary. But it's the easy solution, so iHeart might do it.
That's what I get for trying to comment based on memory and not googling.
Ironically, the LA, Denver, and Seattle "Patriot" or "Freedom" stations all used to have Air America left wing talk programming 10-15 years ago!
And I just remembered that Coast to Coast AM hasn't had a San Francisco affiliate since KGO changed to sports betting. (KSRO in Santa Rosa still does - but from personal experience it starts to fade out the closer you get to I-80.)
I think to give your scenario even more credibility, you should have proposed a revival of 960's AM stereo signal.
Ding, ding! Ding, ding! (Hang on for dear life while the conductor scans your Clipper card as you hurtle down Powell Street.)
What everyone forgets is that the last gasp of the KABL format was on the 92.1 Walnut Creek FM. Which is fine if you're going after Rossmoor (kind of the Bay Area's equivalent of The Villages) but iHeart isn't the kind of operator that's set up for the business model that would be necessary.
I think it's more likely that VCY would buy the station. I have a hard time doubting that coverage of Babylon-by-the-Bay is a temptation they'd have a hard time resisting.
Possibly nowhere. Consider whom Bloomberg is targeting with its programming. Most likely it's financial professionals. The larger financial services firms have either left the Bay Area or have greatly reduced their presence. I worked for one of them; when I left, it still had two buildings in downtown San Francisco; it's now down to part of one building south of Market. Most of it moved to an awful suburb of Dallas. Others have shrunk as well. Wells Fargo is the big one that remains. Bank of America is gone. A few funds are still around. Silicon Valley investors not only are not likely to turn to radio for financial news, they would want to even avoid being seen to do so, probably considering it the same way that a preacher would consider going into an "adult bookstore" for entertainment.
Bloomberg's model is to lease a station as a promotional tool. So the great unknown is whether Bloomberg even sees a market in the Bay Area.
I do have a speculative possibility in mind but I'll go all Stephen Colbert on you, as in "what number am I thinking of?"
Apologies in advance for all the double negatives.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And that concludes this installment of "Musical Call Letters". 😁
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Especially after being outbid by that Seattle non-comm in the Stolz auction.
KDFD (the Denver version) exists mostly because KOA doesn't run that much syndicated programming and has lots of sports. But extreme-right talk is a very crowded market in Denver, in a place that's gone from "purple" to "blue" for the most part.
I don't remember which San Francisco frequency had Air America - it was either 910 or 960. But if you couldn't make it work in the San Francisco market, there are few other places where you could make it work.
It's really not listenable south of the Golden Gate, either day or night.
When VCY was running that station temporarily, it was broadcasting in mono and most of the programming was talk or preaching. FM really gave it no advantages.
I'd kind of root for Radio 74 Internationale, based on what I hear on KPLS in my current market. I don't much go for their theology, but the programming is really quirky. Even so, I suspect not.
960 originally had Air America and had a left-wing talk format from 2004-12. Then from 2012-14, 960 changed its branding to reflect a broader talk format, with conservative shows in the day and liberal shows at night.
910 then briefly had several of the old left-wing 960 shows from 2018-20.
That's what I had thought, but I wasn't sure.
I honestly didn't pay too much attention to 910.
Any new right-wing talker would have competition from KSFO and KTRB.
Again, no one (not even or maybe not especially iHeart) is considering competition in the traditional sense.
IF they put their right-wing talk hosts on 960, it'll be to show San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose on its clearances---the same reason Cumulus keeps KABC . As K.M. said earlier, nobody's asking for proof of performance beyond that.
One of which is barely treading around a 1.0, and the other not subscribing to the Nielsen books.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Again: KSFO is there to clear syndicated fare. Nothing more.
And Salem (KTRB) only subscribes to the Nielsens in markets where they own mainstream music-formatted stations (like Honolulu).
Then the challenge is figuring out what they're getting from it, or what alternatives are lacking.
KTRB is its own very sad story that should have stayed in Modesto, but too late now.
Which I mentioned upthread. Still, the situation presents the aspect of stray dogs fighting over scraps in the alley where vegetarians live. Are bragging rights over clearances really a viable operating model?
It's not bragging rights. It's just the easy answer to the checkbox labelled "cleared in the top (whatever) markets".
Which is just another way of counting coup.
The business of syndicated radio is different from local radio. iHeart, Cumulus, and Salem all own national syndication companies. So they all get something by clearing their national show in market #4. It is quantifiable and reportable.
In fact, in this economy, it's possible to get more this way than by selling local spots on a low rated AM station.
I have a friend who is a PD in a large market. Very successful.
He describes the job as "managing the decline".
That's literally what it's about, even at stations that are doing well at the moment. They're doing so with fewer resources and budget cuts a real possibility in every quarter.
When I was ND at KFBK, I had the opportunity to visit the iHeart clusters in Los Angeles and San Francisco. I didn't want to say it at the time, but it's been years and I'll say it here.
In both places, I walked in, looked at the clean, modern facilities, how few people were actually involved and, remembering what those stations were when I was coming up in the business, said to myself:
"This is what's left of KFI?"
"This is what's left of K-101?"
And both those visits were five-ish years ago. It's worse now.
Since then I hear they also shrunk the physical footprint. At least that was the goal a couple of years ago.
Not to make excuses, but the technology has made all of this possible.
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