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Changes At KFI

I don't know about Rich Marrota, but things are being tweaked at the station. The promos for the traffic reports are touting more coverage where listeners drive most. The evening drive time segment now includes a separate report for Orange County.

Initially the OC segment was a variety of co-reporters backing up the venerable Mike Nolan; this past week Mike is doing Orange County as back up for an anchor who continues into the late evening. Mike of course was once KFI's airborne "eye in the sky" using his own plane but got grounded as part of a cutback - then was re-hired for in-studio duties. Is he now preparing for retirement?

This of course raises the entire issue of where "in studio" now is. Clear Channel owns both KFI and Total Traffic - along with KOST and KTLK which also feature traffic reports largely done by the same reporters as appear on KFI.

Is Total Traffic doing reports for the CC Los Angeles cluster from Burbank? Reports elsewhere indicate that some TT clients in Los Angeles are being served by reporters as faraway as Texas! I have no direct evidence that this is true but would like to know. When KFI was still at 8th and Ardmore with the late Mark Dennis everything was done from a dedicated studio.
 
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Rich Marrota phones in via ISDN to the Handell show from Reno anyways.
Maybe they are looking for a local guy for sports?
They could always borrow Fred Rogan from KLAC when he isn't playing fill-in for Petros or Money when they are out and about.

Why would Carroll need a sports guy anyways?
I haven't heard him since he went to late mornings but he never really devoted much to sports outside of saying he attends Kings games.
 
Thank you for the information about TT being in Long Beach. Now, does that mean TT is doing the CC cluster from there rasther than Burbank? And what about the changes involving Mike Nolan? He's been with the station 28 years, is nearly 65 and could be prepping for retirement but that's speculation on my part with no solid evidence..
 
No idea about Mike, but yes, TT's Southern California studios are in Long Beach. I don't know if KFI has people doing traffic specifically for them from Burbank or not.
 
michael hagerty said:
Maybe. Having done traffic for TT, though, they're using CalTrans and CHP data sources that would be just as easy for someone at KFI to access.
Click to expand...

Having access to the data is one thing. Collating it into a script for presentation is another. So if they can get the assembled materials from TT, that means less time and effort for the person at KFI, who is probably doing other things besides traffic.
 
If KFI does get a new sportscaster, it would be nice if he gave all the scores. On many nights, the Clippers, Lakers, Dodgers, Angels and Padres are all playing...and the next morning, during the KFI newscasts, Rich Marotta will often spend his allotted 60 seconds talking about only one of those five games. KNX isn't much better. They promote "Sports at :20 and :50" but usually the scores of only the southern California teams are given and listeners are urged to go to the KNX website for the other games' scores. Yes, there are a lot of teams, but when I tune to a station's sportscast, I want to hear all the scores.
 
Well, I can answer my own question abour Rich Marotta. During the final hour of Bill Handel's show today, he announced that he'll no longer have to get up in the middle of the night. He's retiring from radio after 33 years but he will continue to announce boxing matches. Prior to joining KFI, Marotta was at KNX, 1981-82, and KRLA, 1983-90.
 
Former Fox Sports Radio anchor Joanne Zelasko and former Bruins/Clippers forward Marques Johnson will host the morning show from 5:30 to 9 and will be followed by three hours of Jim Rome and three hours of Fred Roggin. Brett Winterble will be on from 3 to 7 pm, joined by former Jaguars tight end George Wrighster. A program called L.A. Sports Today will air from 7 to 9 pm and CBS Sports Radio network programming will fill the remaining hours.

And the "Beast" name needs to go.
 
Does anyone know who does the new station IDs for KFI? And why is "Los Angeles, Orange County" spoken so softly? Does Robin Bertolucci not want us to know the station's broadcast area?
 
The new traffic bumper is awful.

Its not that the long-standing "Ratt - Round and Round" bumper should be considered sacred or always impervious to change (despite its long history and establishment as the traffic sound at the station), but the new bumper is completely indistinctive. Nothing about its tone is memorable or makes your ears perk up in such a way that says "It's time for a traffic update".

Rich Marotta leaving. Bad traffic bumper. Lame ID change from "More Stimulating Talk Radio" to "More Stimulating Talk". Lame name change from Clear Channel to IHeartMedia (while still over $20-Billion, with a "B", in debt).

I just don't see the future being bright at KFI.
 
KFI finally changed the irritating background noise that plays during their traffic reports. The new noise is much less irritating. But the traffic reporters now say, "KFI traffic---more coverage of where you drive most." What exactly does that mean? I haven't noticed any change in the traffic reports. Is the slogan just something that's supposed to sound good to the listeners but has no real meaning?
 
During evening drive (and possibly morning, I have't checked)there are tw reporters on the traffic reports - one for Los Angeles County and another for Orange County. The Los Angeles reporter starts the reports, then breaks for Mike Nolan who does Orange County and then throws ir back to the anchor. Thuis added emphasis on Orange County = "more coverage of where you drive most." Remember that the 50,000 watt KFI transmitter is squarely on the border of Los Angeles and Orange County in Buena Park even though the main studios are in Burbank. One or both of the traffic reports may be emanating from Clear Channel's traffic subsidiary in Long Beach - I don't know.

What really puzzles me is the role of Mike Nolan. He's been with the station nearly 30 years (starting in 1986) and is the sole afternoon reporter for traffic on sister stations KOST and KEIB.

Confining Nolan to Orange County on KFI while concurrently doing the entire area on the other two stations makes no sense unless he's getting ready to retire. The only rationale I can see that KFI wants to sound as diverse as competitor KNX.

The reality is that with Cal-Trans feeds and other sources traffic doesn't really need multiple reporters like it did in the days of KMPC's famous trio, Max Schumacher in the air, Dave DeSoto and Andy Park on the ground and of course the original "SigAlerts." They were what led to Bruce Wayne and later Mike Nolan becoming KFI's "eye in the sky" along with Dawn and Eve O'Day on KABC.
 
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Bruce Wayne, of course, later became famous as Batman.

No, sorry---that was a different guy. I occasionally hear a KFI traffic report for northern San Diego county. I wonder if the technology exists that would allow KFI to schedule a 60-second traffic report every ten minutes precisely and then broadcast five simultaneous reports covering Los Angeles County, Orange County, Ventura County, San Diego County and the Antelope Valley. Each report would be broadcast to its respective county and each county's listeners would hear their local area's traffic report. I'm assuming, of course, that KFI has a fairly large listening audience in each of those regions, and I'm assuming that this idea is practical. Big assumptions, I know. The Weather Channel takes frequent breaks so local stations can insert the local forecasts, but KFI is a single station. Is what I suggested even possible?
 
It would be a cacophony, but quintuple audio is as good a term as any.

You could theoretically split the band into five very narrow channels so that only receivers specially tuned to that sub-channel would receive the desired report. The problem is that every listener would have to have a multiplex receiver tuned to the desired sub-channel and there would be the risk of bleedover from adjacent channels.

As for standard receivers (the kind everyone has today) they could get all or part of all five channels randomly - which would be unintelligible.Because the very concept of broadcasting signal coverage of a broad area all sub-channels would still be hearable in all areas within range of the transmitter depending on the setting of the receiving units. There is no way to restrict a broadcast signal solely to geographic lines on a map.

By the way, while we're discussing Los Angeles traffic reporters I didn't mention that Dawn o'day went on to become news anchor Kelly Lange (her real name) and that two of Bruce Wayne's counterparts were former U-2 pilot Gary Powers and Cal (yes the auto dealer - "go see Cal") Worthington.
 
Before coming to KFI/KOST in 1968, Bruce Wayne was the first helicopter-borne traffic reporter in Boston. He was then Bruce Talford, the "Skyway Patrolman" on the old WHDH-850. I remember when he died in 1986. His plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Fullerton Airport and all the KFI hosts asked motorists to drive with their lights on as a memorial to Bruce Wayne, the "K-F-Eye in the Sky."
 
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