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KTRH IS NOT A REAL NEWS STATION

O

OldChicago

KTRH has once again shown its political bias and that it is not a real news station. On election night, even tho they carried the concession speech from Romney, they did not carry the victory speech from Obama. Now the ultimate insult. They did not carry any of the swearing in or any of its related activities or speeches yesterday. They continued with regular programming. I am very angry an worked up over this. I may call the station manager and ask why did they do this. Thank you KROI and KUHF for doing the right thing.


Old Chicago
 
Not a real news station? Sacre bleu! When did you notice this, pray tell? KTRH hasn't been a "real" news station for a very long time. The ratings services don't even list them as "News-Talk" anymore.

You are probably right about the political bias, but that works both ways. I wonder how many stations with liberal talk shows carried Obama's victory speech and ignored Romney's concession? Our national political divide extends even into the radio spectrum.
 
Just noticed the ratings services do now have them listed as just plain old 'talk'. This is a surprise to me and if not somewhat confusing.
Can't fathom KTRH not having a local news staff at all.

Question, what years was KTRH spending the most time per day airing local news? I suspect this would be in the 70s and 80s.
Last but not least, how many full time employes presently work strictly in the KTRH news department? How dose this compare when KTRH
was heavy into news during the 70s and/or 80s?
 
There are plenty of stations, radio and TV, that call themselves "NewsRadio 620" or "NewsChannel 13." But they're not really news stations. They just want to own the news position in their market, because that's very valuable.

In fact, there are only about 15 All-News radio stations in the U.S. and five in Canada. And I even include a few, like WBZ Boston, KRLD Dallas and KGO San Francisco, that are mostly All-News by day but do Talk shows nights and weekends.

You're lucky in Houston that Radio One has decided to put a real All-News station on the air (although I understand they run Jim Bohannan for a few hours overnight). All-News stations have a really rough time in Sunbelt markets. KNX LA has a hard time staying in the top 10 and KRLD Dallas has a hard time staying in the top 20. And there were no other Sunbelt All-News stations until a year or two ago. Now Houston and Atlanta have them, but Miami, San Diego, Tampa, Phoenix, etc. have none.

KTRH had been All-News in the daytime some years ago. But over the years, they kept cutting the news blocks.

Are you sure Mr. Obama's victory speech wasn't covered because it was so late at night? Mr. Romney didn't give his concession speech for an hour or more after the networks declared Obama the winner. Then Mr. Obama gave his speech about 15-20 minutes after that, as is tradition. So maybe KTRH just went into syndicated programming by Midnight, since everyone knew for more than an hour that Obama had won. Even a biased news organization would cover the re-elected president's speech, if only to follow it with commentary on how wrong it was, if it wasn't so late.
 
Yeah, but KTRH, from a marketing standpoint, had a real brand-following as "the" news station for the Houston area for like, thirty years, maybe more, and they have seemed to simply given it away, what they have done is akin to Coke deciding not to sell cola anymore. In the past, at some point during the day, everyone in town tuned in to get local traffic/news/weather, and that sells national-account advertising. They gave up their market share for that space, and now 92.1 is making a play for the "the" news station space to fill the vacuum. As the talk-show-ranter model fades, they may regret it deeply, since they liquidated their news talent base in the process.
 
***KTRH had been All-News in the daytime some years ago.***

That's not true. I worked at KTRH for several years in the mid 70s, and again in the late 80s and early 90s, and I can testify it has never been "all news."

It had a 2 hour morning news block, a one hour block at noon, and a 2 hour afternoon block. In between it had a wide variety of local talk and feature shows.

I remember a show with a lady named Betty something and a local psychologist named Dr. Ed something talking about personal and family issues. The late great Howard Finch had his own one hour show reading poetry over beautiful elevator music.

There was an agri-business show and a garden show on alternate days, a 2 hour open line call-in show with Nikki Van Hightower and TV weatherguy Ed Brandon, and a one-hour Devil's Advocate call-in with an arrogant host who antagonized everybody by disagreeing with everything they said. Whatever happened to him? I heard he got fired for insulting the Pope.

It's not correct to say KTRH was ever "all news."
 
FilioScotia said:
***KTRH had been All-News in the daytime some years ago.***

That's not true. I worked at KTRH for several years in the mid 70s, and again in the late 80s and early 90s, and I can testify it has never been "all news."

It had a 2 hour morning news block, a one hour block at noon, and a 2 hour afternoon block. In between it had a wide variety of local talk and feature shows.

It's not correct to say KTRH was ever "all news."
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification. Doing those three local news blocks would not qualify then as an "all news" format. Now, if they were all local news from 5:00AM to 7:00PM, could they be considered an "all news" format?
 
My view is that to qualify as an "all news" format, a station would have continuous news wheels 24/7. Running AM, Noon, and PM news blocks with call-in shows in between is the definition of "News-Talk," which is what KTRH always had up until recently.

An earlier poster said there are only about 15 all news stations in this country and maybe five in Canada. This paucity exists because All News is enormously and prohibitively expensive, as Radio One is learning with its brave efforts at News 92.

Unless a conglom or a Dot Com Billionaire is willing to put one on the air as a public service loss leader, there isn't much hope that this will ever change. I predict commercial All News formats will disappear from the air waves in the next 10 to 20 years.
 
Here's the list:

Market 1--New York: WCBS, WINS
2--LA: KNX
3--Chicago: WBBM simulcast on WCFS (FM)
4--San Francisco: KCBS simulcast on KFRC (FM), KGO (All-News Weekdays, 5-9am and Noon-11pm)
5--Dallas: KRLD (All-News Weekdays, 5am-7pm)
6--Houston: KROI (FM) (Jim Bohananon 2-5am)
7--Atlanta: WYAY (FM)
8--Philadelphia: KYW
9--Washington: WTOP (FM), WNEW (FM)
10--Boston: WBZ (All-News Everyday, 5am-8pm)
11--Detroit: WWJ
13--Seattle: KOMO-AM-FM
25--Pittsburgh KQV (All-News Weekdays, 5am-7pm)

Canada has five All-News stations running the format 24/7: CFTR Toronto, CKWX Vancouver, CIWW Ottawa, CFFR Calgary, CHQT Edmonton.

I wouldn't worry about the All-News format ever disappearing. WCBS, WINS, WBBM, KCBS, KYW, WTOP, WBZ, WWJ, CFTR and CKWX are among their markets' highest earning stations. WTOP is the highest earning station in the country.
 
EJ204 said:
Here's the list:

25--Pittsburgh KQV (All-News Weekdays, 5am-7pm)
Click to expand...

Wasn't aware the Pittsburgh market has an All-News radio station. This is a pretty big surprise given
the Pittsburgh market size and the somewhat subpar 1410 AM signal. Another surprise is this format is on 1410 AM and not on the 50 KW KDKA 1020 AM.
 
For EJ204:

How many of those stations on your list are network O&O's. I'm guessing most of them owned by their network, which makes their "survivability" quotient a bit higher than it is for locally owned independent stations and those owned by congloms.
 
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