Are Changes Coming To KGO?

[Brother Buzz]

Are Changes Coming To KGO?

5-19-14

Cumulus may soon be throwing in the towel on its attempt to challenge KCBS and KQED as an all-news outlet in San Francisco and switching back to Talk. Sort of. Radio Ink has learned that the company plans to evolve KGO in a direction similar to All News 106.7 in Atlanta which is a mix of local and national talk shows, with news blocks in morning and afternoon drive.

The plan is for KGO to reflect the views and sensibilities of the Bay Area and Cumulus wants it to be extremely local. KGO flipped to news and fired talkers Ray Taliaferro, Gene Burns, Gil Gross, and John Rothmann back in December 2011. Ron Owens remained at KGO when the rest were fired so the flip was never really a 100 percent change to all-news. Ratings have not been good since the change. The company is now searching for local talent to make the transition, although nobody has been identified at the moment.

http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2792283&spid=24698

I don't expect much at this point, and doubt they could reclaim their former cachet, but I'd be in pig heaven if they could snag John Rothmann for a 9-12 pm slot

[lostincalifornia]

1. They screwed up big time. They had something that was very unique and they threw it away. Seeing

how they screwed up so badly when they bought KGO, I am skeptical. If they are talking "national talk', that makes me even more doubtful they will pull it off.

and looking at the station they want to model, that station looks like it is full of republican hosts.

F*ck Cumulus, they deserve to go broke for what they did

[Brother Buzz]

2. I do not disagree and will watch developments with a jaundiced eye

One rumor mill is suggesting the "national talk" might very well be Michael Savage. Michael Savage! That would go over like the proverbial lead balloon considering his flagship station, KSFO, sister station to KGO, dropped his syndicated shit.

KGO was unique because the listeners were unique, something Cumulus never figured out. But, damn, I miss that 50,000 watt blowtorch signal.

[lostincalifornia]

4. Yes, the listeners were unique, but they also had a good balance of radio personalities. If they

take the michael savage route, they are history.

The minute they fired everyone, I stopped listening to them, and removed my radio presets.

I did listen briefly to owens, and though I was never a fan of his since in my view turned further to the right, listening to him it didn't seem like he was very thrilled with his new environment. He didn't have his "heart" in his show. Seems like he is just their to fulfill a contract and collect a pay check.

Yes, that 50 thousand watts could reach quite a few people all over the country.

It was interesting for me to see Gene Burns evolve when he saw the damage that bush had done. That upset a few of his regular views. Unfortunately, Gene Burns passed away. I think Rothman and the others are on other stations. Not sure where Ray is.

They are going to have a tough time recapturing the chemistry they had, especially if they go national, instead of local personalities.

One of the most progressives cities in the country doesn't really have a station that fully represent its populous. KGO in its prime came pretty close. Now gone

[Peace Patriot]

3. Thanks for the heads up! KGO certainly needs renovation.

They say...drum de drum drum drum..."TEN MINUTES OF NON-STOP NEWS"--then we get 9 minutes of commercials including the "news" advertising ITSELF with half sentences of old news stories.

Very poor news presentation--very annoying, very uninformative. Also, news presenters often run a sentence of news right into a commercial, sometimes in the same sentence. This is commercialism gone mad.

They announce traffic accidents as if these possible deaths and injuries on our roads were merely ants dying on our ant trails and the point is to CLEAR THE ROADS. They sometimes even do this in bouncy voices, as if we all should be really happy that the blood and gore has been cleared off the road and we can now speed wherever we're going without that inconvenient wreckage in the way.

Jeez. Why don't they do a thought-piece on the horror of our tolerance for a transportation system that includes inevitable, daily harm to human beings?

They have a feature called "Your Money," and the only thing it ever talks about is how the Stock Market is doing. What about the people with no money to invest? For that vast part of the population, "Your Money" is NOT stocks. It is salaries, wages, tips, Social Security, unemployment checks, maybe rent from a small rental and other forms of subsistence living. So why doesn't KGO's "Your Money" report include news about the minimum wage, or labor union activities, or about huge student indebtedness, or the high and rising cost of gasoline, or unfair taxation, or other matters of concern to working people and the poor? Nope, the presumption is that all listeners are investors.

Tells you a lot about the culture at KGO, i.e., Corporate Culture.

The talk shows are too few and far between, and on the whole pretty lame. But I DON'T THINK that the answer is to run "national" talk shows. The talk shows should be more plentiful, should use all local talent--of which we have a huge amount in the Bay Area--maybe with some of the news talk shows or parts of the shows devoted to topics of national interest. A "national" talk show will likely be an imposition of views from Washington DC and New York elites. The heck with that!

I'm glad that renovation of KGO is in the works, but worried that the renovation will not improve the station and could even make it worse.

[marzipanni]

5. Gil Gross turned them down; money they offered was "laughable."

From a well-placed Bay Area media source who knows the ins and outs...


KGO Radio Offered Gil Gross a Gig Back in January; First Footprints of Change in Direction; Wednesday Opener

May 21, 2014

KGO Radio and its Opps Mgr, Ron Escarsega took Gil Gross, a former KGO yapper and current Clear Channel tonsil, to dinner and offered him a shift on KGO-- It was around the beginning of this year. Not going to happen, however. Gil told the source the money they offered was "laughable."

What we learn here is that Cumulus began reading the tea leaves as early as four months ago that its all-news platform was a failure and began scoping the area for "live and local" voices.


Only problem in this case is the human sleep inducer, Gross, would be one of their first targets. Gross is a nice man with solid news credentials--that's news as in NEWS and not talk ---Gross ratings, like "Talk 910"'s have flat-lined at around the 1 area and hardly inspires anything inspiring --apparently a prerequisite for CC which has a $15B debt payment looming in 2015.

http://richliebermanreport.blogspot.com/2014/05/kgo-radio-offered-gil-gross-gig-back-in.html#comment-form