Noriega Story Fails to Halt KNX’s Coverage of Bruin-Trojan Game

KFWB-AM(980), which has offered a radio headline service for 20 years, may not always deliver depth, but did live up to its format proclamation of “All News All the Time” during the Manuel Noriega surrender Wednesday.

On the other hand, crosstown rival KNX-AM (1070) which has a reputation for providing more meat in its news coverage and has a hall full of journalism awards to prove it, delivered something else.

Though initial reports of the Panamanian strongman’s capture were carried by the CBS owned-and-operated station Wednesday evening, KNX News Director Bob Sims decided about an hour into the story to return to regular programming. That meant USC and UCLA for two hours of basketball with time out for news headlines at halftime.

“There wasn’t much news after 6:45 or 7 p.m.,” Sims said Thursday. “I was trying to think of what we could do from a news point of view that would justify blowing out a scheduled piece of programming and I couldn’t think of what it would be. You can certainly recapitulate or write the same news in a different way and tell the same story over and over. But it’s not new developments. It’s just what we’ve already told you. Tell you again and again and again.”

In an attempt to broaden KNX’s audience and boost its ratings, the station carries some non-news features, such as an hour of “food news” each morning and an hour of old-time radio drama each night, in addition to its seasonal football, baseball and basketball games.

Far from criticizing Sims, his counterpart at KFWB has nothing but praise for the KNX operation which, by its very nature, he calls “newsradio” as opposed to KFWB’s bona fide “all-news” format.

“These guys are very tough competition but they have chosen play-by-play sports as part of their programming thrust,” said KFWB News Director Ken Beck. “We stick with a news format come hell or high water.”

Both stations carried President Bush’s news conference.

“Let me assure you if the President had decided to speak at 7:30, we would have put him on instead of the game,” said Sims. “If the news of Noriega had been 2 or 3 hours later instead of earlier in the evening, the game would have been the casualty. But the story was done, you know. Just wasn’t much left to talk about.”