From a KGO Radio staffer who requested anonymity for obvious reasons:The individual was speaking about KGO's lack of ability to cover Sunday Morning's 6.0 Bay Area earthquake--
"The problem with KGO isn't so much the canned program. It's that there was literally NO ONE IN THE BUILDING other than a minimum wage board op. No exaggeration --NO ONE THERE!"
"No one--KCBS has a person on staff."
Note: KCBS went commercial-free all morning long and as of 9: 50 AM PT, is still providing wall-to-wall coverage on the quake.
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Does this surprise you? Once they started cutting us for news out of Dallas the place became a ghost town all weekend. The staffer is 100% correct. There is no one working at kgo news desk at night during the weekend. And then they call us all to rush back in just like they did with the plane crash.
ReplyDeleteWe're an embarrassment to local news in a major city especially since we refer to ourselves as a news station.
I can't say for sure but I would bet my job kcbs at least has someone to answer to the phone. I called KGO just to see what would happen and of course no one answered.
"Live And Local"
ReplyDeleteWhat did you expect Rich? Why would KGO have a news person in the building at 3:30 am on a Sunday morning anyway? Think about that for a moment before making another obvious statement like the one you just made. Of course KCBS has live, local announcers at 3:30 am on a Sunday, because they are fully staffed and have been the bay area's top news station for years. Cumulus has no interest in spending the time or money to compete with KCBS, so they have canned programs on after the news and one lonely, underpaid board op to run the show. So too does 'The Sports Leader,' (that's a joke!) which has one of the smallest staffs and is making a ton of money for the Dickhead Bros. But back to KGO for a moment; that's why their ratings will continue to flounder, because Cumullus refuses to pay to bring in more people. Jeez Rich, what are you telling us that we don't already know?
ReplyDeleteBut I was hoping to hear Deet-Truh Miles report about the damage in "Salsa-Lido"
ReplyDeleteRich I was listening to the Jonathan Kincaid Sports Show on KNBR when the earthquake happened--Then I heard you talking with Kincaid right afterwards!! Not only that but our very own Rich Liebermann had the Jonathan Kincaid "Tweet of the Day"!! Way to go Rich!!
ReplyDeleteKnbr has a small staff so they can pay for the rest of their sf cluster.
ReplyDeleteKGO did not JUST become a joke.
I'd be more surprised if someone had actually been there!
At 4:00 AM KCBS had a reporter in downtown Napa discussing a bail bond office where the facade of the building was basically in the street. At 7:59 AM a KGO reporter was doing a live report on the same subject. KGO NEWS "CANNED, LOCAL AND WE'LL GET TO IT WHEN WE CAN!'
ReplyDeleteKGO has a cool and hip sounding voice/promo guy. Don't ever forget that. And they have rock music.
ReplyDeleteAnd KGO has a person who lives right in the affected area who could have given early reports. But, she was probably too busy giggling.
ReplyDeleteLOL. That was mean. I thought about JJ too. I'm sure we'll hear about tomorrow morning.
DeleteOf course the first thing Lieberman thought when the earthquake happened was... goody, goody, here's another chance to criticize KGO.
ReplyDeleteI don't hate KGO like some others but there is no excuse for their coverage today. Just a disservice to the Bay Area. Their coverage was nothing short of bad so I guess it's better for them to cut away to a preseason football game.
DeleteNo one in their right mind would expect live quake coverage from KGO early Sunday morning. That's not what they are.
DeleteThe information was available from other sources.
Correct but it's what KCBS is. And it's what KGO claims they're trying to be. But I agree, I would never expect them...to do the right thing.
Deletewhy do people say things like no one in there right mind would expect emergency coverage.... Hello for over 60 years I have and they never failed to deliver and @ 3:00 am comfort folks.. From things like leaders getting killed @3:00 am to every earth quake I know of at night in 600 years KGO was there.. before any other reports Folks called in.. and you would figure out where it hit hardest.. You would know then your family or friends are OK or in a bad way... On and On... It should be against the law what KGO has become as the beacon of the bay... There 100% useless!!!! HOw can we in the bay not have had any good info on the radio.. 88.5 nothing NOTHING!!! 740 had some one on who had issues with getting calls But did what he could.... all so 2nd NO 3erd No last rate almost I thin a hour before USGS.. s(sp) Roberta Gonzales came through with real info for 740 That was it..... Thank R .G. for that... It was the only real work I could get in what they call a civilized place...... I am still so Damn mad about KGO.... lawyers and KGO I wish they all where in the Bikini Islands some time ago.
ReplyDeleteHuh? Are you drunk?
DeleteNot only was that a genuine example of authentic frontier gibberish, but also a courage little seen in this day and age!
DeleteSorry anon@5:13, things have changed. There used to be two daily newspapers in San Francisco, now there's just one.
DeleteDon't waste your time dwelling on how "great" KGO was (or wasn't) decades ago, just like Lieberman loves to do. It's a pointless diversion from living in the present.
"pointless diversion from living in the present.."... that says it perfectly....
DeleteThere was a little test circulating on the internet some time back that essentially said "You have been in radio too long if you remember this:" One of the most telling statements was "if you can remember when people thought radio was important." Yes, competition from the internet may have taken some of the shine from over the air broadcasting. But what really devalued it was the product being delivered in an era of syndicated, automated programming. Maybe it was the high prices paid for broadcast properties after the rules changed permitting an owner to have as many as six signals in a market and an unlimited number of markets across the country. Maybe it was necessary to cut costs. Or maybe it wasn't. Corporate owners lived so far from the communities where they owned stations that they didn't seem to care what kind of impact running their properties 'on the cheap' would result. We can lament the loss, and wonder how we got to this place. Yet the cold hard facts are that the big time players have a substantially different agenda than broadcasters of the past. It is what it is. And an earthquake merely points out that we are all poorer for it.
ReplyDeleteAlso disappointing - the local N/T in Sonoma County (KSRO in Santa Rosa) had minimal coverage of the quake. Sorry, just claiming "we're small market, what do you expect?" doesn't cut it. I remember when the Loma Prieta Quake hit, small music-only station in Pacific Grove (satellite formatted no less) had the small staff and owner of the station head up to their mountaintop transmitter site and they broadcast near round the clock equake coverage for 24 hours (until power was restored at their studio). The station had a police scanner and one telephone (and no cell phones) and managed to provide coverage to a public desperate for information. The fact that all KSRO did was occasionally provide bite-sized reports every hour or so was weak.
ReplyDeleteRich,
ReplyDeleteHere’s another way KGO and KNBR screw up. During the 49er game today, they jettisoned some of the network :10’s at the end of the spot breaks and replaced them for KGO news promos. What did that mean? It meant that every affiliate on the 49er Network ended up airing promos for KGO. A completely unprofessional move by Cumulus. You should never send your local programming out over the air when you’re feeding a network. It’s bad form, unprofessional and unethical to carelessly and knowingly have your calls air on other stations.
There are two correct ways to run a network:
1). Run your network like KSFO ran Golden West during their heyday. The network feed to the affiliates only carried programming that aired for the network. There were no KSFO news promos or Jim Lange morning show promos going out on the feed to the network stations. They received a clean feed of network spots – sans local content.
When local breaks ran, the net feed net spots or psas for fill. The broadcasts were always smooth and if you were listening to Giants baseball or 49er football on KMJ, KSBW or KATY, etc., you never heard KSFO’s call letters during a spot break.
2). The other way to run the network is that the “flagship” station produces the broadcast uploads to the satellite and then, like the affiliates they take a satellite feed of the game. This ensures that only local spots and promos will air on the flagship and none of their programming will air on the affiliates.
If KNBR or KGO were interested in producing a professional broadcast, they would run their network like Golden West did or they would follow option #2.
I remember during the big east bay hills fire back in the late 90’s, KGO interrupted their coverage of the 49er game in order to provide wall-to-wall coverage of the fire. As a SF-based radio station it was their obligation to provide that coverage to the local market. But….was it the correct programming decision for the radio stations in Fresno, San Luis, San Diego, Portland, Honolulu, to receive KGO’s fire coverage in lieu of the football game? I imagine most stations bailed out of the fire coverage and went back to local programming. But why couldn’t KGO have been professional about it and separated the two? Had they set up their network properly, they would’ve continued to provide 49er football to the network stations, while cutting away locally for their fire coverage.
Most modern broadcasters are too cheap, too arrogant and too stupid to understand how to build and maintain a proper sports network.
Let us review the KGO fiasco archives. Per the Dickies and parroted later on by Matress man: The audience of KGO wanted MORE news! Mattress man was excited because "we needed to do something, things are not working right now". Here we are, the news station we (the audience) "wanted" was AWOL during a regional catastrophe. Yet another black eye on the dickies and more importantly the spineless Matress man. Let's see how he spins it tomorrow. Embarrassing!
ReplyDelete