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KSFO To 810

DavidEduardo said:
I really doubt that the new commissioner will be very worried about the near-dead AM band when his major concern is new media and telecommunications.
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Here's what he said in his dissent. If he was sincere in his comments, I'd say he will find time to reverse the decision:

Commissioner Brendan Carr, who pushed for the addition of FMs in 2020, says the latest decision reversing the rule change ignores the unprecedented set of challenges being raced by the radio industry, including economic headwinds and unregulated competitors pouring into the market.

“If ever there were a moment for the FCC to modernize its regulations so that broadcasters could compete on a level playing field, that moment would be now. Yet the agency does the opposite today,” Carr said. He also says none of the harms feared by abolishing the rule for FMs have come to pass during the past four years. “The FCC offers only theoretical harms that never materialized,” Carr adds.
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KilowattKat said:
What happens to the 560 frequency? Is that where the KGO calls and sports betting will go? Or an unannounced new format...
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KilowattKat said:
I agree with Mark Roberts, the most likely scenario would be a simulcast, while migrating the KSFO crowd to 810. Which makes me believe this will be 810 KSFO. Easier, and less confusing for the KSFO listener, and would need to only replace the 560 with 810 in that red and blue logo. Cheap and easy, the way Cumulus likes it.

I would certainly hate to see the KGO call letters disappear, just too legendary to just get rid of. They can be moved to KSFO, right?
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They can be moved to 560. I wish people would quit messing with 3-Letter Calls.
 
Tom_KYA1260 said:
They can be moved to 560. I wish people would quit messing with 3-Letter Calls.
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They probably cannot be moved to 560.

I'd have to go back and look at the exact terms of the sale of ABC Radio to Citadel, but my recollection is that it was an indefinite license to keep using the calls from ABC - but only on the stations they were on at the time of the sale.

Is it worth it to Cumulus to tangle with Disney lawyers (who are famously easygoing and loose!) just to move a set of now-meaningless letters to a frequency where they're not going to move the needle on ratings or revenue?
 
At least the KGO call letters live on via Channel 7, KGO-TV. They're not gone completely as some three-letter call signs have.

And remember KGO-FM was around for a while, beginning on 106.1 in 1947 for a brief time, then on 103.7 until 1971. Then again from 1982 to 84 on 103.7, as an FM version of KGO's talk format.
 
fybush said:
They probably cannot be moved to 560.

I'd have to go back and look at the exact terms of the sale of ABC Radio to Citadel, but my recollection is that it was an indefinite license to keep using the calls from ABC - but only on the stations they were on at the time of the sale.

Is it worth it to Cumulus to tangle with Disney lawyers (who are famously easygoing and loose!) just to move a set of now-meaningless letters to a frequency where they're not going to move the needle on ratings or revenue?
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Would all this still apply, being that this would only be a switch of the calls between 2 stations owned by ABC/Disney at the time they were sold? Are the KSFO calls exempt from this agreement, due to the KGO calls still belonging to current Disney owned channel 7?
 
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Mark Roberts said:
I was in Santa Cruz earlier this month, within sight of the boardwalk, and can tell you that KSCO literally sounds horrible: it undermodulates and sounds very distorted. I wonder if its antenna system, which is in a kind of swampy area, has deterioriated significantly. At night, I was able to pick up the 1090 from Baja California with almost no interference from KSCO.
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KSCO is 10kW by day and ONLY 28 Watts at night--I think THAT's the problem!
 
Andy Travis said:
As much as I resisted it, and hate to accept it, while I believe there was a window for more varied talk on FM... In most markets it's closed, because technology advanced and the investments weren't made when it could have been developed and rooted enough to still be viable. The best I can hope for now is a few intrepid PDs or companies that rearrange those Titanic deck chairs for a better view on the end of the ship that is more slowly sinking.

Real Radio in Orlando is still a successful non-partisan talk station. Are they launching any new ones? The product was created in a different time by a different owner when "podcasting" wasn't even a word and sustained. Trying to do it from scratch now, unless you're Bezos or Elon and you just have a fetish for radio, seems like a non-starter. KMBZ in Kansas City (FM) is programmed very well by Alan Furst. Did Audacy call him up to be a talk format captain and evolve stations like WPHT? Did they call Diane Newman at WWL? No.

For whatever reason, this is the product we get, the KSFO type stations and they're going to ride it till the wheels fall off, apparently. Look at WLS. I grew up with that being not a rock and roll station, but the home of Don and Roma, Catherine Johns, Jay Marvin, Ty & Ed, they even had local hosts on weekends. Then they go all in on conservative talk. They make a half-hearted attempt to moderate with Bruce St. James, the ratings remain anemic, and they "repent" and go all in on the Trump wing. The ratings still stink but they stay the course.

In St. Louis, Audacy owns two big talk outlets, the legendary KMOX and the successful KFTK. KMOX is a more mild in tone outlet that appears to be more moderate (to be honest, I'm not familiar with two of their anchor shows, they've changed them since I was more regularly listening) and conservative talk KFTK. It appears KMOX may be moving more towards the KMBZ model, but until those changes, KMOX was also heavily conservative and has three competing fully-Trump friendly outlets (an iHeart "Patriot" and two local independents that go even further - "Real Talk" and "NewsSTL".)

I'd love to believe it could change. I still love radio. But I'm about over putting any hope in it being what it was for me again, both as a listener and as a career. And I was listening to Chip Franklin till the very last, so it's not like every KGO listener was in those high and difficult to sell demos, but there's not enough of us, and I doubt even if you rebooted the entire project on FM, it would recapture half of what it used to be, financially or audience wise.

And I hate that. Because live, reacting in real time radio, with the discipline and pacing and interaction can be magic. You can't replace it with a podcast. I can get more out of three hours of truly lively talk radio than unstructured rambling for three hours with Joe Rogan. But I grew up on that format, it resonates with me. Even the biggest national conservative talkers mostly don't make Rogan bucks. So... here we are. And speaking of Chip Franklin, they gave him a couple of fill-ins on KIRO in Seattle. He was great. He hasn't been back in what, two years now? That time slot is running with a solo host because even slower to cut Bonneville had to make budgetary adjustments. Even some of the most talented and experienced are screwed because of this. So "talent development" is barely a concept. They're trying to bail the water out, not bring on more weight - even if that's a better crew than what they've got on board.
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Shortly Before acting liberal at KGO, Chip Franklin had a low rated conservative show at KOGO in San Diego. Hard to believe he was sincere at both stations.
 
Andy Travis said:
To use a cliche that fizzled with the failure of CBS' FM talk experiments, make it the talk that rocks. And it does take the resources, the producers and new media people. I know a top 20 market talk station that went from a 2 person night show with a producer and a board op, to 1 host and one producer/board op hybrid. Now they have no night show. I get the financial argument - but I also get that if you want to do something at proper scale, you need a lot of fuel and people who can focus on excellence in each aspect. So to do something at this scale, you have to go big. BBC Radio 1 big.
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But the BBC license fee is set to be abolished by 2027. The UK government isn’t going to make up for those billions in revenue the BBC is set to lose:
www.statista.com

Licence fee income of the BBC 2010-2024 | Statista

How much money does the BBC make from TV license? In the fiscal year ending March 2024, the license fee income declined by 80 million GBP.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
 
Time Traveler said:
Why is KGO directional full time? I would think that being directional only at night would certainly protect WGY.
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This is a complete guess on my part. But, I'm thinking KGO remains directional daytime because that pattern fits the unique S.F. Bay Area population footprint better than an omni-directional signal.

Unlike most cities in flat areas that can expand outward in nearly all directions, the Bay Area is somewhat hemmed in by costal mountains, plus more hills/low mountains east of the Bay. As a results, the urban area is largely squished into a NNW/SSE axis that stretches from Gilroy in the south, way up to Santa Rosa around 100 miles north. KGO's signal is generally aimed at this axis. Yes, the pattern does give you slightly weaker reception in East Bay cities like Livermore and Concord. Those are areas where (as others have posted) 560's omni-directional 5kw may be a bit stronger.
 
alok said:
Might have already been said but any chance of bringing back the old KGO talk format, with some new and some old on-air people and new calls on 560? Would that format work today?
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Reminds me of the phase "to make a small fortune start with a bigger one." It would be very expensive to do and the chance of success are slim to none.

To start, many of the old on-air people are retired or have died (RIP) so you would probably have to a have a new crop of people. There isn't many options for syndicated moderate, center, center/left or left talk shows so your schedule would have to have in house hosts from 6AM to 6PM every weekday at minimum. Just airing news from the bird isn't enough and would need to build a local news team. Then you have to promote it and hope people tune in.

But the bigger problem is, who is going to listen to this? The audience for AM talk radio is 55+ and getting older everyday. Younger people get their spoken word content fix from podcasts, YouTube, and other social media.

A new KGO would cost millions and, as others have said, would only work as a pet project for a billionaire. Like a Bay Area version of John Catsimatidis.
 
inari said:
A new KGO would cost millions and, as others have said, would only work as a pet project for a billionaire. Like a Bay Area version of John Catsimatidis.
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There are a lot of those kinds of people. Most of them are involved in high tech companies, and have no interest in old tech. If you take a trip to Cupertino, you'll see a very sophisticated radio station, all part of something called Apple Radio. None of which uses transmitters or towers.
 
inari said:
But the bigger problem is, who is going to listen to this? The audience for AM talk radio is 55+ and getting older everyday. Younger people get their spoken word content fix from podcasts, YouTube, and other social media.

A new KGO would cost millions and, as others have said, would only work as a pet project for a billionaire. Like a Bay Area version of John Catsimatidis.
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True if there is a Bay Area Version of John Catsimatidis it's Elon Musk but he moved his operations to Texas. X is basically Elon Musk's version of running WABC Radio.

Not so sure the Bay area would go along with this stuff given how 110kw KQED-FM is the most listened to News/talk station in San Francisco.


www.statesman.com

Why is Elon Musk choosing this small Texas town as the landing spot for X headquarters?

This week, Musk announced where exactly his social media company X would land — and it might not be where many expected.
www.statesman.com www.statesman.com
 
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