Posted on 12/26/2011 7:52:41 PM PST by Political Junkie Too
Clear Channel is beefing up the lineup on its 910 AM frequency, first by hiring fired KGO hosts Len Tillem and Gene Burns, and now by adding Rush Limbaugh. The new lineup starts Jan. 3. Limbaugh’s move was revealed publicly in a tweet by 910 morning hosts Armstrong & Getty.
There are two schools of thought about why Limbaugh is changing stations. One is that his show is expensive and KSFO’s owner, Cumulus Media, is cutting costs. That’s why they laid off most of the talk hosts at KGO and replaced them with less expensive news staffers. Another theory is that Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Networks, is owned by Clear Channel, and it wanted him to throw his weight behind 910 to help it attract an audience.
Here's the schedule of KKSF 910 (formerly KNEW) starting Jan. 3: Armstrong & Getty 6-9 a.m., Rush 9-noon; Tom Sullivan noon-3; Len Tillem 3-4 and Gene Burns 4-7.
The AM station in Raleigh Durham that lost Limbaugh is really in the dumper.
I suspect that is true of a lot of them.
-PJ
Personally, I'd like to see them bring Roger Hedgecock's show back up. He has alot on the ball, IMO.
A local CC channel would not ‘dump” Limbaugh per se.
CC would make the decision to sell Limbaugh’s show to that stations’ competitor so they could make money on both Limbaugh and their station at the same time.
Eason got caught up in a feud with station new-commer Michael Savage, who was the local afternoon-drive host. In those days, KSFO had Geoff Metcalf in the noon slot. Metcalf was replaced by Sean Hannity when he started his radio show.
-PJ
-PJ
I do have to say that I miss the clarity of the FM for the occasional C2CAM broadcast.
I forgot to add that Limbaugh gets bumped for the Yankees, too, on the local non-CC station.
I”m not saying that CC always made good choices, but for years their model was to make money off of Rush’s show on other stations and to make money on their music etc on their own stations. They wanted to make money off almost every station in the market.
Sometimes their strategy was too cute by half - and they made some mistakes. In any case, the dying music format on many CC stations is causing them to turn many of their FM’s into talk stations featuring Rush - so they are yanking the Rush show off of AM stations in the market they were selling that show to.
Boy, they machine-gunned practically the whole staff at KGO. Bloodbath. Living in No CA, I primarily listen to KSFO, though I will miss Jon Rothmann ex-KGO 10 pm. The rest of KGO I could care less about, but geeez, that was the biggy station up here and they just fired everybody. Gene Burns, gotta be 20+ years, Rothmann, 15 years, Wattenberg, 30 years. Tillem, probably at least 10 years.
I know that KGO had some expensive hosts, but the bloodbath there surprised me. People in the Bay Area who listen to KGO...libs, mainly, and that is everybody up here...I swear their dials are welded to KGO. Things change very, very slowly in No. CA. (Hippies are still cool up here, that’s how retrograde it is) While I am not an expert or even a strong amateur in radio syndication or programming I believe this will turn out to be a bad move. KGO was probably the biggest station up here and IMO this will scatter their listenership to the four winds. Certainly, competing with KCBS (news, weather, sports, little bit of CBS TV) is a guaranteed loser. Really, I have no conception what KGO is going to do. I think it could take them 3++ years to recover even their recently flagging audience numbers...if they ever do. But as I said, I just listen to the thing, I’m not a radio expert.
Don't forget about Bernie Ward, 7 years at Lompoc.
-PJ
That (Rodgers’ opinions) is entirely possible, but Lee was getting pretty danged tired at the end. That he was broadcasting from his home in AZ perhaps made him more comfortable, but he was quite literally “phoning it in” at the end of his tenure at KSFO.
I liked Melanie Morgan in conjunction with Lee Rodgers. I do not believe she could carry a talk show on her own. I can also imagine the three-way host situation with Ofc Vic on their show got to be a major piece of overhead. Once Mel left the show it got very, very dry and crusty, IMO.
LOL. I actually enjoyed Bernie Ward, believe it or not. Not always, but in general, he made credible arguments for the lib side.
Rodgers had also suffered a severe heart/lung ailment after his last cruise vacation that nearly killed him.
Sussman and Tom Benner seem to have hit a groove, but the show seems more childish and flippant than when Rodgers was running things. Rodgers had a solid stable of regular weekly 20 minuyr interviews with interesting pundits. Susmann still has some of them, mostly new more recent talent, but only for 10 minutes at a time. The rest is yuks with "Officer Vic."
Also, they brought in a new woman, Katie Green. I'm not sure how long she'll be there, as she's still going to college.
-PJ
Music radio isn’t really failing, it’s probably the cheapest radio to program. Most CC stations are canned and voice-tracked by jocks in NY or Los Angeles. Then you have filler fluff material from intellectual lightweights like Ryan Seacrest, John Tesh and Leeza Gibbons who cater to the lowest common denominator among us. As well as VH1 Classic Rock Nights, closet libs Bob and Tom and other syndicated music fare.
Yes, and he's still vastly more influential than you'll ever be.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
I like Katie just fine. She announces and does news/fill-ins for Vic, for the most part, and for that she is just fine IMO. Peppy voice.
Sussman, I go hot and cold on. I appreciate that he is hard working and I generally agree with him, but there are lots of times when I just find him so full of himself I have to shut him off. He’s competent, not especially dazzling. If you recall, when Lee Rodgers was sick and later easing out, Sussman often did double shifts, talking 8+ hours a day. That takes some endurance, I’m sure.
Heard Bill Wattenburg was hired by a station in Santa Cruz.
One of the very few times I heard Rogers really lose his temper was when OV made a comment about Rogers' "cheesy career."
Talk had switched to OV's traffic report and cheese had been the subject of conversation -- OV often connected the two segments with (sometimes) hilarious comments. No big deal I thought.
Rogers exploded saying that he (OV) didn't have the guts to say that to his face. I don't recall that OV responded. Rogers was not kidding. He was pissed.
I thought, what the hell is Rogers talking about, OV is either sitting there or well within reach. Well he wasn't.
After a short boycott of KSFO after Rogers was dropped I started back with the morning show. I had always caught Sussman's evening show.
Well within a few days Sussman took a call from a regular who describes himself as a Communist or Marxist. Sussman started in on the guy telling how he (Sussman) was going to beat his ass. Borrrrring.
Been going on for years -- so do it already. At one time the guy suggested that they rent a place to fight and the proceeds would go to charity.
That was the last time I listened to the morning show.
I greatly prefer Brian Sussman over Lee Rodgers. Rodgers had a pervy edge to him that I found highly distasteful. He could take a story about pavement and make it something perverted...yuck.
I guess we’ll all see what happens here. If Brian S does well, I’ll be happy.
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