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Yikes…97.1 😱

The sports talk format is really aimed at older white males. Sure, some of the hosts are African-americans or other minorities, but the aim of the programming is to go after older white males.

I'm saying this because Los Angeles is now a majority minority city with most of those minorities being Hispanic followed by Asian- and African-american people. The sports talk format, no matter where it's at, has never really attracted these listeners, and I really don't think that putting sports talk on FM is going to make any difference.

The one football team this audience liked (when it was in Los Angeles) was the Raiders. While the Rams drew in a lot of white fans, my late father (who was a Rams fan and never liked the Raiders) actually attended a Raiders game in the late 1990s as the result of getting a free ticket through friends. He told my mother after he returned to Phoenix that he was surprised by how many black, Hispanic, and Asian faces were in the Raiders crowd--he never saw those large numbers at Rams games back in the early 1970s before we moved to Phoenix.

But I digress. I just don't think that sports talk, no matter who has the format, is ever really going to be a big factor in the Los Angeles ratings of today--the demographics of the listeners it's aimed is not as big as they were years ago and the current demographics just aren't interested in sports talk stations.
 
Ted, don't apologize for digressing about your late father's experience at the Raiders game. I think it makes a point about how certain teams attract certain demographics and others attract different demos.

The question here is: Absent the Raiders, and with all of the other teams in town largely attracting white fans in larger percentages than the well-chosen phrase "majority minority" citizens, is there enough potential audience for a Sports-talk station, with (apparently) no live games planned for the schedule, to get a piece of the usual white male demographic that the existing Sports stations attract?

Because if they can't, Audacy just took on an expense they didn't have to and prove nothing in the process.
 
I just don't think that sports talk, no matter who has the format, is ever really going to be a big factor in the Los Angeles ratings of today--the demographics of the listeners it's aimed is not as big as they were years ago and the current demographics just aren't interested in sports talk stations.

It hadn't been a factor before TheFanLA. We predicted this in 2017. The fact that it's on FM doesn't change a thing.

When the station signed on, posters asked where are all the experts who said this wouldn't happen. The answer is we're still here.
 
When the station signed on, posters asked where are all the experts who said this wouldn't happen. The answer is we're still here.

And we will be here to say "we told you so" when this disaster bombs.
 
Here's the thing, though---reading the Barrett Media piece with Andrew Williams that I posted this morning, it looks like the focus here is profitability, not ratings. Success is likely to come down to what the margins look like, and we don't know what the timeline and set goals (if any) are.

Sports Talk always bills well beyond what the numbers would suggest. If it were just shares, KSPN would be a disaster---and they're 23 and a half years in.

My beef historically has not been with the idea that someone could make money with another sportstalker, it was with people who swore they could get a three share and a top ten ranking if they'd just let them have a crack at it.
 
My beef historically has not been with the idea that someone could make money with another sportstalker, it was with people who swore they could get a three share and a top ten ranking if they'd just let them have a crack at it.

Those are the same people who think 6+ numbers accurately define a station's worth, when it's the demographic breakouts that actually do the defining.

As @davideduardo has pointed out many, many (MANY) times, there are some advertisers who specifically give the ad buyers directives to buy Sports stations, regardless of ratings. Now, whether or not that applies to a brand new Sports station, time alone will answer.
 


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