Bertolucci Out at KFI

[BLA]

They already carry ads on their exclusive-content talk stations (e.g., POTUS). It's not that big a deal, because the hosts need a moment here and there to take a short break and/or switch gears. I think most listeners realize this. But I agree with @MarkW, if they pull that particular bait&switch on the music channels, that will be the kiss of death for a battleship-load of their listeners. For them "ad-free" wasn't ever a bug, it was the feature.

U Betcha!

Another take is ... I just this month, after weeks-long consideration, dumped all talk channels from my XM car subscription, post election, in part because (except Bloomberg, maybe) the programming is mainly crap, but my thinking involves something else too, the advertisers, not commercials but bottom-feder (XM) advertisers with cheaply produced, annoying ads. Enough! They're also mostly cons.

They just can't all entertain like Larry Miller- him I really like! And who would be bothered by a mattress commercial, anyway??

I can understand that standards must sometimes take a back seat . For example, not washing the dishes on the Titanic that certain April night. But this S.-XM company seems to be doing pretty well as-is. Now they may drop in these ads on other channels?

 

[TheBigA]

the advertisers, not commercials but bottom-feder (XM) advertisers with cheaply produced, annoying ads. Enough! They're also mostly cons.

This is the 4th quarter. This used to be when we'd all make enough to cover any losses earlier in the year. Not anymore. This is why iHeart is firing everybody. There's simply no ad money right now. Can't pay staff with no money.

 

[Robnoxious]

Okay, so, if you were in Bakersfield in the years Rush was on KFI, with a decent car radio, you would have been able to hear him on:

580 KMJ, Fresno
600 KOGO, San Diego
640 KFI, Los Angeles
1140 KVLI, Lake Isabella
1560 KNZR, Bakersfield
99.7 KSMJ, Shafter

Again, it really doesn't matter. People tune in the station they can hear the most clearly. In those days KFI and KMJ came into Bakersfield like locals, and KOGO wasn't half-bad, either...but nobody who lived there was listening to them.

KFI in Bakersfield was/is very noisy even in the car.
KOGO is more like no go; Never heard it in Bakersfield proper (then again, I never sought it out when I lived there).
KVLI was possible I suppose, but not exactly a reliable or interesting signal choice.

KMJ and KNZR would be the only two stations someone in Bakersfield would tune to for Rush.
I know for a fact my Dad listened via KPMC/KNZR.

I do not remember 99.7 being talk during those days (90's especially) but FM in the Bakersfield area went very topsy-turvy once it started populating more signals beyond what was Q-94, KeLLY 95, B-Rock, KGFM, KKXX, KUZZ, KJUG and the myriad of Spanish stations in the heady late 90's. I was already out of the Valley by then.

 

[davideduardo]

This is the 4th quarter. This used to be when we'd all make enough to cover any losses earlier in the year. Not anymore. This is why iHeart is firing everybody. There's simply no ad money right now. Can't pay staff with no money.

Add in that a lot of advertisers stay off radio in the election season, not wanting to be drowned by political ads.

In all my years managing stations and sales in Puerto Rico I put strict limits on the ads every campaign could buy. This was written by my Washington counsel and given an "informal review" at the Commission.

We would specify a maximum daily amount of spots per campaign per candidate, with the most going to the governor race followed by metro area mayors and the two chambers. Maximums per daypart were also specified.

We let all agencies know (we did not seek direct accounts) that we had that policy and plenty of prime avails for their clients. What happened is that a larger portion of the reduced political season budget went to us, and much of it bled over through November, making election years just as good as other ones.

 

[michael hagerty]

KFI in Bakersfield was/is very noisy even in the car.
KOGO is more like no go; Never heard it in Bakersfield proper (then again, I never sought it out when I lived there).
KVLI was possible I suppose, but not exactly a reliable or interesting signal choice.

KMJ and KNZR would be the only two stations someone in Bakersfield would tune to for Rush.
I know for a fact my Dad listened via KPMC/KNZR.

I do not remember 99.7 being talk during those days (90's especially) but FM in the Bakersfield area went very topsy-turvy once it started populating more signals beyond what was Q-94, KeLLY 95, B-Rock, KGFM, KKXX, KUZZ, KJUG and the myriad of Spanish stations in the heady late 90's. I was already out of the Valley by then.

I pulled both KFI and KOGO in on a car radio in Bakersfield in the 90s.

The point was not that people in Bakersfield would choose to listen to them. The point was exactly the opposite.

It was a response to the previous poster’s story about hearing Rush on multiple stations and considering them as competing for the same audience.

My point, then and now, is that people would listen to the signal they could hear most clearly.

 

[Robnoxious]

I pulled both KFI and KOGO in on a car radio in Bakersfield in the 90s.

The point was not that people in Bakersfield would choose to listen to them. The point was exactly the opposite.

It was a response to the previous poster’s story about hearing Rush on multiple stations and considering them as competing for the same audience.

My point, then and now, is that people would listen to the signal they could hear most clearly.

Our points are absolutely very congruent then.

The rest are rimshots that didn't factor into the markets that would be in competition with one another.

(edit) Looking back at the topic title ... this has nothing to do with what this thread is about.

 

[henry]

I lived in Bakersfield last year. KFI was basically unlistenable during the day. It technically came in, but the static was horrible.

Established residents didn't give a crap about what was going on over the hill in LA. Recent transplants like me watched LA CBS News on Roku and listened to KFI. But as time went on, I started caring less and started watching KGET TV instead. It really is its own town, even if a lot of people commute over the Grapevine. Radio listening was country or Spanish-language formatted stations. The Bakersfield subreddit (on Reddit) used to have local Hispanic residents joke that "Radio belongs to us!" (And it feels true, as you dial scan).

 

[michael hagerty]

Our points are absolutely very congruent then.

The rest are rimshots that didn't factor into the markets that would be in competition with one another.

Looking back at what I said that you responded to, it had a relevant quote above it, but it was a round of conversation or two downstream from the original quote, which was:

https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/bertolucci-out-at-kfi.773896/post-6772806

(edit) Looking back at the topic title ... this has nothing to do with what this thread is about.

Welcome to RadioDiscussions. "Robin Bertolucci out at KFI" stopped being the main point of discussion after two days.

She's been gone three weeks.

 

[michael hagerty]

I lived in Bakersfield last year. KFI was basically unlistenable during the day. It technically came in, but the static was horrible.

My reference was 30 years ago. The noise floor was lower.

And given the sprawl, I think where you were in Bakersfield (30 years ago, not now) would have made a difference, too. I can only speak to what I heard.

Established residents didn't give a crap about what was going on over the hill in LA. Recent transplants like me watched LA CBS News on Roku and listened to KFI. But as time went on, I started caring less and started watching KGET TV instead. It really is its own town, even if a lot of people commute over the Grapevine. Radio listening was country or Spanish-language formatted stations. The Bakersfield subreddit (on Reddit) used to have local Hispanic residents joke that "Radio belongs to us!" (And it feels true, as you dial scan).

And again, the point was being made to Yabdabaado1 that just because several out-of-market signals carrying the same program can be heard in an area, that does not put them in competition with each other:

https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/bertolucci-out-at-kfi.773896/post-6772806

 

[RayydioLA]

Radio was not "live and local" in the Golden Age of the late 20's to the earlier 50's. It was national: Red and Blue and CBS and later NBC, CBS, ABC and Mutual. Almost all the "listened to" programming was nation-wide on networks.

Congress tried to prevent any individual stations from having wide audience area coverage by limiting the power of stations to just 50kw for a few, 5kw for many more and 250 watts for about 1,000 more.

The high cost of interconnection prevented music formats from "going national" but if cheap distribution had been possible, we would have done national and regional formats in the 50's and 60's. By the 70's, we got thousands of stations running taped "unwired network" formats and then satellite allowed simultaneous broadcast of formats on huge numbers of stations.

If you listen to the national stations in places as diverse as France and Perú and Chile and Spain you will hear much better music formats with excellent talent, the most interesting artist appearances and the like... using dozens if not hundreds of transmitters to cover an entire nation.

So much for "Local".

Now, as to "live" that began to die when Ampex introduced tape recorders and Bing Crosby could do one show and have it run in each time zone at the same local time. Then we got carts, and automation and could have a station sounding live while actually being 100% recorded. Then we got computers, and it became even easier to create a station with little or no live programming.

So much for "Live" (which was a myth all along).

Thanks for the history lesson, but I said "beginning in the Golden Age" and named several decades after that. Does no one remember literally ALL radio publications--from Billboard, to R&R, to HITS, to InsideRadio, to Allaccess .com--with countless editorials in the 80s, 90s, 00's, etc, trumpeting "Live & local radio" is king? How short your memory is. And how sad that today's radio managers--even dating back to the '90s--who all grew up reading and championing this philosophy--are still kowtowing to the bean-counters and putting themselves and their colleagues out of jobs, instead of revolutionizing the medium, yet again.

 

[davideduardo]

Thanks for the history lesson, but I said "beginning in the Golden Age" and named several decades after that. Does no one remember literally ALL radio publications--from Billboard, to R&R, to HITS, to InsideRadio, to Allaccess .com--with countless editorials in the 80s, 90s, 00's, etc, trumpeting "Live & local radio" is king? How short your memory is. And how sad that today's radio managers--even dating back to the '90s--who all grew up reading and championing this philosophy--are still kowtowing to the bean-counters and putting themselves and their colleagues out of jobs, instead of revolutionizing the medium, yet again.

The medium is changing due to both the economics of ad-supported radio and listener requirements and preferences.

Of course I "remember" Billboard and R&R and all those others. See the link at the bottom of this post. But we are in 2024, not ancient history.

Radio was "live and local" starting with the surge in music formats... particularly Top 40... in the 50's. Much of both "live" and "local" had to do with costs, not listener preferences.

Radio was "live" because there was no way to do music formats in a totally prerecorded manner until broadcast automation began to appear in the very late 60's and 70's. And even then, doing most formats with automation was not cost effective until we got computers... a decade or so later at best.

And radio was "local" because, until we got the internet, costs for dedicated phone lines (or even dedicated microwave systems) were too high to do 24/7 music formats in "networked" style.

So, in the 70's we got dozens of syndicators and formats distributed on tape to be played locally but done somewhere else. And then satellites provided "live" formats to hundreds of stations. Now, we get "work parts" that allows localization of even the biggest names like Seacreast, Booby Bones and Charlemagne in a combination of the old "network" and "local" concepts.

In most cases and most formats, "live and local" is neither needed nor efficient.

 

[michael hagerty]

And how sad that today's radio managers--even dating back to the '90s--who all grew up reading and championing this philosophy--are still kowtowing to the bean-counters and putting themselves and their colleagues out of jobs, instead of revolutionizing the medium, yet again.

You DO understand that the bean counters don't just "count", right? They distribute. They tell today's radio managers how many beans they have to work with.

I had lunch with a well-connected friend yesterday. We have the same theory. The reason Robin was gone on a Friday and most of the KFI News and traffic employees on Monday is that Friday is when they told Robin who she was going to have to let go come Monday.

Robin quit instead. She knew they'd do it anyway, and she also knew that even if she did what they wanted, eventually, it'd be her.

Again, just two guys (with tons of experience and some insight into the company) and the same theory. I'd bet lunch on it.

 

[TheBigA]

And how sad that today's radio managers--even dating back to the '90s--who all grew up reading and championing this philosophy--are still kowtowing to the bean-counters and putting themselves and their colleagues out of jobs, instead of revolutionizing the medium, yet again.

What you miss is they ARE "revolutionizing the medium" by shifting their resources to other platforms, in the way CBS and NBC shifted their resources to television in the 1940s. It's a continual evolution. The revolution happened 25 years ago. Everyone knows it and is equally to blame because they all willingly stopped listening to radio at a time when it was fully staffed and well funded. There are no formats programmers can add, no amount of staff radio companies can hire that will cause people to throw away their digital devices and go back to listening to broadcast radio. We all know that and can see it.

 

[henry]

KFI should be on Twitch.

And on YouTube Live.

And iHeartMedia should be making deals with any and all streaming platforms to be there with their non-music products that are still live. Profit splitting. Cross promotion. Cultivating and blurring the lines between the best live streamers and the best radio hosts, until they are one in the same. KFI is California's 24/7 live stream, regardless where you are. Lonely? Curious? Concerned? KFI is talking about the stuff going on in California right now. And some college kid scrolling around on Twitch will find it. Listen. And stay hooked.

But they don't do that. Because, like Eddie Lampert at Sears, iHeart (et. al) seem only interested in drinking the last bit of juice from the orange, and plan to chuck the stations in the trash when they no longer have value.

 

[TheBigA]

KFI should be on Twitch.

They are:

And on YouTube Live.

They are:

KFI AM 640

Stay connected with KFI AM 640 in Southern California or from anywhere on the iHeartRadio app. The News. What it means. Why it matters. Featuring hosts Amy King, Bill Handel, Gary & Shannon, John Kobylt, Tim Conway Jr., Mo Kelly and more. KFI is the most listened to news/talk radio station in...

www.youtube.com

They also have podcasts of all their shows available at their website and all podcast sites.

The John Kobylt Show | iHeart

John and Ken have been on KFI for over thirty years and with Ken's recent retirement John now takes the show solo. John Kobylt digs into the news to uncover the real story hidden below the headlines. John regularly exposes liars and “spokesholes” while providing blunt, fast paced analysis of the...

www.iheart.com

And iHeartMedia should be making deals with any and all streaming platforms to be there with their non-music products that are still live.

They own their own streaming platforms that other radio companies pay to be on.

KFI AM 640 | iHeart

SoCal News: More Stimulating Talk

www.iheart.com

But they don't do that. Because, like Eddie Lampert at Sears, iHeart (et. al) seem only interested in drinking the last bit of juice from the orange, and plan to chuck the stations in the trash when they no longer have value.

How wrong can you be in one sentence?

 

[MassMusicMan]

How wrong can you be in one sentence?

It's the strangest corollary on this message board, and I've seen it for the almost 25 years I've been participating: Radio fans who ostensibly don't pay attention, yet opine anyway.

Imagine a model train enthusiast never having heard of Lionel.

 

[Ray D. Owe]

The Twitch channel has no videos and KFI has never live streamed a show on Twitch. That account was created and abandoned.
The YouTube channel is your standard clips. When was the last time KFI did a livestream on YouTube?

Henry was CLEARLY talking about sending LIVE content across all possible channels to reach a wider and younger audience. KFI has not and does not do that.

Also, I don’t know if Henry has contacts inside iHeart, but I have been there for multiple decades and can assure you that the “orange” plan he describes is EXACTLY what iHeart intends, and has so stated in meetings.

 

[TheBigA]

Henry was CLEARLY talking about sending LIVE content across all possible channels to reach a wider and younger audience. KFI has not and does not do that.

Do you really think "younger" people are interested in watching people the age of their grandparents complaining? They could visit their own grandparents and get that. That's not why they use Twitch. The reason the KFI audience is mainly over 55 is because everyone on the air is mainly over 55. If they want to appeal to younger people, maybe they should hire a few. It's not the platform, it's the content.

I have been there for multiple decades and can assure you that the “orange” plan he describes is EXACTLY what iHeart intends, and has so stated in meetings.

Yet they keep buying stations, and would buy more if they were allowed to by the FCC. Putting linear broadcasting on a streaming platform is putting old wine in a new bottle and selling it as new wine. The TV networks understand that. That's why they're all looking at selling their networks and going to on-demand platforms. I'm sure iHeart sees the same thing. They're not going to extend the future of broadcasting by putting it on someone else's platform. If people want free linear real-time content, they know where to get it. It's why 90% of the public still uses broadcast radio.

 

[DToTheJ]

"Fox" is a network, one of the "Big 6" that we traditionally call "broadcast networks" as their base is over the air TV stations... In fact, "Fox" is the only one of the "Big 6" not to have a nightly network news show.

You forgot CW and My Network, Dave-O

 

[davideduardo]

You forgot CW and My Network, Dave-O

Based on numbers, the term "Big" fits neither.