Will KABC’s Low Ratings Lead to Station Shake-Up?
Fueling speculation and scattered reports of a coming shake-up in the KABC-AM (790) broadcast lineup, morning host Ken Minyard revealed Wednesday night that the talk station’s president and general manager has been “laying it on the line” in meetings with his troops.
At a forum on talk radio at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills, Minyard startled the audience by quoting KABC boss Bill Sommers: “Bill said, ‘Look, we are not going to be a 2 1/2-share radio station, and if we can’t do better than that, we’re going to blow it up.’ ”
On Thursday, Sommers confirmed the essence of Minyard’s account of their meeting a few weeks ago, explaining that when he said “blow it up,” he did not mean the whole radio station but “elements” of the programming.
Sommers said that “the way it was put” to Minyard and partner Peter Tilden, who host the key 5-9 a.m. slot, “was, ‘Hey if we have to blow up elements in order to get beyond a 2 1/2 share, then that’s what we’ll look at.’ ”
Minyard said he told Sommers, who took over in December at KABC and two other stations owned by the Walt Disney Co., that he “agreed completely. He said, and I accepted: ‘We botched it up the last year and a half. Now you tell me what you want to do, and we’ll do it.’
“We did,” Minyard added, “and we’re doing the show we want todo now. And if it fails, we don’t deserve to be here.”
Minyard’s comments came a day after the release of the quarterly Arbitron ratings, which showed KABC falling from 10th to 15th place in the market with a 2.6% share of audience--its lowest figure in three years.
Sommers said Thursday that the station’s ratings have been declining over the past seven or eight years and confirmed that he has ordered a study “analyzing every single element of the radio station--part-time, full-time talent, production, how we’re perceived, likes and dislikes.”
When it’s ready in a few weeks, he said, “we’ll make decisions on what changes might be necessary.”
At the forum Wednesday night, realizing the stir he had created, Minyard said that changes are “not imminent; it’s not going to happen any time soon.”
Still, when someone asked whether hosts who lose shows miss their listeners the way listeners miss them, Minyard quipped, “I’ll let you know in a couple of months.”
Otherwise, the 90-minute session, attended by about 150 people and moderated by Steve Bell, the museum’s director, was more talkfest than debate.
On the panel with Minyard were KABC weekend host Michael Jackson; KFI-AM (640) host John Kobylt, who did his afternoon-drive broadcast with Ken Chiampou from the museum; KLSX-FM (97.1) afternoon-drive host Tom Leykis, who aired a rerun at 6 p.m. so he could be on time; and KLSX’s Tracey Miller, who does news and other chitchat during Jonathon Brandmeier’s midday show.
Even when expressing differing opinions about the increasing use of nationally syndicated programming rather than local broadcasts, cordiality ruled. “You need local [programming],” contended Jackson, who also took local TV to task. “We should stop being quite so greedy.”
Kobylt, whose show is heard on 70 stations, disagreed, saying, “I don’t find L.A. all that gripping. It shut down dead” after the O.J. Simpson trials.
And Leykis, syndicated to 176 stations, argued that with 85 cities in Southern California, talking about the city of Los Angeles leaves out three-quarters of the listeners in this market alone.
Then, in a tone of benediction, Jackson said that “there’s room for all of us.”
Noting that the three most popular shows in the Los Angeles market are syndicated--Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern--Leykis said flatly that he gears his shows to males, 18-34, just like Stern does, and that his job is to “shovel in” some of the 600,000 listeners who tune in each week to Stern.
“I’m not interested in the 50-year-old politically active woman. . . . I will do what is most lucrative. Whoever pays the bills, that’s where I am,” Leykis said.
Kobylt said his audience breaks down “4-3 women,” and that he couldn’t get the demographic Leykis is seeking even with “lesbians stripping” in studio.
The line of the night came from Jackson. When the moderator asked what’s missing from Los Angeles radio, the host who lost his 30-year weekday show last July said quietly: “Me. Daily.”