A Christmas ratings book is usually a non-factor. It's considered a lesser reflection, numbers wise because a holiday chart is skewed toward Christmas music, (
KOIT) and many people aren't tuning in radio,
especially AM radio lately.
That all said,
KCBS had an especially sucky Dec./'22. It fell from a 7.4 to a 6.7 in the overall 6+ --yes, as we say, "
beauty contest" numbers--the ratings that the ad people don't buy on but nonetheless, KCBS had a terrible month and more ominously for them, it' a trend.
A bad one.
KCBS's own internal numbers have been sagging for quite some time now. Their CUME is now less than 500K-remember only a near-decade ago, they were over 1.5M.
Now even in basic monopoly mode when they are the only game in town, KCBS continues to TANK. The few people to tune in now largely only do so to check traffic and hear an occasional breaking news salvo. The rest have TUNED OUT.
Listeners are tired of mass screw-ups, anchor whack-a-mole, new/lousy reporters and complete and total staff chaos. Not to mention a
Titanic-mode leadership that gets away with mass-mismanagement every day.
As some say at 855 Battery, "welcome to the shit show."
Stopped liking KCBS for almost 2 years now & have stuck with Bloomberg’s 960, still giving stock news, actual news, weather & traffic.
ReplyDeleteThe only time I put kcbs is in my iphone at home to check how Burch, Peck or Heggen are on the weather side at :18 and :48.
Peck is definitely KCBS’s star (they quoted it) & on weekends (like at 4:18pm) and when he’s filling in during the weekday afternoon (3:48 or 4:18pm) & evening for Heggen all day, he interacts with the anchors & they ask many questions that he can answer thru the weather charts. Fun to listen to but it tends to take up a lot of airtime from normal things.
Hackney & Heggen and likely Burch do not interact much with them. One thing I did not like about Hackney is at the end he never said First Alert Forecast or said who he is…he was like “That’s the forecast from KPIX 5” whereas everyone else is “I’m meteorologist … with your KCBS KPIX5 First Alert Forecast”. Burch is great but does talk too fast but somehow I understand her well.
My issue with Peck is he takes 30 seconds to say something that could have been said in 10 seconds.
DeleteI agree. Peck has too much air time for the weather.
Delete@1:56pm & @3:23pm - Correct on that. Burch, Hackney & Heggen do not take that much time. I bet you that even Mary Lee doesn’t waste this much time. I think when there was extensive storm coverage and Mary was in, on KCBS, she made everything clear & crisp. And Peck is great but too passionate thats why he loves working the holidays, weekends, fill in, you name it.
DeletePerhaps I'm missing your point, but why do you care if a weather anchor doesn't use some marketing driven tag line? Did you come up with "First Alert Forecast" or something?
DeleteKCBS is a waste of bandwidth.
ReplyDeleteIt is, thats why I switch to listening to 960 or even better Sirius XM. Watching news on tv is better.
DeleteI watch 960 too all morning until 2 pm. News, traffic and weather all smooth and professional. This blog has helped me make that decision.
DeleteHi Rich: You're right....how the mighty has fallen; I remember the good o' days when KCBS was King and KGO a close 2nd, had excellent anchors, desk editors and field reporters. Segments were great too; Dr Edel, David Narsi and other great contributors. You can forget present breaking news to have reporter(s) there pronto, sometimes it's a non reporting let alone a story, never mind traffic reporting, it sucks.....
ReplyDeleteYup, you're absolutely right, We travel quite a bit and was depended upon KCBS traffic reports to avoid problems but presently they are almost non informational so I suggest do not tune in for conditions....unbelievable...
DeleteIs your KCBS-ratings analysis maybe a little over the top there Rich? KQED in similar situation, had similar holiday ratings drop. Cause for both seems most likely just the listener's different schedules, holiday vs regular. To me, KGO's continued ratings-tanking 3 months is a row now, w/their new format is the most interesting number. It's almost like the folks in charge there prefer low rating numbers.
ReplyDeleteY'all have been beating a couple of dead horses fo at least a decade now. Can we establish once and for all--right here on this blog...that KCBS and KGO both suck...and have sucked for a decade? Everyone (Rich included) repeatedly points out the daily screw-ups and lower-level talent? I bet we can go back five years...on this date...and find some variation of screw ups that are happening today...made by some lower-level talent of that era.
ReplyDeleteCan we all acknowledge that this is the new normal...and just move along? It just gets tiring to continue reading about the same-ol', same-ol'.
Can we also acknowledge that radio is a dying medium, with an audience that is literally dying away, and as a result, advertisers are less willing to pay for the ads that used to pay for the quality talent that went into radio?
DeleteIf you need a column topic within the scope of "415 Media" you might want to rant about the decline of sfgate.com It's become quite the amalgamation of click-bait and various paid layouts. It's probably down to one or two real news items and even they aren't often breaking news. Quite a turn since the old days when it was as good as the Chronicle except more up to date. What are the go-to alternatives to sfgate?
ReplyDeleteFor free? None. Paid? None local, except some of the Mercury News coverage. sfchronicle.com sucks almost as badly as sfgate.com
DeleteTo say it’s become the amalgamation of click bait and various paid layouts is actually being kind to them.
DeleteSFBait, which is essentially a compilation of plagiarized, stolen and useless content, belongs 35 feet underground, buried in a landfill with other rotting shit.
There aren’t enough words in the dictionary or minutes in the day to describe how pathetic and sad that site has become.
In terms of alternatives, I’ve switched to SF Standard and SFist. Both have real, ORIGINAL stories and real information. SFist is a little ‘lighter’ but the combination of the two works well.
Whatever has been written about KCBS by Rich is mostly spot on. Having worked there for 7 years, the decline was noticeable as early as 2017. A frantic, overwhelmed news director who was, and probably still is, way over her head, a news room that still had many solid vets but many more were retiring and being replaced by minor league quality talent. More and more annoying and inexcusable technical glitches, Am atmosphere that though is was not toxic, was not nearly as relaxed or convivial as it had been. Morale started to tank and the high quality of on-air presentation was noticeably inferior to what it had been. Audacy, or Entercom, or whatever the faceless mega-media company back in NYC ‘brands’ itself with today, is clueless, cheap and not uninterested in professional quality radio. They could care less about providing the kind of high level news coverage that the SF Bay Area grew to expect. Audacy-Entercom is not as bad as Cumulus, ( but who is outside of I-Heart radio?) but they’re not much better. The deregulation of radio and TV back in 1995 was a terrible decision that has led to the industry becoming a sad caricature of what it once was. KCBS is merely a reflection of that.
ReplyDelete