It doesn't always work that way. The Portland Trailblazers flagship station is regularly third in the format despite 25KW on 620!
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When will this happen in L.A.?
- Thread starter Loverofradio
- Start date
Portland isn't exactly a pro sports town. They're a one-team market. Who airs the University of Oregon and Oregon State games? I would think those stations do well during their football and basketball seasons. Do they have much coverage of the Seattle or Bay Area pro teams?
So, do you believe what you wrote earlier, or not?
I suspect you don't want to issue a rebuttal because your original statement simply isn't accurate.
Here's my viewpoint: the Dodgers and Clippers would never consider partnerships with 570 KLAC if the signal were poor. (This isn't the Angels or the Ducks, after all.)
If AQH share in Men 25 to 54 were consistently poor (compared to normal) over a substantial length of time, revenue would likely take a hit, and there'd be some people replaced.
If signal strength were irrelevant to KLAC's profitability, iHM would move the format to a signal with poorer coverage such as KEIB. They'll never do that, because signal strength DOES matter.
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There was also KMAX years ago at 107.1 (if I remember correctly). Had Big Joe McDonnell, who was a large local sports personality who gained popularity and quite a following at KMPC when it was sports in the 90s. KMAX thought it could leverage Joe just like our poster describes.
The station died a quick death and Joe's career was never the same afterwards.
Reading your responses, I really get the impressions that 1) you are young and 2) you really don't know history, particularly radio history in Los Angeles. If the large commercial radio operations in Los Angeles (IHeart, Audacy, Cumulus) thought that sports radio would be a winning formula in the market, they would have flipped one of their stations to that format a while back. If Bonnville (which at one point owned 100.3 FM in Los Angeles and currently owns two sports outlets in Phoenix, one AM and one FM) had thought that sports talk might have worked on FM, then it would have either not sold KSWD or demanded more money from Educational Media Foundation to purchase the frequency.
Do things change? Yes, they do, but, outside of technology, changes tend to happen over a very long period of time. The only real way that I could see the big companies reconsidering sports on FM in Los Angeles would be if both playing music over the air and streaming that music online became too expensive for even national advertisers to support but that is not the case now. I was considering if an all-sports in Spanish FM radio outlet might work in the Los Angeles market--but there is now only one national spanish sports network right now and KWKW has the rights to that.
So you believe that the 1540 story is old history and won't happen again if someone else tried it? I'd say in response: put your money where your mouth is. Go to your local bank, fill out a loan application, and then 1) try to buy a local radio station with it; and 2) program it with sports talk with no games. Then report back to us on how successful (or not) your venture was and why.
Bonneville did not sell KSWD to EMF. They sold it to Entercom (Audacy), who then divested the station to stay in regulatory compliance as part of the CBS Radio acquisition.
Just because none of the big owners have placed All Sports on an FM in L.A. shouldn't necessarily be interpreted as a lack of viability for such a format under the right circumstances.
I do agree with you that some top-shelf PBP rights would need to be obtained to make any such venture successful.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That's not the way you phrased it originally ... you made it a challenge:
If you want a valid rebuttal, please be as complete in the future as you were in the more recent post.
I agree completely about your statement regarding the Dodgers (who own a piece of KLAC now, BTW) and Clippers taking the signal into account when affiliating. And yes, absent those affiliations the remaining programming would likely be weak enough to warrant moving it to 1150.
But none of that is reality, "what if" fantasy scenarios are frowned on by RD management, and it still doesn't make an argument for an FM sports station.
The Dodgers did spend five years on 1150.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Indeed true, Flipper. And look how quickly they took iHeart up on the offer to move to KLAC with a part-ownership of the station.
Yes, a no-brainer for them.
The main thing the team gets from iHeart is production of online content. The on-air broadcast is incidental.
My rebuttal was valid as originally written. You, not me, stated ratings and signal mattered very little to KLAC's success. My rebuttal was essentially, "well if that's the case, then why wouldn't iHM slash the programming budget to bare bones and move the brand to the weakest of its three AM signals from a geographic coverage vantage point?"
Where we agree (I think) is that the Dodgers and Clippers are strategically important to KLAC. It's good that you've now acknowledged the reach of the signal is indeed an important consideration.
I still would like to know if you think a 0.0 share in Men 25 to 54 during sports talk programming would command the same billing as a 10 share.
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Two. In the Northwest, MLS is much bigger than in most other parts of the country, so Timber play-by-play has more value to a radio station (and potential to attract listeners) in Portland or Seattle than in, say, Boston or Chicago, where their MLS franchises are afterthoughts.
Marlins air on iHeart's mostly syndie Fox Sports AM 940. Puny night time signal about to be downgraded. Audacy gave up on airing the Marlins several years ago.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Yes ... and no. Yes, having pro teams' games is strategically important to any sports-formatted station. Having franchises in multiple leagues (in this case, both MLB and NBA) is also a good strategic move as it leaves less of the year absent of live games.
Although it's not directly comparable, let me give you an example from early in my career . At the first station I programmed in 1978-1981, KAAP-AM/FM in Ventura County, we were an affiliate of the network operated by KMPC/710 and carried all the games of the California Angels, Los Angeles Rams, and UCLA Bruins (both football and basketball). We used to split the AM from the simulcast for the games; note that with that combination of teams there was never any period longer than a few weeks when we didn't have at least one game from one sport or another.
If that combination were available today as a package, you can bet I would want to build an all-sports station around it. But reach of the signal? KAAP-AM was a mere 1kW, but had strong coverage throughout the market.
I compared the daytime primary contours of KLAC and KEIB. 570's 2mV/m signal goes up to Ventura/Oxnard, into the Antelope Valley, and the Inland Empire (stops just short of the Coachella Valley), plus some coverage in north San Diego county (along the coast, mostly).
1150 still gets to Ventura/Oxnard, but the Antelope Valley and Inland Empire are in the lesser 0.5mV/m contour, as is the coastal coverage of North County. But the Dodgers also have a network affiliate in Lancaster (KAVL/610) so there's some mitigation.
Those are relatively minor differences in signal, so if iHeart needed 570 for something else, 1150 would be a reasonable substitute, and the change in coverage area wouldn't likely reduce agency buys, since they are more concerned with the demographics (as has been referenced above).
Since the vast majority of ad buys in L.A. are agency buys, and since they buy based on the format and not the ratings, I do not think the billings would change by much.
While this is the Los Angeles board, my comment was not specifically meant to say that sports talk should replace one of the current formats or that sports talk without play by play would definitely work in Los Angeles. It was in response to the statement that a sports talk station must have play by play to be successful. Someone responded by saying “I didn’t understand the business,” a rude and arrogant way to shut down a discussion. It’s not like what I proposed was some radical idea. If all you radio experts think there is no audience for sports talk unless the games air on the same station, there isn’t much more to say. We can just agree to disagree.
LOL, Decades ago the Dodgers actually moved the games to 1150 kHz. They got nothing but complaints...particularly nighttime, Many listeners scanned the dial and found 720 in Vegas (when it still existed) for night games. I even heard Rick Monday promote KDWN for fans trying to listen at night in "fringe" areas.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I made that remark, but not in direct response to you. Many others here dismissed your idea as being unrealistic, which led to my making that general remark.
