Bob Hudson
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Wither San Diego radio
- Thread starter Bob Hudson
- Start date
sdwulfdawg
Star Participant
The mega corporate broadcast station entities have made San Diego radio stations as boring, cookie cutter as possible....so there is very little to gossip about.
KOGO keeps getting slower and slower in the slow lane on I-8... KFMB-AM drowns itself in a rain barrel of Tea Party politics, has given up on mornings with a syndicated show.
We are the seventh biggest city, the second biggest in California, and the stations here are as interesting as overcooked corn in a sweet drippy milk sauce at MCRD with no innovation.
Personally, with KFMB-AM drifting lower and lower into ratings you would think that the Meyers family would do something with that station than keep Dave Sniff comfy in his job till retirement as a caretaker PD. If I was an owner of that station, I would find it unacceptable that they are 20th in the ratings, while other news/talk stations around the country (KFI, KSL, etc.) hover in the top five. KFI in Los Angeles is on in my car and by my bedside.
KOGO keeps getting slower and slower in the slow lane on I-8... KFMB-AM drowns itself in a rain barrel of Tea Party politics, has given up on mornings with a syndicated show.
We are the seventh biggest city, the second biggest in California, and the stations here are as interesting as overcooked corn in a sweet drippy milk sauce at MCRD with no innovation.
Personally, with KFMB-AM drifting lower and lower into ratings you would think that the Meyers family would do something with that station than keep Dave Sniff comfy in his job till retirement as a caretaker PD. If I was an owner of that station, I would find it unacceptable that they are 20th in the ratings, while other news/talk stations around the country (KFI, KSL, etc.) hover in the top five. KFI in Los Angeles is on in my car and by my bedside.
Would it be that crazy for CBS to rebroadcast KNX here with breaks for local coverage, local stories? I find it amazing and pathetic that even at this stage you can often get better news on San Diego over KNX than from any of the local stations. As to where radio is going, it does seem to be going Spanish, religious, and Asian. It has so much going against it. Don't you flip the dial when an obnoxious ad comes on? They are supposed to be memorable, to be noticeable, and they often are in the same way as a mosquito bite; they are avoided. And my old gripe, right wing politics driving away, alienating the 30 % of the population that considers itself Democratic. KLSD had a solid, loyal Democratic following, that was a nice start, but it doesn't seem to have fit with the views of the ownership, nor did KPOJ in Portland despite their acceptable ratings. All things considered, AM will probably be virtually all non English within our lifetimes.
That's a lot to cover. Let's concentrate on a KNX simulcast...
Yes, it might be smart to rebroadcast KNX in San Diego, although how would you do it? Would you simply have KNX try to include a few San Diego stories everyday, as it tries to do a few Orange, San Bernadino, Riverside and Ventura County stories each day? And would the traffic reporters include San Diego accidents? And the sportscasters include coverage of the Chargers and Padres as local teams?
Or would you block out a segment each half hour and run a San Diego-only local newsbreak for several minutes while 1070 is doing other local news? I know Time Warner Cable does something similar for its NY1 local news channel. For viewers in New Jersey, every half hour they block out a few minutes of New York City news and insert a prerecorded New Jersey newscast. But would that be enough for San Diego listeners?
And where would you put it? CBS owns no AM stations in San Diego. Would you blow up one of CBS's two FM stations for a KNX simulcast? Would you have CBS buy a little-used AM station for this simulcast? KOGO and KFMB have the best signals but they're not for sale. Salem isn't going to sell 1130 or 1170. Family Radio already downgraded from FM to AM 910 a few years ago. They're not selling that station either. All the other AM stations probably have worse coverage in San Diego than 1070 has. So if you're not already listening to 1070, would you listen to, let's say, 1040 if it had a San Diego newsbreak every 30 minutes?
Of course, CBS could also lease a Tijuana station, but then that's complicated. Hey, it's a good idea to get Market #17 an All-News station on the cheap, using KNX. But I'm not sure how it would be done.
Yes, it might be smart to rebroadcast KNX in San Diego, although how would you do it? Would you simply have KNX try to include a few San Diego stories everyday, as it tries to do a few Orange, San Bernadino, Riverside and Ventura County stories each day? And would the traffic reporters include San Diego accidents? And the sportscasters include coverage of the Chargers and Padres as local teams?
Or would you block out a segment each half hour and run a San Diego-only local newsbreak for several minutes while 1070 is doing other local news? I know Time Warner Cable does something similar for its NY1 local news channel. For viewers in New Jersey, every half hour they block out a few minutes of New York City news and insert a prerecorded New Jersey newscast. But would that be enough for San Diego listeners?
And where would you put it? CBS owns no AM stations in San Diego. Would you blow up one of CBS's two FM stations for a KNX simulcast? Would you have CBS buy a little-used AM station for this simulcast? KOGO and KFMB have the best signals but they're not for sale. Salem isn't going to sell 1130 or 1170. Family Radio already downgraded from FM to AM 910 a few years ago. They're not selling that station either. All the other AM stations probably have worse coverage in San Diego than 1070 has. So if you're not already listening to 1070, would you listen to, let's say, 1040 if it had a San Diego newsbreak every 30 minutes?
Of course, CBS could also lease a Tijuana station, but then that's complicated. Hey, it's a good idea to get Market #17 an All-News station on the cheap, using KNX. But I'm not sure how it would be done.
KNX mixes local LA news all through the hour; for San Diego there is a lot of less-than-relevant material.
KNX bills about 3 times the billing of the top billing San Diego station and there's 6 times the total market revenue in LA as there is in SD, so it is very unlikely that KNX would alter its clock and its presentation so it could be rebroadcast and / or localized to a smaller market.
It was down below a 1 share in the sales demos and had little revenue.
Clear Channel put progressive talk via Air America on a number of good signals like Miami and Portland and LA and several mediocre ones such as KLSD. When Air America failed, the ratings continued to decline and they switched those that were bleeding the most. Interestingly, your idea that this has something to do with the views of ownership is disproven by the fact that they still have progressive talk on 1150 in LA, a fairly significant facility and signal.
After the Air America disaster, KPOJ also continued to decline and ended up with about a 0.5 in 25-54. It did not have anywhere near respectable ratings.
In San Diego, only one AM is in Spanish and that one has a contemporary Christian format. As a rule, in any US market with a big enough Hispanic population to support a Spanish language FM there will be little listening to an AM. Mexico is on its way to eliminating about 85% of all AMs by moving them to FM after declaring AM to "not be viable".
AM already has well below 10% of the under-55 market in most places in the US. In some markets, it's less than 5%. AM stations will hang on for years serving smaller niche communities with the possible exception of a few huge signal stations that will continue to attract decent audiences, albeit old ones.
The problem here is that radio does not use the population of a city to define a market. It uses metropolitan areas. In the case of of San Diego the market is all of San Diego County and it ranks as the 17th largest US Metro Survey Area.
It's generally pretty hard for an all news station to work outside the top 10 or 12 markets.
Is it possible some business arrangement might come up in which a non CBS owned station in San Diego repeats much of KNX then inserts local at times. Sort of like syndication. That might not be a bad idea for KFMB, if the numbers work. And if syndicating the general KNX coverage worked in San Diego, might it also not work in Santa Barbara, Vegas, Phoenix...etc?
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gibsongk55
New Participating Member
So many stations and so much repetition. No wonder there is so much consolidation.
SuperRadioFan
Star Participant
david
Leading Participant
Actually, 1150 AM in El Lay was flipped a couple years ago to another right-wing formatted talk station (The Patriot). It still includes some consumer business talk programming (Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey) but the progressive voices were removed entirely from its Mon-Fri format.
As to the rest of this thread - agreed. SD radio used to be more fun than LA radio. B100 was very local. Jeff and Jer on 94.9 were very local. 91X has always been a San Diego original. The Flash on 92.5 was a fun station. KSON loved being San Diego's Country. KSDO when it was on 1130 felt like San Diego. KFMB used to be one of the nation's signature heritage stations with both MOR and talk mixed in to robust ratings. Much of that is now gone. Even locally owned KPRI does not have a full local feel to it. KBZT tries but with the Entercom take-over today I fear that its uniqueness may fade. At the moment KIFM may be the most unique station around, and it basically is templated on what stations across the country sounded like a generation ago.
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