I'm gonna say something else about this, too:
Bill White, KFBK's PD, is a great programmer and has been a great and dear friend of mine for a decade now. He's not to blame for what you're hearing and I had his full support in running the newsroom and the broadcasts bias-free.
In 2019, iHeart came up with an idea to start a news hub system for its stations. It involved taking 43 local newsrooms around the country and cutting that number to nine. Those nine would be regional hubs. The other 34 stations would take their newscasts from us.
There were carveouts. KFI, Los Angeles, WBZ, Boston and WOR, New York would maintain their own newsrooms and would neither feed nor take feeds from the other stations, unless they made a special request for coverage. Similarly, if we wanted material from them, we'd have to ask them directly.
KOGO in San Diego would get its news content from the 24-7 facility in Long Beach. Every other bit of news that aired on an iHeart station in California not named KFI or KOGO would come from the KFBK newsroom.
I was News Director at KFBK at the time and the guys who ran 24-7 News for iHeart, guys who I'd reported to directly in Phoenix and who had a lot to do with my getting seven promotions in six years once I got to Sacramento, laid out the plan for me and offered me the job of Western Regional News Director.
I had concerns about the plan---it involved eliminating the position of Assignment Editor. The reporting staff would remain the same size (seven), but they would become corporate employees and news producers would remain on the KFBK budget. In other words, they'd be taking content from corporate (in the same newsroom) and building shows from it, rather than jumping in and enterprising coverage as they often did (the boys said they'd rather have their people responsible for content).
The reporters would also have virtually no time to go cover Sacramento stories because they'd be busy feeding the rest of the state. I was told that the plan was to focus on stories "that have statewide interest---that could air anywhere in California."
I asked if I could do that and continue to co-anchor with Kitty O'Neal. They told me they couldn't see how, but since we had history together, they'd trust me to brainstorm and pitch them if I had a workable idea.
They left and the Market President and I sat in a conference room for an hour and Rubik's Cubed it. Every possible scenario.
They were right---it wouldn't work. The MP told me I had a choice to make. I said "Kitty. No contest." She said "Right answer" and drew me up a lovely new contract for more money than the Western Regional News Director position that included the severance that saved my ass in the layoffs a year later.
The Western Regional News Director gig went to Veronica Carter, who was doing a stellar job of producing what was then a neutral, objective, journalistically-sound morning newscast.
She bailed after a year to go to KXL in Portland, and there was a succession of folks who had the title but not much else as corporate let it be known that Long Beach and especially Phoenix were in charge and slowly let the news staff ebb away by attrition.
Last I heard, there aren't any full-time reporters in the KFBK newsroom. The venerable Joe Michaels (also last I heard) produces afternoons for Kitty and Joe's a real one, too, so let's give him credit for fighting the good fight.
This puts Bill in the position of having to essentially program talk shows in morning and afternoon drive that have the word "News" in the title. And he's got umpteen layers of bosses above him, who I'm sure have their hands all over it. Props to him for shielding Kitty and Joe (he, by the way, hasn't said a word of this to me---I just know the dynamic and I know Bill) and allowing them to essentially perform a three-hour miracle every day.mgl glad to see
