• 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

Chris Little interview about KFI

Let me get this straight. The news guy thinks some news item is more important than the station's biggest stars interviewing a senator in afternoon drive and just has to break in; it can't wait five minutes until the next break.It was called the John and Ken show, not the Chris Little show. Of course John is going to be irate.

Modern day Less Nessman. He still doesn't seem to understand what they told him. KFI is an entertainment station, not a news station."But you're getting rid of a real independent news voice" he pleads, as if the City will be missing its food supply, not three minutes of ToH news on an AM radio station.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
KFI is an entertainment station, not a news station.
Click to expand...

I think that was the fundamental change that happened when all those cuts were made. The decision was made to keep the live & local hosts. The station's in house news staff was sacrificed for that. It's not as though iHeart didn't have news people in LA. they have an entire news bureau there. But having a staff of people who only did news for KFI was something they could' t retain.

iHeart isn't the only company making these kinds of changes. iHeart's broadcasting division lost $100 million last year. That was after all of those cuts at KFI. That's why they're making more cuts now. Yes change sucks. But it happened, and they have to respond to it.
 
I was critical of KFI back when they dumped the news dept.and thought they would suffer from it. However, the ratings didn't drop, and the great "Talk" that myself and others tune in for wasn't affected. After all, that's the main reason for listening to KFI. In fact, I find all the news, traffic, and weather breaks to be a nuisance that gets in the way of listening to the hosts. I wish they would get rid of the quarter hour updates, and just do a brief top and bottom of the hour.

BTW, the newest addition of Monks and Merrill, is s very good show.
 
TheBigA said:
I think that was the fundamental change that happened when all those cuts were made. The decision was made to keep the live & local hosts. The station's in house news staff was sacrificed for that. It's not as though iHeart didn't have news people in LA. they have an entire news bureau there. But having a staff of people who only did news for KFI was something they could' t retain.

iHeart isn't the only company making these kinds of changes. iHeart's broadcasting division lost $100 million last year. That was after all of those cuts at KFI. That's why they're making more cuts now. Yes change sucks. But it happened, and they have to respond to it.
Click to expand...
Perhaps the station was still "Cash Flush" when news dept. broke into regular programming for what may have been an important news item. Two dynamics come to mind here - 1-Editoral judgement and 2-Simple vanity. Maybe politics? Well, who knows. And I did not listen to the recording as yet.
 
It might have helped if Chris had told us what the story they were breaking in for was. But---if you end every newscast with the positioner "KFI is the talk station with news on the hour, on the half and when it breaks", then you either deliver on that or you stop saying that.

A deep-dive through posts on this board over the 24 years Chris ran that news department would find a lot of people talking about how KFI was doing a better job covering L.A. than KNX was during a lot of those years.
 


Back
Top Bottom