Again, SiriusXM has a staffed, in-house fantasy sports channel and has had one for some time. There's interest out there. It may not be enough to move the meter ratings-wise, but anyone who listens to "blabbermouths" offering tips on cashing bets is a potential customer for that channel or station's advertisers, much the same as listeners to the "blabbermouths" on Bloomberg Radio are for advertisers offering tips on successful "investing," as gambling is known in the financial world. No one is listening to this stuff for light entertainment; they're all out to make some money.
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A Change Coming to KGO
- Thread starter atthestars
- Start date
Again, SiriusXM has a staffed, in-house fantasy sports channel and has had one for some time. There's interest out there. It may not be enough to move the meter ratings-wise, but anyone who listens to "blabbermouths" offering tips on cashing bets is a potential customer for that channel or station's advertisers, much the same as listeners to the "blabbermouths" on Bloomberg Radio are for advertisers offering tips on successful "investing," as gambling is known in the financial world. No one is listening to this stuff for light entertainment; they're all out to make some money.
True and KCBS Radio has been de emphasizing 740 AM for some time mainly to get listeners over to 106.9 FM going back to when CBS Radio managed KCBS and KFRC. That started in San Francisco and some of that was about the median audience using FM over AM when the FM simulcast started. Now it's about this one considering that newer cars have dashboard apps that radio and podcast outlets are adapting to newer tech which is at play in this decade.
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Well, let's remember that losing at the polls doesn't mean there's not an audience. The CalMatters poll on Prop 27 shows 27% of voters support it and 20% are undecided.
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Let's say you're the PD of KNBR. Your listeners punch the button sometimes. Fact of life. If they go to 95.7 The Game, they're not only going to a competitor, but they're moving off the AM band. What if you could recycle those listeners to your own sports-themed-AM, and recycle them back to KNBR?
And that fact will probably be what keeps AM radio stations on the air for the near term.
KNX is owned by Audacy.
As for the branding, think of it this way: EVERYBODY has "KNX 1070" burned into their brain. Now, they need people to remember that KNX is on FM and where on a very crowded L.A. FM dial it is (it'll be interesting to see what they do in New York with their upcoming FM simulcast. I've never been to NYC, but the phrase "1010 WINS" is iconic).
They may, at some point, when they believe they've established 97.1 sufficiently, return 1070 to the branding.
Four or five years ago, when I was at KFBK here in Sacramento, we branded as "News 93.1 KFBK", choosing not to mention the AM. I see that they've now updated to "KFBK News Radio 93.1 FM 1530 AM", returning the AM to the branding (part of that may be in honor of the station's 100th anniversary).
KCBS in San Francisco had its FM in second position in its branding for years...now it's "All News 106.9 and AM 740, KCBS."
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...and frankly, it's what has kept AM stations that aren't 50,000 watt monsters on the air for decades. Brokered programming, paid preachers, infomercials----very few of those attract measurable (by Nielsen Audio standards) audiences, but they all pay the bills.
That's wonderful for the station owner. He can spend almost nothing on programming and stay on the air. But as a listener, I don't want to hear that crap, so I'm more likely to buy a satellite radio subscription or log on to Spotify, and then not bother coming back to the AM band. Ever. That's hardly a long term business strategy.
This happened on cable tv. They kept raising their prices and diluting their programming. Fewer recent movies and special productions, more infomercials, tv preachers and reality shows. Even the so called premium channels thrived on a diet of 20 year old movies everybody has already seen and few more recent ones. They kept making the product poorer and charging more for it until cord cutting became a thing. Since I cut the cord I get endless letters, e-mails and phone calls from cable providers asking me to come back. They don't bother to ask me why I left in the first place. Those guys are clueless but still have dollar signs in their eyes. Then KGO ends its talk format by stunting with a bunch of songs about money. This is too funny. You can't make this stuff up.
It may not be a long term business strategy today---I think I'll see AM go dark in my lifetime. But for hundreds of owners, it has been a long term strategy. There are stations that went to that model in the 1960s that are still on the air and a lot more since and some of them (I don't know where we'd find the actual percentage) are financially successful.
And 49 of them are right-wing talk.
Change is hard for some.
Mostly people who knew someone who used to work for the company.
Yes, you could count them one maybe two hands.
Chances are the old format wasn't listened-to by any new listeners anyway. 99.99% of modern listeners don't care about legacy or heritage. That's a radio nerd or formerly radio employee thing.
Sometimes you need to break a few eggs to bake a new cake.
All the more reason to leave broadcast radio behind. SiriusXM has Progressive Talk, Urban View and the Middle of the Road POTUS, plus a talk station from Canada. Then there are endless podcasts from all perspectives. I do find it strange that most markets do have three Right Wing talk stations. One dominant station that used to run Rush Limbaugh and currently runs the first string right wing talkers that gets pretty good ratings, then a second and a third string station programmed with second and third string right wing talkers that gets lousy ratings but can find enough syndicated stuff to survive. They are owned by big companies who keep pumping money into them. Are there really that many advertisers who peddle Medicare Advantage Plans and reverse mortgages?
They really had nothing to lose by being nice to the old listeners. Some of them might even stick around for the new format instead of leaving angry. Not being a dick might have cost them another 15 minutes in air time. What was the point?
And, with many times the number of channels that any radio market has in its "full signal" count, they can do that. No channel has to stand on its own.
And many number their listeners in the dozens. Whether on radio, TV or streams, there are many wannabees and few massive audience genuine stars.
Yes, even the lowest tier seems to make a bit of money and are, of course, AMs that have no alternative other than turning off the transmitter.
The point is that the people you call "old listeners" were so few it did not make any difference and, in any case, are not a salable audience to advertisers.
As Randy Michaels told the WFLA staff in Tampa more than two decades ago, "get rid of the blue haired women".
Yep. And every post-Limbaugh attempt to do center or left talk has failed.
KCBS added the 106.9 FM simulcast in 2008---in fact, October 20th, 2008, so next Thursday will be 14 years.
The male ID voice was Nick Michaels, who passed away Memorial Day weekend of 2018. KCBS kept his voice on the air for several months afterward, then hired Randy Thomas, who has been the off-camera voice for the Oscars for years:
Randy's as good as they come, but I do miss Nick's voice, and I also preferred the old positioning statement within the ID---"What's happening and why."---which is exactly what a news radio station should tell you.
And I have to agree here. I doubt that it would have mattered---people are pretty button-happy, but I think not being a dick would have been a good thing. It would have cost them nothing.
Then why the hell did they let him do that 10-minute show in the first place? It’s nonsensical and only yielded negative PR.
Go straight to stunt mode at 10am. They had one job.
And what DID Mark say on KFI last night? Anything new?
Maybe they were supposed to do the cutover at 10am but something caused a delay and that's why he was on for a short time.
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