New Call Letters for AM 560 Are KZAC. A Question:

[Mark Roberts]

And yet, WBAP even adding the FM signal last year hit record low shares right ahead of the election, while KRLD's move to Conservative Talk in many dayparts simultaneously drove it down to record low shares. At one point KERA-FM had a higher share than every Conservative talker in the market combined.

So maybe I should say---it doesn't even work in Dallas.

San Francisco is clearly a much less likely market to go adding more syndicated conservative talk, especially if you're competing with yourself.

Dallas, as with the other large Texas metros in recent years, is not the conservative bastion it once was...and I can personally attest that there are some pretty blue parts of Houston, too. There's still probably a regional audience for the right-wing harangues that conservative talk radio is composed of, and there's always Fort Worth, where I spent a month one week at a cybersecurity conference a few years ago, but the equivalence of Dallas and conservativism isn't nearly as strong as it once was. Someday Texas politics will reflect the changed nature of its metros, but it's been a long wait so far.

My theory, and it is mine, is that KRLD thought it could cut costs by going to conservative talk and lose some audience but partially gain a new audience and the numbers would work out reasonably well. Whether the financial numbers work out as a result is a whole other question; all that we the public see are a limited version of the audience numbers. There's some relationship between those numbers and financial numbers but it's not a one-for-one equivalence. Or to put it more simply, KRLD may be willing to accept lower shares in order to achieve lower costs.

As for San Francisco, it feels like KSFO, KTRB, and KNEW are fighting for table scraps, though KSFO does better than the others. But I think previous discussions have established that KNEW exists for iHeart to check the boxes for market clearance of shows for the benefit of media buyers that don't dig too deeply into what's actually happening in a given market. KTRB may play the same role for Salem. (Moving that thing in from Modesto has to have been the biggest mistake in Bay Area radio, but that wasn't Salem's fault.) KSFO has been more traditional in that regard, since the check-boxer role isn't as relevant to Cumulus. KSFO also has a brand, and a track record; a me-too station won't have those attributes.

Pulling up the December public numbers via RadioInsight, one sees that KSFO gets 1.6 over-the-air plus 0.2 from its stream and I assume that the 0.7 figure for KGO is not something you should add naïvely to come up with 2.3. So let's ballpark it at a 2.0. KNEW earns an asterisk, and I also assume that Salem isn't subscribing, so there's no report for KTRB but, if it did, I think the probability is high that it would get a gold star, too.

 

[Mark Roberts]

I had written in post #65:

As for sports contracts, I don't think KSFO (at 560) had any; 810 has University of California football and basketball.

The last Cal men's basketball game is Saturday, March 8; until then, all the games are listed as being carried on "810 AM". So if that's the hang-up to fully bringing over the 560 programming to 810, thereby allowing the shutdown of 560, then there are a couple of months left to go.

 

[Mark Roberts]

As for KTCT, Cumulus applied yesterday to extend the STA that it's had in place for years - probably 2000, though it's hard to tell exactly now that CDBS is gone - to operate with higher power at night with the daytime pattern:

(Text in the justification document was in all caps; as a public service, I fixed that)

Station KTCT is licensed to operate on 1050 kHz with 50 kilowatts (“kW”) of power
during the day and 10 kW of power at night utilizing a directional antenna. The
FCC has continued to authorize KTCT to operate with its daytime facilities during
nighttime hours at a reduced power of 35 kW to offset the interference caused
by station XED. The interference situation with respect to this Mexican station
has not changed.

DA-2 directional though it doesn't appear that there's a whole lot of difference between day and night; a lot of the protected area covers marine life in the Pacific Ocean.

 

[Michael Rivers Kramer]

The difference on the DA-2 is the South Bay loss at night.

 

[Mark Roberts]

The difference on the DA-2 is the South Bay loss at night.

Then, under the STA, this shouldn't be an issue, or as much of an issue.

 

[Mark Roberts]

As for KTCT, Cumulus applied yesterday to extend the STA that it's had in place for years - probably 2000, though it's hard to tell exactly now that CDBS is gone - to operate with higher power at night with the daytime pattern:

Today it was approved. No surprise, but that was fast.

 

[boiseengineer]

Little history of 1050 "KTCT". Don't remember the dates but owners of 1050 payed 1060 KPAY Chico to shut down so they could update to the higher powers.
KPAY also owned 1290 KHSL and moved the KPAY call & programming to 1290. Later they re-positioned one of the 3 ex-1060 towers then moved 1290 there.

 

[Weiserguy]

Little history of 1050 "KTCT". Don't remember the dates but owners of 1050 payed 1060 KPAY Chico to shut down so they could update to the higher powers.
KPAY also owned 1290 KHSL and moved the KPAY call & programming to 1290. Later they re-positioned one of the 3 ex-1060 towers then moved 1290 there.

Could that have been when Jim Gabbert owned 1050, after he'd sold off KIOI and KIQI? When his other holding was Channel 20 (with the doggie legal ID's at the TOH & BOH)? I sort-of recall 1050 undergoing a big power boost in that era.

 

[Mark Roberts]

An update---I've been saying the 560 tower land is leased from the State Harbor Commission, which apparently is where the lease originated in the 1930s.

However, the Port of San Francisco was established in 1957 by the City and County of San Francisco, and the land was transferred to the Port in 1968.

One thing I wish I had remembered until now: KEST (1450) was evicted from its site, leased from the Port, in 2014. It then moved onto the KSFB (1260) site on the hill west of Candlestick. By the way, this move degraded KEST's signal in the East Bay.

I won't draw any conclusions from this for KZAC except to say that, if you're leasing the land for your antenna site, you're going to be subject to the whims of your landlord.

Link to the FCC filing for the KEST relocation: Draft Copy « Licensing and Management System « FCC

 

[mikecroaro]

The operating cost of KSFO 560 was supossedly very low according to former KSFO staff. It was also said th a station low on the dial in and around 540-640 was the most ideal place to be. It seems unlikely that 560 would simply go silent. I suspect an new format will appear (and perhaps new owner).

 

[Mark Roberts]

The last Cal men's basketball game is Saturday, March 8; until then, all the games are listed as being carried on "810 AM". So if that's the hang-up to fully bringing over the 560 programming to 810, thereby allowing the shutdown of 560, then there are a couple of months left to go.

The Cal game with Virginia Tech this afternoon (January 11) is broadcast on 810 while 560 continues with the regular format.

 

[davideduardo]

The operating cost of KSFO 560 was supossedly very low according to former KSFO staff. It was also said th a station low on the dial in and around 540-640 was the most ideal place to be. It seems unlikely that 560 would simply go silent. I suspect an new format will appear (and perhaps new owner).

Again: 1 kw on 550 covers as well as 50 kw on 1500 assuming the transmitter site is comparable in conductivity and the tower is of appropriate height to match the wavelength.

 

[KilowattKat]

The Cal game with Virginia Tech this afternoon (January 11) is broadcast on 810 while 560 continues with the regular format.

I wonder how much added revenue the Cal State Sports brings in for Cumulus. Why not continue the contract on KSFO?

 

[TheBigA]

I wonder how much added revenue the Cal State Sports brings in for Cumulus. Why not continue the contract on KSFO?

It's probably the biggest revenue source for the station. Likely been that way for a few years.

Why not continue the contract? Perhaps because it means breaking format. The program vendors they have now would get pre-empted by sports, and they don't like that. That's why, apparently, Cumulus sent a letter to those vendors about the simulcast. One advantage about the deal Audacy made with Good Karma for 880 in NYC was that their Mets coverage wouldn't require a break in format. People who listen to news or talk don't want their show interrupted by sports.

 

[Mark Roberts]

I wonder how much added revenue the Cal State Sports brings in for Cumulus. Why not continue the contract on KSFO?

It's probably the biggest revenue source for the station. Likely been that way for a few years.

Though keep in mind that the middleman here is Learfield, which takes its cut and probably a substantial one, all in the service of the University of California athletic program. Learfield, after all, is providing the infrastructure, paying Justin Allegri for PBP, and running the Cal Sports website. There is no free lunch. Granted that Cumulus these days is hunting for pennies in every couch it can find, so it can use every source of income it can get, but it's likely not very much, probably a few availabilities per game.

(Aside: Clyde Lear writes of a pivotal moment in Learfield's move into sports, something that he figured out pretty much as he went along, in this article: https://www.smays.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/LH-Big-Comeback-at-Mizzou-72308.pdf - Missourians past or present will be interested to know that the particular incident involved Jerrell Shepherd, who really was looking for a free lunch. This indeed was a clash of the local media titans in outstate Missouri.)

Why not continue the contract? Perhaps because it means breaking format. The program vendors they have now would get pre-empted by sports, and they don't like that. That's why, apparently, Cumulus sent a letter to those vendors about the simulcast.

That's been true for decades. The horrible news director that I worked for in 1986 was right about some things. He did not like it that the station had sports talk in the afternoon, and de-emphasized sports on the news wheel. His expressed belief was that sports chases away 75% of the news/talk audience. That may depend on the individual market; I suspect KOA gets away with doing the same thing my former boss hated because Denver is such a sports-crazy market. That's not so true in San Francisco. While there's some interest in Cal sports, it's not all-consuming, for all practical purposes amounting to a niche interest.

 

[TheBigA]

Granted that Cumulus these days is hunting for pennies in every couch it can find, so it can use every source of income it can get, but it's likely not very much, probably a few availabilities per game.

On the other hand they likely weren't doing local sales for the gambling format, and there probably won't be much local sales for the syndicated talk. It's all national money that goes to the home office in Atlanta, not used for local operations. This Learfield money was staying in San Francisco. My guess is that the bulk of the local sales is built around KNBR.

 

[Mark Roberts]

On the other hand they likely weren't doing local sales for the gambling format, and there probably won't be much local sales for the syndicated talk. It's all national money that goes to the home office in Atlanta, not used for local operations. This Learfield money was staying in San Francisco. My guess is that the bulk of the local sales is built around KNBR.

There are some local spots on KSFO/KZAC around the top of the hour.

Ultimately all the money is going to Atlanta anyway. Large companies have their own internal forms of socialism. The "eat what you hunt" (a nicer way of putting it) model of revenue allocation doesn't seem to be much in evidence. If it were, there would be a lot fewer AM stations.

 

[TheBigA]

Ultimately all the money is going to Atlanta anyway. Large companies have their own internal forms of socialism.

Yes, but the local budget is based on local sales. And yes, I think there will be a lot fewer AM stations.

 

[Mark Roberts]

And yes, I think there will be a lot fewer AM stations.

This may well be the year of the shakeout we've been expecting for years.

This doesn't involve San Francisco -- I'm saying this to keep the speculation machine from firing up yet again -- but the story is illustrative. One legacy AM-FM operator that I know has told me that if anything renders their AM transmitter inoperative, that will be it: they will turn in the license when and if that happens. That was before they got a translator for the AM, but I suspect that they'd turn in that license, too.

As for San Francisco, unless you could give me a good argument for moving the 1050 programming to 560, I'd say KZAC's clock is ticking ever louder. And even if that move were to happen, then 1050 wouldn't survive.

 

[xmtrland]

You would think that 560 would be cheaper on the transmitter end. 5KW versus 50KW and taking care of 2 tower versus 5. 560 even seems to have better coverage day and night.