Shouldn't San Francisco Have Any Local Talk Radio Shows?

[boombox4]

80% of SF voted for Kamala. 73% of San Mateo voted for Kamala. Alameda voted 74.5%. And 80.5% of Marin voted Dem.
Why bother with conservative local talk in SF? It's a Democratic bastion and has been for decades.

Okay, but on the same token, King County (where Seattle is) voted 70% blue over the past 2-3 elections. Pierce and Snohomish are maybe 60%.

Yet the Seattle market has three conservative talk stations (KTTH, KVI, and KOL). They may not be pulling in big numbers, but they are surviving.

Something is obviously different with the SFO market.

 

[TheBigA]

Yet the Seattle market has three conservative talk stations (KTTH, KVI, and KOL). They may not be pulling in big numbers, but they are surviving.

They're primarily syndicated stations. San Francisco has syndicated conservative talk.

San Francisco also has KPFA with some local talk.

 

[davideduardo]

San Francisco does have local talk radio but it’s on NPR affiliates. I don’t know how commercial talk is going to work specifically for the Bay Area but every time we talk about talk radio specifically we keep going back to the 1980’s when the framework of right wing talk became popularized when Rush Limbaugh replaced Morton Downey Jr on KFBK Sacramento.

This discussion needs to keep in mind the impact of the “removal“ of the Fairness Doctrine at the end of the 1980s, allowing for polarized talk shows such as the one Rush created.

How much of this is that we keep going back to a time when Sacramento County was more Republican in the 1980’s than it is today. The last time conservatives won the county was in the 1988 elections. But this content is not how it was in the past.

We have fairly ample proof that liberal or progressive talk does not work (or at least did not work) while conservative talk does. So what we have as a viable format today is conservative talk radio. It does not matter if a market leans red or blue; there are enough people on the minority side to more than sustain one or more radio stations.

Also important to remember is that Nielsen does not race cities but counties. And most markets are made up of multiple counties. So we have lots of markets that may have the central County meaning blue wow the surrounding ones being red. Two individual stations the distribution by county is vastly less important than the total market reach.?

 

[crainbebo]

Pierce County is in the low 50s for Dems. I think Puyallup and Spanaway are purple to red, and grade A contour for KTTH/KVI reaches there.

 

[cc333]

This discussion needs to keep in mind the impact of the “removal“ of the Fairness Doctrine at the end of the 1980s, allowing for polarized talk shows such as the one Rush created.

I feel like the Fairness Doctrine, in some form, should be reinstated. In the current hyperpartisan state of affairs, this will likely never happen (though it has come close several times, once as recently as 2019). I say this because I feel like everything has become too one-sided. Particularly on radio, and especially on AM radio.

c

 

[Michael Rivers Kramer]

It seems to me that EMF has completely flooded the market already. Why on earth would they want to add more?


I think you meant Middletown, yes?

c

I feel like the Fairness Doctrine, in some form, should be reinstated. In the current hyperpartisan state of affairs, this will likely never happen (though it has come close several times, once as recently as 2019). I say this because I feel like everything has become too one-sided. Particularly on radio, and especially on AM radio.

c

I’d love to see that happen. However, it appears that congress is uninterested in bringing that back and even if they did it’s pretty moot since it would only apply to licensed broadcasting stations, not the internet including podcasts or cable news.

 

[cc333]

I’d love to see that happen. However, it appears that congress is uninterested in bringing that back...

Congress is hardly interested in anything anymore. Least of all governing and legislating, which are ostensibly its main constitutionally defined functions). And let's not even discuss the budget....

The last two Congresses were pretty much constantly infighting and the steadfast refusal by some (let's call them the ones who religiously practice MAGA goodthink) to cooperate with almost anyone, including each other, resulting in perhaps some of the most ineffectual Congresses in modern history.

The new Congress will likely be more of the same, maybe worse since the majority party now has a smaller margin (such that all it takes is one or two MAGA goodthinkers to crash things, whereas before it was more like three or four, maybe five, which gave the moderates some room for damage control, slight though it may have been).

c

 

[Gregg.]

Maybe the argument for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would be something to discuss a decade ago. But today, it's clear linear radio and television are less and less popular. Young people want to hear and see what they want, when they want. And you can't use the Fairness Doctrine if people are streaming TV shows and podcasts.

 

[408listener]

Let's compare SF with other large markets for local talk shows on commercial stations...

1. New York: WABC (Red Apple) has local talk shows most of the day. WOR (iHeart) has local talk from morning drive until noon. WNYM (Salem) has Joe Piscopo in mornings.

2. Los Angeles: KFI (iHeart) is all local except for overnight. KABC (Cumulus) has an afternoon show. KRLA (Salem) has a morning show.

3. Chicago: WGN (Nexstar) is all local except overnight. WLS (Cumulus) and WIND (Salem) both have AM and PM drive shows.

4. Dallas (now ahead of SF in market size): WBAP-AM-FM (Cumulus) are a mix of local and syndicated shows. KRLD (Audacy) has two local shows in middays. KLIF (Cumulus) and KSKY (Salem) have local morning shows.

5. San Francisco: KSFO (Cumulus) has NO local talk shows. It uses Armstrong & Getty in AM drive. KTRB (Salem) also has no local shows, even though Salem's stations in other large markets have morning shows. Non-commercial KQED has a locally produced two-hour show in middays. But that isn't a substitute for at least one local show on a commercial talk station in SF.

I understand, market conditions change. KSFO had a few local shows and dropped them one-by-one for financial reasons. KGO had local talk shows. It saw its ratings and profits dwindle and switched to sports betting two years ago.

So what's wrong with San Francisco? How can Dallas have seven local talk shows spread across four stations and SF has none?

My TL;DR theory is that the local audience and cost of living are incompatible with the politics (yep) and economics.

NY and LA are company towns for broadcast media, to an extent Chicago too. DFW stations serve outlying rural areas that have many reliable listeners to conservative talk shows.

But in the Bay Area, the market for local talk radio is not large enough to attract ad revenue necessary to pay the talent a competitive salary for the high COL here.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

This discussion needs to keep in mind the impact of the “removal“ of the Fairness Doctrine at the end of the 1980s, allowing for polarized talk shows such as the one Rush created.

We have fairly ample proof that liberal or progressive talk does not work (or at least did not work) while conservative talk does. So what we have as a viable format today is conservative talk radio. It does not matter if a market leans red or blue; there are enough people on the minority side to more than sustain one or more radio stations.

Also important to remember is that Nielsen does not race cities but counties. And most markets are made up of multiple counties. So we have lots of markets that may have the central County meaning blue wow the surrounding ones being red. Two individual stations the distribution by county is vastly less important than the total market reach.?

True too given that I looked up places like El Dorado, Placer, Yuba and Sutter counties in the Sacramento area they are red counties in the 2024 elections while Yolo, Sacramento are the blue counties in the 2024 elections.

There’s another factor how Sacramento managed to get a commercial station that run the News/talk format and it’s similar to some of the examples like the stations are in a market where the outlying areas are rural/suburban which cater to the demos in the market.

 

[Red78]

Persons Using Radio for LA is about the same as San Francisco. There is not enough difference to make usage a reason for not supporting talk.

(I took Persons Using Mass Media and removed the streams to get the traditional PUR)

Lack of talent doesn't help either.

 

[TheBigA]

Lack of talent doesn't help either.

As we said earlier in this thread, there are so many better ways to make more money if you're talented. San Francisco is big, but talented people today can go national or even global. At one time, the cost of entry was expensive. Now it's not.

 

[Mark Roberts]

As we said earlier in this thread, there are so many better ways to make more money if you're talented. San Francisco is big, but talented people today can go national or even global. At one time, the cost of entry was expensive. Now it's not.

San Francisco and the nearby parts of the Bay Area, historically, have also tended to be rather parochial*. Someone who succeeds in San Francisco as a local personality might not do so well elsewhere. This isn't absolute, of course, and San Jose/Silicon Valley seem less focused on Bay Area-specific cultural and other issues.

(* For years, KPIX-TV had a slogan: "The Bay Area - the best place on earth". That's what I mean by parochial.)

 

[Weiserguy]

San Francisco and the nearby parts of the Bay Area, historically, have also tended to be rather parochial*. Someone who succeeds in San Francisco as a local personality might not do so well elsewhere. This isn't absolute, of course, and San Jose/Silicon Valley seem less focused on Bay Area-specific cultural and other issues.

(* For years, KPIX-TV had a slogan: "The Bay Area - the best place on earth". That's what I mean by parochial.)

I don't know if I'd call that parochialism. Boosterism might be a better descriptor. Like with any similar positioner, it's not meant to be taken literally.

For many years Ron Lundy would open his radio show on WABC, and later WCBS-FM, by exclaiming some variation of "From New York, the Greatest City in the World!". (A clip of Lundy uttering the phrase even appeared in the opening minutes of the movie Midnight Cowboy, as the Jon Voight character was approaching Manhattan in that Greyhound bus.) It was later adopted by David Letterman to open his CBS Late Show. Is that parochialism, boosterism, or just creating the impression that you're originating from the Biggest and Best place on Earth?

 

[cc333]

I don't know. I think the Bay Area is a fine place, if you can afford it.

I wouldn't call it the best place on earth, though. Without much effort, I can think of a few places that are better in some important ways (more affordable cost of living, cleaner air, more space). The weather, however, is pretty hard to beat because in my opinion, most other places in the US are too dry, too wet, too hot or too cold. The Bay Area also doesn't have the destructive tornadoes, hurricanes, floods or blizzards that many other places get. It does have some major problems with fires and earthquakes, though, so pick your poison I guess?

Speaking of slogans, one that may classic hits stations use – "The Greatest Hits On Earth" – annoys me. Sure, some of the so-called hits they play are good enough. A few maybe actually are great, but the greatest on earth? Not for me (but then, I'm an outlier, so conventional programming wisdom doesn't work too well for me).

c

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

San Francisco and the nearby parts of the Bay Area, historically, have also tended to be rather parochial*. Someone who succeeds in San Francisco as a local personality might not do so well elsewhere. This isn't absolute, of course, and San Jose/Silicon Valley seem less focused on Bay Area-specific cultural and other issues.

(* For years, KPIX-TV had a slogan: "The Bay Area - the best place on earth". That's what I mean by parochial.)

I get what you mean San Jose/Silicon Valley is less Bay Area Specific. Some of this is how many tech companies and Venture Capitalists have to get their talent from other parts of the world via workers visa or some of their talent come from San Joaquin County and commute to San Jose for work. Now there’s been lots attention in the past 5 years about jobs leaving California for Texas with that states major cities negotiating to get Ex-California residents to move there.

https://www.chron.com/culture/article/tech-hubs-2025-texas-20337530.php