Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 1:20:04 PM
Townhall.com member station News Talk KRLA AM 870 continues to have an impressive weekday lineup, including Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Miller, Kevin James, Bill Bennett. This lineup has been fairly stable lately. (Salem also has an FM Christian station, 995. KKLA, which has a conservative afternoon talker, Frank Pastore.) This is notable, because there have been many changes lately in the local market.
Earlier this year, we lost our CBS FM Talk ("hot talk") station, which flipped to Top 40 (less expensive, better ratings). This was after losing our "Republitarian" Larry Elder from our Citadel talk & news station. Elder's local show was replaced by syndicated Mark Levin. I'm sure this was a move that saved money, too, but I don't know how the ratings have held up. That station still has a local host during the morning drive. Tammy Bruce would be on the station Saturdays, when not pre-empted by Dodger baseball, but recently she was off the station and making a push online. This station also has the Sean Hannity show.
Meanwhile, the powerhouse high-rated "conservative" talk & news Clear Channel station features Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlessinger as live syndicated programming, and local shows for the morning and afternoon drives (neither of which is especially conservative) and the evening.
There has also been another AM station that has recently tried to do some conservative talk, with the syndicated Laura Ingraham program and John Ziegler (author, documentary filmmaker).
Now things are going to be shaken up again as Dr. Laura leaves the station that launched her current show, and one of the local CBS AM news stations, which has been toying with format changes, adds talk to accommodate her show. I'm assuming her signing with syndicator TRN also means she is leaving Premiere, the syndication arm of Clear Channel. This station also says they will be bringing on Laura Ingraham's show. I would think that would mean the other station is losing her. If that other station is going to retain the talk format, and if this CBS station is open to adding more talkers, there certainly are a of local personalities without shows on local radio, as well as syndicated shows without a Los Angeles affiliate. However, the trend seems to be towards cost cutting, so I don't expect we'll see these returning to the Los Angeles airwaves.
Something of note is that the station dropping Dr. Laura - one of the top rated stations in Los Angeles - will be filling the three hours by having the morning host return for two hours after Limbaugh, and expanding the afternoon show so that it starts an hour earlier. The afternoon show's 6pm hour is often a replay of the 3pm hour, so I expect that the additional hour will also mean repeating another hour instead of a new hour of content. Not having to pay for Dr. Laura and instead using existing station personalities (especially rebroadcasts) should save a nice chunk of change for the station. But considering Los Angeles is one of the top markets in the nation, I am surprised this is going on. It shows how tough things have gotten in radio.
The "conservative" Clear Channel station is going to be less conservative, further giving KRLA AM 870 an edge when it comes to those looking for conservative hosts. Unfortunately, the trade-off is that KRLA doesn't have a local focus during the daytime.