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KCSN/KSBR brand

TomásEstefan said:
Maybe, maybe not, but It's interesting to note that KCSN 88.5's primary (direct signal) target is the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita, and through an on-channel booster, the West Side or simply the western environs of LA, Santa Monica, etc. They have a translator covering Ventura, and another one covering Ojai. What's puzzling is there is no such facility covering greater Thousand Oaks as KCSN's direct signal is blocked by TO's KCLU 88.3. Why there's no translator in that area is a mystery, they probably could be shoe horned in somewhere. (Like buying out the religious LP FM on 107.9 that nobody listens to other than the individual who put it on the air.)
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It looks like they quite have their hands full trying to stay on the air with their existing facilities.

I also notice that David never questions whether there is room in the market for other niche formats, like say all-Iranian, all-Korean, or even the hate-filled KPFK which draws a 0.1 on one of the best signals in the land. That all seems much more niche than the AAA they are playing on KCSN.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
It looks like they quite have their hands full trying to stay on the air with their existing facilities.

I also notice that David never questions whether there is room in the market for other niche formats, like say all-Iranian, all-Korean, or even the hate-filled KPFK which draws a 0.1 on one of the best signals in the land. That all seems much more niche than the AAA they are playing on KCSN.
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Persian (Farsi) programming is available in LA on several HD signals 94.7 HD3, 95.5 HD3 101.9 HD3 and 107.5 HD3 and HD4. And of course on 670 AM.
 
Appears to be some changes going on at 88.5 this week. Saw some various tweets throughout the day, they also had the Les Perry Beatles show have it's last episode happen this past Saturday. Here are links to some of the tweets including from the PD Mookie:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1584620109641191425
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1584598268851367936
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1584587896173969408

Looks like some shows are getting moved around and Mookie is coming back to do a DJ shift in the evenings. Other than this tweets there hasn't been anything official from The SoCal Sound on their website or other social media. Some of the DJs have mentioned their shifts getting moved up an hour today.
 
I wonder what the status is of the other shows they had from 6-10pm: World Cafe, LA Buzz Bands, and Deeper Grooves? A lot of change, that's for sure. The motive seems to be keeping the regular music format going in the evening, and moving speciality shows to a later time.
 
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So Les may not have retired and instead is being kicked to the side? That would be very disheartening, especially given the quality of his shows and his long-time service to the station.

My first thought is these overall changes must be some sort of cost-cutting move, but my guess is all speialty show hosts are paid little if anything. They mostly do it as a labor of love.

Otherwise moving specialty shows to later hours only makes sense. It is a struggling niche station to begin with, having niche within a niche shows during prime listening hours can only hurt them.
 
Former listeners of 100.3 The Sound are lamenting in a Facebook group about the changes at 88.5, specifically the focus moving away from classic rock and the adding more consistent programming blocks that can attract a younger demographic. They claim all the commercial stations already target younger demos. My POV is 88.5 The SoCal Sound remains different from all the commercial stations in the artists it cultivates and exposes.

Strategically, rock is a diminished genre in the music ecosystem and so it needs (IMHO) radio stakeholders who are willing to find and expose the next generation of rock artists... so that the rock genre can (hopefully) return to flourishing and being the prominent musical genre for the 18-49 audience.

I think with these changes Mookie (PD) is trying to help KCSN/KSBR become a tastemaker in this globally influential Los Angeles market.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
I also notice that David never questions whether there is room in the market for other niche formats, like say all-Iranian, all-Korean, or even the hate-filled KPFK which draws a 0.1 on one of the best signals in the land. That all seems much more niche than the AAA they are playing on KCSN.
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There is a big difference between commercially sustained stations doing formats in Farsi, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Armenian and others and non-profit stations like 88.5.

All of the stations in other languages exist because there is a business community that supports them with advertising. If they did not make money, they would soon change to something else.

KPFK exists because there are enough donors to sustain it. Obviously, the content they do is better suited to podcasts as evidenced by the nearly non-existent audience.

But 88.5 exists because of they get money from public funds, and don't have a real and precise metric to justify what is a nearly zero-listener format. They average a 3,000 listener level in a market of 13,900,000 persons. What I question is the value of such a format when it comes from taxpayer money.
 
david said:
Strategically, rock is a diminished genre in the music ecosystem and so it needs (IMHO) radio stakeholders who are willing to find and expose the next generation of rock artists... so that the rock genre can (hopefully) return to flourishing and being the prominent musical genre for the 18-49 audience.
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I agree with the first half of what you say, but I believe the solution has to come from the music industry: The artists, labels, and associated teams. They need to focus on building careers, not just throwing music at streaming services hoping for it to find audiences. That kind of music is fine for KCRW. That's what they focus on.
 
david said:
Strategically, rock is a diminished genre in the music ecosystem and so it needs (IMHO) radio stakeholders who are willing to find and expose the next generation of rock artists... so that the rock genre can (hopefully) return to flourishing and being the prominent musical genre for the 18-49 audience.
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While we are at it, let's work on returning to their glory Big Band radio stations... along with those playing Beautiful Music and Smooth Jazz.
 
DavidEduardo said:
But 88.5 exists because of they get money from public funds, and don't have a real and precise metric to justify what is a nearly zero-listener format. They average a 3,000 listener level in a market of 13,900,000 persons. What I question is the value of such a format when it comes from taxpayer money.
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I worked in public radio underwriting for a short time. At least the station I worked with received just a portion of its budget, think about 10%, from government grants (CPB and others). The rest of the budget comes from giant donors and other private grants, corporate underwriting agreements, and listener donations.

As long as those 3K listeners are engaging with the station on a monetary basis, either through providing a recurring subscription or have some type of financial agreement with the station, it may be more beneficial to them to run this format vs. running a non-com Top 40 format, for example.

But I will say this: Public media is failing to serve the larger market as a whole, not even recognizing the millions of Spanish-language speakers. KCRW/KPCC/KCSN are not serving these listeners. Instead, they are targeting wealthier, Anglo listeners who are willing to pay for more "high-touch" media.

Public media is the most elitist institution I have ever worked in.
 
radiojomo said:
I worked in public radio underwriting for a short time. At least the station I worked with received just a portion of its budget, think about 10%, from government grants (CPB and others). The rest of the budget comes from giant donors and other private grants, corporate underwriting agreements, and listener donations.
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And, in fact, CPB-qualified stations must prove (on an annual basis) that they are qualified to receive that funding. It requires a minimum amount of financial support from donors, underwriters, etc. So even that 10% goes away if you don't get the other 90 from elsewhere.

Dave B.
 
DavidEduardo said:
While we are at it, let's work on returning to their glory Big Band radio stations... along with those playing Beautiful Music and Smooth Jazz.
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David... Snark like that is uncalled for. You seem to routinely have a bone to pick in threads that deal with rock formatted conversations. I remember your continued put downs of people who promoted Indie 103.1 as well as in AAA threads.

Your drawing a parallel between rock and big band (adult standards), beautiful music, and smooth jazz is disingenuous as Rock and roll has had arguably more impact on our nation’s political direction than any other genre in the mass communication era. It's been a transformative effect on American society because it encouraged younger people to break out of the more conservative American mold. It inspired increased use of technology in daily life, as well as (importantly) implemented civil rights movements that bolstered minority groups and races - into the far healthier scenario we have today than existed during the days of the march on Selma.

For you to suggest rock was, is, and should be no more than a niche is veering way off course.
 
david said:
David... Snark like that is uncalled for. You seem to routinely have a bone to pick in threads that deal with rock formatted conversations. I remember your continued put downs of people who promoted Indie 103.1 as well as in AAA threads.

Your drawing a parallel between rock and big band (adult standards), beautiful music, and smooth jazz is disingenuous as Rock and roll has had arguably more impact on our nation’s political direction than any other genre in the mass communication era. It's been a transformative effect on American society because it encouraged younger people to break out of the more conservative American mold. It inspired increased use of technology in daily life, as well as (importantly) implemented civil rights movements that bolstered minority groups and races - into the far healthier scenario we have today than existed during the days of the march on Selma.

For you to suggest rock was, is, and should be no more than a niche is veering way off course.
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Well...I don't think that's what Mr. dE actually meant..but to digress, way, way back in the day here in SoCal we had a little AM daytimer on 900 called KGRB (licensed to West Covina, but located actually in the City of Industry) it's format was music only from the 30s and 40s. They played exclusively 78 RPM records from their vast library of many thousands. The owner/manager/PD didn't believe in reissues, wanted the audience to hear the original sources. The station's signal, although relatively weak, could be heard throughout much of the LA Area and I found myself listening occasionally and thought it fascinating!...talk about a "niche" format!
 
TheBigA said:
Lots of other radio stations serve those audiences.
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But not for smaller music genres and hardly at all for news and discussion.
 
david said:
David... Snark like that is uncalled for. You seem to routinely have a bone to pick in threads that deal with rock formatted conversations. I remember your continued put downs of people who promoted Indie 103.1 as well as in AAA threads.
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And in all those cases formats failed to attract a significant and self-sustaining support.
david said:
Your drawing a parallel between rock and big band (adult standards), beautiful music, and smooth jazz is disingenuous as Rock and roll has had arguably more impact on our nation’s political direction than any other genre in the mass communication era.
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But it is in marked decline, with most of the following now among people over 35 to 40.
david said:
It's been a transformative effect on American society because it encouraged younger people to break out of the more conservative American mold. It inspired increased use of technology in daily life, as well as (importantly) implemented civil rights movements that bolstered minority groups and races - into the far healthier scenario we have today than existed during the days of the march on Selma.
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You are giving "rock" credit for things that "music" have been responsible for centuries.
david said:
For you to suggest rock was, is, and should be no more than a niche is veering way off course.
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I did not say "should be". I said "becoming". Which is true.
 
ChannelFlipper said:
It looks like they quite have their hands full trying to stay on the air with their existing facilities.

I also notice that David never questions whether there is room in the market for other niche formats, like say all-Iranian, all-Korean, or even the hate-filled KPFK which draws a 0.1 on one of the best signals in the land. That all seems much more niche than the AAA they are playing on KCSN.
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Hate filled is a little strong , in my opinion,just because you don’t agree with KPFK’s political views. I mean I don’t like them much either but they are entitled to put whatever programming they want on that frequency as much as Salem on 870 or IHeart on 1150
 
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