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KABC-AM Cuts Most Of Local Lineup/ Sacramento's Armstrong and Getty to Join in 2020

I live in a different part of the country, commenting because aspects of this thread resonate with me this morning. My neighborhood contains about 7,000 people, significant in the local market size. The live and local media is the neighborhood Facebook pages. That is where you go if you'd like to know what is going on. It self-curates surprisingly well. The local AM station that is live much of the day markets itself as your hometown station. Yet they are frequently clueless about what matters to people. A major thing happened here a while back, and the AM station stayed in a local baseball game, ignoring what the town was in shock over. Don't you think the team and the game advertisers would have understood if the station had mobilized and covered a tragedy?

It's a hell of a thing. Local AM radio fails to do what it claims as a birthright and province. Hard to sympathize...
 
I don't know where this myth that AM radio is the place to get live and local news and community service comes from. I suppose someone who grew up in the 50s and 60s might still cling onto that old perception, but I'm sure most people expect to find nothing but conservative talk, syndicated sports, religion and foreign language stations on AM now. Sure that's a generalization, but it's also the reality that helped drive young people away from AM radio years ago.
 
Greg Strickland said:
Local AM radio fails to do what it claims as a birthright and province. Hard to sympathize...
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Who pays for the neighborhood Facebook pages? That's your answer. User generated content doesn't cost anything. It's a hobby. A radio station isn't a hobby.

The downside to neighborhood Facebook pages is your personal information gets used by Facebook. They sell it to their advertisers. Is that OK?
 
btw-my comments are not directed at Cumulus. I think they are acting rationally and logically.

TheBigA- No it is not OK to me, and I'm not on Facebook. People around me are, and I notice they get local news and information faster and more accurately from Facebook than from the local AM station.

Theater of My Mind- I agree with you. Some AM stations I hear position as exactly that, the place to get local news and information.

I agree radio is not a hobby. Stand-alone small radio station only needs two people with radio sense that know what to do. It might effectively be a hobby if they are old and semi-retired.

My complaint is when it is a train wreck. Yes, you are live in morning drive. Great! You will play maybe 10 songs in one hour. Why are you playing that one?
 
Greg Strickland said:
I agree radio is not a hobby. Stand-alone small radio station only needs two people with radio sense that know what to do. It might effectively be a hobby if they are old and semi-retired.
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AND...those two people are independently wealthy by today's standards, ($ billions) willing to potentially throw money away.
 
I get that some male listeners don't care to have a female co-host in mornings. But realistically, how many male morning shows has this station gone through during the last ten years or so without success? I get that some might find Dr. Drew boring. It's hard to make his subject matter exciting. But somehow, he attracted an audience at KROQ, and it wasn't all because of Adam Corolla. At some point, you have to stop throwing good money after bad. The next time anyone leaves KFI, that position will be next to impossible to fill and keep the ratings of the previous host. I predict it will be very hard to find the next generation of talk show hosts. In less than fives years, we'll be wondering what happened to KFI.
 
TheBigA said:
I get that some male listeners don't care to have a female co-host in mornings. But realistically, how many male morning shows has this station gone through during the last ten years or so without success? I get that some might find Dr. Drew boring. It's hard to make his subject matter exciting. But somehow, he attracted an audience at KROQ, and it wasn't all because of Adam Corolla. At some point, you have to stop throwing good money after bad. The next time anyone leaves KFI, that position will be next to impossible to fill and keep the ratings of the previous host. I predict it will be very hard to find the next generation of talk show hosts. In less than fives years, we'll be wondering what happened to KFI.
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If the Next Generation of Talk show hosts are going to exist they are more likely to find them on podcasts or on youtube though.
 
Jillian barbarie was a disaster for mornings. John phillips is good but she sounded like a school girl. Cumulus made the right call with her. The mornin show was unbearable with jillian co hosting. She did more harm than good.

Dr drew was so boring. He drew an audience pardon the pun on loveline because of the subject matter. Cumulus made the right call.

It is a rearranging of the deck chairs on the titanic but sooner or later kabc will b blown up. In the interim i havent listened since douglas left and now i will. I like savage and i like john phillps solo.

I guarantee you kfi will be just fine in five years and beyond. They got bill handel. I dont care for him but he is good at what he does. And they got john and ken. With those two anchors alone plus timmy time at 7 kfi will be just fine and always a ratings success.
 
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Theater of My Mind said:
I don't know where this myth that AM radio is the place to get live and local news and community service comes from. I suppose someone who grew up in the 50s and 60s might still cling onto that old perception, but I'm sure most people expect to find nothing but conservative talk, syndicated sports, religion and foreign language stations on AM now. Sure that's a generalization, but it's also the reality that helped drive young people away from AM radio years ago.
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Beats me. To the extent that I listen to radio for news...mostly I get news on the internet...I listen to NPR and KQED on FM. I grew up in the 60's when most music, news, talk, and everything else was on AM. FM at the time was mostly automated easy listening or classical music. But that was 50+ years ago.

The problem with news on regular AM or FM is the commercial load. Story- 2 commercials - traffic - 2 commercials - Sports - 2 commercials. etc. I can't stand it. Also - I need some depth, and they don't provide it. Other than NPR, the old "22 minutes and we'll give you the world" model still applies.
 
hotpatrick2004 said:
I guarantee you kfi will be just fine in five years and beyond. They got bill handel. I dont care for him but he is good at what he does. And they got john and ken.
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Those people are getting up there in years. Handel is 68. I don't know the ages of John and Ken, but I'm sure Ken is in his 60s. You don't think there's a good chance at least one of them will retire in the next five years?
 
My point is kfi aint suffer the same fate of kabc. I bet my life on that. Ya got smart people making sure that will never happen. Kabc doesnt have any of the same issues that the failed kabc does.
 
hotpatrick2004 said:
My point is kfi aint suffer the same fate of kabc. I bet my life on that.
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I'll check back with you in 5 years. By the same token, KFI has a MUCH better signal than KABC. My point in this whole thread is that the signal is what's killing KABC. They've gone through multiple hosts during the past 20 years, and none of them have helped the ratings. Once the talk audience moved to the suburbs, KABC was dead.
 
hotpatrick2004 said:
Big A why dont u think cumulus just doesnt pull the plug on kabc? Why this slow death?
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To start with, because they have a license with the FCC. The license obligates them to keeping the signal on the air.

But as others point out, the station provides an LA outlet for Cumulus syndicated shows.
 
hotpatrick2004 said:
Big A why dont u think cumulus just doesnt pull the plug on kabc? Why this slow death?
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First, they likely can't find a reasonable buyer. They sold KLOS, and the company has said that it wants to pull out of non-synergistic stand-alones and small clusters. However, the market for AMs is very soft.

In the meantime, they seem to have a profitable sports deal and have a way to cheaply clear WWO programming. The cost of operating KABC in this manner is very low, so for the moment, and pending a decent purchase offer, we can expect the status quo* to continue.


* Not to be confused with a quid pro quo..
 
hotpatrick2004 said:
My point is kfi aint suffer the same fate of kabc. I bet my life on that. Ya got smart people making sure that will never happen. Kabc doesnt have any of the same issues that the failed kabc does.
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Mr Hot,

I don't want to single you out specifically, but this is a good moment to remind everyone that we are not "texting" on this board; we are "writing". Excessive use of acronyms and contractions as well as employment of incomplete, un-punctuated and un-capitalized expressions is discouraged because it makes reading posts harder.

I'm reminded in these moments of Weird Al's video... see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
 
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Love "Word Crimes"


DavidEduardo said:


Mr Hot,

I don't want to single you out specifically, but this is a good moment to remind everyone that we are not "texting" on this board; we are "writing". Excessive use of acronyms and contractions as well as employment of incomplete, un-punctuated and un-capitalized expressions is discouraged because it makes reading posts harder.

I'm reminded in these moments of Weird Al's video... see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc
Click to expand...
 
Stop the bleeding

Cumulus is no longer programming KABC for ratings. It just wants to keep it license at minimal cost until a buyer can be found
 
Greg Strickland said:
TheBigA- No it is not OK to me, and I'm not on Facebook. People around me are, and I notice they get local news and information faster and more accurately from Facebook than from the local AM station.
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That's because the AM radio station isn't even trying. I learned that the hard way a couple of years ago when my power went out for an extended period of time. Finding ANY type of local news was a long shot. I don't use Facebook but I bet that FB on your phone was providing a lot more info.
 
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