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KGO fired Burns, Rothmann, Gross and Taliafero today!!!

SFStatic said:
All news 810. When will they blow up one of their FMs to mate with it to take on KCBS head on?
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That would be incredibly stupid. San Francisco does not need a second commercial All News station. Even LA can no longer support a second all news station.

Very sorry to hear about the firing of Burns, Rothman, Taliaferro, and especially Gil Gross.
 
My guess is LA-based Doug McIntyre who does his red eye radio show from KABC and sometimes from WABC in New York will takeover for Ray on overnights.
 
They have zero shot against KQED and KCBS.

All-news costs a lot to run. And Cumulus is one of the biggest penny-pinching operations in radio, period.

Oh, and KGO just lost an irretrievable amount of audience goodwill forever with these firings. Those people won't go back to 810.

What could go wrong?
 
I cannot believe what these idiots have done to a legendary radio station.

I tuned in awhile ago and wondered why Gene Burns was on and there was no mention of what has happened today. Just a few minutes ago, Gene mentioned today is November 16th. What an unclassy operator these boneheads at Cumulus are. Fire people and then rerun a show from a couple of weeks ago.

The Bay Area doesn't need another all news station, especially one that will be a low budget operation.

This is a sad day in West Coast radio. I have listened to KGO fairly regularily here in Vancouver since the early 1970s.
 
According to Rich Lieberman, you can add Dr. Bill Wattenburg, Len Tillem and Joanie Greggains to the list of air talent that were sacked.

The Matier & Ross story mentions Ronn Owens and Brian Copeland as two hosts who remain at KGO. Haven't heard anything yet about Karel, Michael Finney, Brent Walters, John Hamilton or Stacy Taylor.

Have any off-mic staff been let go as well?
 
I wonder if they will do anything with KSFO-560 or not? If they had to do what they did with KGO, maybe they should have moved a few KGO talkers to KSFO and replace some of those syndicated voices with more local voices but of course that won't happen because syndicated talk is cheap!
 
Dumb. Mickey Luckoff is either laughing, crying or both.

In a related development, KCBS has filed with the FCC to change its call letters to ROTFLMAO. News at 11.
 
michael hagerty said:
Dumb. Mickey Luckoff is either laughing, crying or both.

In a related development, KCBS has filed with the FCC to change its call letters to ROTFLMAO. News at 11.
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No kidding. Soooo...if I understand correctly, KGO will be All News, but not All-the-Time, and only on AM, whereas their commercial competition has been a well-established and well respected Bay Area radio institution for 43 years...that now simulcasts on FM.

And their other competition is non-commercial KQED/NPR on FM, which in the new PPM world - is turning out to be very popular (though everybody knew that all along).

OR - alternately, Cumulus will decide to waste one of their reasonably well-earning FM stations to simulcast this experiment?

Yeah - that'll work. Great plan.
 
Big mistake, love them or hate them (recently fired air talent) they are as much the bay area as the Golden Gate bridge. I was always a fan of "talk radio" sad to see this day come. You could always count on KGO being there like a old friend but now it's time for me to say goodbye to KGO.

Good luck, you'll need it!
 
Lkeller said:
That would be incredibly stupid. San Francisco does not need a second commercial All News station. Even LA can no longer support a second all news station.
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Cumulus obviously wants to drive KCBS out of all-news. It's a little late for that. I've been told that CBS treats their people well (certainly they seem to stay around and provide consistently good reporting). KCBS and KQED-FM will make toast out of KGO.
 
A sad day indeed. Not entirely unexpected, but sad nonetheless. I always admired KGO. As a child, catching it at night in the Tri-Cities, WA - I loved Wattenburg's crustiness. Ray T I thought was obnoxious. The station was great though - and I listened. Here was a talker that would keep the torch burning in a world of syndicated talk that kept it local.

This new 'all news 10 hours a day with some talk' feels like a test. Keeping Owens at least anchors some local talk. If this turns out to be unsuccessful, they can try to revert it back.

It's already a success, because they've now driven the payroll way down. I think Cumulus knows they aren't going to out hustle KCBS, especially with only a partial all-news format and an AM only brand.

The points about the competition being on FM is spot on. The trends moving away from AM are undeniable, yet KGO, a station that was renowned for being ahead of the ball is now suddenly looking way behind it.

I wonder what would've happened in say, 2000 if KGO would've started an FM simulcast in the bay area. Would things have played out the same?

Phone calls have already gone out to Luckoff. I wonder if he'll publicly comment. He knew this day was coming too. That why he flipped Farid the bird and quit.
 
Cumulus just shot the only healthy horse in its stable.
 
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