EARLIER TODAY...I talked about the old KGO Radio and offered a brief analysis as to how invaluable a service it provided to a community and a BIG community at that--the Bay Area.I said that KGO was more than just a radio station. That KGO was a community asset that catered to people who loved its news-talk niche and was an oasis for people to vent and share both good and bad alike; a family gathering place if you will. Furthermore, a place where smart people congregated around other smart people (hosts). What a unique situation!
TODAY, not only is the new KGO a veritable waste; its hosts cater to utter morons; dumb people. Dumb and dumber people.
Pay attention.
The new KGO is a cesspool of waste. A radio station that was once gold has turned into a vast consortium of taped assholes offering out benign sweet nothings. A radio station that is beholden to a mothball notebook that basically tells host that the listener is a dumb ass and reacts to tepid offerings and cookie contests. Classic stupid, innocuous chatter centered on 15-minute clusters more apt for Boise than the Bay Area. STUPID and DUMB too. That's the KGO playbook and even though it doesn't work and even though it's an insult to the average listener, KGO management suits continue its drivel because they have no brains; they have no money (an excuse, really) and a corporate radio bully that doesn't know how to run a business, let alone doesn't know how to run a RADIO business.
Other than that, everything is just fine.
KGO is run by its corporate dumb master, Cumulus...the king of smarmy and its innate ability to hire managers who average about six months on the job; fuck up the entire already, FUCKED-UP operation (like the new generation KGO is) and destroy whatever semblance of good things (smart things) that are still in working condition (like a host who doesn't adhere to the stupid playbook and has the ability to talk Current Events and real, legitimate things; sometimes horrible things like the Manchester Massacre) and US Election, just for examples.
If the new generation of KGO was run by smart people, then topics, idiocies, like, say, "what's your favorite ice cream; where was the first place you got laid; shit like that, wouldn't be on the air while important, SMART things, like, say, possible criminal conduct by the current president and some of his friends was being discussed and analyzed in the country and on cable TV. Furthermore, any real and credible radio station would cease running a TAPED program from earlier in the day at nighttime, 7 PM, of some bozo host talking bozo clown minutiae with his equally bozo female enabler while little kids were being bombed to death in the UK. Just a hunch.
The new KGO: your dumb and dumber radio station.
So you're writing a few paragraphs about Chip Franklin. Totally agree. He is vanilla without the vanilla, but with obnoxiousness and an air of superiority and condescension thrown in to distract from the even more ridiculous sidekick. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteChip's the guy that plugged up my toilet and destroyed my bathroom the last time he was at my house. How did he get it on the ceiling?!?
DeleteIt's a real toss up between the worst two clowns on KGO right now, Bearman and Chip Franklin. I have to give it to Franklin though...he's 100% irritating while Bearman hovers around 88%.
DeleteChip Franklin: thinks he's funny and he's not. Thinks he's the smartest guy in the room when on his best day he's probably slightly below average intelligence. Bombards listeners and interrupts news/traffic/whatever with lame anecdotes no one could possibly give a shit about. Is a grown man who still goes by "Chip".
Whoever put him on the air should go step in front of a train out of shame.
He's also seemingly on every single ad the station has with his awful grating voice (in addition to the obnoxiousness and condescension). He instantly makes me turn the channel.
DeleteI also think that anyone who identifies as a "comedian" should at least at some point have been able to say something genuinely funny or make someone laugh. Chip doesn't qualify. (Maybe he was funny in the 80's? He sure isn't now.)
The guy who put chip on is actually dead. He died in the building.
DeleteShow of hands if you want to know what happened to KGO?
ReplyDeleteAlright, I'll tell you anyway...
Sooo...KGO was the voice of the Bay Area, etc, and was middle of road (nationally left) and/or liberal. But those hosts either died off, were fired, went to prison, or somehow have a job even though they're the least talented of all the previous people.
The subs were modeled after those people; the types of people Mickey and Jack liked for the market. Those two were fired, and the subs were really never good enough to carry shows, but that's what existed on weekends.
Then radio took a corporate nose dive because of so many reasons I don't want to get into, but simply because they never modernized, and could never stop free music on the internet. Talk radio is a different product, but it's still the same companies who are losing their shirts. Because they had no money they stopped investing, or paying in talk radio talent. Instead, they went with old, white, dying off conservatives, who are grasping for air in an aging sea.
Of course, most of the sales managers are conservative, simpleton, white guys, who think "that works...do that!" So they try to repeat it. Except, it becomes pretty clear that's not going to work, as ad revenue drops nationwide. And it's DEFINITELY not going to work in the Bay Area.
What to do?
Well, you bring in talentless hacks from Atlanta who begin a plan on "lifestyle radio". Except, that doesn't work either, and it was tried on FM radio 10 years ago. The data tells them that "women with school age childen listen to radio still, and country music is still selling CDs!"
Cumulus was like, "Okay, then lets talk about your first boyfriend because moms love that shit, and lets create NASH!"
How's that working?
Then you have KGO, and they are completely of the mind that liberal radio doesn't work, and they're right because their talent is worthless. So they do the lifestyle thing because the sales guy loves it and the data says moms. In truth though, mom doesn't give a shit about AM radio, and it's why BMW is even removing it from their cars.
In the end, you can blame so many people for why things are they way they are.
Yet if they had actually been willing to pay someone like Swanson, who actually understood the market, he'd have paid legitimate people to broadcast, and would probably prove that the medium is viable. Instead, you are paying a nobody in a cheap suit from San Jose who tells the producers to "bring on authors" because that's what he likes.
And anyone who knows ANYTHING knows that AUTHORS AND WRITERS ARE FUCKING BORING when they speak.
That's why they write.
Bye, Bye, KGO.
Make sure you shut the lights, Justin.
Yeah, it's me again.
Si!
DeleteWhoever you are write more!
DeleteNice summation 7:00pm. However, a look back at the old KGO and they had authors and writers as guests quite frequently, in studio much of the time. And it was still excellent radio. Jim Eason, Owen Spann, among others up to Bernie and Gene all enjoyed interviewing authors. Of course news talk was the bread and butter, but it all depended(s) on the subject of the book/material and quality of interviewer/ee which generally were well done, entertaining, and enlightening.
DeleteYeah but now they have on authors to fill space and they stink
DeleteI've pretty much given up on KGO, my once go to station for over 30 years. It has as much depth as a Bakersfield strip mall. Can maybe a sale to someone who gives a damn and a complete overhaul work? I doubt it; it's probably too late.
ReplyDeleteNo one mentions the advent of PPM. Not a very favorable methodology for this format.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is right about the big differences between the old classic KGO and the new clueless KGO. Just awful what the Cloud Clowns have done to the once hallmark station.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the real Mr. Dumb & Dumber, Jim Carrey, is currently sporting a Bob Weir beard, and has for the last two years. Either he's mourning the state of the entertainment world (like Bay Radio) or he is competing in Stupid Beard Tricks with the retired David Letterman, who was last seen substituting for the ill Mr. Soul, Neil Young, in presenting Pearl Jam into the Rock Hall of Fame. Even Carrey and Letterman at their dumbest would be far better than the imbeciles that exist at KGO and many other radio stations.
Glad to see Rothman and Thurston kicked to the curb. KGO need to get a good local fire-breathing conservative on air
ReplyDeleteWhy? Isn't that what KSFO is for and every other failing talk station? Conservative radio has literally destroyed talk radio. Demographids tell the story and so do lack of advertisers. Get a clue.
DeleteNo more conservatives on KGO. A & G is bad enough, dragging down the rest of the ratings later in the day. Yes, you got KSFO with their alt-right hatefest 24/7 and a milder Con radio on 860. NO MORE CON RADIO, PLEASE!!
Delete> A radio station that is beholden to a mothball notebook that
ReplyDelete> basically tells host that the listener is a dumb ass and reacts
> to tepid offerings and cookie contests.
All media today. I don't listen to/watch anything anymore. Even PBS sucks for the most part.
Well, PBS shows like Frontline, American Experience, American Masters, Nova, et al., are still fantastic compared to most anything else out there.
DeleteChip Franklin can't even finish a sentence when he interrupts someone, he just butts in, loses his train of thought, moves on.
ReplyDeleteI do not doubt that his cohost would murder him with her own hands.
I think he's hopped up on something always. His mush mouth, blubberingly fast delivery makes most everything coming out of his mouth sound like gibberish. And it literally is in content. He's a boob in the first degree. To go from the intelligence of the likes of Gene, Bernie, and Ray to the idiocy of Franklin, Bare-man, Langon, or A&G, what a disastrous, outrageous, criminal act perpetrated against us all.
DeleteThe criticism that KGO has received is warranted.
ReplyDeleteThink about it, the character at 10:00am only talks about reruns of Survivor, are you kidding? or that clown at 12:00 noon who talks about tech gadgets or nutrition.
Then you have all the incessant laughter from some birdbrain phone operator that interrupts the flow of the program.
KGO, you deserve all the rips that come your way!
I listen the 10 a.m. to noon show almost every day, I don't remember a show about survivor, I remember it from the past, these days it is mostly politics, he does have guests on talking about various topics, that is no different from the old KGO. Do agree with you about the noon to 2 a.m. show, and that is the show that is replayed in prime drive time 7 p.m. I don't need to comment on that, I think Rich has said it all.
ReplyDeleteKGO intends its content to appeal to the Bay Area market demographic, which it does. 'Nuff said.
ReplyDeleteIt does? And what demographic is that? 18-54? Women? Millennials? Tell us, 7:02, how well are they appealing to "the Market"? How is that content doing, what are the numbers? The answer, sir, is they have, as well as you it appears, no clue- on anything.
DeleteAtlanta and their puppets locally aren't running a competent organization (penny stock, get it?). The SF cluster, including KGO, has no rudder, no plan, no long term idea. What's obvious, and painfully laughable, is every move they've made since 2011 has been the wrong one. And it's not just at KGO, it's across their monopoly of stations in the U.S.
So to sum up your inane comment: KGO "intends" to nothing, not content, not to appeal, and certainly knows nothing of "market demographics". Got it?
'Nuff said.
7:02 said ...."KGO intends its content to appeal to the Bay Area market demographic, which it does." ....
ReplyDeleteREALLY? please illustrate the demographic profile that listens to Armstrong and Getty, and then continues with Ronn Owens?? Who listens to A&G and then Pat Thurston... what age group, economic class... ? Who listens to Chip Franklin then purchases the same questionable products week after week being hawked on the weekend?? Please share your wisdom...