MONDAY HAPPY HOUR ITEMS--
No, listen up. You
HAVE to report the Somerville story. It's a
NEWS story. In any other market,
THEY report it. It's not "
piling on." Far from it. It's a
LEGITIMATE news story. Fact is,
Frank (
Somerville)'s travails, especially his
DUI arrest last week is NEWS! At
KTVU, you have an anchor READ a story and
move on. It's not very becomming for KTVU but it
has to be reported. By ignoring it, KTVU looks bad. Like as if they're living in another world with their head in the sand.
*AWFUL news for KNBR and KGO, KCBS too: December '21 RATINGS are out and bad, bad times at KNBR--how the hell do you crater from a 4.0 to a 3.4 in Football season? The listeners have SPOKEN. KNBR, you've been EXPOSED. KGO Radio, a REPUDIATION: Cumulus continues to embarrass itself and KGO is now officially in the coffin. KCBS? You are a JOKE now.
Rich, you must know that KTVU is not making those calls. FOX is. It's all so sad for me seeing what happened to us. We dragged our station from #4 to #1. Frank should have never been given that job. He's a man little boy. Don
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ReplyDeleteRich, Richard, Riccardo.... KNBR lost the Giants when their season ended. Daily Manna from the heavens. The Niners play once per week. End of story.
ReplyDeleteNah. Football is king, year round. From prospects to the draft to summer camp, preseason and regular season, people are into the NFL all year. Their ratings are reflective of the mediocre talent that KNBR employs present day. Listen to just about any east coast station and you will immediately hear the difference.
DeleteThey need to get rid of Murph, Mac, the token black guy aka Rodney Brooks and Dieter.
DeleteKGO is auditioning McAlister for full time show. Who is the next head to roll? C'mon rothman!
ReplyDeleteshe filled in for pat thurston, and again rothman went out of his way to shamelessly brown nose her before he came on something to the effect that she did a 4 hour program and he,rothman, was listening the whole time and it was the one of the best things he ever heard
DeleteKim McAlister seems like a nice person and is fine for news, but oh, she is a dreadful talk show host. Can you say boring. No life, no excitement, so monotone. She does nothing to entice callers or make you want to listen.
DeleteOnce again: KCBS fluctuates. Historically. Yes, they're down over last month but that was their highest share in six months and this month's is their 2nd-highest.
ReplyDeleteKTVU is following the Fox handbook. Deny. Ignore. Deny. Ignore. That's why they call Fox "The Firm". Besides, now they have ultra conservative Julie Haener anchoring. Watch what happens next. Frank was a bay area longtime liberal. They balanced each other out when Cox owned KTVU. Expect the Fox-ification of KTVU to start rolling NOW. They already show those slanted national packages from the Fox mothership regularly. Embarrassing to the old KTVU guard. More of that and an anchor who won't object like Haener doesn't, that's what's coming. FOX CORP. 100%. Anyone who doesn't want to be associated with straight up Fox News will bail. Guaranteed.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of Brian Murphy, but I have come to the realization that most of the time I dislike him is when he is on air with that musician wanna-be Paulie. Last year there were times when he was paired with Adam Copeland that I thought they worked really well together. Paulie has got to go. He interjects in the middle of questions or answers. He says NICE!! far to often, and he drags down the morning show. He drives me crazy. Get rid of Paulie and fill it full time with Copeland.
ReplyDeleteCopeland is an obnoxious, know it all. Thinks he is smarter than anyone else. He isn't. His arrogance shows through. He is the reason I don't listen anymore.
DeleteWNYW New York was tight lipped when Ernie Anastos said on air, "gotta fuck that chicken!"
ReplyDeleteWNBC New York was tight lipped when Sue Simmons blurted out, "What the fuck are you doing??!!"
I'm familiar with both of those incidents. In the first, Anastos had a momentary slip-of-the-lip when the newscast came out of some pre-taped package, and he meant to say "plucked", which would have made sense in context. Not a good goof for a long-time pro to make, but still, it was simply a goof. In the second, Simmons, also a long-time pro, thought they were taping a tease for the 11 pm newscast and didn't realize it was actually going out live. She was reacting to a technical error and assumed in the moment it would be edited out before hitting air. At worst, either incident might have incurred a fine and slap on the wrist to the station, not the anchor. And both incidents are very different from the Somerville situation, which had been going on for a long time, and where there is a DUI and potential felonies involved.
DeleteIs that why Papa mentioned ratings today?
ReplyDeleteNot surprised by the low ratings for KNBR. It's very immature radio. I travel around the country for business and listen to sports talk radio to get a flavor of how they do things in other major cities. It's day and night compared to what we have here. The personalities are focused, professional, and stay on topic. Plus, they actually take calls. Here, their immature, take text messages and often talk about other topics rather than sports.
ReplyDeleteTake calls? So if you had a talk show you'd leta caller call up and say The Nners need to start Trey and call that good radio? Callers suck plain and simple
DeleteI disagree about callers sucking, plain and simple. Back when you had quality call screeners, I'd hear some great back and forth between callers and evening hosts such as Marty Lurie.
DeleteBack when Damon Bruce was on 1050, he'd take a good amount of calls from a stable of loyal listeners and it made for great radio. Without quality screeners filtering out the nonsense along with an informed and quick witted host, good debate is impossible. Sadly, it's led to the massive proliferation of repetitive segments, hot takes, and manufactured conflict.
The other issue is fans are hyper-focused now. They only want to hear about their team or sport and couldn't care less about a different sport. Podcasts are slowly, but surely, killing sports talk radio. They're generally focused on one team or sport, you can listen when you want, and you can rewind if you missed something. And many podcasts are done live on streaming platforms like Twitch or YouTube and listeners/viewers can ask questions via chat and hosts can pull up the interesting takes and put them on the screen. Some sports podcasts are far more interactive than radio and the real kicker is... the vast majority are uncensored and commercial-free. If radio wasn't scared of podcasts, why do so many stations chop up sport-specific segments and post them as podcast-esque clips?
Aside from baseball doesn't know anything about sports
DeleteAnd I tune in to hear hosts and guests not Joe from Livermore on his hot takes
Don't blame call screeners blame the lame callers
DeleteAnd Damon was on 1050 a decade ago...
@ Anonymous 11:18 PM
DeleteGood call screeners filter out lame callers, which goes to the point I was making.
Yes, Damon was last on 1050 in 2014. What does that have to do with anything I wrote?
In the morning you have two options with local sports talk on the radio knbr, or 95.7,. I'd listen to Murph & Mac all day long , at least Murph dosen't throw soft ball questions, & Paulie is entertaining. I used to listen to the bay area radio stations everyday, KGO was king. Most of the time I have on SiriusXM, my co-worker listens to Murph & Mac every morning, I like Copeland, but I sure do miss Pconn.
ReplyDeleteThanks Murph for chiming in.
DeleteMurph is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Giants.
brian murphy finds time to sell season tickets for the giants,dry clean and press larry baer's suits thre times a week, serve him tea and crumpets and breakfast in bed, take his dog for a walk every night, do his grocery shopping, oh yeah and own and operate 13 amicis in addition to pretending to be a pop culture expert..
DeleteI can answer everyone's questions, by posing my own. What is the revenue of the KGO of 15 years ago compared to today. They can't afford talent. Even if they entered into contracts for talent that exceeded revenue and sought a loan at the bank, Cumulus' credit is no good. Love, love, love the old KGO (perv Bernie Ward aside), but it will never return to it's glory again.
ReplyDeleteSadly, there is no, no, NO AM radio station anywhere in the country that will return to its glory days ever again, unless that station is doing (or commences) an FM simulcast on a full-market signal. Even the huge 50K watt "clears" like KFI in LA and WINS or WCBS in NYC are hemorrhaging listeners. Standalone AMs (with the possible exception of small market AMs in isolated locations with limited competition) are toast.
DeletePull together a "weirdo line-up"...Karel, Ward, Christine (I'm Not A Lady) Craft and Brian Copeland. Can't cost more than minimum union scale for each!
ReplyDeleteRe: Anon @ 7:48: It's not quite fair to compare the station's revenue of 15 years ago to today and thereby conclude that they cannot "afford" to pay decent talent. The two revenue figures are facts, but the reason for the change is not self-evident in those facts, and at least a passing glance at why the figures changed is called for if we're going to have this conversation.
ReplyDeleteMary Berner herself said, about 2 years after taking over, that for every $1 saved in cost-cutting measures, revenue had slipped $2. She didn't seem to to learn from that however, as we've continued to cut and cut since then, with similar results. If KGO hadn't fired its' best talent back in 2011, if instead they had innovated and found new ways to attract and retain an audience and sell that audience to listeners, perhaps the revenue numbers would infer a very different story today.
We'll never know, because 3/4ths of U.S. radio stations are owned by two bankrupt corporations run by people who have no clue how to do radio.
The final nail in the coffin happened in October 2017 when the Trump FCC quietly killed the local studios rule, a wrong that has not been undone. Watch for Cumulus and "iHeart" to start ripping out clusters altogether and feeding transmitters from out of state; you read it here first.
Buy a radio station and make it for generous
Delete@ 9:42 am: That format you describe would attract a huge audience. Make it weird enough to get some news coverage; it worked for KSFO back in 1995: the liberal establishment was aghast at having a "conservative voice" in their midst; the controversy was gold.
ReplyDelete@ 2:24 said, "buy a radio station...". Yeah, I'd love to, actually. Since the deregulation of 96, the prices for radio stations have gone outside the reach of most individuals and small companies. But I don't have to own one; I'll GIVE you the formula for how to save KGO in a few sentences. If I were running it, here's what we'd do:
ReplyDelete- Live and Local is what differentiates radio from an iPod. We would become THE voice of the Bay Area, and we would also cater to the West Coast. I would solicit contributors from throughout our coverage area, and talk about what is going on in these communities.
- Lean and mean local news coverage. Leave the national stories to the network; get people engaged in controversial and/or important goings-on in our cities, towns and communities.
- Become THE champion of local events. From Hardly Strictly and Pride Parade, on out to Gilroy Garlic fest, kite flying contests, farmer markets, whatever; if it's happening we want people reporting from the scene, we want guests who invite listener involvement.
- Leverage the Internet, don't compete with it. Invite guests on our shows to also do a Blog Entry on a blog, one of several we would actively maintain; include links for people to get involved. Let people explore topics more deeply with topic-driven podcasts that cross-promote with our live shows. Solicit cross-linking with the websites of everyone we deal with. Measure the on-line listening audience, and sell that to the advertisers.
- Attract an audience and sell that audience to the advertisers (I mangled that in an earlier post). If it's a political show, advertise news and information stuff; if it's a gardening show, sell garden supplies. We would forego the "easy money" audience repellent paid programming and have a range of specialty shows, and salespeople would seek out advertisers who would pay to reach those niche audiences -- you know the audience we build over time through promotion, consistent on-topic quality, and engaging relevant content. I cannot over-emphasize this point, because everyone in this market has forgotten this basic block-and-tackle of how to do radio. "Give away" introductory ad packages if necessary to prove that we can get results this way; the advertisers on todays radio are starving for results. Craft ad campaigns that are clever and offer compelling value, and that produce results that are self-evident, e.g., mention KGO for a discount or similar; the advertiser will get a clear picture of the effectiveness.
In combination these elements -- community engagement, quality programming, and good salesmanship and promotion -- are the formula for a successful radio station, even on the AM dial, even today.
"Some Guy" (and I think I know which "Guy" you are, nice to see you here),
DeleteAs I wrote up above, unless KGO (or KFI, or WABC, or WLS, or any of the big-signal AM stand-alones) get an FM simulcast on a full-market signal, they are dead men walking. It's over for them. Someone born in 1972 will be 50 this year, and they began forming their listening tastes in the mid-80's. Those tastes were not AM. Since then, the noise floor on the AM band has gotten progressively worse from all the digital devices and hi-tech lights in the environment. The disaster that was AM "HD Radio" necessitated narrowing the aural bandwidth at the transmitters, such that the vast majority of AM stations now have the audio quality of those old black Bell System telephones. And very few listeners under the age of 55 are willing to tolerate those conditions, no matter how good the programming is.
So if you could get your hands on an FM with a strong signal, then the prescription you wrote might work. But unless you want to pay $3 in sales effort for every $1 in revenue, you're just not going to attract very many ears from people young enough to be in the sales demographic (which, for those who don't know, is 25-54 for a talk station). The only people willing to tolerate an AM listening experience in 2022 are going to be over 55, and more likely over 60, and that is a really hard sell.
Obviously you 2 fellows have spent a few years working in radio.
ReplyDelete