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Rams to iHeart

davideduardo

davideduardo

Moderator/Administrator
Staff member
A Tweet from Don Barrett says:

Don Barrett ‏@barrettLARadio

is iHeartMedia/LA thisclose to announcing a broadcasting deal with the just relocated Rams football team?
 
I doubt they would put them on 570 (KLAC), so I have to wonder if they'll flip on of their FMs to sports?

16 games a year is awfully thin to change a format. If they got the Dodgers, it would be another matter.
 
They have the Dodgers on KLAC. iheart will probably make KLAC (maybe KFI, just maybe) the home of the Rams and also simulcast the games on one of their FM stations. Much like the Niners on KNBR and KSAN. Three or four hours out of music on a Sunday afternoon, six months out of the year, is not a big deal.
 
umfan said:
I doubt they would put them on 570 (KLAC), so I have to wonder if they'll flip on of their FMs to sports?
Click to expand...

There was a discussion on whether or not the Dodgers and the Rams could co-exist on KLAC (or perhaps a hybrid of KLAC and KFI) during this thread:
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?691473-What-Radio-Station-will-carry-the-Rams

NFL on FM seems to work best when the station is Classic Rock, because of a better demographic match. The closest station iHeart has to that format is 98.7 KYSR. I agree that there is much doubt they'd blow Alt up just to have a format that matches a once-a-week live sporting event, but that audience is the most likely of their five FMs to "put up with" the music being interrupted for football (as brettbutler has opined).
 
So when is the big announcement? Been over a week since this was first posted.

I like the way Don tweets out his scoop in the form of a question (so no one can say he was wrong in case it doesn't pan out). Kinda like when the late great Jim Healy would get a scoop (which was often) he would preface it with his big, bombastic, "IS IT TRUE?". The only difference is, when Jim Healy asked on air if it was true, you could take it to the bank that it was.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
So when is the big announcement? Been over a week since this was first posted.
Click to expand...

Who knows, other than the people involved? Don has somewhat lost his ability to stay on top of the market since he retired (and I don't blame him). Probably, everyone heard him say "I'm retiring and I really mean it this time" and stopped feeding him insider information.

It's as good a guess as any.
 
Well, if we are in speculation mode...

I really want to say KFI will get the nod and KYSR on FM for a dual band simulcast at least for the first year or two but nothing much beyond that unless the LA Rams start out HOT! (possible but not likely)
KFI needs more earholes right now and football 'could' do it even if as an albeit temporary solution.
Sundays on KFI is a ghost town of Leo Laporte and infomercial time and the occasional Monday Night games will just give Timmy a night off if the schedule remains as it is today.
There's no escaping the power of Sixty-Four KFI's torch even if it doesn't have the same range (and captive audience) as yesteryear.
Once the new car smell wears off, the Rams will kick to KLAC if the AM band is even an option they'd want to pursue.

On the FM side, things are touch and go.
Like many here, I agree that KYSR is the only realistic option.
KOST goes all Xmas and puts up good numbers during a time when Football is closing the season while KBIG does what it does and there's no way they'd disrupt KIIS.
Football on KBIG wouldn't disrupt the apple cart too much, it just wouldn't "fit" with their current format.

My side bet would be that KLOS places a bid to shoehorn their way in with a broadcast agreement that would have Cumulus paying iHeart a luxury tax to air the games exclusively on 95.5.
I don't see The Sound making a play this time around.
 
I think that if the Rams were guaranteed an FM signal in the market (KYSR having the right demographic "fit") they wouldn't have a problem with a co-owned AM (KFI) simulcasting the games. If iHeart can put such a deal together, maybe they could have "more stimulating" pre- and post-game fan call-in segments on KFI, with KYSR joining the simulcast just for the games.

Yeah, a few alternative music fans will gripe about losing a few hours of their music once a week, but there would be far more complaining by the listeners of the other three iHeart FMs, for the reasons Rob states.

Even though Entercom does have NFL on some of their stations, I reconsidered my original thoughts and I think they held back from bidding because with a one-station "cluster" the Rams would become an "all or nothing" situation for the listeners, who might switch over to KRTH next door or KLOS down the dial in the other direction ... and who knows when they'd remember to come back to 100.3?

One thing I don't see is Cumulus writing any kind of check to iHeart for anything, sports-related or not.
 
K.M. Richards said:
I think that if the Rams were guaranteed an FM signal in the market (KYSR having the right demographic "fit") they wouldn't have a problem with a co-owned AM (KFI) simulcasting the games. If iHeart can put such a deal together, maybe they could have "more stimulating" pre- and post-game fan call-in segments on KFI, with KYSR joining the simulcast just for the games.
Click to expand...

There's a lot of money in those beer spots.

Before the telecomm act, Bill Bidwell struck a deal to put the Arizona Cardinals on an AC FM station (KESZ) without an AM carrying anything. It was co-owned by a TV station at the time, so some of the value in the deal came from the TV side of the shop. But they had no problem blowing up the love songs show on certain nights for a coaches show because it made a crapload of money.

The same GM who put that together is the same man you can thank for every AC in america going all Christmas every Thanksgiving. Jerry Ryan knew how to make a buck, even when there could only be a combo and not a cluster.

TL/DR: if the money is good enough they might not care about the demographic fit. But since they have options and the coverage on all of their FM sticks are equal, it makes the most sense to run games on KYSR, and have the rest of the stuff on one of their AMs.
 
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