KGO Changes?

[paulsecic]

Citadel reports the result of their first quarter as owner of the ABC stations of a 7% drop in revenue.  Several markets are mentioned, among them San Francisco. 

I'm wondering if this means Cit will have a more hands-on approach to KGO (and thus screw it all up), or whether they'll decide to sell the station to Mickey Luckoff, Jack Swanson, et al. 

While I disagree with KGO's insistence on blowing off the under-50 crowd, still I can't fault them for an otherwise excellent presentation, stable of talent, and listenability.  I surely hope Citadel doesn't kill their golden goose.


I think Mickey Luckoff, Jack Swanson, and James Gabbert should buy KGO.

[JimA]

KGO is great!  Only thing is to dump those Mormon jingles and get some good ones from Dallas!!

[DavidKaye]

I think Mickey Luckoff, Jack Swanson, and James Gabbert should buy KGO.

I undertand Mickey has been trying to do this for more than 10 years.  ABC wouldn't budge.  This is actually why I brought up the topic.  If KGO/KSFO is off as the CFO of Citadel says, let's hope they don't send in somebody to mess with it.  Let's hope they either leave it alone or sell it to management.

[gameon]

KGO (and for that matter all AM stations) are down financially is because national business for radio is down across the board.  The national business that is being booked is overwhelmingly bought on the 18-49 demo, where AM talkers typically drop in rank position due to the preponderance of 50+ audience. 

the buyers and planners at these large conglomerate agencies are usually in their 20's and 30's which has never been a desireable demo for AM talk and is even worse now.  They don't "get" AM and thus they are easily convinced to not buy it (usually by FM sellers).

The FM music stations go in and sell the fact that even if a station like kgo is showing up in the top 10 18-49, most of the audience is over 45 and thus they are not buying a "balanced" station.

[oaktree]

And ... they are right, no?

In addition, there is a staleness to the glut of nationalized talk and because of the amount of talk available, there is a fragmentation of the audience and some who have just burned out on the format.  Nor is that upper demo being recycled with the up-and-coming generation of listeners, as AM quickly erodes and the "mainstream" talk (especially the national talkers) is yet to make its mark on FM, especially in the "desirable" demos.

It would appear, too, that owners/operators fear moving "mainstream" talk to FM because it does lose the wide-ranging coverage of a 50kw blowtorch and as long as FM is seen as "the music medium" and the younger, more sellable demos that don't even know what AM is, there is no wonder the buyers shy at being "balanced" with the dominance of 45+ demos on a band that isn't growing, but dies more each and every day.

Buying KGO is 1)  buying coverage 2) local personalities with legacy 3) Arbitron dominance for 29 years non-stop 4) localized talk 5) heritage 6) no national syndication 7) habit.  Few other stations have those claims ... anywhere.  But tomorrow will be here in this lifetime and some serious thinking will have to be done either with buyers "discovering" AM or KGO skewing younger and not the status quo that got them where they have been for 30 years ... at the top.  What willl the next generation bring?  At that, KGO still does a credible job in most every way.

[gameon]

cbs invested a ton in FM talk with FREE FM and it failed so miserably it cost Joel Hollander his job

[Production Boy]

Gameon and Oaktree...

Thank you for your thoughts. They are on the money. The theory that moving talk to FM is gonna cure the
younger demo problem is very popular. However, if the programing remains the same, why would they go there? Oh I know...Stereo, better audio quality...is that the theory? Or the "They don't know what AM is" explination.

WELL

What about content? The CBS Free-FM experiment proved without content, there is no audience. Thank you gameon. And now there is No Free FM...well I think the KLSX LA survived.

If someone 18-34 0r 25-49 wants to listen to Fergie and not hear about Iraq or taxes, then I guess that
Talk On Any Band is in trouble.

The fact that KGO is Live and Local is what makes them better able to respond instantly to what is happening in the Bay Area. The larger portion of the ABC/Citadel stations are mostly syndicated National
talk. It saves them money on one hand BUT costs them in these ways...They don't own ALL the inventory to sell. The Ratings are not as high which cost them on Rates.

KGO Rates are high because the Ratings are good. Those YOUNG time buyers are also looking for Cost Per Point when they place advertising. And KGO's is high, so they go where they can get the best deal. Many of our competitors will slash rates just to get the business away from us.

I guess the good news is that all those young folks will start to age...Start having kids, start to buy houses, start to worry about taxes, start to be afraid that their kids my have to go to war...and then they will discover the AM band...

[Lkeller]

Production Boy said: "What about content? The CBS Free-FM experiment proved without content, there is no audience. Thank you gameon. And now there is No Free FM...well I think the KLSX LA survived".

Not only Free- FM, but 95.7 KPIX ("the FM Talk Station")in the 90s, and KGO-FM (103.7) in the 80s.  Talk on FM has failed in the Bay Area in 3 decades.  I have no doubt that if they moved KGO 810 as is to an FM signal, it would remain a ratings winner, but I'm skeptical that it would suddenly pick up a lot of younger listeners.

"If someone 18-34 0r 25-49 wants to listen to Fergie and not hear about Iraq or taxes, then I guess that
Talk On Any Band is in trouble."

God, yes!  I don't think "info-tainment" is enough to carry a talk format - you need to discuss important issues in the NEWS - Iraq, the presidential elections, etc.  If celebrity and sex-talk is all Gen-Xers and the "millenials" (or whatever they're calling the gen that grew up in the 90s) want to listen to, the talk format will die out in another decade.  Did you ever hear Darian O'Toole on Free-FM? Her personal problems aside, listening to her talk about current events was painful and embarrassing.  Her sarcastic wit was very funny and entertaining in short segments between songs on K-Big in the 90s, but she didn't have the knowledge or background to make it work on a talk format.

"The fact that KGO is Live and Local is what makes them better able to respond instantly to what is happening in the Bay Area."

Absolutely, and you'd think radio programmers would learn this after the prior failed experiments with syndicated content on FM Talk stations - or low rated AM talk stations, for that matter  I guess the money savings are just too great to resist. How many stations in the Bay Area has Tom Leykis gotten crappy ratings on?  Four, by my count...but when KYCY tanks, some other station will probably pick up his show.

[oaktree]

...and then they will discover the AM band...

<sarcasm monitor on>  Yeah, in our dreams.  Our getting very lonely dreams.  If Arbitron is right in stating, as it has, that Persons-Using-Radio declines in the last 8 years equals a loss of 17% of the radio audience, that 80 percent of radio listening is to FM and the other 20% (with a healthy does from that 80 percent not listening only to radio, but to other means,) is true ... it doesn't take a mental giant to see that AM is dropping off the charts faster than a Fergie hit.

With the even faster introduction of new modes of "entertainment" and media choices, 51% of the radio audience as we know it today will be mostly non-existent in 15 years from now.  Of that, you can well bet that as gen Y turns 35-40 in that time frame, they're attention spans that are obviously dwindling today will not become any better and their choices will be more personal and immediate.

And for that which they don't know now (AM Radio) will become, out of that 49% of listeners available ... largely non-existent whatsoever. And for those thinking that it won't affect the small markets ... think again.  The proliferation of outside syndication and cost cutting will reduce the radio landscape markedly ... and AM will become a huge vast wasteland.

FM could make it until then ... but it will be so generic and "safe" (such as how AM started its rapid slide inside of five-to-ten years,) that that band will have similar problems by then as well.

The alternatives will be quick to materialize; much faster than they were thirty years ago. Twenty years ago. Ten years ago ... even five years ago.

It's going to be a wild ride in the next decade for radio. 60 year olds will be 70.  50 year olds will be 60. 40 year olds will be among the uncounted and uncared for...and below 40 ... they just won't care, because they will, literally, be held "to their own devices."

Think about how change has affected this industry and how quick that change has established itself to put us in the shape and condition we're in now.

With conditions as they are ... remember, KGO has seen change, too, through that time, and is not immune to more.  The loss of the 49ers may have been just one of the early signs of change. There will be more to come.

[DavidKaye]

Not only Free- FM, but 95.7 KPIX ("the FM Talk Station")in the 90s, and KGO-FM (103.7) in the 80s.  Talk on FM has failed in the Bay Area in 3 decades.  I have no doubt that if they moved KGO 810 as is to an FM signal, it would remain a ratings winner, but I'm skeptical that it would suddenly pick up a lot of younger listeners.

The Bay Area suffers from the fact that no single FM can reach the entire market, and since ratings are determined by the market as a whole, moving KGO to FM could suffer.  On the other hand, simulcasting could be a big boon. 

While it's true that FM talk has failed several times in the Bay Area, looking back on it, it was either poor quality or not giving enough time.  KGO-FM is a case in point.  At first it was a relay of KABC's top-notch lineup, including Ira Fistell, Ray Briem, Michael Jackson, etc.  Then something happened.  I don't remember if it was salary issues or KABC simply not wanting to syndicate their stuff after all, but suddenly one day the ABC Talk Radio network was all different.  There was an Ira Fistell-type character.  There was a guy with a Michael Jackson-like accent.  There were these replacement guys.  So, just as people were getting to know the crew suddenly they're all jerked and a new lineup shows up.  You just can't win with such short-sightedness

Case in point:  KGO has had a talk format for 43 years.  It has been #1 for 28 years.  That means that it took 15 years for KGO to get to #1.  No owner today is going to wait 15 years to let a station build that slowly.  They want results across 3 quarters, and if it shows growth then they'll think about whether to keep the format or not.