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Changes At KMLE

T

TheBigA

Entercom announced some changes today to its country and alternative stations, including KMLE in Phoenix. Longtime OM Tim Richards is gone, along with the afternoon host Nina D:

https://www.allaccess.com/net-news/...pread-entercom-rif-in-progress-memo-to-staff-

Elevate Our Best Programmers and Personalities into Larger Roles – Give our most talented programmers greater responsibilities to reimagine and elevate our content while amplifying some of our top shows across larger regional and national audiences.

Field says, "I want to make sure that there are no misunderstandings about the actions we are taking. To be clear, Entercom will remain local, first and foremost ... every station will continue to have its own unique playlist driven by a continued commitment to heavy local research."
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One local example is KALV's Morning Mess now airing on KAMP in Los Angeles.
 
More details announced here:

http://www.insideradio.com/free/lay...cle_b1cf2e1e-f39d-11ea-b81c-cf9d4bfb8f34.html


Specifically:

Meanwhile, all of the company’s 21 country radio stations will carry national shows in middays and nights. Katie Neal from WNSH New York will anchor middays across the platform. A “Superstar Power Hour” will be part of the midday block, featuring a different music artist as co-host for a week, starting next week with Luke Bryan.

Having big name artists as co-hosts will “drive a better listener experience through contact with the artists they love on a daily basis,” said Roberts. The ACM Award winning duo of Rob Stone and Holy Hutton from WYCD Detroit will host nights across the 21 stations.

Roberts said the country stations will “continue to have a live and local presence in morning drive” and that afternoons will have either a regional host or a local talent.
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Country Aircheck adds one more name to the dearly departed list:

KMLE/Phoenix APD/middays & Cluster Dir./Digital Programming Jared “Marshall” Goldberg, who joined the cluster in 2016
 
So a "commitment" to "live and local" means anything outside of morning drive will be tracked from somewhere else. I also noticed no announcement of which "local" person will be handling programming duties for all 3 stations.

This is not "fresh thinking." It's iHeart 2.0.
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
So a "commitment" to "live and local" means anything outside of morning drive will be tracked from somewhere else.
Click to expand...

Here's the quote from David Field:

"To be clear, Entercom will remain local, first and foremost ... every station will continue to have its own unique playlist driven by a continued commitment to heavy local research."

So the playlist will be local, important because it continues trade panel participation. And of course all the commercials will be local. No barter or network inventory.

In music intensive formats such as country, less than five minutes an hour is coming from the talent. The other 55 minutes is music & spots.
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
So a "commitment" to "live and local" means anything outside of morning drive will be tracked from somewhere else. I also noticed no announcement of which "local" person will be handling programming duties for all 3 stations.

This is not "fresh thinking." It's iHeart 2.0.
Click to expand...

And it is what has been done with music formats in Europe and Latin America since the 60's.
 
TheBigA said:
In music intensive formats such as country, less than five minutes an hour is coming from the talent. The other 55 minutes is music & spots.
Click to expand...


I guess the thing I'm getting at here is a simple question: Why should a listener (or client, for that matter) choose "local" radio? Outside of morning drive, what can I get from the station that I can't get from a streaming service?

I mean, I can't tell you the last time I turned on my television and watched a broadcast channel. The TV is just a box I use to stream content. Some of the regular content I consume is car reviews by millennials on You Tube. The more in depth ones cover the vehicle's infotainment, but you know what they never mention?

The radio.

Oh, there's this one guy who wants rewinding satellite radio, but terrestrial over-the-air radio is utterly irrelevant to them. Like my television, the infotainment in the car serves as a box to stream content via Android Auto or Apple Car Play.

When I scroll through Field's missive to Entercom employees, I don't see "fresh thinking." It's more akin to the CEO of the Yellow Pages saying "if we just make the book smaller, people will be more able to pick it up and carry it into their house for later use looking up phone numbers."
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
I guess the thing I'm getting at here is a simple question: Why should a listener (or client, for that matter) choose "local" radio? Outside of morning drive, what can I get from the station that I can't get from a streaming service?
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For the same reason they did before: The music. I doubt the P1s can name the afternoon host at KMLE. So what do they really have to lose?

The ratings for this station made everyone, especially on air, vulnerable. This was a station that had failed to make a local connection. If they have someone live & local, and they're getting killed by KNIX, why should the company keep paying the salary & benefits?
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
I guess the thing I'm getting at here is a simple question: Why should a listener (or client, for that matter) choose "local" radio? Outside of morning drive, what can I get from the station that I can't get from a streaming service?
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Particularly since local elements like weather and the like can easily be inserted into national formats that are assembled locally from workparts. Shows like Seacrest's morning offering prove that a national program that has access to artists and interesting people is often better than a local person saying, "Hey, it's seven-fifteen in the Motor City and here's Billy Joel".

A major percentage of nations with commercial radio outside the US, from Ghana to Chile to France to the Philippines use a national model. One interesting thing is that they localize via their websites the content, and that is where traffic maps, local weather in detail and even local sports are detailed.

I mean, I can't tell you the last time I turned on my television and watched a broadcast channel.
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I am in a market with very distinct weather and very provincial activities and politics. So I watch, via my TiVo, the local news. Most entertainment comes from paid services like Netflix and Amazon and even the network's paid offerings.

During the pandemic, we "discovered" that for what we paid for a couple of family movie theater with snack outings each month (perhaps $65 for three people, twice a month or more) we can have nearly every paid service that interests us and save money. Because we made that commitment to the services, we likely will go to very, very few theatricals ever again in the future (and we will avoid the frustration and anger at other moviegoers cause by constantly checking their cellphones and talking).

When I scroll through Field's missive to Entercom employees, I don't see "fresh thinking." It's more akin to the CEO of the Yellow Pages saying "if we just make the book smaller, people will be more able to pick it up and carry it into their house for later use looking up phone numbers."
Click to expand...

No, it's just doing what the rest of the world has done for many decades... enhanced by technology that allows national content to adjust to local formatic needs, such as different stopset lengths and placements.
 
TheBigA said:
I doubt the P1s can name the afternoon host at KMLE.
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Well that's a problem, isn't it?

If they have someone live & local, and they're getting killed by KNIX, why should the company keep paying the salary & benefits?
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Seems to me there's a couple options. Get someone better that will kill KNIX, or give up and go home. Field seems to have chosen the latter. It's certainly the cheaper option, but - again - is it a long term solution?

No. It's the Yellow Pages publisher trying to make the book more appealing by making it less cumbersome.
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
Get someone better that will kill KNIX, or give up and go home. Field seems to have chosen the latter. It's certainly the cheaper option, but - again - is it a long term solution?
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That was Tim's job. He had 8 years to fix the station, and didn't. I learned a long time ago to never give the CEO an opportunity to do your job.

You make like this is a bad thing. There are thousands of radio stations that are doing this and getting great ratings. Country P1s will hear things they'd never hear on a local midday show. If this doesn't work, they'll put the cluster on the market, just as CBS did ten years ago.
 
TheBigA said:
That was Tim's job. He had 8 years to fix the station, and didn't. I learned a long time ago to never give the CEO an opportunity to do your job.

You make like this is a bad thing. There are thousands of radio stations that are doing this and getting great ratings. Country P1s will hear things they'd never hear on a local midday show. If this doesn't work, they'll put the cluster on the market, just as CBS did ten years ago.
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I didn't realize the PD was there for that long. How the hell did he hold onto that job?
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
I didn't realize the PD was there for that long. How the hell did he hold onto that job?
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I don't know. He made lots of staff changes. He presided over at least three KMLE morning shows. He got promoted to VP for the cluster.

Here's the hiring announcement from 2013: https://news.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/headline_id=n26691
 
Deus Ex Machiato said:
Seems to me there's a couple options. Get someone better that will kill KNIX, or give up and go home. Field seems to have chosen the latter. It's certainly the cheaper option, but - again - is it a long term solution?
Click to expand...

It's amazing that groups did not figure this out earlier. They could see the results from Stern, and can see now how well Seacrest and several other morning hosts have done over the last 25 years.

And, as I have said before, in much of the world, national radio with local simulcasts are the norm. With today's technology, a station can still be local while having national hosting. It just took longer for US radio to figure this out.

TV figured it out six decades ago... the late night network shows are national, not local. And the daytime non-scripted hosted shows are national, too.

And web streaming has made users less "local conscious" as they find more entertaining and interesting shows at the national level.
 
DavidEduardo said:
It's amazing that groups did not figure this out earlier. They could see the results from Stern, and can see now how well Seacrest and several other morning hosts have done over the last 25 years.

And, as I have said before, in much of the world, national radio with local simulcasts are the norm. With today's technology, a station can still be local while having national hosting. It just took longer for US radio to figure this out.

TV figured it out six decades ago... the late night network shows are national, not local. And the daytime non-scripted hosted shows are national, too.

And web streaming has made users less "local conscious" as they find more entertaining and interesting shows at the national level.
Click to expand...

Right. This is not the 50’s or 60’s anymore when musical tastes were more regionalized. A song that was a hit in New York City was not necessarily a hit in Phoenix. The only formats that will remain local are sports and news/talk radio. And even those have national feeds and hosts to supplement the local content (see KTAR and KMVP).
 
In the meantime, KMLE's competitor KNIX is local from 5AM until 9PM. They've resisted the temptation to put the company's big star Bobby Bones on in morning drive. So the people of Phoenix have a choice.
 
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