KDKA, Pittsburgh: Someplace...Stable?

[tce]

I have been paying attention - or at least been aware of - KDKA AM for more that 55 years. Leaving aside questions of quality and success, is there another station in the market that has shown greater stability in terms of gradual evolution. I don't recall a time when there was any of the following:

A change of call letters.
A change of frequency.
An immediate, complete overhaul of every element of the format.
A quick replacement of a significant proportion of the air staff.
Major, obvious on-air changes immediately coincident with change of ownership.

Of course, almost every aspect of the programming has changed since 1958. However, I can't remember any instance where a given change would have been seen as a major, station-wide shake-up. Some would describe this as stagnant rather than stable. I won't argue for either characterization, but I think underlying facts hold.

Is there a comparable example over a comparable time span, other than KQV as "mostly" all-news since the mid 70s?

There are likely examples in other markets. Such as....

 

[hypwr]

There was a change of frequency. I started listening to KD when they were on 980 KC (not KHz). However, the change was not their choice. It was mandated via the big shift.

 

[tce]

Sure. I understand they had a short-wave frequency at one time. My comments apply to the mid 50s forward.

 

[Boss Radio]

Call letters and frequency are both gold. No need to change either.

There's never been a need for an instant overhaul of the format. Probably the most radical thing they've done in the last 20 years is substitute out-of-market programming for local in the late night and overnight slots. That's just a matter of economic reality.

WCBS-AM/New York has been all-news since 1967. KNX/Los Angeles adopted an all news format in 1968 and still has it.

 

[Pratte4Life]

WDVE has to be on rock for 40 years by now.

KQV has been all-news since 1975.

WAMO has been urban since Porky Chedwick, right?

WDSY has been country for 30 years minimum.

WISH has to have been soft rock for a long time, too.

Not debating KDKA is someplace stable, though they have had some employees there in the past who were emotionally unstable!

But perhaps that's not unique.

 

[Parttimer]

WDVE has to be on rock for 40 years by now.

KQV has been all-news since 1975.

WAMO has been urban since Porky Chedwick, right?

WDSY has been country for 30 years minimum.

WISH has to have been soft rock for a long time, too.

Not debating KDKA is someplace stable, though they have had some employees there in the past who were emotionally unstable!

But perhaps that's not unique.

This market is unusual in that there has been far less ownership turnover here than in other places. Renda and the Frischlings have held out and not sold to a national group, and Keymarket owns most of the rimshot FMs. A lot of the format turnover happens on the 5th FM in a cluster.

The stations which have had multiple formats are 96.9, 104.7, and 100.7. All came from questionable owners and had signal issues at one point or another.

And one more factor, this market has not seen much in the way of move-ins. Froggy 104.3 from East Liverpool is probably the most successful. But stations like WJPA and the group in Butler have stayed with their local markets instead of trying to become Pittsburgh stations, and there haven't been attempts from places like Youngstown, Wheeling and Morgantown. In other parts of the country those distances from a major market are considered prime move-in targets.

 

[kenhawk1160]

WDVE has to be on rock for 40 years by now.

KQV has been all-news since 1975.

WAMO has been urban since Porky Chedwick, right?

WDSY has been country for 30 years minimum.

WISH has to have been soft rock for a long time, too.

Not debating KDKA is someplace stable, though they have had some employees there in the past who were emotionally unstable!

But perhaps that's not unique.

WDVE...since 1969.

KQV...yes.

WDSY...if you count the years since simulcasting WEEP, I think 1970. When they did part-time program separation, it was a form of country-esque easy listening. The crossover AC stuff.

WSHH...1989. Thus the birth of the short-lived WEZE 104.7, which I was part of for some time.

The most major shake-up KD had was internally, and that was about 1990, when the hierarchy restructured. Formatically, it was a slow, gradual progression. In step with what other high-power sticks were doing, but not to where listeners really noticed much of a difference.

 

[tce]

Do I correctly perceive a pattern: a consistent or slowly evolving format does not result in sudden, major air-staff shake-ups?

Or are there examples of that happening in this market? Also, is there an instance of a long-established format where a majority of the day-parts went from live & local to voice-tracked or syndication, all at once?

 

[RickStarr]

Call letters and frequency are both gold. No need to change either.

You'd think so. When we were replacing Bogut with Cigna a highly respected national ad agency (in Gateway Center which did some sales collateral printing for us) decided otherwise. Although we didn't request it (in fact quite the opposite as we knew we were going to replay the "Maynard in the Morning" series we had invented in Boston using Cigna as the foil) they sat us down at the beginning of the presentation of a new sales kit and said "We we just so excited we had to show you this: it's an image campaign for the station that sets you off in a whole new younger direction!"

So we sat.

The campaign was "Ride the 1020" and it consisted entirely of television commercials and print ads of pictures of diesel trains rolling through the hills of Western PA. No mention of the call letters, not once. No mention of Cigna, not once. It was the most bizarre presentation I ever saw, and after demolishing it we moved on to the real business, which was pretty much "a new sales kit folder." Later I had one person confide to me they thought "KDKA" had negative associations like "My Mom's radio station', which was, of course, true, but trying to get 25-year olds to switch back to AM radio in 1984 was ridiculous, and ignoring the (new and crucial) morning show in favor of pictures of trains roaring down the rails was, well, worse. Trains! Who thinks a diesel locomotive is "youthful"?

Burson Marsteller, who'd a thunk? After a few more months they lost the sales collateral business, too. Too bad, they were right upstairs, just an elevator ride away. They were, to quote the song title of a completely different meaning, "so close, and yet so far away."

 

[tce]

Always nice when Rick Starr checks in with informative and entertaining posts. Rick, would you say that KDKA has purposely made gradual and incremental programming adjustments -either because a shake-up wasn't needed, or because they wanted to avoid the appearance of the need for a shake-up?

Ricks story about the ad agency's perplexing imaging suggestions has a faint echo in my experience at the college radio station at Lehigh University (where I think Rick had an association just before my time there). We came up with what we thought was a slick, up-to-date sales brochure (about 1967). It had to get approval from our faculty adviser, who told me he thought we were missing a natural theme: "Ra-di-Oh Six-Four-Oh!" He did, however, approve out presentation without change. You should have heard his suggestions when we bought a customized jingle package.

 

[kaysguy]

WDVE...since 1969.

KQV...yes.

WDSY...if you count the years since simulcasting WEEP, I think 1970. When they did part-time program separation, it was a form of country-esque easy listening. The crossover AC stuff.

WSHH...1989. Thus the birth of the short-lived WEZE 104.7, which I was part of for some time.

The most major shake-up KD had was internally, and that was about 1990, when the hierarchy restructured. Formatically, it was a slow, gradual progression. In step with what other high-power sticks were doing, but not to where listeners really noticed much of a difference.

102.5 has been rock since 1969, but for the first few years, it was KQV-FM.
KQV has had news in various formats, beginning with the whole NBC bews and informaiton network, but they have been stable with all news since the early '70's.

 

[Boss Radio]

KQV went all news on Oct. 15, 1975.

 

[RickStarr]

Always nice when Rick Starr checks in with informative and entertaining posts. Rick, would you say that KDKA has purposely made gradual and incremental programming adjustments -either because a shake-up wasn't needed, or because they wanted to avoid the appearance of the need for a shake-up?

Well, when you're sitting in a huge leadership share there's a natural tendency to be more conservative about changes (unless your hand is forced, as happened with Bogut.) But when I first arrived in 1977 the lineup was Bogut-Pallan-Beatty-Steinbach-Fox-Cigna-Marshall. A decade later the only name remaining was Cigna, and he was in a different time slot, so there was a lot of change, but it was incremental.

I will say that the macro change (to all talk) that happened after I left was discussed and researched for years, including while I was there both times (77-79, 83-87), and every single comparative study we did in other markets, or in-depth number crunching of the Arbitrons, or strategic studies in market - all of them indicated we were better off with the hybrid approach (full service AMD, music day, talk at night) - until presumably market trends showed that the multi-format approach had seen its day and it was time to move on. (I will say there was an institutional bias towards keeping the music as well because of demos, so that had to be overcome as well.)

You might remember the "big moves" (Bogut to WTAE, 13Q abandons Too 40, morning shuffle at B-ninetywhateveritwas) didn't exactly win big either, so there's always that. Changes are usually made out of desperation, and we were less concerned about "appearance" than "actual effect." And who has the patience to wait for success anymore, anyway?

Of course, as I say, we had no choice in the Bogut issue, he took a better offer across town (because it included TV which KDKA declined to match - they already had a successful daytime show in "Pittsburgh 2Day".) so now we move Cigna, which means there's a hole at night. I would have loved to plug in one player and be done, but Doug Hoerth didn't work, so there's another change. Now Fox goes nuts, Pallan wants to retire, and suddenly the whole thing is up in the air. Even with all of that, the station had such image momentum it was "the same", even if some listening levels cruised lower.

(Not so for WTAE, I think, which lost a young-demo generator in O'Brien & Garry, and accelerated the move to music in FM and the eventual failure of the AM side. Not Bogut's fault, BTW, just not the same match as he had in KD.)

Anyway, long answer to a short question. Yeah we cared about perception, but we cared a lot more about reality.

 

[tce]

Thank you, Rick, for a comprehensive response.

Off topic: Do you know if John Fishback continued in broadcasting?

 

[RickStarr]

Off topic: Do you know if John Fishback continued in broadcasting?

Did not. Last I heard he had a video production company in Connecticut, I think. Actually made contact a few years ago but it faded quickly. Don't really know much else. [email protected] put a period between his first and last name if you want to use that.

 

[tce]

Thanks. Glad to know he stayed in creative endeavors. Doug Welldon has retired from managing a Nassau cluster, before they started their slide. All the best to you.