Looking at this thread, I can't help but wonder if IHM is cannibalizing its own audience. When I look at the Denver market, I count five AM conservative talk stations: three owned by IHM and one each owned by Salem and Kimtron (Crawford). Yet Denver is mostly a liberal town politically. Therefore, I would think that having a moderate or liberal host during morning or afternoon drive times might help make one of these stations stand out from the others in the minds of the audience. Instead, IHM is digging in its heels and, like what it's doing at KFI in Los Angeles and KFBK in Sacramento, it's trying to make KOA more conservative! As I said at the top, to me it looks like IHM is cannibalizing the available conservative audience and I'm now thinking that one of those stations' licenses (probably KDFD's) will either be cancelled or sold within the next five years.
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Denver KOA Ends All-News Morning Show
- Thread starter Gregg.
- Start date
I don't know about KOA's listenership, but for KHOW, Tom Martino's midday consumer advice show gets a lot of callers from Colorado Springs and other cities besides just Denver.
Like who? The track record for liberal radio talk show hosts in the last 20 years isn't very good. That's the problem. ESPECIALLY on AM radio. If they have a strong personality who might be moderate or a-political, they put him on an FM classic rock station. That usually works.
The fact is that they can put awful conservatives on an AM station and some people will listen. Or they can do what they've done in San Francisco, and just give up with NO local talk. That's the choice. The format pool for AM radio is conservative talk, sports betting, or ethnic.
KDFD is unlikely to be a candidate for disposal. The daytime signal is just fine (2 my/m goes past Cheyenne, Wyoming with a slight null to the south, but iHeart can cover that audience with Pueblo’s KCSJ); the 93.7 translator has broader coverage than the 94.1 KOA translators, and it’s all syndicated and cheap to run.
Crawford’s KLZ isn’t driven primarily by ratings, instead being driven by ideology and local sales; Salem’s KNUS seems just as haphazard as any other Salem talk outlet.
The thing is, the incremental cost of keeping a station like KDFD on the air is still pretty tiny. The AM site was sold to Vertical Bridge and is being leased back at a very favorable rate, plus it's also the backup site for KOA. The equipment out there is all in good shape and needs only occasional maintenance from an engineer who's already on the payroll for the whole cluster anyway.
The programming is already in house (at the corporate level) and Premiere needs the clearance in a big market.
KDFD may not make a lot of money, but I'm quite certain it makes some money, probably more efficiently than anything else in the cluster. Why change what's working?
The programming is already in house (at the corporate level) and Premiere needs the clearance in a big market.
KDFD may not make a lot of money, but I'm quite certain it makes some money, probably more efficiently than anything else in the cluster. Why change what's working?
Remember, even the ITU has declared that today's noise levels require a 15 mV/m signal for an AM station to be useful.
The KDFD daytime signal on 760 should be able to attain or exceed those levels in the urbanized portions of Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties as well as Denver city-county. Possibly in Boulder county, too. I say “urbanized” because some of these counties extend into more sparsely populated areas farther away from Denver, notably Adams and Arapahoe.
How is firing a great news anchor in marty lenz and putting the same people in different time slots meeting the listeners needs exactly? Another lame excuse for iheart to fire people and spin it as they are helping the listeners.Denver alternative paper Westword examines the KOA and KHOW changes:
Inside Huge Shakeup to KOA Radio's Morning Lineup
"We periodically review our programming to ensure that we are meeting our listeners’ needs. Occasionally this means that we need to make some changes."www.westword.com
Right because its all syndicated stuff nobody listens to anyways. Why would anyone wanna buy ad time on that.
An interview with Ross Kaminsky
barrettmedia.com
Why the Time Was Right for Ross Kaminsky to Move to Mornings at 850 KOA
Ross Kaminsky thought he had the best talk radio job in the Rocky Mountains when he was hosting middays at 850 KOA.
barrettmedia.com
I don't think this is about the listeners.
They're probably looking at this based on a portfolio of stations. In the most recent 6+ numbers, for what they're worth (but it's what we've got), iHeart's non-sports talk competitors...Salem's KNUS and Crawford's KLZ...don't show up at all. I admit that they may not be subscribers. Even so, the three iHeart talk stations combined sum to a 5.7 share: KOA (3.0), KDFD (1.5), KHOW (1.2). (Denver). It probably looks OK on a spreadsheet in some office hundreds of miles away.
All of that said...
I haven't had a chance yet to listen to the new morning block. I'm trying to get a new recorder to work with timed recording and there must be a step that I'm missing. I did hear Michael Brown yesterday at the start of his show.
Who ever thought it was a good idea to put this guy on the air...anywhere? He sounds like a bleating goat with a sinus infection. Then there's the content: he started out with an attack on Michelle Obama. Really? In 2025? This is all rather old news. Ross Kaminsky at least seems to attempt to be fair while expressing his points of view. Brown makes no such effort, and sounds just awful in the process.
I haven't had a chance yet to listen to the new morning block. I'm trying to get a new recorder to work with timed recording and there must be a step that I'm missing. I did hear Michael Brown yesterday at the start of his show.
Who ever thought it was a good idea to put this guy on the air...anywhere? He sounds like a bleating goat with a sinus infection. Then there's the content: he started out with an attack on Michelle Obama. Really? In 2025? This is all rather old news. Ross Kaminsky at least seems to attempt to be fair while expressing his points of view. Brown makes no such effort, and sounds just awful in the process.
Indeed-- that Michelle Obama attack was way out in left field, especially considering her husband can't be President anymore, as he's already had his two terms there.
I recorded Wednesday's news and talk block, finally giving up on the new recorder and going back to the tried and true Tascam. I listened to the now-truncated "Colorado's Morning News" from 5 to 6 am, followed by "Ross Kaminsky on the News" until 9 am.
The first of these four hours is pretty much the same as before: a couple of six-minute newscasts, two shorter newscasts, two business-news segments...for which Jeana Gondek was the solo anchor. There were also two two-minute sportscasts read by news anchor Chad Bower. Traffic reports were included as well, adjacent to the newscasts. In the first half-hour, Gondek also had an interview with ABC News correspondent Steven Portnoy about the congressional vote on the Jeffrey Epstein files. All pretty familiar and not much different from before.
The changes kick in at 6 am when Ross Kaminsky comes on board. There are four newscasts, roughly at quarter hours...though KOA is not particularly good at sticking to a clock. All the newscasts, read by Gondek, were usually three minutes in length, including brief sports items, all followed by traffic reports.
Other features...business news, dedicated sportscasts, news interviews...have all been replaced by segments where Kaminsky is the lead voice. Kaminsky still does interviews, but they're not conducted in a manner that a journalist would conduct them. To be fair, Kaminsky has said he is not a journalist and has said that he wouldn't attempt to influence the manner in which Gondek reports news. Still, hearing interviews conducted by a less-than-neutral interviewer makes it seem less like news and more like propaganda.
In other ways, the line between news and opinion are also blurred in the non-newscast segments of the 6-9 am block, especially when Gondek and Kaminsky are engaging in back-and-forth banter. I hasten to make clear that Gondek never expresses news-related opinions on the program.
There were three interviews in that morning's program. One, in the 8 am hour about potentially dangerous toys, was timely and fairly uncontroversial. It was the interview that represented the least amount of change from "Colorado's Morning News".
The first interview, in the 6 am hour, was with Chris Stirewalt, political analyst for NewsNation. Kaminsky started out by asking a question about recent polling regarding President Trump's performance. Kaminsky asked the question in a manner that suggested that some media were cheering for Trump to have poor polling numbers. Stirewalt was a good diplomat; he contradicted Kaminsky's premise by pointing out that, objectively, Trump isn't polling well and appears to have run out of the traditional "honeymoon" period for newly installed presidents.
It was actually a pretty decent interview, despite occasional interjections of opinion. One weird note is that both Stirewalt and Kaminsky said they don't like the term "affordability" but never explained their dislike of it.
The interview in the 7 am hour, though, was pure propaganda, and esoteric, too. It was with the president of the National Right to Work Committee (i.e., anti-union), Mark Mix. The interview was about a package of bills being developed by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) that Kaminsky positioned as bills to "modernize and add a little more freedom to American labor laws". Among other things, the bills would require secret balloting for union representation elections and restrictions on picketing. This was a very friendly interview; Kaminsky didn't challenge Mix at all.
There was a weird element to this interview: Kaminsky attacked Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), who apparently opposes Cassidy's bills and has introduced bills of his own to strength unions' positions in representation elections through mandatory arbitration and other measures.
OK, we get it. Kaminsky doesn't like Democrats and uses the word "Democrat" as a cudgel. But, as someone who's from Missouri originally and who still tries to keep up with goings-on in the state, I found those statements to be downright bizarre. I'm no fan of Josh Hawley, either, for other reasons, but this was just weird. He ought to look up "Harold Volkmer" sometime to see what a socially conservative Democrat from Missouri really was like. (Disclaimer: I was acquainted with Rep. Volkmer back when I was a reporter.)
I don't see this as something that attracts a morning drive-time audience.
Other segments were generally less political, though Kaminsky kept referring to the Epstein files while saying he didn't really want to get into many details about them. But he talked about them in several segments anyway.
While listening to the recording of the Wednesday program, I came to realize a common theme among KOA's programming. It's repellent. The talk show hosts sound terrible. Ross Kaminsky's voice is the least offensive but I can only take so much of it...and that has nothing to do with what I think of his political stands. I've mentioned the raspy, nasal quality of Michael Brown's voice in another thread. Mandy Connell has a voice that could strip paint from the nearest wall. The sports-talk programming sounds more normal but is of interest only to sports fans. The top-of-hour IDs are overproduced, as if to appeal to 16-year-old gamers. The blindster.com commercials (for window coverings) are numerous and repetitive. The Voltair encoding is cranked up high so that it sounds like a low bitrate stream. It almost sounds as if the station is trying to drive away listeners. No wonder its ratings performance is mediocre at best. I was criticized in another thread for saying that iHeart was incompetent in its management of KOA. Based on what I heard, I stick by that conclusion.
They could do so much better. They probably won't. It wouldn't surprise me if, in the next round of cuts, the news elements of the morning-drive programming were eliminated altogether and what KOA ends up with is another cookie-cutter talk show. They may lose an expense but they'll also lose listeners and revenue. Not a winning proposition, and another example of how radio needs to be re-imagined. iHeart isn't too big to fail, and its size may in fact lead it to fail.
The first of these four hours is pretty much the same as before: a couple of six-minute newscasts, two shorter newscasts, two business-news segments...for which Jeana Gondek was the solo anchor. There were also two two-minute sportscasts read by news anchor Chad Bower. Traffic reports were included as well, adjacent to the newscasts. In the first half-hour, Gondek also had an interview with ABC News correspondent Steven Portnoy about the congressional vote on the Jeffrey Epstein files. All pretty familiar and not much different from before.
The changes kick in at 6 am when Ross Kaminsky comes on board. There are four newscasts, roughly at quarter hours...though KOA is not particularly good at sticking to a clock. All the newscasts, read by Gondek, were usually three minutes in length, including brief sports items, all followed by traffic reports.
Other features...business news, dedicated sportscasts, news interviews...have all been replaced by segments where Kaminsky is the lead voice. Kaminsky still does interviews, but they're not conducted in a manner that a journalist would conduct them. To be fair, Kaminsky has said he is not a journalist and has said that he wouldn't attempt to influence the manner in which Gondek reports news. Still, hearing interviews conducted by a less-than-neutral interviewer makes it seem less like news and more like propaganda.
In other ways, the line between news and opinion are also blurred in the non-newscast segments of the 6-9 am block, especially when Gondek and Kaminsky are engaging in back-and-forth banter. I hasten to make clear that Gondek never expresses news-related opinions on the program.
There were three interviews in that morning's program. One, in the 8 am hour about potentially dangerous toys, was timely and fairly uncontroversial. It was the interview that represented the least amount of change from "Colorado's Morning News".
The first interview, in the 6 am hour, was with Chris Stirewalt, political analyst for NewsNation. Kaminsky started out by asking a question about recent polling regarding President Trump's performance. Kaminsky asked the question in a manner that suggested that some media were cheering for Trump to have poor polling numbers. Stirewalt was a good diplomat; he contradicted Kaminsky's premise by pointing out that, objectively, Trump isn't polling well and appears to have run out of the traditional "honeymoon" period for newly installed presidents.
It was actually a pretty decent interview, despite occasional interjections of opinion. One weird note is that both Stirewalt and Kaminsky said they don't like the term "affordability" but never explained their dislike of it.
The interview in the 7 am hour, though, was pure propaganda, and esoteric, too. It was with the president of the National Right to Work Committee (i.e., anti-union), Mark Mix. The interview was about a package of bills being developed by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) that Kaminsky positioned as bills to "modernize and add a little more freedom to American labor laws". Among other things, the bills would require secret balloting for union representation elections and restrictions on picketing. This was a very friendly interview; Kaminsky didn't challenge Mix at all.
There was a weird element to this interview: Kaminsky attacked Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), who apparently opposes Cassidy's bills and has introduced bills of his own to strength unions' positions in representation elections through mandatory arbitration and other measures.
OK, we get it. Kaminsky doesn't like Democrats and uses the word "Democrat" as a cudgel. But, as someone who's from Missouri originally and who still tries to keep up with goings-on in the state, I found those statements to be downright bizarre. I'm no fan of Josh Hawley, either, for other reasons, but this was just weird. He ought to look up "Harold Volkmer" sometime to see what a socially conservative Democrat from Missouri really was like. (Disclaimer: I was acquainted with Rep. Volkmer back when I was a reporter.)
I don't see this as something that attracts a morning drive-time audience.
Other segments were generally less political, though Kaminsky kept referring to the Epstein files while saying he didn't really want to get into many details about them. But he talked about them in several segments anyway.
While listening to the recording of the Wednesday program, I came to realize a common theme among KOA's programming. It's repellent. The talk show hosts sound terrible. Ross Kaminsky's voice is the least offensive but I can only take so much of it...and that has nothing to do with what I think of his political stands. I've mentioned the raspy, nasal quality of Michael Brown's voice in another thread. Mandy Connell has a voice that could strip paint from the nearest wall. The sports-talk programming sounds more normal but is of interest only to sports fans. The top-of-hour IDs are overproduced, as if to appeal to 16-year-old gamers. The blindster.com commercials (for window coverings) are numerous and repetitive. The Voltair encoding is cranked up high so that it sounds like a low bitrate stream. It almost sounds as if the station is trying to drive away listeners. No wonder its ratings performance is mediocre at best. I was criticized in another thread for saying that iHeart was incompetent in its management of KOA. Based on what I heard, I stick by that conclusion.
They could do so much better. They probably won't. It wouldn't surprise me if, in the next round of cuts, the news elements of the morning-drive programming were eliminated altogether and what KOA ends up with is another cookie-cutter talk show. They may lose an expense but they'll also lose listeners and revenue. Not a winning proposition, and another example of how radio needs to be re-imagined. iHeart isn't too big to fail, and its size may in fact lead it to fail.
It's more preaching to the converted than propaganda, because the boomers who still listen agree. That's why they still listen. If they didn't agree, they'd do what I do, and change the station.
This is what's happening in a lot of markets. Phoenix, Dallas, and Seattle. All blue cities where the news/talk stations have become all conservative talk. It leads to lower 6+ numbers, but they get higher TSL, and that translates to more revenue. More revenue is all that matters. Like all radio formats, there is no majority format. There are a lot of small consensus minorities. There is no fairness doctrine, so there is no need to be unbiased.
Even the Audacy all-news stations are starting to bend the rules a bit. I see lots of comments on radio boards that the newscasters on WINS are too happy, that they seem to take glee in the troubles the president is having, and they have a biased tone in their voices when reading certain stories. That tells you more about the complainers than it does the radio station. They're all men over 60, they're all curmudgeons, and they all like to complain. That's what talk radio has become. You're not going to attract people to radio by hiring Rachel Maddow. Been there and done that. The people who listen like what they hear. That's why they listen.
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Once that listener is lost, is that listener ever going to come back? Chances are slim.
I don't think the change in morning programming had anything to do with getting more listeners. I think it had to do entirely with costs. You can defend it all you want, but the result is still a diminished product.
They left already. They've been leaving every year for ten years, and they haven't been replaced. The track record was set before they made the change. They saw the writing on the wall and followed the audience. No, they're not coming back. Nobody in radio thinks there's a chance they can do something that will get listeners to throw away their digital devices and instead tune in their old transistors. That train left the station a long time ago. All they can do is program to who still listen. There's a business there for now.
Where did I say they did it to "get more listeners????" If I did, I was wrong. There aren't more listeners for an AM news talk station. That audience is set. It declines every year as people pass away. Yes they're also looking to cut costs, because the revenue for the format is in decline. Only so many drug ads they can cram into an hour. They can't raise prices and they can't add more spots, meanwhile costs keep going up. I predict the changes will lead to lower 6+ numbers, just like at WBAP. They're cutting costs to adjust to declining revenues.
I noticed today that KOA has dropped its "News...Talk...Sports" slogan, not just at the top of the hour but other places as well. When Jeana Gondek was reading the 9 am news this morning, she didn't flub the outcue, but there was a rather awkward pause after she said "KOA" as if to imply "shouldn't there be something else here?"
I thought the WINS 6+ ratings increased dramatically after they added FM. Probably skews old, but pretty sure ratings increased with FM.