Daryl Gates Helps Make KFI Top Talk Gun : Radio: The former Los Angeles police chief’s hiring in September leads station to victory over rival KABC.

The whirlwind of controversy that forced Daryl Gates to retire as Los Angeles police chief last year blew good fortune at KFI-AM (640). The station hired Gates as an afternoon host in September and this week saw itself crowned the top-rated talk-radio outlet in town, overtaking KABC-AM (790) for the first time since converting to an all-gab format in 1989.

“We found 150,000 people came to the radio station to hear what the chief of police sounded like on the radio,” KFI program director David Hall said after the quarterly Arbitron ratings came out. “A lot more new people came to the format that didn’t already (listen to) talk radio. Certainly not all of them stayed with his show but they sampled other (shows on the station). We did no advertising and KABC did. To beat them and pick up as many listeners as we did, I can’t think of any other thing to attribute it to but Gates.”

The Arbitron ratings, covering Sept. 24 through Dec. 16, 1992, showed that KFI drew an average of 3.7% of the listening audience between 6 a.m. and midnight while KABC attracted 3.5%. In the previous three months, KABC had gotten 3.7% to KFI’s 2.7%.

KFI’s margin of victory was small but significant, considering that it adopted an all-talk format only a few years ago and was challenging the nation’s oldest talk outlet and one of the Los Angeles area’s most consistently successful stations.

“They deserve to celebrate, even if it’s for one rating period,” said KABC General Manager George Green. “Beating us is an accomplishment. (But) I wouldn’t drink too much champagne.”

Green, who said that KABC planned no personnel changes as a result of the ratings, attributed KFI’s big jump to the popularity of syndicated mid-morning host Rush Limbaugh, the conservative political commentator who in the past months has come out with a best-selling book and a television series.

“Because of the elections, Rush Limbaugh had a fabulous November (ratings-wise),” Green said. “Being on television and radio, Rush is a hot property, and that has been driving that whole radio station, literally.”

KFI executives acknowledge that the station has benefited tremendously with Limbaugh, whose ratings beat KABC competitor Michael Jackson. KFI also outdraws KABC on weekday afternoons with Laura Schlessinger, Dean Edell and Gates, who replaced Tom Leykis. In November, KFI cut Gates back from three hours a day to one, bringing in the team of John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou from 4 to 7 p.m. KABC, meanwhile, outperforms its rival in the early morning, with “The Ken and Barkley Co.,” and at night with David Viscott, Dennis Prager and Ray Briem.

But many industry insiders think that KFI’s surge reflects stronger forces--that KFI has been steadily building by catering to a younger audience with controversial and sometimes outrageous programming while KABC has stayed in a comfortable groove that may have become a rut.

In interviews, KFI managers continuously describe their fare primarily as entertainment, while KABC officials constantly tout their station’s informational value.

“We’re much more controversial than KABC,” Hall said. “We’re much more lifestyle-driven in our topics.”

KABC’s Green describes his station as “very classy soft talk” and points out that its personalities are known for moderation and information.

“KFI goes more for the controversial talk,” Green said. “They want to shake people up with a little more shock value. There are a lot of people that like that kind of conversation. We have that kind of thing from time to time on our programs, but we don’t encourage our people to seek out controversy for controversy’s sake. That’s not to say that we wouldn’t change our mind or couldn’t change our mind, but right now we’ve taken a direction that doesn’t include controversial conversation. We’ve selected the people we believe in and we think there’s plenty of room for both stations.”

Green acknowledged that Jackson--arguably the cornerstone of KABC--has become more outspoken in recent months. But it is not an effort to emulate Limbaugh’s style, he emphasized.

“He’s become more opinionated because we’ve been urging him to be that and because I think the public wants that,” Green said.

In July, 1989, when KFI became a round-the-clock talk station--after offering an unsuccessful mix of music, talk and game shows--station manager Howard Neal had described the difference between the two stations simply: “We see ourselves as the Arsenio Hall of talk radio and KABC is Johnny Carson.”

Extending the “Tonight Show” analogy, KABC has since adapted its lineup for a younger, more Jay Leno-like feel. Last August the station dropped the afternoon drive-time sports show hosted by Steve Edwards and replaced it with the fast-talking, wisecracking Peter Tilden, a former morning-drive time personality on a classic rock station. The aim was clear: to compete with KFI for a younger, FM-oriented audience that heretofore had not been big listeners of talk radio.

Some people at KABC and others in the industry say that KABC’s changes have been too few and too late in coming. Some say that KABC did not take KFI seriously enough until very recently.

“One of the keys to KFI’s success was staying with their game plan,” said Ron Rodrigues, managing editor of Radio and Records, an industry trade publication. “People over at KABC privately told me that they did not take the challenge by KFI very seriously.”

KABC’s Green denied the allegation. “I took them seriously from the first day they went talk because before that we had (the talk-radio market) all to ourselves,” he said.

But later he said: “We don’t respond to them. We’re not reacting to anything they did. We operate our radio station independently. I don’t think about KFI. I don’t listen to KFI. I don’t change programming because of competition. You make changes because you have to, because it’s time, not because of the competition.”

Rodrigues, noting that for most of the past three years KFI had been growing without cutting into KABC’s ratings, said that KABC’s dip may only be temporary.

“I don’t think KABC is on a steady decline,” he said. “I think they’re going to recover. They have the Dodgers (radio contract). Ultimately, I think they’re going to do fine. I think (KFI’s ratings win) goes to show what a lot of radio executives around the country have been telling me: Talk radio doesn’t have to be an old-fogy format. If you stay consistent and put good personalities on, people will listen to it, no matter what their ideology.”

A New Talk-Show Champ

KFI-AM (640) has finally overtaken KABC-AM (790), which has gradually declined in the ratings while its rival has steadily climbed since going to an all-talk format in 1989.

Fall ’89 Fall ’90 Fall ’91 Fall ’92 KABC 4.6 4.3 4.2 3.5 KFI 1.7 1.9 2.7 3.7

Source: Arbitron