A/B AM/FM comparison of KNX before switch to sports

[ted chittenden]

Here's Richard Wagoner's update on the poll. He even mentions this site.

Is there a difference between how AM and FM radio sound?

Columnist Richard Wagoner conducted a listening poll, comparing the sound quality of recordings made while KNX was still simulcasting its news format on its AM (1070) and FM (97.1) signals.

www.dailynews.com

One other thing about Mr. Wagoner's response that needs to be considered is the difference between what people say they would do and what they actually do. This has been seen in how consumers behave with a product with observers watching them through a one-way mirror. (I remember learning about this in marketing classes at both LMU and ASU.) The one-way mirrors were used *after* surveys were taken about how consumers would use the products involved.

In the case of Mr. Wagoner's poll, listeners said that they would listen more to AM if there were music and non-political or politically diverse radio stations. Yet the ratings tell us that, for the most part, when such radio stations come on the air, consumers don't flock to them. Civic Media, for example, has been trying to gain success with a moderate talk format for the past couple of years in Wisconsin on many of its AM outlets. And do you know what happened? None of its stations have done well ratingswise and most, outside of the large markets of Milwaukee and Madison, have now gone silent.

The only English music station that has shown itself to be successful on AM (and frankly, I don't know how much of that success is related to the station's FM translator) that I know of is the Bustos-owned oldies outlet, KDRI at 830kHz in Tucson, Arizona. And, even there, its numbers, though solid, don't outperform the vast majority of the city's FM outlets.

So yes. There is a big difference between what people say they want to hear on the AM band and how they actually act when those formats are put there.

 

[michael hagerty]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...(from Richard Wagoner's column):

And to further make my point, the last time our local frequencies of 570, 690, 710, 1150, 1190, 1230, 1480, and 1580 had decent ratings, they played music. Just sayin’.

Right. But 570 and 710 absolutely make multiples more money doing sports. I don't know how what the financials are for the rest of them, but you could make a reasonable assumption based on the fact that they're not playing music anymore and haven't tried to go back.

Ratings are great as long as they translate to money, but when they stop doing that, it's time to change. And for those stations, that time was more than 25 years ago in pretty much every case.

This is like only being able to afford a Hyundai Venue SE. At $20,550, it is the lowest-priced car in America. It looks like this:




But back in the day, you had this sweet '66 Mustang GT fastback and all the radio pushbuttons were set to AM stations and it looked like this:





Well, heck, why aren't you driving a Mustang GT fastback now? They still make them!




Because it costs more than $25,000 than you can afford to pay for a car, that's why.

And that's why the radio stations don't do stuff they can't afford. Negative numbers exist.

Same with 930 and 1110, though they are now religious and supported by listener donations. I still have dreams of bringing back KHJ (930 AM) as a top-40 station, though …

No, Richard, you really don't. Because that would mean it would be playing what KIIS-FM is playing now, and if you were okay with that, then you'd be okay with KIIS.

You want a Top 40 station that plays the Beatles and the Stones and the Beach Boys and the Supremes and not even Saul Levine with all his freedom from debt nor KRTH with all its resources can afford to do that anymore.

Time doing what time does.

 

[michael hagerty]

The money part of broadcasting is one of the least-understood elements. It is not linear. If there are 20 stations and you're number 10, you're not making half what number one does in ad revenue.

I don't remember if I've mentioned this here before or not, but I've been fortunate enough to know several people who worked for KHJ over the years.

KHJ's last profitable year under RKO's ownership was 1976.

1976.

Every year after that, it lost money. At first, a little, then, increasingly more.

The "we've got to do something" moment was Country (1980). They spent big, couldn't get the results and lost a lot more.

"The Boss is Back" (1983) and "Car Radio" (1984) were efforts to reduce costs as much as possible to nudge the ledger sheet back into the black. But they couldn't generate sufficient revenue to make even those low-budget formats profitable.

Even the automated, single voice "Smokin' Oldies" format on what by then was KRTH-AM did not make money. It wasn't losing the massive amounts of money KHJ did between 1977 and 1983, but it wasn't making a profit.

And it's not just KHJ.

At KMPC, costs had gotten so out of control and the revenue pool for music on AM in 1979 so small that they decided to try to peel off half of what KABC was billing. And got killed.

They were able to get back to profitability with Adult Standards, but they did it with four-hour airshifts, one big name jock (Robert W.) and some very talented, but not superstar jocks, the elimination of mobile units and separate board ops.

But that didn't last for long. The shift to Sports Talk ten years later was because the profit margin was shriveling. There is an aircheck of Robert W. near the end complaining that the light in the men's room nearest the studio had been out for a week.

Existence does not mean success. A number does not mean a profit.