KTWV 94.7

[Howard Dean]

This is CBS's last owned Smooth jazz station or whatever you want to call it now. I'm not from the LA area so maybe some of you can fill me. hows 94.7's billing? Took a listen a little bit ago, nothing like it used to be.

Wondering if it might Flip to a Simulcast of KNX or KFWB sometime down the road?

 

[davideduardo]

This is CBS's last owned Smooth jazz station or whatever you want to call it now. I'm not from the LA area so maybe some of you can fill me. hows 94.7's billing? Took a listen a little bit ago, nothing like it used to be.

Wondering if it might Flip to a Simulcast of KNX or KFWB sometime down the road?

KTWV is around 13th in 25-54 in the last book; that's a bit of an improvement over the showing when the station was true smooth jazz (it's really an AC hybrid now).

LA is not a news market due to a variety of factors. I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix. Further, LA is nearly 45% Hispanic now, plus 8% Black, 12% Asian and perhaps 10% other first generation immigrants such as Persians and Russians... making the pure news core rather tenuous.

KFWB is not going to work on AM, FM or Bluetooth. It's in a trust, and has to be sold... don't know how they have kept it this long... and the format is a placeholder.

 

[Mediafrog+]

I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix.

I don't disagree with that observation, but would be interesting to have you expand on that thought.

One thing that might make a difference: Cities in the northeast have densely populated urban cores, where there is more commonality of interest in what's going on in "local" news. Sunbelt cities are lower density and more spread out, meaning a lot of material on an all-news station would be irrelevant to listeners in any given part of the metro area.

 

[davideduardo]

I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix

I don't disagree with that observation, but would be interesting to have you expand on that thought.

The point advanced by others is that there is a different pace of life as well as different educational levels and a large number of "not born here" residents. To some extent, each of these factors is correct... and the fact that the top 20 or top 25 markets with news stations is limited: Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, Houston, Dallas, LA, San Diego, Phoenix. The two news operations, KRLD and KNX are either "the jury is out" or "underperforming" so the evidence is real.

As I said, this is an idea I've read on these boards, and something I had not considered. And I believe there is an element of truth here, although the exact reasons may be debatable.

 

[LKellerIII]

I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix.

I don't disagree with that observation, but would be interesting to have you expand on that thought.

One thing that might make a difference: Cities in the northeast have densely populated urban cores, where there is more commonality of interest in what's going on in "local" news. Sunbelt cities are lower density and more spread out, meaning a lot of material on an all-news station would be irrelevant to listeners in any given part of the metro area.

This wouldn't explain the San Francisco Bay Area, where KCBS (AM & FM) and KQED (FM) are both highly rated. And KCBS was doing well before the simulcast with FM.

The Bay Area these days is certainly spread out - while San Francisco could be said to represent its "densely populated urban core," it's only a small fraction of the Bay Area's population (about 800,000 out of 7.3 million), and it hasn't been the Bay Area's largest city for a couple of decades now - San Jose is.

The "sun-belt life-style" is probably closer to the mark, though I'm not sure how that would be defined.

 

[justpassingthough]

I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix.

I don't disagree with that observation, but would be interesting to have you expand on that thought.

One thing that might make a difference: Cities in the northeast have densely populated urban cores, where there is more commonality of interest in what's going on in "local" news. Sunbelt cities are lower density and more spread out, meaning a lot of material on an all-news station would be irrelevant to listeners in any given part of the metro area.

This wouldn't explain the San Francisco Bay Area, where KCBS (AM & FM) and KQED (FM) are both highly rated. And KCBS was doing well before the simulcast with FM.

The Bay Area these days is certainly spread out - while San Francisco could be said to represent its "densely populated urban core," it's only a small fraction of the Bay Area's population (about 800,000 out of 7.3 million), and it hasn't been the Bay Area's largest city for a couple of decades now - San Jose is.

The "sun-belt life-style" is probably closer to the mark, though I'm not sure how that would be defined.

Its almost anathema because if people in the Sun Belt cities are living in low density, bedroom communities- in places like LA, Atlanta, etc- one would think their commute times are higher and they would have a greater propensity to listen to formats like news or news/talk.

I think the nearly impossible to describe "Sun Belt lifestyle" may be a reasonable explaination, though. I think the easiest way to quantify the lifestyle is the different pace caused by living in a city where the weather doesn't keep you locked inside for a better part of the year. Its obviously more than that, but I figure thats a good starting point...

 

[recto101]

I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix.

I don't disagree with that observation, but would be interesting to have you expand on that thought.

One thing that might make a difference: Cities in the northeast have densely populated urban cores, where there is more commonality of interest in what's going on in "local" news. Sunbelt cities are lower density and more spread out, meaning a lot of material on an all-news station would be irrelevant to listeners in any given part of the metro area.

This wouldn't explain the San Francisco Bay Area, where KCBS (AM & FM) and KQED (FM) are both highly rated. And KCBS was doing well before the simulcast with FM.

The Bay Area these days is certainly spread out - while San Francisco could be said to represent its "densely populated urban core," it's only a small fraction of the Bay Area's population (about 800,000 out of 7.3 million), and it hasn't been the Bay Area's largest city for a couple of decades now - San Jose is.

The "sun-belt life-style" is probably closer to the mark, though I'm not sure how that would be defined.

I agree that San Jose is spread out as LA is but the Bay Area could be counted as sun belt if you only focus at Diablo Valley, Delta, Napa Valley, Fairfield and Vacaville. but Vacaville is counted as Sacramento Valley. But if you look at Ukiah and Mendocino its more of the Redwood Belt.

 

[davideduardo]

This wouldn't explain the San Francisco Bay Area, where KCBS (AM & FM) and KQED (FM) are both highly rated. And KCBS was doing well before the simulcast with FM.

The "sun-belt life-style" is probably closer to the mark, though I'm not sure how that would be defined.

I wouldn't classify the Bay Area as Sunbelt any more than I would include Denver in that category. In fact, the contrast between listening in LA and SF rather confirms the sunbelt idea.

 

[davideduardo]

Its almost anathema because if people in the Sun Belt cities are living in low density, bedroom communities- in places like LA, Atlanta, etc- one would think their commute times are higher and they would have a greater propensity to listen to formats like news or news/talk.

Two things are in play here... only about a third (or less) radio listening is in the car... and commute times are no longer in the average Sunbelt large city than the average northern or rustbelt metro. The data is in the Census American Fact Finder.

 

[Uncle Rob]

This is CBS's last owned Smooth jazz station or whatever you want to call it now. I'm not from the LA area so maybe some of you can fill me. hows 94.7's billing? Took a listen a little bit ago, nothing like it used to be.

Wondering if it might Flip to a Simulcast of KNX or KFWB sometime down the road?

KTWV is around 13th in 25-54 in the last book; that's a bit of an improvement over the showing when the station was true smooth jazz (it's really an AC hybrid now).

LA is not a news market due to a variety of factors. I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix. Further, LA is nearly 45% Hispanic now, plus 8% Black, 12% Asian and perhaps 10% other first generation immigrants such as Persians and Russians... making the pure news core rather tenuous.

KFWB is not going to work on AM, FM or Bluetooth. It's in a trust, and has to be sold... don't know how they have kept it this long... and the format is a placeholder.

I remember posting a while back how badly KNX sucks and how they were much better when they had the 2 Sunday footballs games, the Monday Night Football game, George Nicholaw's editorials, The Drama Hour at 9 p.m. and repeated at 2 a.m., the Horse racing results (even though I'm not into the Ponies, a lot of my friends are and listened to that all the time.) Sports were at :15 and :45 past the hour. How they always had the full 5 minute top of the hour newscast and then gave you a summary of all the stories they would be covering in the next 1/2 hour. And yet when I mentioned that, I believe it was you David who belittled me for it. Now you are saying that an all news station doesn't fit the LA lifestyle. I wish you'd make up your mind. What KNX needs to do is end the failed "experiment" and bring the old KNX back. The thing that used to crack me up was they had more sports than the "all sports" stations did.

 

[calguy]

This is CBS's last owned Smooth jazz station or whatever you want to call it now. I'm not from the LA area so maybe some of you can fill me. hows 94.7's billing? Took a listen a little bit ago, nothing like it used to be.

Wondering if it might Flip to a Simulcast of KNX or KFWB sometime down the road?

KTWV is around 13th in 25-54 in the last book; that's a bit of an improvement over the showing when the station was true smooth jazz (it's really an AC hybrid now).

LA is not a news market due to a variety of factors. I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix. Further, LA is nearly 45% Hispanic now, plus 8% Black, 12% Asian and perhaps 10% other first generation immigrants such as Persians and Russians... making the pure news core rather tenuous.

KFWB is not going to work on AM, FM or Bluetooth. It's in a trust, and has to be sold... don't know how they have kept it this long... and the format is a placeholder.

I remember posting a while back how badly KNX sucks and how they were much better when they had the 2 Sunday footballs games, the Monday Night Football game, George Nicholaw's editorials, The Drama Hour at 9 p.m. and repeated at 2 a.m., the Horse racing results (even though I'm not into the Ponies, a lot of my friends are and listened to that all the time.) Sports were at :15 and :45 past the hour. How they always had the full 5 minute top of the hour newscast and then gave you a summary of all the stories they would be covering in the next 1/2 hour. And yet when I mentioned that, I believe it was you David who belittled me for it. Now you are saying that an all news station doesn't fit the LA lifestyle. I wish you'd make up your mind. What KNX needs to do is end the failed "experiment" and bring the old KNX back. The thing that used to crack me up was they had more sports than the "all sports" stations did.

Remember who made most of those stupid moves? David G. Hall. Guess he was a one trick pony.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

This is CBS's last owned Smooth jazz station or whatever you want to call it now. I'm not from the LA area so maybe some of you can fill me. hows 94.7's billing? Took a listen a little bit ago, nothing like it used to be.

Wondering if it might Flip to a Simulcast of KNX or KFWB sometime down the road?

KTWV is around 13th in 25-54 in the last book; that's a bit of an improvement over the showing when the station was true smooth jazz (it's really an AC hybrid now).

LA is not a news market due to a variety of factors. I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix. Further, LA is nearly 45% Hispanic now, plus 8% Black, 12% Asian and perhaps 10% other first generation immigrants such as Persians and Russians... making the pure news core rather tenuous.

KFWB is not going to work on AM, FM or Bluetooth. It's in a trust, and has to be sold... don't know how they have kept it this long... and the format is a placeholder.

I remember posting a while back how badly KNX sucks and how they were much better when they had the 2 Sunday footballs games, the Monday Night Football game, George Nicholaw's editorials, The Drama Hour at 9 p.m. and repeated at 2 a.m., the Horse racing results (even though I'm not into the Ponies, a lot of my friends are and listened to that all the time.) Sports were at :15 and :45 past the hour. How they always had the full 5 minute top of the hour newscast and then gave you a summary of all the stories they would be covering in the next 1/2 hour. And yet when I mentioned that, I believe it was you David who belittled me for it. Now you are saying that an all news station doesn't fit the LA lifestyle. I wish you'd make up your mind. What KNX needs to do is end the failed "experiment" and bring the old KNX back. The thing that used to crack me up was they had more sports than the "all sports" stations did.

Remember who made most of those stupid moves? David G. Hall. Guess he was a one trick pony.

The old KNX had consistency. You knew what you were going to get and when you were going to get it. I know many people who tuned in at just the right time to get top and bottom hour news, sports, and business. When they started "experimenting" is when it all came tumbling down.

 

[davideduardo]

I remember posting a while back how badly KNX sucks and how they were much better when they had the 2 Sunday footballs games, the Monday Night Football game, George Nicholaw's editorials, The Drama Hour at 9 p.m. and repeated at 2 a.m., the Horse racing results (even though I'm not into the Ponies, a lot of my friends are and listened to that all the time.) Sports were at :15 and :45 past the hour. How they always had the full 5 minute top of the hour newscast and then gave you a summary of all the stories they would be covering in the next 1/2 hour. And yet when I mentioned that, I believe it was you David who belittled me for it. Now you are saying that an all news station doesn't fit the LA lifestyle. I wish you'd make up your mind. What KNX needs to do is end the failed "experiment" and bring the old KNX back. The thing that used to crack me up was they had more sports than the "all sports" stations did.

The "lifestyle" issue, if you look back a day or two in the posts, is something I mentioned because others on these boards had brought up the possibility that all-news did not perform or underperformed in all the sunbelt markets; this is not my observation (although I find possible merit in the idea).

And nobody suggested that news did not "fit" in LA; the discussion has been about why news performs at a lower, often unacceptable level, in sunbelt markets. And that is a demonstrable truth.

I looked at KNX on a 4 book average from 1998 to 1999, and 60% of the audience was over 55. If you projected the appeal of that style to 2011, you would likely have over 70% if not more in the "out of the money" demos.

In the last diary based books, 1997 to 1998, the 55+ had come down a few percent and this was likely due to the changes, including the elimination of the "geezer demo" things like the ponies, the network news and the old-time radio shows.

Now, in PPM, KNX is close to 50% under-55, its best performance in a long, long time. Its cume is around 1.4 million, vs. under 1 million in 1998. KNX had a 1.6 in 25 54 in '98 but now has a low-twos average there. In other words, KNX has managed to increase cume and share in 25-54, despite the 13 year span in the years I've compared... 13 years where AM usage by under-55's has decreased significantly everywhere and during which time the Hispanic percentage of LA population has increased from around 32% to 44%.

You won't find any successful news operation... such as WBBM or WINS or KCBS or KYW... with any of those old-fashioned features. And you won't find any of those successful news stations in the sunbelt, either. KNX has done a remarkable job in an era of lower budgets and decreasing AM listening, even if you take the elimination of KFWB into account. And, keep in mind that even back around 2000, the total two-station news share was just over 3, while in New York, with two stations also, there were over 7 shares: it's a different market for news in LA.

 

[davideduardo]

Remember who made most of those stupid moves? David G. Hall. Guess he was a one trick pony.

After all those "stupid moves" KNX is much better off than it was before.

 

[badjef]

Remember who made most of those stupid moves? David G. Hall. Guess he was a one trick pony.

After all those "stupid moves" KNX is much better off than it was before.

David, I don't necessarily subscribe to the statistics of demographics. If they were all true, there would be no reason to play sports. The Yankees would always win the World Series and my Rays would have never won the East Division 2 out of the last 3 years. To me, it is Fantasy Radio to expect a Mexican or Korean would not listen to an English all-news operation. Just wait for the next "disaster" and robo-radio isn't keeping the people affected informed.
And we all have a tendency to agree with ratings when we win and conversely disagree with them when we don't.

With that said, it is expensive to run a quality all-news operation, such as WINS. If they were to move to FM, would they run out of signal before running out of market as it would be if it were one of the Wilson signals trying to target Orange County? KNX covers the market adequately, but that will not continue due to added electrical interference for AM especially in the car. Not everybody is like me. I put an antenna through the fender of a brand new Hyundai Accent to improve the AM reception.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[davideduardo]

To me, it is Fantasy Radio to expect a Mexican or Korean would not listen to an English all-news operation.

KNX, in a market that is nearly 45% Hispanic, gets only 14% of its listening from Hispanics. That's because listening to it is pretty much a function of age, band and language usage. About 60% of LA Hispanics are Spanish Only or Mostly Spanish... and TV is the preferred medium for news (no FM has anything other than headlines, and FM is over 90% of Spanish language listening). The Univision evening and night newscasts on TV are consistently #1 in LA, and they are in Spanish, not English.

The Korean population is not a stratification variable in Arbitron, so there can be no analysis. However, there is plenty of evidence that first generation populations in the US waaaaay underindex in usage of English spoken word radio.

Just wait for the next "disaster" and robo-radio isn't keeping the people affected informed.

AM news radio does a good job in LA; the issue is that the potential constituency is limited because of the band, KCBS in SF had to add an FM simulcast to improve its sales-demo ratings.

And we all have a tendency to agree with ratings when we win and conversely disagree with them when we don't.

A past head of Arbitron told me that there were two constituencies at any given time. First, those who stayed the same or went up, who believed they were programming gurus. Second, those who went down, who believed they were also gurus, but that Arbitron was wrong.

Whatever the case, when we can track a format in both diary and then PPM for a decade or more, we know what works. Since ratings are essential for sales in the larger markets, arguing about sample is a sidebar to trying to improve ratings.

With that said, it is expensive to run a quality all-news operation, such as WINS. If they were to move to FM, would they run out of signal before running out of market as it would be if it were one of the Wilson signals trying to target Orange County?

The Wilson FMs cover Orange County better than perhaps two of the LA AM stations. The biggest signals, like KBIG, KRTH, etc., put a 65 dbu to the bottom of Orange County, and the lowest powered ones like KIIS put one two-thirds of the way down the county, covering 90% of the OC population with a 65. OC is only a quarter of the LA metro population, so that portion that a few FMs don't cover quite as well is less than 2% of the population. On the other hand, most of the AMs have real issues... if not daytime, definitely at night, in large parts of that county.

In LA the issue is not coverage on the FMs. It is the aging of the AM listener and a highly ethnic market with many groups that underindex on all-news usage.

KNX covers the market adequately, but that will not continue due to added electrical interference for AM especially in the car. Not everybody is like me. I put an antenna through the fender of a brand new Hyundai Accent to improve the AM reception.

KNX is useful in the car to about Redlands to the east, and up and down the coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara. It's in home and at work where the noise is an issue, and some parts of the LA metro will not get enough signal for that kind of use.

New York is different, as the FMs are conforming B's, not grandfathered stations with 50 to 60 kw on a 5,000 foot high mountain overlooking nearly the whole market.

 

[calguy]

Remember who made most of those stupid moves? David G. Hall. Guess he was a one trick pony.

After all those "stupid moves" KNX is much better off than it was before.

No offense David, but I would think that KFWB's move away from news did much to help KNX. Personally, moving all the features to different times confused a lot of people.

 

[davideduardo]

No offense David, but I would think that KFWB's move away from news did much to help KNX. Personally, moving all the features to different times confused a lot of people.

And I mentioned the KFWB matter as part of the change in fortune for KNX; the market had lost so much news listening that it went into the 2000's with only about 3 shares between the two stations. KFWB was down to around a 1.2 or 1.3, and was even worse in sales demos.

The biggest issue with KNX was an aging audience and programming that was really too old-fashioned for anyone under about 60. Some of those drama segments had the sound of the Mercury Theatre recordings from the late 30's... a sound that nobody under about 70 could feel warm and fuzzy about. And the positioning of elements in their clock was certainly not ready for current ratings methodology.

Anecdotally, I'm a news listener and viewer. I preferred KFWB as it had better flow and formatics. The times I listened to KNX, it lacked flow, was cluttered with roadblocks, and sounded old. When the racetrack report came on, I could never last more than 10 seconds; I can't believe how that would have lasted unless someone was being taken care of.

Most important, as a sales proposition, one station with a 3 share sells a lot more than two stations with 1.5's.

 

[ChannelFlipper]

No offense David, but I would think that KFWB's move away from news did much to help KNX. Personally, moving all the features to different times confused a lot of people.

And I mentioned the KFWB matter as part of the change in fortune for KNX; the market had lost so much news listening that it went into the 2000's with only about 3 shares between the two stations. KFWB was down to around a 1.2 or 1.3, and was even worse in sales demos.

The biggest issue with KNX was an aging audience and programming that was really too old-fashioned for anyone under about 60. Some of those drama segments had the sound of the Mercury Theatre recordings from the late 30's... a sound that nobody under about 70 could feel warm and fuzzy about. And the positioning of elements in their clock was certainly not ready for current ratings methodology.

Anecdotally, I'm a news listener and viewer. I preferred KFWB as it had better flow and formatics. The times I listened to KNX, it lacked flow, was cluttered with roadblocks, and sounded old. When the racetrack report came on, I could never last more than 10 seconds; I can't believe how that would have lasted unless someone was being taken care of.

Most important, as a sales proposition, one station with a 3 share sells a lot more than two stations with 1.5's.

David, why would the "positioning of the clock" not work in today's rating methodology? Since most major elements were 5 minutes apart, I would think that would play right into the PPM methodology.

I always assumed when they played the Trevor Denman horseracing calls, they were really paid for ads by the tracks themselves. Otherwise, what would be the motivation? Total tune-out time for most active listeners.

 

[goriajk]

I tend to "buy in" to a number of people who have commented that all news does not fit the sunbelt lifestyle and culture, from Miami and Atlanta to LA and Phoenix.

I don't disagree with that observation, but would be interesting to have you expand on that thought.

One thing that might make a difference: Cities in the northeast have densely populated urban cores, where there is more commonality of interest in what's going on in "local" news. Sunbelt cities are lower density and more spread out, meaning a lot of material on an all-news station would be irrelevant to listeners in any given part of the metro area.

This wouldn't explain the San Francisco Bay Area, where KCBS (AM & FM) and KQED (FM) are both highly rated. And KCBS was doing well before the simulcast with FM.

The Bay Area these days is certainly spread out - while San Francisco could be said to represent its "densely populated urban core," it's only a small fraction of the Bay Area's population (about 800,000 out of 7.3 million), and it hasn't been the Bay Area's largest city for a couple of decades now - San Jose is.

The "sun-belt life-style" is probably closer to the mark, though I'm not sure how that would be defined.

Still, The Bay Area Is A Completely Different Beast Than L.A. I Personally Listen to KNX and KPCC But When I'm In the Mood Prefer listening to KQED over my iPhone app. KQED kicks KPCC Overall. KCBS beats KNX by 400 miles. =) Just my preference.