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560
- Thread starter K108 Sacramento
- Start date
Don’t ask me. Ask someone who’s 45 years younger than me.
The line of authority is the line of jurisdiction. That is sometimes as simple as "within the city limits" and "unincorporated areas of the county."
For example, David, since you and I both know Los Angeles well, the LAPD is responsible for the city limits of L.A. That's everything in purple on this map:
View attachment 9570
The places not in purple are a mix of cities that have their own police departments (Santa Monica, Inglewood, Long Beach), and unincorporated areas of the county that are not within a city limit. Those unincorporated areas are in pink on the map below:
View attachment 9572
The L.A. County Sheriff's Office is responsible for law enforcement in the unincorporated areas.
But it's more complicated than that, because there are 40 incoprated cities in L.A. County that have chosen not to have their own police departments, but to contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff for law enforcement within their city limits:
Again, though, the agencies know what's their jurisdiction and what's not and in a situation where LASO might be a block away from an emergency not in their jurisdiciton, mutual aid agreements allow them to respond.
They might be first on the scene, but as soon as the city police arrive, the PD assumes jurisdiction and thus control in terms of media access.
Beyond that, I just want to say that @cc333 , @Weiserguy and @Mediafrog+ all are correct, but there is one other distinguishing feature of County Sheriffs---they are elected officials.
Most city police chiefs are appointed by the City Manager, Mayor or City Council, but Sheriffs run for office. As @Weiserguy pointed out, Sheriffs run the jails---and federal funding only goes up with the jail population, so many believe there is an immediate inherent conflict of interest. Incarceration benefits a sheriff.
County sheriff's offices are much more frequently targets of corruption and brutality investigations than municipal police departments. A CBS News investigation last year found county sheriff's officers are three times more likely to kill a citizen than municipal police officers:
County sheriffs wield lethal power, face little accountability: "A failure of democracy"
More people were killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2023 than any other year in the past decade — and it's increasingly happening in small towns and rural areas.www.cbsnews.com
A follow-up: Today, the Wall Street Journal has a story on how violent and deadly rural law enforcement is becoming:
Wow, a thread i started is now 32 pages long. Wow...lol lol lol
If you look at that opening post, it's no wonder. There were very few restrictions on where it might go, especially since it went none of those places.
Thank you Michael for the WSJ posting but concerning attachment 9570, you should see my post at #548
Yes. Thanks for clarifying.
You're quite welcome.
Some of these post went way off topic
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I don't think that could be helped in this case, Mario.
Discussing 560 automatically put 810 into play as a factor. Then discussing why Cumulus moved the KSFO format and call letters there naturally led into a discussion of signal strength and propagation. That pretty much opened the door for any and all Bay Area AMs to be worth discussing in that context.
Usually, I'm one of the first people to complain about threads going off-topic, but not this time. The sidebars and other straying are interrelated and are undoubtedly why the discussion is now 32 pages in length after only six months.
Unless KZAC has a miracle worthy of KEAR, or of this thread that keeps springing back to life, the next time there would be something new to say about it would be about eight months from now.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
LOL, Mark.
To be more precise: March 7, 2026.
To be more precise: March 7, 2026.
I would expect a ton of speculation (or maybe a bushel) in February or maybe even January.
Of course, an event not anticipated by those of us who do not know could make matters moot.
And we'll be the only ones.
Nobody outside of the radio business or people interested in it beyond the act of listening cares. It's gone. 610 going religious and 810 going sports betting were orders of magnitude more interesting to San Franciscans at large, and in about a month, they were over both.
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In the case of 610, most of the interest seemed to center on the effects on A’s baseball broadcasts, which Family continued to air for the 2005 season. Those broadcasts delayed KEAR’s conversion to noncommercial status. Regarding KGO, what was most newsworthy was the suddenness of the change. It came across as impulsive and abrupt. KGO still had enough of an audience that at least a few “ordinary listeners” noticed. None of those factors are present now. If 560 is revived somehow, there might be a Chronicle article about it but that would be it for the general public.
The programming, all of it syndicated blather that can be heard on multiple other stations around the state, remains available on 810. So if 560 were to get turned back on again, it's either going to get back the blather from 810, or -- more likely -- something new, untried, and even less interesting to anyone but a very niche sliver of the SFBA market. So why would anyone (except that niche sliver) waste any brain cells caring? AM's in the middle stage of its death throes, and Cumulus is, uncharacteristically, confronting reality.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And likely from a different owner. Cumulus has proven that they will spin off stations, but if no buyers emerge, they also aren't afraid to take a station permanently silent.
You've been here long enough to know the answer to that. 😜
I run the risk of reanimating this thread…but…
I’m in San Francisco for a quick weekend trip (for a friend’s milestone birthday) and brought an HD radio along, to compensate for the severe multipath encountered in downtown San Francisco.
What’s on Cumulus’ KSAN?
HD-2: KSFO (this isn’t new)
HD-3: KTCT.
Possibly that don’t mean nothin’, and HD channels sometimes don’t have staying power, but it doesn’t seem like Cumulus has given KTCT up for dead yet, either, even if maintained at what amounts to a subsistence level.
Cross-referencing a post in General Radio regarding indications of sale negotiations for KZAC:
I'm going to break my self-imposed rule about not speculating.
If anyone steps up for 560, I think it'll be Bott.
Here's why I think that.
Edit: I'll admit that I was also ignoring the possibility that Bott's noncommercial arm could acquire an NCE FM. But there are few good choices of those in the Bay Area.
If anyone steps up for 560, I think it'll be Bott.
Here's why I think that.
- Bott runs AM stations. I don't think they've acquired any lately, but they haven't gotten rid of the ones they have. Counterargument: all their AMs (11 total) have either FM translators or full-power FM complements (the latter in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Nashville). It would be very difficult for a new entrant to get even a translator in the Bay Area.
- This would be one of their few opportunities to break into the Bay Area market, and on a fairly decent AM signal. Corollary: There are no FM opportunities for a new entrant unless Cumulus gets really desperate and has to sell KSAN(FM). Minor irony there in that Dick Bott's father-in-law used to own KSAN(AM) (KEST since 1971), and Dick Bott was the manager before he bought KDON (point #4 below) in Salinas.
- In its regulatory filings, Cumulus has made oblique references to negotations for KZAC, using wording that's different from the boilerplate language that they've used in other STA extensions. So I think something's cooking, even if at a slow boil.
- Dick Bott spent time in the Bay Area, and owned KDON in Salinas from 1957-60. Sure, that's a long time ago, but there might be just a little more of an incentive to get into the Bay Area for them than might otherwise be the case. It's a company that seems cognizant of its history.
- Counterargument: possible overlap with the programming on KFAX. I'm not conversant with this type of programming, so I don't know how much of a problem duplication presents for the producers of teaching-style programs.
- Another counterargument: any sale wouldn't include the transmitter site. That said, at least it's one not owned by the major tower companies.
- There is precedent in the Family Radio trade that brought KEAR to 610. Yes, that was 20 years ago and Family was then based in the Bay Area. But it is a data point.
Edit: I'll admit that I was also ignoring the possibility that Bott's noncommercial arm could acquire an NCE FM. But there are few good choices of those in the Bay Area.