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CBS Radio News Closure: Effects on KCBS and San Francisco

Also---for those outside the market who haven't actually listened to KCBS---this isn't a rushed, whispered legal ID hiding KFRC.

And apart from Randy Thomas replacing Nick Michaels on his death in 2018, the tagline "What's happening and why" being changed to "When you need to know" at that time, the inclusion of "an Audacy station", and some freshening and intensifying of the music bed, it's been a constant since 2008---EIGHTEEN years:

2010: https://audio.tophour.com/audio/San Francisco-San Jose CA/fm1069_2010-01_kfrc-fm_sfybush.mp3

2011: https://audio.tophour.com/audio/San Francisco-San Jose CA/am0740_2011-01_kcbs_nfuentes.mp3

2013:

2014: https://audio.tophour.com/audio/San Francisco-San Jose CA/am0740_2014-12_kcbs_sfybush.mp3

2021:


And because someone will mention the logo---it's generic enough that if all you do is change KCBS to KFRC, in a month, no one will remember it looked different before.
 
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cc333 said:
It would be hard for me to adjust, but that's just because I'd always known KFRC as an oldies station (KFRC-FM has always been mostly an afterthought; for me, the AM was where it was at – until it found religion and became KEAR, of course).


If there's no more CBS News, it kind of makes "KCBS" irrelevant, and they might as well change it now and get it over with.

Unless, if Audacy wants to create their own service (unlikely, given the expense) and license back the "CBS News" brand from Paramount somehow?

If KCBS were to, say, affiliate with Fox News, I'd probably stop listening. I don't like Fox News, even though their radio division seems less conservative.

c
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A Fox News label in what may be the nation's most liberal large market would be a fatal blow for 106.9, but an enormous gain for KQED and the other NPR stations in the Bay Area.
 
There's one other aspect to this that goes beyond the surviving call letters, or what to do for those first three minutes of the hour. (Or for that matter, 60 Minutes on Sunday evenings.) I did a quick backscan to review what I'd written way up yonder -- turns out it was #31 & 32 -- and nobody seems to have surfaced it as a problem, but it is.

What happens when a certain president gets a whim and decides to go to war, or when someone tries to take a potshot at a president/senator/congressperson/VP/Cabinet Secretary (or candidate for same), or a president starts acting like they're having a stroke? Or a thousand other "Breaking News" scenarios? There really are only two stations in the market that will interrupt normal programming to go with that story, and stay with it. KCBS is one of them, just as WINS, KNX, WBBM, etc. will do in their own markets. (In case it's not obvious, the other station would be KQED, or its NPR sister stations in those markets.)

The noncoms lean on NPR to do the heavy lifting in those situations, and the All News stations generally lean on their nets. For the most part that's CBS. So what happens when CBS evaporates and you're on your own? KCBS doesn't have the resources to cover a breaking "Tier One" story by themselves. CBS does/did.

Any news station that wants to maintain credibility needs to have an organization with money, professionals and resources behind them. If CBS News is gone, NPR's unavailable, ABC's tied up exclusively with another station or group, who do you turn to? CNN?

It's a small problem, no?
 
Weiserguy said:
There's one other aspect to this that goes beyond the surviving call letters, or what to do for those first three minutes of the hour. (Or for that matter, 60 Minutes on Sunday evenings.) I did a quick backscan to review what I'd written way up yonder -- turns out it was #31 & 32 -- and nobody seems to have surfaced it as a problem, but it is.

What happens when a certain president gets a whim and decides to go to war, or when someone tries to take a potshot at a president/senator/congressperson/VP/Cabinet Secretary (or candidate for same), or a president starts acting like they're having a stroke? Or a thousand other "Breaking News" scenarios? There really are only two stations in the market that will interrupt normal programming to go with that story, and stay with it. KCBS is one of them, just as WINS, KNX, WBBM, etc. will do in their own markets. (In case it's not obvious, the other station would be KQED, or its NPR sister stations in those markets.)

The noncoms lean on NPR to do the heavy lifting in those situations, and the All News stations generally lean on their nets. For the most part that's CBS. So what happens when CBS evaporates and you're on your own? KCBS doesn't have the resources to cover a breaking "Tier One" story by themselves. CBS does/did.

Any news station that wants to maintain credibility needs to have an organization with money, professionals and resources behind them. If CBS News is gone, NPR's unavailable, ABC's tied up exclusively with another station or group, who do you turn to? CNN?

It's a small problem, no?
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Even if they choose to do national/international news themselves on routine days, they’ll need either a traditional network affiliation (AP) or an agreement to carry someone else’s audio. Maybe that’s from TV (CNN, ABC, NBC or—-if they’re not concerned about what’s happening to CBS News’ image—-CBS).

And that affiliation or agreement would need to cover breaking news and continuous coverage.
 
Weiserguy said:
So what happens when CBS evaporates and you're on your own? KCBS doesn't have the resources to cover a breaking "Tier One" story by themselves. CBS does/did.
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You're making an incorrect assumption. You believe the only network resource KCBS has is CBS News. That's incorrect. KCBS has other affiliations:

Bloomberg (for business news)
KPIX (for local news)
Associated Press (for national & international news)
Audacy News (which is an internal linking of the Audacy all news stations)

So they have other options besides CBS News.
 
michael hagerty said:
Let me pull rank provide insight and guidance as a former programmer.

@Mark Roberts is absolutely correct about the priorities:
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Finally, a payoff for my time in all-news radio!

michael hagerty said:
Beyond that, you apply any change to a successful radio station with a medicine dropper.
{...}
And all of it is delivered like you've been doing it since Marconi figured out the wireless.
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Pretty much what I would say, except I'd work in a reference to Doc Herrold somewhere.

michael hagerty said:
And before anyone suggests that a (retired) pro is mocking the ideas of the people who haven't worked in radio---nope. You've just read what I'd write in an internal memo.

Welcome to the inside.
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I also think all-news is a special beast. Wrangling that beast is outside the expertise of many programmers. They've got to understand both programming and journalism, and far too many, in my opinion, either don't want to understand journalism or are flat-out contemptous of it.

Producing hours on a news wheel will quickly separate the posers from the doers. Been there, done that.
 
For what it's worth...probably not much...I recall that, until about 15 years ago, weekend morning sportscasts on KCBS actually came from the AP's audio service. When that part of the AP service was discontinued, KCBS replaced it with local content. Some of it was featurish material from one of the sports anchors recorded earlier in the week, with any needed updates of scores provided by the news anchor.

The point in mentioning this is that KCBS will find ways around the CBS content problem.
 
Mark Roberts said:
The point in mentioning this is that KCBS will find ways around the CBS content problem.
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Exactly. They do this for a living. Just down the hall from KCBS is KGMZ, which happens to be a sports station. They need someone to do local sports? They already have people on the payroll. Just work out a schedule on how it can be accomplished internally. That's what the GM does.

But as we've discussed, I expect all the suits at Audacy have been discussing this over the weekend, and likely have a plan ready.
 
Mark Roberts said:
I also think all-news is a special beast. Wrangling that beast is outside the expertise of many programmers. They've got to understand both programming and journalism, and far too many, in my opinion, either don't want to understand journalism or are flat-out contemptous of it.
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The kind of news that is contained in the "give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the world" is different from in-depth journalism. In fact, to me it is closer to entertainment than journalism.

The "20 minute" listener generally wants to be informed. In the "old days" this was to avoid not knowing something around the water cooler or the first morning coffee break.

The news/talk listener wants to be a silent part of a conversation with the talk hosts. It's a sports bar, but about news events.

Only the more in depth coverage... today that really only means public radio in the audio world... involves people who want to be up to date but also want to learn details and hear insights.

My first incursion into in-depth news was at Ecos de la Montaña in Quito. We did news blocks, soap operas, drama shows and sports before TV was of significance. The news blocks, with deep coverage of current national events, ended up with guns pointed at me and an invitation to leave the country, or else. That shows the strength of in-depth radio news.

I created a new all-news station in Puerto Rico in 1982. It was the "popular class" version of news, where murders headlined ahead of legislation. It was decidedly entertainment, sort of like "C.O.P.S." of TV. We did break lots of stories, using listeners as stringers. But it was mostly for entertainment, not awareness.

I became part of Buenos Aires, Argentina's, most listened to talk station in 1999. It had long newscasts in AM and PM, and the writing staff and reporters numbered over 40. The "on the air" roundtable for 6 AM to 9 AM had 7 people on mike, including a staff comedian who wrote short skits about events of the day. Extremely deep verification of stories was required, and the station scooped newspapers and the other 10 or so news talk stations in the market. The attention to detail was so great that the AM and PM newscasts were followed by a staff meeting to analyze what could be done better. There was very little crime, accident and fire coverage... this was about "the fate of the nation" and we all felt we were responsible for doing a very good job of covering all the news.

I've done news/talk in LA, Chicago, Miami, New York, Dallas, Houston and several other Latin American places. But when you add "talk" to the format descriptor, you are in the area of opinion mixed with facts. Even if you get interviews or sounders from various perspectives on an event, you find that every story is seen differently by different groups of people, based on age, education, income levels, political party affiliation, religion and the like.

I don't want to negatively say that news/talk content is unavoidably tainted... but rather I am saying that the flavor of the commentators not only images the shows of each host, but it colors the whole station. In other words, going back in time, "I think the news on that station Rush Limbaugh is on is slanted to the conservative view" even if that was not the case. Guilt by association.

Mark Roberts said:
Producing hours on a news wheel will quickly separate the posers from the doers. Been there, done that.
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Agreed. But we have to remember that there are different kinds of news listeners and viewers: those that want to learn and discover and those that just don't want to be embarrassed by being "out of touch".
 
michael hagerty said:
KCBS is different. Parts of the market are in tricky areas for 106.9. KFBK in Sacramento ditched the AM references while I was there. That lasted a year. They have trouble spots with 93.1, so the AM mentions (in the logo and on the air) were brought back.
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Actually, there are trouble spots in the L.A. area for 97.1 as well as I noted (and @K.M. Richards confirmed) on another thread. And I was *very* surprised that KFBK tried to ditch their AM after the addition of KFBK-FM. From where that transmitter is located plus its assigned power output, it's hard for me to see how that frequency is able to cover the entire city of Sacramento let alone all of the other areas that KFBK-AM's signal covers.
 
ted chittenden said:
From where that transmitter is located plus its assigned power output, it's hard for me to see how that frequency is able to cover the entire city of Sacramento let alone all of the other areas that KFBK-AM's signal covers.
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Remember, we are decades beyond when advertisers paid any attention to how much a station might cover outside the Metro Survey Area.

KFBK may cover well outside the Nielsen ratings market, but that coverage does not help at all on ratings based buys. Yes, a few local advertisers might appreciate and benefit from wider coverage, but in all other cases it adds nothing to the revenue potential.

When we consider that more and more ad buys are being done by computers with no "pitch" by the station and no analysis by agency staff, this consideration is even more important
 
TheBigA said:
The brand is the other 55 minutes. Not the top of the hour. The locals listen because of the local news. Not the other stuff.

Just like in NYC, the people of SF don't care about what's happening at some corporate office. They just want local news. That's why they listen.
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I'm not so sure I agree with this. I don't ever recall KCBS billing itself as "Your Local News Station." I wonder if any focus groups in the station's listening area (which covers a lot more than San Francisco) have ever shown how the audience views the station.

That said, I very much agree with the way @michael hagerty would handle the situation.
 
davideduardo said:
Remember, we are decades beyond when advertisers paid any attention to how much a station might cover outside the Metro Survey Area.

KFBK may cover well outside the Nielsen ratings market, but that coverage does not help at all on ratings based buys. Yes, a few local advertisers might appreciate and benefit from wider coverage, but in all other cases it adds nothing to the revenue potential.

When we consider that more and more ad buys are being done by computers with no "pitch" by the station and no analysis by agency staff, this consideration is even more important
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It's no wonder that radio, and AM in particular, is in trouble. I mean, if ad agencies are ignoring where a possible plurality, if not majority, of a radio station's audience is actually located...
 
The local audience is not going to be bothered by any of these changes. Nobody cares just us that are still living in the past. Today is nothing like it was back in the last century when stations had to do legal ID'S every 15 minutes. For the audience it will all blow over in 30 days or less, for us maybe 60 days. Its all temporary anyway like life, All things must pass even radio stations and radio formats and station ID's. We'll all get over it.
 
michael hagerty said:
Again, not gonna happen, for the reason you cite and because FOX News is already cleared on KSFO.
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I haven’t listened to iHeart-owned AM 910 and 960 lately to know if they already run their in-house TOH on those stations. If not, could KCBS start running them, absent Audacy launching their own?
 
cc333 said:
They already call it "the Bay Area's News Station," so they're almost there....

c
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On the TV side locally, KRON4’s tagline is the similarly worded, “The Bay Area’s Local News Station.” This could also cause some brand association issues with people thinking KRON-TV and KCBS-AM maintaining a formal partnership, which they do not.
 


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