The Jackson Aftermath

Last week was actually Michael Jackson’s third strike at KABC-AM (790). And this time he’s out.

While his loyal, longtime following roared with disapproval, threatened boycotts, talked pickets, wrote letters from here to the Federal Communications Commission and jammed station phone lines--so much so that the voicemail message in President and General Manager Maureen Lesourd’s office was changed to refer callers to KABC’s listener-comment number--this was not Jackson’s first time on the brink of losing his weekday talk-show slot.

Twice before, the 30-year KABC veteran nearly got bumped from his midmorning berth. The first incident occurred about three years ago, when George Green, Lesourd’s predecessor, confidentially sought to negotiate a contract with USC law professor and liberal commentator Susan Estrich to replace Jackson, who was balking at signing a new pact that called for a pay cut.

Estrich, who began as a substitute host in 1990 and had been Jackson’s major fill-in, disclosed Tuesday that Green asked her “to secretly negotiate a contract and not tell Michael. And I said, ‘That’s not how I play baseball.’ I just wouldn’t do it. I spoke to both Michael and his wife. I said, ‘Michael, go sign your contract.’ That really forged a strong relationship between Michael and I. And he did sign.”

Confirming that Estrich had been “my first choice for replacing Michael Jackson,” Green said that “at the last minute” Jackson decided to stay, at a “somewhat” reduced salary.

The second near-termination came just before Lesourd took over at KABC in May 1996, after the Walt Disney Co. had purchased Capital Cities/ABC. Green explained that expenses were still at issue and that he was close to hiring Gene Burns, a host at KGO-AM in San Francisco, to replace Jackson. But when new management came in, “they stopped the process. If it was up to me, I don’t know whether I would have replaced Michael or not because I had protected Michael for 30 years,” he added. “I thought he was the greatest thing that ever walked [but] he’s one of the highest-paid performers in [radio].”

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Ratings Rule: What made KABC finally decide to move Jackson to weekends was ratings.

While it’s true that, in the Arbitron figures for the first three months of this year, Jackson’s ratings essentially matched the profile of the station as a whole among listeners 12 and older--ranking 12th in both cases--KABC operations manager and program director Dave Cooke prefers to look at narrower demographics. He measures Jackson among listeners aged 35 to 54, which is talk radio’s core demographic, and among listeners aged 25 to 54, which is the group most sought after by advertisers. And he compares that performance against other weekday programming between 5 a.m. and midnight, rather than including weekends and predawn hours, when fewer listeners are available.

And by those standards, he says, Jackson was falling short of the station averages. Among listeners 25 to 54, Jackson accounted for 1.4% of the audience, while KABC overall averaged 2.1%. Among listeners 35 to 54, Jackson took 2.1% and the station averaged 3%, Cooke said.

Jackson counters that those figures, for the January-March quarter, refect a large period when he was preempted for preseason Dodger baseball--and “nobody listens to that.” But Cooke says that Dennis Prager, who follows Jackson on the KABC schedule, also was preempted then but still averaged a 2.3% share among listeners 25 to 54 and 2.9% among the 35 to 54 crowd.

“Jackson’s numbers are consistent with earlier books,” he said.

But ratings aside, Cooke was asked, if Southland residents were asked to name the top half-dozen radio hosts in Los Angeles, wouldn’t Jackson be on that list?

“I would think so, yes,” he said. “Michael has tremendous heritage in this marketplace. Although in recent years [he] did not produce winning ratings . . . , for [25] years, Michael Jackson was on top of the ratings, and no one will ever take that away from him.”

So isn’t there something to be said for keeping a heritage personality in a high-profile time slot? Cooke said there was, “but in the final analysis, it’s ratings that rule.”

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Jackson’s Weekend Gig: Cooke reports that Jackson will begin his new weekend show July 19 or 26, depending upon when remote broadcast arrangements can be secured with the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills.

KABC has not yet said what will happen with Estrich, who was left in the lurch with the sudden switch of Jackson to her slot of Saturdays and Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. She didn’t even know the move was being made until a Times reporter called her. She still has a year to go on her contract.

Jackson’s replacement in the weekday 9 a.m.-noon slot, Ronn Owens of San Francisco’s KGO, begins Monday; he will be simulcast in both cities.

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The Jackson Memo: Apparently on talk radio--or at least on KABC and sister station KTZN-AM (710)--you can criticize the president of the United States but not the president of a radio station.

It’s “not entertaining,” says Cooke, author of the memo that went out to programming staff at both stations last week ordering hosts “not to make any comments on the air whatsoever” involving Jackson and/or Owens, or “to engage any callers on the matter.” It also advised screeners that “callers who want to talk about programming changes should be screened out.”

Cooke explained his rationale this week: “I did not want the entire broadcast day or substantial portions of [it] to be turned into a discussion about the wisdom, or not wisdom, of the Michael Jackson move. Obviously I did not mean the memo to apply to Michael’s show.”

But didn’t Jackson say last Thursday, his last weekday on the air, that such calls were going to be permitted only during the show’s final hour? “That’s correct,” Cooke said. “Obviously there were calls in the first two hours as well. . . . But I didn’t want the whole three-hour show to be that. It simply is not very entertaining radio.”

Asked if there wasn’t an element of free speech involved, that it’s OK to criticize the country’s president but not the station’s president, Cooke said, “Typically in radio stations that kind of thing does not happen. It’s not very entertaining radio to have people on the air criticizing the decisions of the radio station.”