I know this is the Los Angeles board, but let's remember that KCBS has lost a live, local news presence as well---and as the smaller of the two stations, I'm betting this may have been more out of considerations related to KCBS' budget than KNX's.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
KNX Los Angeles and KCBS San Francisco to Simulcast Overnight Programming
- Thread starter Joey1986
- Start date
I know this is the Los Angeles board, but let's remember that KCBS has lost a live, local news presence as well---and as the smaller of the two stations, I'm betting this may have been more out of considerations related to KCBS' budget than KNX's.
This year and to some extent last year, there’s been an usually large amount of retirements and dismissals of longtime talents at KCBS — Bret Burkhart, Patti Reising, Eric Thomas, Susan Kennedy, Jeffrey Schaub, Kim Wonderley among others. There’s lately been a bunch of new voices and some newer traffic anchors who have been promoted to main anchor duties to take their places. I know KNX has gone through some of those as well recently. While retirements are nothing new, I feel the days of all-news radio is starting to give way to less local and less comprehensive news content due to the economics of running such a format these days.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Here's a good question for some clever researcher to tackle: With the changes in media that have included the migration in large numbers to online/app-based sources, how many people under the age of, say 35, even know what the local terrestrial all-News or News/Talk station is, and do they know where it is on the AM/FM dial?
Good question and there is no public research so specific as to focus on radio news sources.
But if we look at the usage of radio in 18-24 and 18-34, we know that a huge percentage don't use radio at all, while those that do generally are lighter listeners (the exceptions being for ethnic and even religious formats).
In LA, the real research question is whether those under about 40 know what AM even is. The only ones that likely actually do know the answer are sports fans who listen to KLAC.
Note that KLAC does not promote its calls any longer, and does emphasize "AM" in its logo.
It's really touching how so many old-timers on this board care about what radio is doing for the next emergency and whether there will be a pro at the board at 3:00 am when it happens (no sarcasm, or at least not much, intended). As long as everyone knows that the first thing the vast majority of people will do (particularly the 54 and under set that radio really cares about the most) is reach for their cell phones and pull up Twitter or their favorite social media site to find out what is really going on in real time.
(Grandpa is up and about early when it happens, "Dag-nabit, Where is that flashlight and AM transistor radio, I know I had one in the garage here somewhere")
It's not that simple. In California, rates for the IOUs (investor-owned utilities) are set every four years. It used to be every three years, but the process was so arduous that the cadence was lengthened to four years. This is done through a "rate case". Many lawyers are involved, for a rate case is a legal document. It contains detailed justifications. Intervenors...public-interest groups, mostly, plus a PUC staff tasked with representing consumer interests...can and do challenge those justifications. They sometimes win, other times the IOU wins.
So it's not nearly as simple as asking dad for keys to the car. A lot of work goes into a rate case. In some instances, requests are rejected. The IOU never gets everything it asks for. Some costs are instead borne by shareholders rather than ratepayers, which means reduced profits even though, nominally, there's supposed to be a guaranteed rate of return. Sometimes these costs are offset by cutting other costs.
If it sticks with its present business model.
Maybe stick values will go low enough to where local agencies can buy a station for emergency management purposes. That would be an interesting development.
I wish I could find the article, but I read the results of a major media survey that was published earlier this year. Anyways, the takeaway was that the majority of those under 30 get all their news from social media (particularly Tik Tok and Facebook),. Radio had a very low percentage, and the smartphone was the number one device used to obtain news coverage.
You keep saying this. They stick with the present business model because there's no other option. They can't put their air signal behind a paywall. It's against FCC rules. That's why they're transitioning to other platforms. There's a different business model on digital.
Owning a radio signal won't make the people listen. A lot of state DOTs own AM stations where they transmit their own traffic info. We have no idea if anyone listens. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.
A more complete explanation is that PG&E's renewed emphasis on fire risk stemmed from the bankruptcy that came about because of the lawsuits stemming from the destruction of the city of Paradise. The power shutoffs were really difficult at first. My own house was affected by some of them. The company got better at them with practice, making them more targeted and improving advance notification to customers. PG&E also did some innovative things with geographic information systems (GIS) that made the process better and more understandable to customers.
I was there during the bankruptcy. Actually the worst months were the ones leading up to the actual filing. You couldn't spend a cent on anything. No travel, either. Once the DIP financing was arranged through the packaged bankruptcy, we could actually function more normally again. Fortunately, our paychecks didn't stop. Gavin Newsom was making a lot of noises back then about taking over the utility. We would say among ourselves that we might end up working for the State of California.
Then what happens if there is no cell service?
The root cause of such a failure will be loss of power. Some cell sites will have backup power that lasts a day at most.
Internet via cable TV operators requires electrical power to operate. Fiber internet is more robust: it will operate if you can get power to your terminal adapter. I keep a Jackery unit on hand just for that. But not everyone thinks to do that. And even that backup will run out of power eventually.
In my former Oakland neighborhood, we lost cell service quite a few times due to power shutoffs and, in one case, when after a winter storm a tree fell on the two-phase line (California has phase-to-phase wiring so you have to have at least two phases) that powered our nearest cell. It took days to get that line up again because the ground was so waterlogged that a new pole couldn't be set. In the meantime, no cell phone service.
And I'm going to keep saying it.
Comparing a little TIS on AM frequencies that are at the very edge of the range of the "dial" with a full-power AM or FM station is ludicrous.
OK, it is complicated. But the rates do go up and never go down. Radio has seen a 75% decrease in Persons Using Radio and one station I know that celebrated in 1996 selling its first $1000 spot is now selling for 10% to 20% of that.
But my point is that, tedious or not, the rates increase. Radio's don't..
And how would those stations be staffed to provide useful service?
You also don't have an obligation to keep presenting it when all you're doing is trying to have the last word.
So then expect not to be believed when you say, and I quote, "I'm explaining why things are the way they are".
The Puerto Rico hurricane, now going on 8 years ago, found every service dead except for WKAQ AM. On the whole Island.
Yes, in metro San Juan a few areas kept cell service. But that died as the batteries, intended for a few hours of backup, died. Few cell sites had gennies. TV stations lost their towers and the transmitters were crushed underneath. Landlines, almost all above ground, gone. Roads impassible, more than half the bridges out or damaged.
And so on. It took months and months to get some municipalities (same as "counties") back to normal services.
But the first things to go were cellular, landline and power services.
I don't think such stations would be on all the time. So it would be like any other kind of emergency-response staffing. A lot of the time it would be overhead (though, if powered down, the costs would be minimal). But, to take an example, firefighters aren't fighting fires every hour of every shift. They are there when you need them, and we as a society have determined that it's worth paying the overhead of having them idle some of the time.
As for emergency communications, this is something that hasn't really been reckoned with yet. So it's hard to see what the future might be like if that future is without any kind of independent broadcast capability that doesn't rely upon cellphones or other Internet connections.
There are sirens, but they just indicate that you need to go find the information somehow.
How long before services such as Starlink make cell radio towers obsolete? I don't know either, but the future is coming very fast.
That won't make it true.
You're right. I have no obligation. I do it because it's fun for me. I don't care who gets the last word.
So then expect that I'll keep posting regardless of what you say. I know how to play this game.
Indeed, everything hinges on electric power. If I recall correctly, the Puerto Rico power authority had underinvested in maintaining its infrastructure, which made matters even worse...though, clearly, in that disaster, things were going to be pretty bad as they were.
In an absolute catastrophe, wouldn't we still have satellite based cell phone service. If the cell tower goes down you still have the satellites, right? And of course we'll still have (and god bless them) ham radio operators!.