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Would All Comedy Be Worth a Try in This Area?

B

Barry

AllAccess reports that Clear Channel just flipped one of their AM stations in Riverside/San Bernardino California to an all stand up comedy format. It has been given the call KFNY (as in "funny"). Programming is being provided by the new Donkey Comedy Network.
The Clear Channel manager for the market gave what seems like a reasonable justification for this: "On AM radio you have to find a niche -- something special that no one else is doing...and everyone loves to laugh."
Donkey says that the bits will be rather short, and presented in a fast paced manner, to suit short attention spans. They assert that demand for the format has been carefully researched.
With so many AM stations in the area airing similar stuff, might this be a reasonable gamble for a suburban station seeking to differentiate itself? Comedy is a mainstay of TV. Perhaps it could also work on terrestrial radio?
 
I wouldn't see an NYC licensed station do all-comedy, but it's possibly a small AM in Jersey could do all-comedy.

Being from the LA area, I would like to check this station out. Too bad 1440 AM doesn't make it too my area so most likely I'll have to wait until I go to Vegas to listen :p
 
I believe all stations that have tried this format have failed. Being from the Washington DC area, we were the first to be exposed to this with the sign-on of WJOK out of Gaithersburg in 1983. Sadly, this lasted only about a year or so. Part of that station's problem was its weak signal. I don't know why KFNY is making a go at it. Now, if they were to feature certain shock-jocks' skits, be 'personality driven' or offer other features, they might have a chance. But just to play routine after routine will get stale before long. I would include music features (parodies, novelties, etc.) as well on such a station. Now for a station, 620, 1130, 1160, 1190, 1380, 1560 or 1600 might be considerations.
 
It doesn't matter what you try...AM is dying.

Oh sure...the big border blaster AM's aren't going anywhere anytime soon. But, the first or second nail is in the coffin.

But almost no one under 50 bothers to listen to AM. Few people under 40 have ever listened to an AM station and, frankly, don't know or care what it is.

Listeners only travel from AM to FM...nothing can make them go the other way.
 
wouldn't see an NYC licensed station do all-comedy, but it's possibly a small AM in Jersey could do all-comedy.
Click to expand...


In 1999 there a comedy format on 1450AM WFPG Atlantic City......They carried the Comedy World Radio Network until it folded a year or so later.
 
KevinFodor said:
Few people under 40 have ever listened to an AM station and, frankly, don't know or care what it is.
Click to expand...

Wrong...once a year, when I'm at the cabin up in rural Maine, I sit on the deck and listen to WBZ-AM while I eat breakfast and contemplate the back yard.  So there, when I am in geography so isolated that the UHF band won't work, its AM for me.


To chime in on the all comedy...if you could somehow overcome the immense problems of audience inability to speak English and acquiring content cheaply, without devolvong into shock talk, which Free-Fm proved unviable, then perhaps. At times O&A and Stern, in their heydays, were almost stand up, and their audience were quite large. But the content was expensive, and both of them eventually got beaten in the rating by the Spanish speakers.
 
Of course, Free-FM had the WFNY-FM call letters. Which makes sense because their attempt at FM talk radio without Howard Stern was quite laughable.
 
It would be a good HD2 format. Except that the comedians would have a larger audience at their own shows than the total number of HD radios owned by the general public in the market, and people won't get the jokes if a few sentences are cut off because the HD drops out.

At least with music HD2s they don't have an additional cost to program them and people can sing the lyrics when the HD drops out.
 
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