• 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

Yikes…97.1 😱

I'm reading this thread and thinking of the old days in the music industry. (I mean really *old* days, like in the 1960s and 1970s) when record companies kept artists on for two or three albums if the first albums didn't sell well. The idea was artist development, i.e. assisting the artist in developing his talent to be more sellable to the public with each new album.

That kind of artist development is no longer here, thanks partially to the digital age and partially to the demands of stockholders who want to see instant returns. For me, judging KNX-FM after only 9 days is kind of like that, demanding that the radio product be an instant success out of the gate. And, frankly, that demand is *very* unrealistic!
 
Jstnpspck said:
How involved was The Fan in Audacy LA's world cup festivities? I was fairly confused when I saw KNX News was doing an all-morning remote from Hollywood Park Casino last week... Why was KNX the headlining brand and not The Fan?!
Click to expand...
I just saw that on my Instagram. That makes zero sense. On top of that when have all news stations done remotes? As I’ve said before, 97.1 is an experiment for Audacy to see how cheap this can build an all sports station
 
TheBigA said:
It tells me that core sports listeners don't even know the station exists. How would they know it's even there?

Has the station done ANY promotion? Other than telling news listeners about the change?
Click to expand...
As I said on the other thread, this roll-out was simply not ready for prime time (or any time) in the #2 LA market.

They did not bring the PxP rights to a local franchise (or even a promise, nay, even a hint, about attracting one), they brought no name talent, even when LA based Jim Rome is available, and the shows all sound like bad basement podcasts complicated by out of format ToH news from the previous station. WHAT exactly did they have to promote? What I have heard on the station so far is by far a stronger argument for the AM band than any article Wagoner can write.

Just by comparison, when KMPC went all sports, they brought Jim Lampley in the mornings and Jim Healy in the afternoons + Angels (back when they were competitive) + Rams + UCLA. That is how you launch a sports radio station. The only thing missing was a listenable signal. Details you know.
 
The line up should be:

DMac or Reiter with Decker in the morning.

D-Fish, Brock and Alex in middays or afternoons

And Jim Rome either on delay in afternoons or middays. He’ll I’d rather them call Tom Leykis or Adam Carolla and see what their availability is at this point (I’m not serious about that btw)
 
Loverofradio said:
The line up should be:

DMac or Reiter with Decker in the morning.

D-Fish, Brock and Alex in middays or afternoons

And Jim Rome either on delay in afternoons or middays. He’ll I’d rather them call Tom Leykis or Adam Carolla and see what their availability is at this point (I’m not serious about that btw)
Click to expand...
No radio station is airing a topical show on delay. But I agree that it’s just plain dumb not to have Rome on just to say you’re live and local all day. That Brock and Alex show is terrible. Derek Fisher says nothing and that Kody Decker is full of himself. Put D-Mac and Reiter on mornings 6-9. 9-12 can be filled by one of the rotating night show guys who sound MILES better than Brock and Alex who sound like high school announcements. Rome from 12-3. They should consider poaching Jonas Knox from Fox Sports Radio to do afternoons from 3-6. And 6-9 nights can be one of the rotating night guys.
 
I think the numbers in the 4/30 - 5/27 survey period are totally useless for evaluating the performance of “97.1 The Fan” and KNX 1070. On the KNX line you are looking at combined AM/FM news listening between 4/30 and 5/18 when the format changed. The rest of the data on that line is AM only listening from 5/18 to 5/27. The 97.1 FM line is the 9 days of sports listening between 5/18 and 5/27. I’m not saying the data is corrupted - but it is disrupted - and really useless for anything. Wait at least until next month to wildly speculate on the audience performance of the Fan (not that anything other than sales will matter to Audacy) and what percentage of the news audience prior to May 18 was KNX able to shift to the AM. (It won’t be 100%).
 
For those who say, "How can you judge a radio station based on only nine days of ratings?" Well, that may be true. But nine days is still almost a third of a month. Wouldn't there be SOME indication sports fans are at least sampling KNX-FM? Has any successful station ever debuted with only a .1?

On the other hand, Audacy's sports FM in San Diego started slowly. It had a few early ratings months where it was less than a 1.0. But it is the flagship for the Padres baseball team, in second place in the NL West. KWFN is currently #3 in San Diego.
 
Gregg. said:
Wouldn't there be SOME indication sports fans are at least sampling KNX-FM? Has any successful station ever debuted with only a .1?
Click to expand...

Once again, how would potential listeners even know it's there? People don't scan the dial looking for new radio stations. There was no pre-flip stunting, so that means no word of mouth. It just went from news one day to a cold start with sports. I've started a lot of businesses from zero, so a .1 is more than you can expect from a cold start. It's unlikely it will see a 1 share by next month. They need a "viral moment."

The Game in San Francisco spends a lot of time in the 1 share area, and it's been around for 15 years. I don't think this station was created for impressive 6+ share numbers.
 
Gregg. said:
For those who say, "How can you judge a radio station based on only nine days of ratings?" Well, that may be true. But nine days is still almost a third of a month.
Click to expand...

Three of those nine days were a weekend (Memorial Day). Now you're down to six---which is one more than five---which is less than a fifth of a month.

Very little of the KNX simulcast audience stuck around. Complete blowout format changes like that are rare----probably the last one that happened in L.A. (not counting 1260 AM) was changing 97.1 from Now to the KNX simulcast. BUT---there you were constantly telling an AM audience with a huge cume that they had a new way to listen to their station.

Before that? It was The Sound to K-Love.

Gregg. said:
Wouldn't there be SOME indication sports fans are at least sampling KNX-FM?
Click to expand...

Yes, and you won't find it in a quarter-hour share, which is a mathematical factor of total audience and time spent listening.

Instead, look at the cume (total audience for the month). Let's look at all-sports stations:

570 KLAC: 449,400

710 KSPN: 234,100

97.1 The Fan: 109.400


So, in nine days, almost half as many people as listened to 710 all month sampled 97.1---and roughly about a quarter of the people who sampled 570 all month.

Gregg. said:
Has any successful station ever debuted with only a .1?
Click to expand...

Not that I'm aware of, but again----say it with me now----this is not a debut book. This is a fraction.

And let's get our expectations in line, okay? The number one sports station in L.A. (570) has a 1.3. The number two sports station (710) has a 0.7. If 97.1 catches 710 in six months, that's actually not too shabby. For the next five months, expect them to be below that.
 


Back
Top Bottom