A Change Coming to KGO

[davideduardo]

They were #1 in San Francisco up until the PPM era in, what was it, the year 2008? They were still ranked pretty high in 2011 and whatever listeners they had they mostly lost based on their ill-advised format changes. Also, David said that AM listenership is 15% in San Francisco, higher than most other metropolitan areas. I don’t think that figure takes into account FM simulcasts, but I could be wrong since it was David that mentioned the 15% number.

That figure includes the two major FM simulcasts since those both chose the AM to be the "master" station.

So the real AM number is about 8% to 9%, which is still much higher than the AM share in other major CA markets. But it is mostly over 55, so when you look at the sales demos, the AM share is well under 5%.

 

[CTListener]

Everyone, even the 18-24's that folks are fond of saying don't listen to radio. In fact, about 8'% of them actually do. Yes, a lot less. But they listen and have preferred stations.

Surely there must be a missing digit here! 80%? 78%? 68%? If only eight percent of that age group is listening to radio today, then the medium is in more trouble than any industry tout can shrug off.

 

[CTListener]

At least for now KGO didn't fall for the virus we call KLove.

To be biblically canonical, the word you should be using is "plague."

 

[Rusty Muck]

They were #1 in San Francisco up until what the year 2008?

Tis when the PPM came out, and as @DavidEduardo noted, KGO’s audience share got literally halved.

They were still ranked pretty high in 2011 and whatever listeners they had they mostly lost based on their ill-advised format flip. Also, David said that AM listenership is 15% in San Francisco, higher than most other areas. Nothing about that being on FM simulcasts.

The notion of KGO’s 2011 flip being “ill-advised” had a lot more to do with no new younger listeners willing to listen to an AM station after the revamped formats. Cumulus’s hands were tied.

 

[michael hagerty]

And not to forget that Nevada is only a few hours' drive from most of California's biggest metros, and I'm certain that sports betting is a big deal in Nevada. I don't know how many hours it takes to go from the Bay Area to Reno, but it's not like driving 1000 miles to place a legal bet.

It’s a three hour drive from San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe. Three hours and 15 minutes from San Francisco to Reno.

Flying from SF to Reno takes an hour and flights between $49 and $69 each way are not uncommon.

So, even by car, about 60-90 minutes closer than Las Vegas is to L.A.

 

[michael hagerty]

But the people who weren't listening were divided up by the other 10 or so other stations on air at that time. And KTKT was never going to get the religious, Country, news and MOR listeners anyway.

Yes. But again, BigA's point was to someone who said "everyone" listened to KFRC.

No. A lot did. But not "everyone" or in fact anything close to "everyone".

 

[Rusty Muck]

Right. 15 years from now, Audacy will have to change the call letters of four radio stations in three major markets (NY, LA, SF).

A lot can happen between now and 2037. With how Audacy blew up the brands of WOGL and KOOL so those stations could more appropriately be marketed to fit classic hits’ target demos, I wouldn’t consider “CBS-FM” an untouchable brand by any means.

 

[Rusty Muck]

Peter Hartlaub did what I’d consider an appropriate eulogy to KGO’s talk format. He doesn’t cite the lack of preparedness for the PPM and stagnant nature at the tail end of ABC ownership but you can clearly infer it from how Cumulus repeatedly struggled to revamp the station.

KGO was once a local talk radio juggernaut. How could it die so fast?

KGO was the pinnacle of local radio from 1978 to 2009. Now the news talk format has been...

www.sfchronicle.com

 

[michael hagerty]

Now that you mention it, #8 sounds familiar but I was thinking it was after the Game Zone which made it to Portland around 1988. I think Magic 61 Adult Standards came in at #4.

So here's what happened to KFRC after. Again, the Game Zone premiered in mid-April of 1985.

Spring 1985: 1.9

Summer 1985: 1.5

Fall 1985: 1.7

(KFRC suspends "The Game Zone" at the end of October, 1985 and goes back to contemporary music with Dr. Don in mornings, Bobby Ocean 9-Noon, Jim Bridges noon-4, Big Tom Parker and Bill Rafferty 4-7, Don Sainte-Johnn 7-midnight and Willie Sancho overnights).

Winter 1985/86: 1.7

Spring 1986: 1.6.

At that point, KFRC is six months back into contemporary music with name personalities in the Bay Area and they're tied for eighteenth.

On August 11, 1986, KFRC switches format to standards as "Magic 61'. It's too far into the summer book to affect much.

Summer 1986: 1.7

But after that...

Fall 1986: 2.7 (9th place)

Winter 1986/87: 4.3 (6th place).

"Magic 61" stayed in the top ten for the entire run, until August of 1993, when upper demographics became too difficult to sell to advertisers.

 

[michael hagerty]

I'm 37 next month and have just hit the point where the CHR and Rhythmic Contemporary stations I've always listened to are making me go "oh for god's sake, why are you playing this garbage again?" on an increasingly regular basis (and with slightly more four-letter words). It's definitely a thing.

I don't want to listen to talk radio during a particularly depressing trash fire news period, and I don't want to listen to sports radio - for me, sports is a social thing shared with friends at the weekend, not something I want to hear about discussed on the radio all week ad infinitum. And the idea of listening to sports betting content all day is just depressing.

I've mostly gravitated towards Soft AC, or AAA, or classic alternative, just something, anything that's not endless pumping house beats on a 40-minute rotation. I never wanted to be that person who stopped listening to new music, but it comes to us all! At least I'm aware it's happened, and I'm not complaining about ageing out of Top 40 radio or pretending the stations should cater for me until I'm in my grave.

You actually outperformed most people in terms of staying with contemporary music. As a generality, women hang in longer than men, who tend to calcify in their tastes pretty early. But there's a reason CHR is considered an 18-34 format and why "35-plus" is very much an adult demo.

Stereogum has a regular feature called The Number Ones, in which a very talented 40-something writer named Tom Briehan does an essay/review/rating of every single to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 since the chart debuted in 1958. I think he does three a week, and it's still going on now.

In reading that, I found that I knew the music until I was about 43. I've always been really eclectic in my tastes, so I wasn't wanting for alternatives (and this was 23 years ago, when more of those alternatives could be found on the radio), but I had forgotten and was kind of surprised to see that I was still saving a pushbutton for CHR into my forties.

 

[davideduardo]

Surely there must be a missing digit here! 80%? 78%? 68%? If only eight percent of that age group is listening to radio today, then the medium is in more trouble than any industry tout can shrug off.

Just under 80%

 

[michael hagerty]

Okay, you could do a traditional all-sports format as opposed to something that is illegal in the state of California. You could do talk that is live and local like before Cumulus blew it up. A Chinese language station considering the sizable Chinese population in the Bay Area. Maybe a Spanish language music or talk station, oldies, Christian talk, etc… In my mind, anything would be better than a betting station for something that is still illegal in California.

Okay, there's a big difference between "In my mind, anything would be better than a betting station for something that is still illegal in California" and your initial statement, which was:

"There are a ton of other formats they could do that would be more successful than this."

But let's tackle that list:

1) A traditional all-sports format.

That would put KGO directly into competition with its own sister stations, KNBR (680/104.5) and KTCT (1050).

2) "Talk that is live and local like before Cumulus blew it up."

That's what KGO has been doing since April of 2016---six and a half years. It got them a 1.7.

3) "A Chinese language station considering the sizable Chinese population in the Bay Area".

There is a major difference between being of Chinese ancestry and being a Chinese speaker. And, as with English (or any other language) speakers, putting a radio station on in that language doesn't necessarily attract an audience because---those people have individual tastes.

4) "Maybe a Spanish language music or talk station."

See number 3) above. Also, as David has told us many times, the Spanish-language audience for pretty much all formats moved to FM decades ago.

5) "Oldies."

Music on AM appealing to a demographic that has near-zero appeal to ad agencies.

6) "Christian Talk."

Is that because it's worked so well for 610 the past 17 years?


So---no. There's not "a ton" of other formats that would be more successful than what they're about to do---even if we're considering ratings.

But---and by now this should be obvious---what Cumulus is doing here is putting a format on 810 that will generate revenue with very little overhead regardless of ratings. And that revenue is how they'll measure success.

Ultimately, revenue regardless of ratings is how AM stations will have to survive, and apart from one or two in a market, it's pretty much the model today.

 

[CTListener]

You actually outperformed most people in terms of staying with contemporary music. As a generality, women hang in longer than men, who tend to calcify in their tastes pretty early. But there's a reason CHR is considered an 18-34 format and why "35-plus" is very much an adult demo.

Stereogum has a regular feature called The Number Ones, in which a very talented 40-something writer named Tom Briehan does an essay/review/rating of every single to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 since the chart debuted in 1958. I think he does three a week, and it's still going on now.

In reading that, I found that I knew the music until I was about 43. I've always been really eclectic in my tastes, so I wasn't wanting for alternatives (and this was 23 years ago, when more of those alternatives could be found on the radio), but I had forgotten and was kind of surprised to see that I was still saving a pushbutton for CHR into my forties.

33 is when I pretty much stopped listening to CHR, in 1988, coinciding with dawn of the country music "new traditionalist" boom years and Hartford getting a country station on FM after many years without. I'd had country as a side interest since the mid-'70s, but the CHR of the late '80s was so far removed from what I'd been listening to since the British Invasion years that the Kiss 95.7 preset was gone for good.

However, when it comes to country music, I haven't become calcified. In fact, I'm more enthusiastic about current country now than I have been in many years, Am I an oddity among country listeners? Are most my age listening to classic country on FM (if their markets have a station), the internet, or satellite, or is there a thread running through country music that keeps current hits of interest across the generations in a way that pop doesn't?

 

[michael hagerty]

They were #1 in San Francisco up until the PPM era in, what was it, the year 2008? They were still ranked pretty high in 2011 and whatever listeners they had they mostly lost based on their ill-advised format changes. Also, David said that AM listenership is 15% in San Francisco, higher than most other metropolitan areas. I don’t think that figure takes into account FM simulcasts, but I could be wrong since it was David that mentioned the 15% number.

From an Inside Radio piece in 2016, when KGO returned to live and local talk:

The station took a major hit from the Great Recession, with revenue plummeting 25% to $22 million in 2009, according to BIA/Kelsey. Total industry dollar declines were lower, at 18%. And when the industry bounced back in 2010, KGO’s revenue turnaround was less pronounced.

But over the following four years KGO’s revenue fell spectacularly—from $23 million in 2010 to $16.6 million in 2011 to $10.2 million in 2012. By 2013, the station put just $7.5 million on the books, one-fourth the amount it billed in 2008. That fell to $6.1 million in 2014 before reversing the decline last year with an 8% increase to $6.7 million. But it was too little, too late for a station operating with a high-overhead news department.

Here's a link to the full article: Nothing Sudden About Downward Shifts at KGO.


Again, that headline----"Nothing Sudden"---was written SIX years ago.

Remember---6+ ratings aren't a measure of---well, anything---but certainly of a station's health or success. Stuff was falling apart on the inside of KGO while it was still #1 6+.

 

[michael hagerty]

Surely there must be a missing digit here! 80%? 78%? 68%? If only eight percent of that age group is listening to radio today, then the medium is in more trouble than any industry tout can shrug off.

If you take the context of the sentence leading up to it, then clearly it's a typo. I see David has corrected it above.

 

[michael hagerty]

A lot can happen between now and 2037. With how Audacy blew up the brands of WOGL and KOOL so those stations could more appropriately be marketed to fit classic hits’ target demos, I wouldn’t consider “CBS-FM” an untouchable brand by any means.

Sure. A call letter change could happen anytime. It has to happen, contractually, in 15 years.

 

[CTListener]

If you take the context of the sentence leading up to it, then clearly it's a typo. David?

He answered, upthread a bit, It was 80%.

 

[TheBigA]

They were #1 in San Francisco up until the PPM era in, what was it, the year 2008? They were still ranked pretty high in 2011 and whatever listeners they had they mostly lost based on their ill-advised format changes.

Those listeners were mainly above 25-54, and the hosts were all getting paid as though the station was still #1. So it was an expensive staff with falling revenue. They needed to do something, since Disney & Citadel had done nothing. Going all-news wasn't the best idea either, but they needed to put a plug in the dike.

 

[michael hagerty]

They have no role. What they have is an interest.

Proof of that interest in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle:

This campaign has received the most donations from San Franciscans. It’s not a S.F. race

 

[fybush]

He answered, upthread a bit, It was 80%.

I keep seeing these numbers, and then I keep talking to my daughter (19, in college in NYC) and watching how she and her friends consume media.

I suppose it's possible they're all outliers from a universe where there's still substantial usage of linear radio and TV, but I doubt it.

They live in a very different media world from ours. They don't have radios and they're not consuming radio content on their devices. The TV with cable in her dorm room hasn't been turned on since I checked out the lineup when we were moving her in.

She watches lots of YouTube content and streaming TV (she has Atlanta on right now), mostly on her phone or laptop. Her music comes from YT, Apple Music or Spotify, and it's a very very eclectic mix that's much more individual than what I was consuming in college 30 years ago.

The only way she knows what Z100 or Hot 97 or CBS-FM are is if Dad is visiting and they're on in the car. (Or if Anita and Russ are taking her out to dinner, but that's unique to her, of course!)