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KNX Los Angeles and KCBS San Francisco to Simulcast Overnight Programming

KMan said:
... Of note - he opened the newscasts with "Newswatch, I'm Art Sanders its X:03 on the west coast." While they're still using the KCBS clock, seems Audacy leadership came to the same conclusion we did and picked a generic branding for the overnight shifts.
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It sounds surprisingly generic to my ear. So much so that they edited out all the station IDs from all the actuality lockouts. All their reporters now sound like they come from the same generic talent pool.

Here's what shocked me: For the first couple of weekends, whenever they came up on the top-of-hour, they ran the KNX legal ID over KCBS. Not followed by the KCBS/KFRC ID, instead of it. This was not a one-time error. I heard it multiple times over those two weekends. Only this past weekend (1/18-1/19) did KCBS resume ID'ing as KCBS. (I didn't try to DX KNX from L.A., so I don't know if they might have reversed the recordings or if KNX's ID was identical to KCBS's at those moments.)
 
TheBigA said:
My expectation is they will do something like that for all their news stations, and then offer it as a national format for other stations as an alternative to the syndicated talk shows.
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Why bother rolling out as a national format if there is no revenue in overnight. Audacy won't make any money out of it.
 
TheBigA said:
My expectation is they will do something like that for all their news stations, and then offer it as a national format for other stations as an alternative to the syndicated talk shows.
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This may be a noble experiment, but I don't expect what you do. SoCal & SFBA are a special case. They have a friendly rivalry going on, but we're all one state, and there's a lot of cross-pollination out here. You won't be able to get away with that on the East Coast. NYC and Philly are only 90 miles apart, but they're in different worlds. As is Boston, as is Baltimore. Washington DC isn't even Audacy, it's Hubbard (WTOP). And I'm only speaking about the Northeast coastal region, a span of about 400 miles, which is the span of LA-to-SF. (Those cities are oil and water and beans.) I think you'd have the same problem in most regions, where virtually nobody is going to care about the news coming out of other participating markets. Texas might be an exception.

(Fox local TV stations out West jointly produce and air a similar concept newscast called West Coast Wrap. It originates out of KTVU Oakland-SF, but also airs in L.A., San Diego, Fresno, Sacramento, Seattle, Denver, Phoenix and possibly a few other western markets that have Fox O&O's. It fills a half hour on the participating stations' schedules, but as a viewer, I often feel like I've already seen or heard what's happening in my own market, and don't overly care about the other markets' local news reports. Occasionally I'm wrong about that, but not that often. I think your idea is likely to suffer a similar fate.)
 
Weiserguy said:
It sounds surprisingly generic to my ear. So much so that they edited out all the station IDs from all the actuality lockouts. All their reporters now sound like they come from the same generic talent pool.
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Its like when i was overnight on about 40 classic country stations... the there was at least 2 generic tracks per hour for all stations with no slogans, names, nothing... and it sounded generic but good after you got into the swing of things.. and i dont think the majority of listeners care about the reporting saying the stations name when they get the info as long as they get what they need.
 
TheBigA said:
My expectation is they will do something like that for all their news stations, and then offer it as a national format for other stations as an alternative to the syndicated talk.
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They might get decent ratings. Would be good for the full Red Eye show with no guests or callers and lots of humorless lecturing to have some competition. Noory gets the best ratings, but his show is really out there.
 
ILOVERADIO said:
They might get decent ratings. Would be good for the full Red Eye show with no guests or callers and lots of humorless lecturing to have some competition. Noory gets the best ratings, but his show is really out there.
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There are no ratings that matter overnight.

There is no revenue that matters overnight.

You put on whatever costs least without running the risk of losing your lead-in audience to morning drive, where ratings and revenue matter.

Everything else is overthinking it.
 
Weiserguy said:
You won't be able to get away with that on the East Coast. NYC and Philly are only 90 miles apart, but they're in different worlds
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And there’s probably no reason to do it as KYW runs pre-recorded news (with live traffic updates) overnights between 2 AM (I think, possibly 1 AM) and 5 AM.
 
Larry said:
And there’s probably no reason to do it as KYW runs pre-recorded news (with live traffic updates) overnights between 2 AM (I think, possibly 1 AM) and 5 AM.
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"This is newsradio KYW, with live breaking ... uhhhh ..."
 
The KNX/KCBS overnight simulcast has improved in the past few weeks. I listen from 3:50am when I am driving to the gym to get there at 4am and during my hourlong workout. Traffic reporting has improved. The reporter is regularly using "the" nomenclature when referring to SoCal freeways. It gets the job done on the overnight shift. I am curious what the contingency plans are for breaking news....fires, earthquakes etc in either market.
 
FiveNews said:
I am curious what the contingency plans are for breaking news....fires, earthquakes etc in either market.
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We know there are other people in both buildings. There are other news people in other time zones during those hours who would be available.

And people are on call. Lots of contingency plans. Everybody has them.

As one exec told me: You don't staff for a hundred year flood. But when it happens, it's all hands on deck.
 
Joey1986 said:
This begins tonight.

ayodaradio.blogspot.com

An LA-SF simulcast, remembering Melinda Lee, and other short takes

We're hearing that starting tonight, the two Audacy all-news operations in California will simulcast overnight programming. The same newsc...
ayodaradio.blogspot.com ayodaradio.blogspot.com
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This has been horrid to have to listen to. I have no desire to hear about LA up here in NorCal. I stopped listening to the morning report after I found a traffic person too difficult to listen to ("yelling", talking a mile a minute with too much "filler"). Wasn't aware of the simulcast until I was traveling in LA and wondered what the deal was. Won't be listening anymore if I hear any LA stuff: irrelevant to me. Just filler I don't need.
 
FiveNews said:
The KNX/KCBS overnight simulcast has improved in the past few weeks. I listen from 3:50am when I am driving to the gym to get there at 4am and during my hourlong workout. Traffic reporting has improved. The reporter is regularly using "the" nomenclature when referring to SoCal freeways. It gets the job done on the overnight shift. I am curious what the contingency plans are for breaking news....fires, earthquakes etc in either market.
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I hate it. Don't need LA information. Don't want LA information. Sounds like everyone's phoning it in at LA speed.
 
So one night a few weeks back, I had early morning insomnia and decided to turn on my Magnavox alarm clock radio for the heck of it. Around 4am, I tuned to 740 KCBS - and it sounded odd that the hourly ID sounded rather generic ("we are KCBS-AM, KFRC-FM") instead of the normal one from daytime/drivetime hours - AND the traffic report was in LA, AND the weather report covered Southern, Northern, and Central CA.

This thread confirmed I wasn't just dreaming.

On one hand, it's disappointing the Bay Area now lacks live overnight programming (other than whichever stations have Coast to Coast and Red Eye Radio, and some college stations. Even KQED has been automated after hours for years.)

On the other, it was cool to hear big-market AM stations acknowledge their out-of-market signal strengths at night!

Didn't KGO-TV do some similar "cross promotion" with KABC-AM back in the '70s one day when KGO-AM was down for maintenance? (I thought YouTube had a video clip of a KGO-TV sign-off from circa 1975-78 where the announcer advised that. But I can't find it now, probably got deleted.)
 
408listener said:
So one night a few weeks back, I had early morning insomnia and decided to turn on my Magnavox alarm clock radio for the heck of it. Around 4am, I tuned to 740 KCBS - and it sounded odd that the hourly ID sounded rather generic ("we are KCBS-AM, KFRC-FM") instead of the normal one from daytime/drivetime hours - AND the traffic report was in LA, AND the weather report covered Southern, Northern, and Central CA.

This thread confirmed I wasn't just dreaming.

On one hand, it's disappointing the Bay Area now lacks live overnight programming (other than whichever stations have Coast to Coast and Red Eye Radio, and some college stations. Even KQED has been automated after hours for years.)

On the other, it was cool to hear big-market AM stations acknowledge their out-of-market signal strengths at night!

Didn't KGO-TV do some similar "cross promotion" with KABC-AM back in the '70s one day when KGO-AM was down for maintenance? (I thought YouTube had a video clip of a KGO-TV sign-off from circa 1975-78 where the announcer advised that. But I can't find it now, probably got deleted.)
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KGO-AM Signoff circa 1980's



This is the one for KGO-AM at sign off when they promoted 790 KABC-AM back in the 1980's. Never knew KGO-TV ever mentioned KABC-AM at some point in its history. But then again if KGO-TV mentions about KABC-TV it has to be during breaking news from Los Angeles when that takes place.
 
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