KFI-AM in Los Angeles is dumping Rush Limbaugh!
For a few weeks I’ve been asked what is going to happen to the former Dial Global, formerly Jones Radio lineup – Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, Ed Schultz, Norm Goldman, etc
The question arises because Cumulus Media is about to take over the former Westwood One / Dial Global. They have no stations carry those progressive shows and no stations they could add to the list.
Clear Channel, on the other hand, makes up a significant portion of the affiliates; backed the bankrupt Air America; and is led by Bob Pittman, a lifetime major donor to the Democratic party. Randi Rhodes is on Clear Channel’s Premiere already.
The brothers that run Cumulus are motivated by only one thing – profit and loss. The Dickeys are not going to cut checks to people who don’t contribute to EBITDA.
Drastic programming changes are often made during the holidays. After a few weeks of “holiday” music, when listeners come back in January, they’ve forgotten what format or programs used to be on a station.
The other shoe dropped today.
Rush to KABC?
I had guessed wrong
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-rush-limbaugh-kfi-ktlk-20131204,0,3611081.story#axzz2mcsdpodT
KABC is Cumulus 😉
So it looks like the reality is the opposite.
Both in San Francisco and L.A., Clear Channel is dumping the “soon to be Cumulus” Progressive Talk.
That being said, KTLK is no KFI. While both are 50 kW daytime, KFI is Class A and KTLK is Class B. KFI has a much stronger signal in part due to being on a lower frequency.
KFI is going “all local” – which could just mean “until we switch to Mexican Accordian music”. The English speaking audience in Los Angeles is shrinking very fast. There are probably several Mexican folks who would pay a big truckloaf of $100 bills to control that station.
Okay – I am confused. Anyone who dumps Rush Limbaugh is about to lose lots of revenue. We can ignore the bad PR on blogs and Facebook, there just isn’t any revenue generated by “Hate Radio” which is what progressive talk is.
So did some LA station dump Rush or did they dump Progressive Talk?
(A vision of hell – Stephanie Miller screeching 24/7).
Both – they dumped Rush from KFI, and they moved him to the smaller KTLK-AM up at 1150 kHz. Both stations are solid in Los Angeles itself, but KTLK fades more as you go inland and up/down the coast.
I had noted two months ago thar KFI’s ratings had fallen off a cliff. KFI dropped from a 4.2 share in March to 2.8 in September back to 3.4 in nov). Rush is the only daytime syndicated show on KFI. CC/Premiere will consolidate the Premiere lineup (Beck/Rush/Hannity) on KTLK.
I’m guessing the motive is by making KFI all local they can work around the national advertiser boycott – if an advertiser buys ads to run anytime on KFI (called ROS – Run of station) but with a restriction they not run during Rush, an accidental running of the ad could cause more damage to the client than the loss of revenue for that ad.
Rush doubling down on stupid – equating women who use birth controls = whore is probably alienating that market more than most. His already skewed male audience is going to approach 100% male if he keeps this up.
Agreed. And just because they are called “birth control pills” doesn’t mean that they are for that single purpose. They have other uses and treatments, including some that are medically necessary to protect or benefit a woman’s health. In short, they are necessary hormones and there are many reasons someone might need to take them in pill form other than birth control.
Exactly! Not being a woman, I can’t speak personally about menstrual cramping. There are many married woman who are monogamous who take the pill because they have all the kids they want and daddy doesn’t want his vas deferens snipped (should vasectomy be covered?)
I’ve not been arguing one way or the other whether the expenses should be covered – the merits or lack thereof can be stated without resorting to calling 98% of women sluts and whores.
Rush’s wife is still potentially of child bearing age – are they using birth control or not having sex? If Rush wants to make this personal, he may have some explaining to do about his own sexuality and why three marriages produced no children.
I am not judging people’s sexuality. I am stating that choosing to have sexual intercourse is a lifestyle decision as is choosing whether or not to have children. Those decisions are in a different category than deciding to have cancer removed.
The former decisions are not life threatening but have no copay and no annual deductible under Obamacare whereas the later decision has both.
KTLK was exclusively liberal talk, except for Phil Hendrie. About a year ago they dumped Phil and started doing sports talk in his place. I thought they were going that direction but it looks like the libs are out and conservative talk is in. Most of the big shows are in daylight hours, so the signal shouldn’t be a problem. KFI is still huge in what’s left of the English-speaking LA market.
Now having more details, agree with your assessment – which gets back to what will happen with the Progressive talk lineup when Cumulus takes over. So far, nobody has said they are going away.
Now that Phil is out from under his contract with TRN and Roy Masters, he is back to normal – not pretending to be a conservative. For a brief time a few years ago, he was doing a local show on KFI on Saturdays, where he took off his Conservative mask, figuring people probably wouldn’t notice.
That local KFI Saturday night show was a weird one. He seemed more subdued than usual, and it must have been a pain to constantly break for traffic and weather. I assumed the whole fake conservative bit was a bid to get callers riled up, but he seems fully able to do the show without them. In fact, it’s extremely weird to hear at this point to hear a voice on the show that’s not him.
I’ve thought about that a bit more. I think actually what it was – he did a local hour first only on KTLK-AM. The KFI entry may be from back when he was syndicated by premiere.
I think probably at TRN, Masters was telling him he had no choice but to be conservative and he had no option since he would be sued if he quit (that’s what they tried to do to Savage). Either that, or Hendri took the mind control tapes and he was hypmotized.