L.A.’s KFI cancels its evening talk show as AM radio woes mount
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- Radio and podcast giant iHeart Media canceled ‘Later, With Mo’Kelly’ on KFI-AM after nearly three years, part of sweeping job cuts hitting the radio industry.
- The historic Los Angeles station previously gutted its newsroom last year and posted further ratings declines in September.
- Commercial radio is struggling as listeners shift to digital platforms, with advertising revenue plummeting and AM technology deemed increasingly obsolete.
Radio and podcast giant iHeart Media has canceled the evening talk show “Later, With Mo’Kelly” on KFI-AM (640), as the latest wave of job cuts sweeps the radio industry.
Morris “Mo” O’Kelly had hosted the program for nearly three years. Previously, he anchored KFI’s weekend “Mo Kelly Show” for more than a decade after joining the historic Los Angeles station in 2011.
O’Kelly’s last night on the air was Oct. 6.
“I gave it everything I had,” O’Kelly said in an interview Tuesday, adding that he was proud that his show “was a true representation of what I wanted talk radio to be. ... I wanted to bring voices of people less often heard, viewpoints less often expressed and communities less often featured.”
It’s unclear how many people KFI cut beyond O’Kelly, his producer and a marketing manager. Host Chuck Dizzle also announced on Instagram that he’d been cut after 10 years from iHeart’s Los Angeles hip-hop station KRRL-FM, which brands itself as “Real 92.3.”
News reports suggest the layoffs were part of a larger companywide restructuring.
Separately, Karen Sharp, host of “Love Songs on the Coast” at sister station KOST-FM (103.5), retired Friday after 38 years playing love-song dedications — once a sweet spot for radio programmers. “You shared your breakups with me, wedding proposals, the passing of a family member,” Sharp told listeners in her final sign-off. “Most of all, you shared your heart.”
The Los Angeles division president of iHeart Media referred The Times’ questions to the firm’s New York corporate office, which did not immediately comment.
Thirteen employees were laid off this week at iHeartMedia’s KFI-AM (640), cutting the staff of the Los Angeles radio station in half.
The moves come nearly a year after iHeart Media gutted KFI’s newsroom, laying off more than half of its staff, including the station’s longtime news director.
It’s a troubling time for local media as newspapers, TV and radio stations grapple with a dramatic loss of advertising revenue amid consumers shifting to digital media, including YouTube and podcasts.
Public radio was hit hard this summer after Congress eliminated $1.1 billion that had been previously allocated for this year and 2026. Local stations LAist/KPCC-FM (89.3), KCRW-FM (89.9) and PBS affiliates KCET and KOCE saw millions of dollars of expected funds vanish.
Last month, the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which had spent decades administering funds for more than 1,500 PBS TV affiliates and NPR radio stations, shut down amid the pullback.
“The volatility has always been there, but it’s even more pronounced now,” O’Kelly said of commercial radio. “The future of AM radio as we know it is coming to an end.”
“The idea of having to use a broadcast transmitter of 50,000 watts is early 20th century technology,” he said. “People can get in their car and they can listen to anything, anyone, anywhere, and at any time, thanks to Bluetooth.”
In Greg Braxton’s report on the furor behind the movie “Soul Plane” (“Bumpy Takeoff for ‘Soul Plane,’ ” May 28), director Jessy Terrero says, “I’m part of Generation X, part of the hip-hop culture, and I just wanted to make a good comedy for my generation.
Garrett Searight, an Ohio-based journalist who covers the radio industry, noted that KFI posted further ratings declines in September, representing more audience erosion for what used to be one of L.A.‘s strongest news stations.
“When you look at the Mt. Rushmore of Los Angeles radio stations, KFI is either up there or it deserves to be,” Searight said. “It’s not a great sign for the industry overall when one of the gold-standard stations is struggling like KFI is.”
In addition to KFI and KOST, iHeart Media owns six other stations in Los Angeles, including the sports channel KLAC-AM (570) and music station KIIS-FM (102.7).
Since early last week, fill-in hosts have been substituting for O’Kelly.
Bob Pittman, a former top executive at MTV and, later, AOL Time Warner, leads iHeart Media. Six years ago, the company, previously known as Clear Channel, emerged from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding designed to restructure more than $10 billion in debt, reducing its obligations to $5.75 billion.
The company’s prebankruptcy $16.1-billion debt load was a vestige of its 2008 private equity leveraged buyout.
Employees at KION-TV and Telemundo 23 in Salinas were told to pack up on Tuesday.
In August, iHeart reported a 5.4% decline in quarterly revenue to $545 million for its multiplatform unit, which includes the company’s more than 800 radio stations. Total revenue was $934 million.
The company has a growing podcast business, producing such shows as “Stuff You Should Know,” “Questlove Supreme” and “Drama Queens.” It also co-produces Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland Audio, which includes “The Laverne Cox Show,” and podcasts with the NFL and NBA.
President Trump’s friend and political advisor, Roger Stone, is coming under fire for using a racial slur on air while talking with a Black radio host.
At the end of last year, the company had 10,100 employees nationwide, according to its annual report. That marks a 10% decline compared with the end of 2019.
Dizzle, the Real 92.3 host, said in his Instagram video that he’d wanted to work in radio since he was 10. But, after a decade, he was no longer employed by iHeart Media, which played his show in L.A. and nationally.
“It’s been a good run,” Dizzle said, adding that he was grappling with a mix of emotions “but mainly [I’m] relieved. ... If you work in radio, you know, any day could be your day no matter what the situation is. ... I’m just grateful for the opportunity.”
“All jobs end. It is not our lives or our health,” O’Kelly wrote last week in a Facebook post, announcing his show’s cancellation. “There is nothing to be sad about here. I’m genuinely excited for the future.”
