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Some Formats Don't Work in San Francisco

D

DavidKaye

Interview with Allen Shaw, the ABC exec who brought "Rock N Stereo" to the ABC FM O&Os. Interesting note here:

"San Francisco: KGO-FM changed calls to KSFX. Formatted AOR never worked in that market, owing to what Shaw describes as “KSAN being such a strong fortress of San Francisco counterculture in rock. We could never get any ratings against them until we went to urban/dance in the mid-1970s. We actually made some money and got some good ratings. You can take a format that is kicking ass in every other city in America, put it on in San Francisco and nothing happens.” [....]"

Full text: http://www.radioinfo.com/2012/08/24/the-state-of-rock-radio-part-five/
 
DavidKaye said:
Interview with Allen Shaw, the ABC exec who brought "Rock N Stereo" to the ABC FM O&Os. Interesting note here:

"San Francisco: KGO-FM changed calls to KSFX. Formatted AOR never worked in that market, owing to what Shaw describes as “KSAN being such a strong fortress of San Francisco counterculture in rock. We could never get any ratings against them until we went to urban/dance in the mid-1970s. We actually made some money and got some good ratings. You can take a format that is kicking ass in every other city in America, put it on in San Francisco and nothing happens.” [....]"

Full text: http://www.radioinfo.com/2012/08/24/the-state-of-rock-radio-part-five/
Click to expand...

Yes. When I left LA in 73, "Rock N 'Stereo" KLOS was popular, but their Bay Area equivalent - KSFX - never caught on. It flipped to "Musicradio" - a copy of 77/WABC, then to a soul and dance format, finally morphing into "Disco 104/KSFX" which (IIRC) was very popular, and rode the brief disco craze. I do recall that "Disco 104" blared out of every store and bar in San Francisco's Castro District, until the disco craze played out.
 
Country doesn't work in San Francisco. Don't bring up the Buddy Baron era KSAN that was way back in the 80s. Since then KSAN withered away and Young Country (Alliance then CBS) failed. The Bear (Bonneville) failed, The WOLF (Entercom) failed.
A lot of good broadcasters culdn't make it work.
 
geek-orama said:
Country doesn't work in San Francisco. Don't bring up the Buddy Baron era KSAN that was way back in the 80s. Since then KSAN withered away and Young Country (Alliance then CBS) failed. The Bear (Bonneville) failed, The WOLF (Entercom) failed.
A lot of good broadcasters culdn't make it work.
Click to expand...

Yep, even though "Nashville sound" works in other markets across the country. In fact it's bigger than hip-hop and rock combined. But not here.

I was really hoping that the 1550 KYCY or whatever it was called, would be successful with podcasts. When they had the format and ran short, clever podcasts it was a joy to listen to. But then they started running professionally done daily podcasts and it wasn't worth listening to for me anymore. It seems that the format might have been one of those "only in SF" formats, but I guess we'll never know.
 
How about MaxFM 95.7 before they went country back in 2005-2007. I know they were supposed to be based on 93.1 KCBS-FM JackFM in LA and a bit of 93.3 the Wave that failed here.
 
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