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KEGL is stunting

How is a lineup presumably consisting of nothing but syndicated air talent (given this was almost entirely budget-driven) going to be any better?
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By syndicated air talent, do you mean DJs or talk show hosts?

Cluttering the station with talk shows (yet again) would indeed be a terrible move.

Using voicetracked DJs wouldn't be a death blow in & of itself.

Live 105 in San Fran had mediocre to terrible ratings for a decade straight. It was brought back from the dead - and at least for now - is performing well. Most of their air talent is tracked from out of market.

That's not to say KEGL is sure to see guaranteed success. I'm just saying it's not guaranteed to fail. Even if ratings only improve slightly from The Freak, the elimination of multiple salaries of folks who produced lousy ratings will already be a "win" for iHM.
 
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MarkW said:
By syndicated air talent, do you mean DJs or talk show hosts?
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DJs. iHeart has the infrastructure and the air talent available to do a plug-and-play national format with an "Eagle" facade. Especially since this WAS a budget-driven format flip and very likely won't have money spent on an all-local lineup.
 
Give them six months of trying to recreate The Eagle, then they will flip to a 24 hour sports betting format just like KGO in San Francisco with Mark Cuban and his friends at the Las Vegas Sands cheering it on for legalized casinos in Downtown Dallas.

Welcome to the jungle, indeed.
 
Nathan Obral said:
DJs. iHeart has the infrastructure and the air talent available to do a plug-and-play national format with an "Eagle" facade. Especially since this WAS a budget-driven format flip and very likely won't have money spent on an all-local lineup.
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I completely agree budget was a big factor .

The Freak had about 10 or 12 on-air people plus producers. The station almost assuredly was losing money given its overhead and poor ratings.
 
MarkW said:
What failed was a mix of crappy talk shows (following Martin's passing) in afternoons, a lot of music preemptions for basketball games, and what appeared to be a less than optimal song playlist.
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I remember when The Eagle was the Howard Stern Station. Then it was the Russ Martin Station.
I don't think that lightning will strike three times.

No more talk.
 
MarkW said:
I completely agree budget was a big factor .

The Freak had about 10 or 12 on-air people plus producers. The station almost assuredly was losing money given its overhead and poor ratings.
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That's the thing. An expensive talk format got replaced by iHeart's Rock Nation format wearing Groucho Marx glasses as "The Eagle". This isn't some grand return when there's nothing from the past to connect it to besides a name. MUCH different from 99X Atlanta rehiring old air talent to buttress their revival.
 
Old Grey Coyote said:
Give them six months of trying to recreate The Eagle, then they will flip to a 24 hour sports betting format just like KGO in San Francisco with Mark Cuban and his friends at the Las Vegas Sands cheering it on for legalized casinos in Downtown Dallas.

Welcome to the jungle, indeed.
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iHeart doesn't run 24 hour sports betting stations, as far as I know. Certainly not on a full-market FM signal in a top-5 market.
 
i was listening for a moment, and it seems they still letting the ads roll, i would have figured it would be commercial free for the first few days of the newly relaunched old format, but nope, got to get that ad dollar.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
iHeart doesn't run 24 hour sports betting stations, as far as I know. Certainly not on a full-market FM signal in a top-5 market.
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KGO was the Number One Station in San Francisco for 30 years with a 50,000 watt signal that covered the entire West Coast at night. Like the Eagle, their ratings dropped in later years.

There are a lot of people with very large checkbooks wanting to legalize gambling in Texas and Mark Cuban is already somewhat affiliated with the station.
 
Old Grey Coyote said:
KGO was the Number One Station in San Francisco for 30 years with a 50,000 watt signal that covered the entire West Coast at night
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Their heyday was when AM radio was popular. I'd suggest that the death of that station has more to do with AM than anything else. As far as I know, no one has flipped an FM to sports betting. It's primarily a syndicated format that companies stick on AMs. If you notice, Cumulus has taken a very different route in Dallas.
 
I don't think AM is dead yet.

What else are they going to do with it? They can't make talk work and they can't find the right rock mix.
Syndicated programming from another one of their stations to save money? Spanish language programming?
 
MarkW said:
How about the fact KVIL is currently #1 or #2 in AQH share in Adults 25 to 54 in the entire market and can be sold in combo with 105.3 The Fan to boot?

KVIL's numbers didn't start rising sharply until Russ Martin passed away and KEGL made a series of ill advised programming decisions.

My guess is iHM was losing out or was fearing of losing out on male focused buys.

97.1 and 92.5 can be paired together for sales purposes, and returning Rock to 97.1 will take a lot of wind out of KVIL's sails (and maybe sales, too!).

There are certainly other compelling paths that could've been taken for 97.1's format choice. Country, Latin CHR and Urban AC are among them. I was thinking Country was more likely than Rock simply because bringing back a brand & format after killing it not just once...but twice...is such a rarity. Plus, I figured Country would pair nicely with all of the other stations in the cluster for sales purposes.
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Why would they have gone country unless you wanted to have a true classic country station.
 
Old Grey Coyote said:
I don't think AM is dead yet.

What else are they going to do with it? They can't make talk work and they can't find the right rock mix.
Syndicated programming from another one of their stations to save money? Spanish language programming?
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Eventually, many broadcasters will just turn in their AM licenses, especially if they have strong-performing FM stations. Once there's no viable profitable programming left to put on the medium wave band, and there's no fear that some other company will snap up the vacant frequency and make serious money off it, the stations will go dark and AM will die.
 
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