This morning’s mailbag contained the news that KGO-AM has killed their entire lineup.
KGO is located in San Francisco and used to be a “progressive” talk station, long before Air America. One of its most famous alumni is Bernie Ward, a former Catholic priest. He went to prison on charges of distributing child pornography. He was released in 2014.
After Cumulus took over KGO, they dumped all of the liberal hosts except Ron Owens and switched to a mostly news format, which is very expensive and the ratings didn’t cover the cost.
Owens is moving to Conservative talker KSFO – Tom Taylor’s newsletter says he is replacing Mark Levin, but Owens this morning says he is replacing Glenn Beck.
Morning drive is picking up Armstrong and Getty, which is carried on several iHeart (Clear Channel) stations in California. I’m not yet clear if Armstrong & Getty are joining Cumulus on their network or just KGO.
A factor in this decision may be the lopsided politics in California. The Presidential race could by Godzilla vs Jesus and nobody is going to buy political ads in California, since the Democrat is going to win.
Turns out Owens is replacing himself on KGO but losing an hour. Levin keeps his slot on KSFO.
Perhaps the management at that cluster has their heads in the Cumulus.
Ronn’s account is interesting. He was approached in February about moving to KSFO and his contract had language permitting that. He was basically OK with that and was making the arrangements. His main complaint was KSFO doesn’t have a window.
Over the weekend, the guy managing the cluster got in touch with Ronn and said “I screwed up”. Allegedly the pushback was more than they expected. Ronn has been on KGO for 40 years. This is the stupidity the Dickeys used to do, and the guy who ran Citadel briefly. On air talent in major markets are not interchangeable cogs. Putting Owens on a Conservative station was a really bad idea. I can’t point to a single successful talk station that carries both liberal and Conservative talkers. A few stations carry Alan Colmes after the sun goes down…
I suspect Mark Levin was also a factor. There are several versions of the plan – but it seemed to be that Levin was going to be delayed and Glenn Beck would be dropped.
I’m noticing a pattern that Cumulus is tidying up dumping the remaining non-Cumulus hosts (except Rush) from their lineups.