Is Bonneville happy with what's happened to KIRO-FM?

It looks like KIRO-FM's 12+ratings and cume are finally increasing but they aren't anywhere to close to being #1 again. Bonneville was successful with WTOP, KSL, KTAR and so were other fomer AM's like WIBC and WWL but KIRO has been a disaster so far now in recovery.
I can't imagine the Mormons are happy with the way they mistakenly blew it here.

Boneville is down the turd whirler in Seattle Recovery is 13th to 12th place 25-54 :-\ They are beating KOMO who lag in 20th place. Oh Yipee KTAR used to be number one as an AM powerhouse with news and talk and sports. KFYI kicks them 12+ and 25-54 KTAR lags around sixth place. Only in DC and in the homeland of Salt Lake does this news dog have bite :-X Boneaville has strong AC stations and should flip KIRO-FM to SOFT AC. Put Mariners, Seahawks, News and Talk on KIRO-FM and own it 8) Who knows if they do that now they could get back up to 11th place

In my mind, it isn't any real surprise that KIRO is struggling to bring its audience to FM. Historically, FM formats have developed slower in Seattle (terrain, audience less likely to change habits, etc.), but it needs more than 9 months to prove itself. The AM should be stronger with the Seahawks, but they are on both AM/FM, and the Hawks are not having an exactly stellar season. I don't think Bonneville is in panic mode, this company tends to be patient and will wait it out for as long as they can. I don't expect to see any changes in strategy in 2010.

A change in overall "ranking" with Arbitron by one place is purely relative and not an objective measurement. It's nothing you can bank on when it's within a statistical margin of error. You need longterm trends, and time to let them develop.

But KIRO management also need to address several other issues, each of which are probably contributing to their audience decline, in my opinion. And I suggest they don't wait to consider some of these factors:

Besides the irrelevant-to-Seattle sydicated programming that popped up, and canning the only "liberal" hosts (weekends and late nights) (hey - if you only want the "end of the private roaders" in outside of Puyallup and Arlington to listen, there's other ways to reach them without alienating your core demographics). I also find the spot load sounds a lot more, ahem, loaded on FM now. I don't know if they've added even more minutes for their hourly spot load, but it sure sounds like it, since programming between commercial breaks often sounds to be only a few minutes, while many of the commercials breaks seem to routinely be at least 4 and 5 mintues long.

At least they toned down the canned intros to the newscast. No need to growl as us, sir.

The ultra-brief local newscasts and traffic/weather (they were awfully short before, but blink and you miss 'em now) seem to be geared to what top 40 stations did when they had to run news, and not to the interests or tone of a news-talk audience.

And the audio processing is awfully loud and 'in your face.' Whether a listener cites that or not, I still think it's fatiguing and goes against the grain of what you'd want to provide for a talk audience. Unless you want them to shout. Heavy compression, pumped volume, and mega bass EQ just make it sound desperate and cheap to me. THey may stand out conpared to other signals, but there aren't many people dialing across with an analog needle anymore. Anyone who'd be attracted to a signal that sounds like KIRO-FM does now is probably not interested in news and talk programming, and is likely to be one of those guys with the loud mufflers that I hear every evening gunning it past the stop signs in my neighborhood until dinnertime. "Good Hearted Woman is on, y'all! Yee-HAW!"

KIRO-FM. Just who are your trying to be now? I don't think a lot of your old audience can tell anymore.

KFNNradioFan said:

The KIRO 97.3 FM signal is one issue as has been addressed here. Phoenix's N/T 92.3fm covers the entire concentrated square-shaped metro region w/ a great signal, unlike 97.3 covering an elongated, undulating area of Thurston,Pierce,King,Snohomish,etc. counties. The state capitol, Olympia, is on the fringe. How is the FM signal in Olympia? Bellingham? Whidbey? Bainbridge? Pt. Angeles? (Note that KSL Salt Lake is on both AM and FM.)

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Yes KIRO-FM (97.3) covers Olympia, Whidby Island, Bainbridge and Port Angeles. Bellingham is not in the Seattle/Tacoma market, so (as others have pointed out), it doesn't really matter. Bellingham have their own stations dedicated to that geographical area.

Sure there are places on the backside of hills which reception is more difficult with FM, but I could argue the same about reception in office buildings (or lack thereof) for AM. In fact, I would confidently argue that there are far more elligible radio listeners working in buildings within downtown Seattle/Bellevue who can't hear AM stations, than all of those rural areas that may experience shadowing from terrain in your list, combined.