Madmansam said:
KQKE-960 committed to their format? Well they dumped Willie Brown's morning show plus their latest ratings were bad (1.1). I wonder if they would dump AAR and pick up Alternative Progressive Programming? As for Los Angeles KTLK-1150, their ratings are worst (0.8). I believe they did better as All Sports. I wonder if progressive talker KSAC-1240 Sacramento will pick up AAR from KCTC or stick with the Alternative Progressive Talk Programming they have?
KQKE dropped the local morning show due to lackluster ratings, and in order to add Stephanie Miller, who's show has been doing well in many markets. They also replaced Franken with Hartmann, and the ratings went up considerably. It's never unusual for a station to tinker with its format in hopes that it will attract more listeners. And KQKE is a station that has done this well.
In L.A., 1150 was a sports station for many years, simulcasting with XETRA 690 out of Tijuana. Ratings were pretty crappy, even with 690 having a pretty strong signal to the south and west of L.A. A few years back, the two stations were broken up as CC moved adult standards to 690 (a Mexican station managed by CC), prior to returning it to their Mexican owners, and sports programming was moved to another frequency (KLAC 570). As a result, KLAC gets a stronger signal and a slight increase in their ratings and KTLK's ratings have increased since the sports simulcast years. In fact, KTLK's overall ratings have often been better than KLAC's. See for yourself:
http://******************/ratings.asp?market=3
KTLK has done well with adding local content. Harrison is pretty good, but it's a shame he's interrupted so often for hockey games. He's strong enough to be syndicated, IMO. Lots of local shows on the weekends as well, and Miller does her show out of KTLK's studios, where she's been doing well in the local ratings (relatively, of course).
Keep in mind that overall ratings performance in markets the size of San Francisco and L.A. is indeed relative. Considering the abundance of stations (that's a lot of slices out of that pie!), the vast land area size of the markets, the presense of other radio markets in the area (San Bernadino, Orange County, Ventura, etc.), and the demographics of the market, a single share could actually be considered a success, particularly on an almost-forgotten AM frequency. Hell, there's full-powered FM stations in these large markets that don't even crack a share.
And the PD of KQKE emailed me a few weeks back. They're very committed to the format, even though they're up against stiff competition from KGO and one of the most listened to NPR stations in the country, KQED. Still, the ratings are similar to their conservotalk station (KNEW) and syndicated talk is a pretty cheap format to run. Considering that KQKE doesn't incur the expense of KNEW's affiliation with Michael Savage, I'm willing to bet that KQKE does better on the bottom line than KNEW does.
