I've always thought that Phoenix could use an all-news station. Anyone else feel the same way? :-\The closest we got is 92.3 KTAR FM, but they focus on talk as well. We need an all-news station with frequent traffic reports, weather reports, business news, breaking news and sports. KTAR's traffic reports during the afternoon rush hour are just not frequent enough and are decent in the morning, but only until 8:30. After that, you'll have to wait a half hour. All news formats work very well across the country and consisently score high in the Arbitron books. You got KNX 1070 and 980 KFWB in Los Angeles, 880 WCBS in New York City, 780 WBBM in Chicago, 1060 KYW in Philadelphia and 740 KCBS in San Francisco (all metropolitan areas larger than Phoenix). But, even a city smaller than Phoenix, Seattle, has an all news station, KOMO 1000. If Seattle can have an all-news station, we should have one here in Phoenix because we sure could use it!
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All-News Station
- Thread starter asugeorge1
- Start date
KOMO is NOT all news. It has been airing Mariners games... the Mariners are moving to KIRO FM this next year however....
KTAR used to have several news blocks in the past--morning, noon and afternoon--but trimmed down to just a morning news block with updates on the hour and half-hour, probably because of ratings.
I'm just not sure that there would be enough listeners, outside of this board, to support an all-news station. I would love it, but then again, I am a journalist and a news junie.
I'm just not sure that there would be enough listeners, outside of this board, to support an all-news station. I would love it, but then again, I am a journalist and a news junie.
asugeorge1 said:
There are about a dozen all-news stations in the entire country, with most of them in much larger markets than Phoenix. Such a station probably wouldn't get the ratings or revenue required to support such an expensive, labor-intensive format.
Most of the all-news stations are owned by CBS or TMISU. Both companies know how to do it well. If they haven't tried it in Phoenix, there's a reason - namely, it wouldn't work well enough here to blow up one of their successful FMs. We don't have the all-but-mandatory low-end-of-the-dial, 50 kW non-directional stick that would be required to do it on AM. As good as their signal is, 620 just isn't powerful enough, and it's doing just fine as a sports parking lot anyway.
I don't expect to hear "All-News 92.3" (or 620, 94.5, 98.7, 101.5, or 107.9) anytime in the forseeable future.
Dinosaurs are no longer being made. Those still roaming the surface of radio have been at it a gazillion years and have trouble attacting new listeners under the age of comatose. Breaking news is internet driven. The last all news started from scratch was WMAQ in Chicago in the 80's...and look where they are today! Not even TMISU have the kind of bucks necessary to build one. The existing news stations that will survive are migrating to FM and adding talk elements to attract a wider and younger audience.
All-news is an expensive proposition, so I don't foresee anyone having the balls to do this any time soon. Sure, it can bring in an audience, but even the tiniest profit margin can be hard to come by. I guess you could barter out your inventory to Metro, but we all know how half assed (and becoming half-assier) their news and traffic are!
True it is expensive. True it can be financially successful though too. As for ratings, WINS in NY is 7th in crowded market, BBM in Chicago (into which WMAQ was blended when became coowned) is 2nd in Chicago. But Phoenix apparently decided long ago that right wing ranting is the cheap way to go; rile up the listeners rather than inform them. Noise instead of news.
But then, in those markets with strong all news stations, you also have a great tradition of strong newspapers (plural) and heritage TV stations doing actual local news, investigative reports, coverage of local and state government NOT just around election time, and not just readers voicing scripts in and out of cute video and PR firm video interviews....and, gahdforbid, not have a newscast without video of a kittie or puppie.
Whose fault is that? Station owners or programmers? Or a lack of public hunger or demand? Or have people just come to not expect much out of Phoenix's publicly licensed broadcast facilities in terms of journalism? :'(
But then, in those markets with strong all news stations, you also have a great tradition of strong newspapers (plural) and heritage TV stations doing actual local news, investigative reports, coverage of local and state government NOT just around election time, and not just readers voicing scripts in and out of cute video and PR firm video interviews....and, gahdforbid, not have a newscast without video of a kittie or puppie.
Whose fault is that? Station owners or programmers? Or a lack of public hunger or demand? Or have people just come to not expect much out of Phoenix's publicly licensed broadcast facilities in terms of journalism? :'(
L
larrykogu
Guest
In 2009 look for the former home to Gambo and Ash (now the all-but-dead XtraSports 910) to do a satellite delivered all-news format, with localized news provided by the KFYI news department.
newswithoutdogs said:
The main reason why we don't see too many news stations out of the top 7 or 8 markets is really simple:
1. News is cume driven. Smaller markets don't have enough people to drive the kind of cume this short TSL fomat gets.
2. Many markets outside the top 5 or 6 don't have more than 1 or 2 competitive AM signals, and these are already in use with news/talk and sports, so there are no facilities for such a station.
3. Phoenix only has 2 half way decent AMs, and they are precisely in those two format.
4. All the full signal AMs are doing well, and in a weak economy there is little incentive to switch to a costly format.
I'm sure many have discussed the possibiliies of all news. The market, in 2008 and 2009, has none of the needed elements for such a format to succeed.
lpAZ said:
I love listening to KNX 1070 at night as well. Here in Phoenix, after 10:00 P.M., all of the talk stations go to nationally syndicated shows and local news updates are few and far between. When I'm driving around late at night wanting to know what's going on in the world, it would be nice to have a local all-news station. I do understand all the reasons why Phoenix won't have one anytime soon. When KTAR split a couple years ago, I was hoping they would turn 620 into an all-news station instead of all-sports. I wouldn't mind all-news with Diamondback or Cardinal games. WBBM in Chicago has the Bears and, as mentioned above, KGO in Seattle has the Mariners.
I also wonder why Phoenix has such weak AM stations. Did we get screwed back in the day or what? 620 KTAR on the fringes of the Valley gets some noticeable noice from a Mexican station south of the border and is barely listenable in L.A. All the other AM stations are fairly weak. It's bad when your in Queen Creek and 1060 KDUS gets overpowered with noise from KNX 1070. Albuquerque (a much, much smaller city than Phoenix) has that ultra-powerful 770 KKOB, Denver has 850 KOA, Salt Lake City has 1160, Oklahoma City has 1520 AM, Lexington, Nebraska has 880 AM and Las Vegas has 720 KDOG to name a few smaller cities around us. Why doesn't Phoenix have a powerful AM station? That's where the all-news station would be at.
When I do want a live, all-news station, I do find myself turning to KNX 1070. When I'm far enough away from Phoenix, KCBS 740 from S.F. comes in pretty good as well. If only someone could shut-up the local Spanish station on 740 we could pick up KCBS a lot more clearly here in Phoenix!
asugeorge1 said:
In a word, yes. Hopefully the Old Gringo (or Keith) will chime in here with
some historical detail.
asugeorge1 said:
That's a bad thing?
Same deal in the 'Tuke--1070 comes in gangbusters at night due to a 1060 null.
Good enough to have KNX as one of my AM presets in the car.
asugeorge1 said:When I'm far enough away from Phoenix, KCBS 740 from S.F. comes in
pretty good as well. If only someone could shut-up the local Spanish
station on 740 we could pick up KCBS a lot more clearly here in Phoenix!
Those 292 watts sure mess up our getting KCBS on 740! Wow--140 more
watts than the lumberyard gets to use (if they used them :
). Looks likeKIDR 740 nulls toward Buckeye, so maybe Akbar can enjoy the 50 gallons
coming in from the Novato sticks with little or no interferencia.
oldiesfan6479 said:asugeorge1 said:
That's a bad thing?
Same deal in the 'Tuke--1070 comes in gangbusters at night due to a 1060 null.
Good enough to have KNX as one of my AM presets in the car.
I'm really glad 1060 KDUS doesn't have the I-CRAP that 860 has. We wouldn't be able to listen to KNX at night if they did! (Shouldn't give them any ideas). :-X
oldiesfan6479 said:
The easy answer is: When the post-war AM explosion took off, the Valley had a total of around 150,000 people with Phoenix itself being about half of that. Phoenix was probably somewhere in between Market #70 and #100 (closer to the latter, I'll guess), not the #13 it is today. ;D
Most of that population (except for Tempe, Mesa, & Glendale) was within 7 or 8 miles of downtown Phoenix, roughly Glendale Ave. on the north, Baseline Rd. on the south, 40th St. on the east, and 43rd Ave. on the west. Sky Harbor Airport was on the eastern city limits of Phoenix and Scottsdale barely existed. There were outlying pockets of small, unincorporated settlements (Sunnyslope, Cactus, Alhambra, Ingleside) that have since been swallowed by the city, but most of the valley's population was close to downtown in those days.
For that reason, all the AM stations in Phoenix in the late '40s (KOY 550, KTAR 620, KOOL 960, and KPHO 1230, later 910) ran no more than 5 kW. No higher power was needed to cover the lion's share of the market. Mesa (KARV 1400 & KTYL 1490) and Glendale (KRUX 1340) had Class IV stations (250 watts fulltime in those days) of their own that didn't target the entire Valley until later in the '50s, when KTYL & KRUX raised their power to 5 kW and moved to better freqencies (KARV only lasted a couple of years in the late '40s). KRIZ 1230 was one of the highest-rated stations in the '60s, despite only running 250 watts at night. They didn't need more.
I'm guessing that the reason no full-time 50 kW station didn't arrive until the 1980s (on 1580) was because the Class I frequencies were already used up. The FCC didn't allow two 50 kW clear-channel stations on the same Class I (Class A) frequency until much later, and by then, it was too late. Phoenix of the '50s easily could have snagged 670, 700, 720, or 890, but it wasn't allowed back then. There might have been issues with Mexico at the time as well.
Bob Dreste can probably fill in/correct anything I'm saying here since he was working in Phoenix radio in that era. I'm going from some research on Phoenix history and personal experience from the first time I lived here in 1964.
asugeorge1 said:oldiesfan6479 said:asugeorge1 said:
That's a bad thing?
Same deal in the 'Tuke--1070 comes in gangbusters at night due to a 1060 null.
Good enough to have KNX as one of my AM presets in the car.
I'm really glad 1060 KDUS doesn't have the I-CRAP that 860 has. We wouldn't be able to listen to KNX at night if they did! (Shouldn't give them any ideas). :-X
IBOC hash from KNX starts wiping out 1060 almost as soon as I pass the KDUS/KUPD towers driving south on I-10. Their ERP to the south is somewhere slightly above Part 15 levels.
Two points:
All-news will not work here because A) It's a dying format anyway, just ask the folks at KFWB and KNX who are now on the beach and B) Phoenix is full of newly-arrived residents who are not emotionally invested in the city. The same problem faces our pro sports teams: everyone has a "back home" favorite team and that's why you see so many Red Wings sweaters at Coyotes games, Cowboys jerseys at Cards games, etc. All-news requires people to care about their city, otherwise you have no reason to cover city hall, county gov't., etc. As it is, those "beats" did once have radio reporters covering them. But that died years ago. Heck, not even the "cop shop" has radio reporters anymore and that's some of the more compeeling and easy to cover stuff out there. You can't do all news without covering some of the smaller stuff; otherwise, you'll be obnoxiously repetitive. Oh, and of course, it's as expensive as heck.
As for why Phoenix has no 50K blowtorch at the lower end of the dial... I can't explain why Albuqurque has one, but back in the 1930s, when these stations were being established, the idea was to have super-regional stations. Phoenix, at the time, was a dusty backwater and was surrounded by signals from LA, Abq, Salt Lake, and Denver. By the time the population exploded (after WWII), the owners of 550 and 620 realized they were easily covering the "metro" area, and as far as anyone could tell, would continue to do so for decades to come with signals at 5K. Heck, I'm just old enough to remember when KRIZ and KRUX (1230 and 1360 respectively) were ratings and revenue generators, and their signals were at about 1K. It wasn't until about 1977-78 the KRIZ and KRUX gave up the ghost. That's a good run and dovetails nicely into the era of FM dominance.
I was once told that Jack Williams, when he managed 550 KOY in the 40s or 50s, was approached about increasing the power to 50K. He looked at the proposal, and figured the station was profitable, had lots of listeners and easily covered the listener base. Why add to the electric bill and eat into the profits? So.... no 50K.
All-news will not work here because A) It's a dying format anyway, just ask the folks at KFWB and KNX who are now on the beach and B) Phoenix is full of newly-arrived residents who are not emotionally invested in the city. The same problem faces our pro sports teams: everyone has a "back home" favorite team and that's why you see so many Red Wings sweaters at Coyotes games, Cowboys jerseys at Cards games, etc. All-news requires people to care about their city, otherwise you have no reason to cover city hall, county gov't., etc. As it is, those "beats" did once have radio reporters covering them. But that died years ago. Heck, not even the "cop shop" has radio reporters anymore and that's some of the more compeeling and easy to cover stuff out there. You can't do all news without covering some of the smaller stuff; otherwise, you'll be obnoxiously repetitive. Oh, and of course, it's as expensive as heck.
As for why Phoenix has no 50K blowtorch at the lower end of the dial... I can't explain why Albuqurque has one, but back in the 1930s, when these stations were being established, the idea was to have super-regional stations. Phoenix, at the time, was a dusty backwater and was surrounded by signals from LA, Abq, Salt Lake, and Denver. By the time the population exploded (after WWII), the owners of 550 and 620 realized they were easily covering the "metro" area, and as far as anyone could tell, would continue to do so for decades to come with signals at 5K. Heck, I'm just old enough to remember when KRIZ and KRUX (1230 and 1360 respectively) were ratings and revenue generators, and their signals were at about 1K. It wasn't until about 1977-78 the KRIZ and KRUX gave up the ghost. That's a good run and dovetails nicely into the era of FM dominance.
I was once told that Jack Williams, when he managed 550 KOY in the 40s or 50s, was approached about increasing the power to 50K. He looked at the proposal, and figured the station was profitable, had lots of listeners and easily covered the listener base. Why add to the electric bill and eat into the profits? So.... no 50K.
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