Since John London is gone from Free-FM and he was their strongest local on-air personality, what is their future now and who can we expect on the local lineup?How about the Quake? I heard a Saturday playback of Stephanie Miller the other day and she sounded right up to date on topics and quick on her bits. Is this station (960 Khz.) younger skewing than KGO?Is there a talk angle that is not being served and do you think Free-FM or the Quake may be filing that void?
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drtylawndre
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Since ABC radio sold out...kgo/ksfo PD Jack Swanson told host Gene Burns that he thought conservative talk was dead or dying could ksfo go with Stern in the morning --if he cuts deal with Citadel...and comes back to free radio...Karel could be in afternoon or evening --kgo could go with Limbaugh, Ronnn Owens and Gene Burns,
Wow. Let's see...1. "Jack Swanson told host Gene Burns that he thought conservative talk was dead or dying..."Oh, please. About the only people listening to old-fashioned AM radio are conservatives. It ain't dying any time soon -- maybe in the Bay Area, but not out on the fruited plain.2. "could ksfo go with Stern in the morning --if he cuts deal with Citadel..."And Stern will not be cutting a deal with Citadel, so there goes that idea.3. "kgo could go with Limbaugh, Ronnn Owens and Gene Burns..."Go where? To #2 in the ratings?Seriously.drtylawndre said:
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drtylawndre
Guest
who listens to FM music.. ? those who cant pay $150 for an Ipod...Owens is a moderate, Burns a libertarian and Bernie Ward and Ray T. liberals...as well as Karel and they all have good ratings.. so there goes the idea of only conservatives listening to AM talk....also Spanish language am talk is doing well and it is not all that conservative....in content or listenership.........conservative am stations are changing formats to Spanish and sports in a number of markets...whatch them die out
Yes, Citadel bought KGO the #1 Station in SF for 28 years to Change formats...And KSFO in the last ARB was about the #5 or #6 station...[/b]Infact ABC with 2 Stations had over 10 points in the last Book. Groups with 7 stations got about17-18 points. I like KGO's and KSFO's odds.Conservative talk is dying ? Lets replace Ronn with Rush ? BTW Stern can't go back to regular radio, It's in his Sirus Deal. Jack Swanson was/is the father of Hot Talk in SF. The Station does just fine thank you. Conservative talk may be dying on KNEW, Tied with the KQKE for 24th in the last book, but not on KSFO.What are you smoking?
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drtylawndre
Guest
940 in fresno had pretty good ratings...went spanish..as did a couple of big signal am talkers in the midwest..you are right ksfo is solid now but who knows....Lee Rogers is half retired now and Limbaugh might OD....things can change fast.. look how Stern and Phil Hendrie lost ground
Do you really think KSFO will Flip to spanish? Do you really think Citadel boughtKGO/KSFO because they could do better with another format? They bought them because they are sucessfull monymakers and VERY sucessful in the ratings...as are the 20 other ABC stations and the radio network they bought too.Fresno, is not SF is it? Perhaps a largly agricultural area, with a large hispanicworkforce will do better with a spanish format than with conservative talk. Good ratings do not always translate to money, if no one BUYS the TIME.Perhaps in the midwest, the spanish population is/was underserved by radio and there are/were advertisers who could make a format flip work $$$. Here in the Bay Area, where we have about 10 spanish stations already, a format change would be unlikely.Good local business decisions are based on a percivied need that will generate revenue. Not what someone did 200 miles away.Please don't confuse your Wishfull thinking with the facts.
Unless of course they bought all the stations with all the Union and Personal Service contracts in place...Which is what they did. All of the contracts havevery pricey severance provisions in place. And with Union Contracts in placethey would have to replace personel at the same rates. It is a merger not an asset sale. Can they fire people or lay them off ? Sure they can. But it will be expensive. For example, Ronn owens makes a lot of money, so does Lee RodgersMelanie Morgan etc. They just resigned Rodgers, 3 years. Ronn's contract runs till 2012. They would have to pay them off. With (union) contracts in place, for KGO and KSFO Staff (AFTRA) any replacement would have to be hired at union rates.The News producers/editors are Union Too. All on air talent, on both stations,even the Talk hosts and News Reporters and On Air Production People are.The talk producers/screeners are not on either station. In the first few years, what they will do is not rehire people who leave or retire.They will increase spot units on the air. They will hire more sale folks.They willcut redundant management. I see one unified sales dept, not 2 as it exists now."Cutting a Person saves once, Revenue increase is FOREVER." That quote belongs to Fried Suleman the guy who runs Citadel.
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drtylawndre
Guest
union contracts are not what they used to be..USX GM, Delphi, etc. Lard head Bernie Ward is or was the shop stew at KGO..I wonder how effective he is...if ad revenue drops.....they will have to cut...pay and contracts.....KGO is solid... I think KSFO could change in 3 years...they brought in Mark Levin...I bet they dump Sussman and Simpson...the fact that KNEW might go bye bye as a conservative station could help them......PD Jack Swanson (Mellons Morgan is married to Swansong)...is the person that said he thought conservative radio was dead...not me......when Rodgers was doing evenings on KGO he would do a fair amount of life style material..and he is doing more of it now
Isn't Rodgers broadcasting from his home in another city now? In the Bay Area, it seems like conservative talk hosts don't die, they just slowly fade away by moving to more tropical climates. From what I heard, the last straw for Jim Eason was having to run into Michael Savage around the studio, who he disliked and refered to as "the Savage Wiener."Though Swanson was smart enough to bring in, and mastermind the "Hot Talk" right wing format at KSFO, he's personally a true-blue liberal, so he may have been engaging in wishful thinking when he said that right wing talk radio was dead. Personally, I think the problem is there's just too much of it, and it's reached a saturation point - at least in the liberal Bay Area.
Jim was in North Carolina when he retired, he has never been at KSFO to broadcast(on a regular basis) since ABC owned the station. He was in NC when he moved from KGO to KSFO. Savage never ran into him here, cause they were never here at the same time. He did DO his usuall cheap shots on the air and picked on Jim's daughter, who was producing his show from here at the time. Jim just recently moved back to California, he is up by Lincoln, where his daughter, and first grand child are plus some extended family too.Jim just had enough of the BS. He had wanted to retire when they talked him intomoving over to KSFO. There were also some health issues.
USX, Delphi, GM are large Multi national corps that are in big trouble financialy. Hell GM/Delphi are almost bankrupt.KGO and KSFO are not. Bernie is the steward but he is NOT in charge of the contract. The Lawyers at the Union Are. If you knew anything about labor contracts you would know they just can't decide to cut pay. It would have to be negociated. A contract is a legal document. And you can't just decide to go non union with a contract in place.Revenue would only drop if the ratings went south...Citadel will concentrate heavely on the sales force...As in more of them, they will ad spots to the hours, that is how you generate revenue. I will say that any radio station that has no ratings, and few spots is most likely introuble...A couple that come to mind are KFIR, KNEW, KQKE, KYOU one listen to the stations would let you know why. They are stations with poor programing. Which meens they are stations with low ratings, which is what advertisers base there buys on. KNEW has Savage which is a bright spot for them in the ratings, but the rest of the day sucks. Michael big numbers don't always translate into revenue becausehe is on so many Agencies Do Not Buy Lists.
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DyingMedium
Guest
You're right...Savage is on just about every Do not Buy list in America. But he doesn't just affect KNEW's bottom line. He also kills revenue for whichever traffic service does news and traffic within his show...National companies want nothing to do with him and neither do most local companies in the Bay Area. Which is why you hear all those low-rent spots during his show. Buy Gold! Buy windows! It wasn't always that way. When he first came to KNEW, many advertisers were eager to do business with him...But he just kept getting more and more bizarre on the air. Does he still mention his dog every day? lol...I do remember one spot for a company in South San Francisco that had the outoing tag of " Smith company does not employ liberals"...LOL. What I always wondered was how they got away with saying that. Surprised it wasn't an EOE issue...But, since it was on KNEW, I Suppose no one really cared all that much.
How about a reply to my question of other talk format voids in SF. In other words if KTRB 860 does finally come on the air, what could they do different to fill a void? With KGO, KSFO, The Quake, KNEW, Free-FM and others, what is the missing void and what could be done better?In reference to KTRB 860, the FCC site shows a seperate day and nite tranmitter site. One near Sears Point and the other near Livermore, both with 50 Kw. It looks like Harry Pappas will spend a ton of money building the station. The question is will Harry spend the right amount of money to make the operation of KTRB in SF viable?
No he won't. He'll just troll for available bottom feeder syndication...he'll have to go 4th tier syndication since KNTS has most of the 3rd tier stuff. He'll take A's BBto fill up the time.What Talk format is not being served...Hard to say, you could do a female targeted format, a gay/tansgender format. But whatever you do, and what KTRB won't do, is spend any money on local programing. Local is expensive. Host, Producer, Phones. And that would go for any "type" of format you picked if it was local.So much easier to just pull it down off a satellite, Barter the time sell your few avails. However Local Pgms work, ask KGO. KFIR 106.9 has no local hosts. Even Turi Rider is working from her home, and not in the Bay area. Karel on KGO is Very LA even though he is on in the Bay Area he orginates from LA. His topics are national/or Generic in nature. Seldom a SF/Bay Area Topic. The one's who phone it in are kind forced to do it that way.If someone wanted to do a General Talk format, like KGO's, here is what they would have to do. Hire a Live local talk staff. Get some folks who knew the Bay Area. Oh wait, that would be expensive. You see that's why KGO is sucessfull.Mickey Luckoff spends to get the best. Jack Swanson hires the best. It's not cheap, but the results are evident. #1 for 28 years. KNEW spends a Mil a year to get Savage, good numbers, hard to sell. The rest of the Station is Low Bid crap. Most of it is automated, and that is usually screwed up.I know Agnew and Kramph (KNEW/KQKE)are busy patting themselves on the back about how much money they save...BUT, they have no ratings, and they make very little money with the stations. Some local, Armstrong and Getty, Sacto not SF, The Will and Willie thing on the KQKE...2 hours, who cares. The weekends stuffed with infomercials, which are not programming. the rest is syndication.2nd tier stuff. Could someone just do somthing interesting and entertaining...PLEASE? I don't care AM/FM/SW. Just entertain me. Don't tell me I'm stupid because I don'tagree with you. I loved Darian O'Toole on 106.9 telling a caller who asked why she though doing an hour on "peeing" was important. Her answer was "Well if you don't get what we are doing here, it's because you are to stupid" You tell em princess. Someone was stupid...It wasn't the caller.London, O'Toole, 106.9s 2 local shows...Both Gone. Why? If you listened, you know why. I guess what CBS/CC and the rest of the talk wannabee companieshaven't figured out yet is that just cause someone is On The Air, and Talking, doesn't meen they are saying anything worth listening to.The listeners are usually the first to know.
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PugUgly
Guest
Turi Ryder lives in SF and broadcasts from in studio.The PM drive shows have had live, in-studio hosts since day one.O'Toole passed out on mic, London prank-called CBS management and threatened another host's life on the air. That's why they're gone.A gay/TG station? For what, 6% of the Bay Area?Nutty.
I've heard Free FM try out a few local shows on the weekend. It seems they did a few with Jimmy Baron, who is a pretty big name out of Atlanta (I remember him from when I lived there). I actually thought he sounded decent with the other two people they tried him out with. Don't know what ever happened with that though. Anyone have any thoughts on this Leslie Gold chick?
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