BlatherWatch

Old Seattle Radio Saturday: "KVI plunges into the news-talk business"

Not only was KVI an oldies station twice  before its recent return to all-talk, but it made news in 1980 when it flipped the first time to blabber in order to compete with KOL and Hardwick.

It was just as music was leaving AM, to land permanently on the FM dial. Rush Limbaugh wasn't to arrive for another decade -- things were looking scary for AM.

Some things never change- the new Operations Manager seemed anxious to "fill quotas" of female listeners by hiring a "clinical psychologist, preferably female" for middays.

Such notables as Jack Morton, Peter B., and Robert O. Smith were already at the station. The music jocks were "encouraged to develop new skills for the new format or move elsewhere."

Of course, it flipped back at least once to oldies back then, famously, back to talk in 1992. Then again to oldies in 2010, then back to talk last month.

 H/T to SeaTac Radio.com

KVI: are you listening?

How are they doin'?

Welcome KVI: seattle's newest old talk station

Starting Tuesday morning, KVI's new "Smart Talk" will start talking smartly with KOMO-TV's Elisa Jaffe and Mark Christopher as hosts of the Sunrise Seattle.

(photos: Howard, left; Jaffe, right)

Then comes syndicated consumer blabbermeister Clark Howard, 56, who will be live, but, unfortunately, talking about his carburetors and CuisinArts from Atlanta, Georgia!

Also live but also local (yea!) is Buzz with Scott Carty offering a talk alternative to Dori Monson from 1-3p in case you don't care for Michael Medved (KTTH m-f 12-3p) or BBC Newshour (KUOW m-f, 1-2p).  

We have great hopes for Mr. Carty, 41, who's rumored to possess a sense of humor and who says he loves to "write for the ear and have intimate conversations with microphones."

That may sound creepy, but actually that's a good thing- the best writers write for the ear; great broadcasters develop Freudian relationships with their mics.

A View Ridge resident, Carty lives within the city limits of Seattle. Another good thing for a Seattle broadcaster, by our lights.

KVI re-flip confirmed... where's the meat?

You suffered ”Hot Talk KVI”, "More Stimulating talk!", “Freedom 570", "Conservative Talk… No Apologies!”, and “Seattle’s  Greatest Hits.”

Now brace yourself for “Smart Talk for a Sound Life.”

We (and others) reported last week that Fisher's KVI is flipping back to talk after a typically unthought-out discarding of a their long-established talk brand for a turn to oldies-of-the-oldies music last year.

KVI to flip back to talk?

 

Will KVI be flipping back (re-flipping, de-flipping?) from oldies to talk coming soon? The answer, which is electrifying the tiny universe of those who care about such things is... probably.

It's only been about a year since the station blew up its venerable talk format for really, old, oldies music. Guess the The 0.3 share must have given Fisher a clue that something wasn't working. (like maybe the people who remember that old music were all dead?)

The word on the street is they will go all-Xmas music after Thanksgiving, and when that gratefully lets up, January 1st they will flip to talk.

Fisher dumps the dumb dump, will stay on as a renter

Fisher is finally out from under one of their worst ideas in a long season of bad ideas!

This from Radio-info's Tom Taylor:

160 million for KPLZ/KOMO/KVI home Fisher Plaza in Seattle.

As CEO Colleen Brown said on her latest quarterly call, it’s not all that simple, trying to sell a building that was built around a TV station. Fisher’s been toiling at it since 2008, and this new deal with Houston-based REIT (real estate investment trust) Hines should be the best of both worlds. Fisher’s KOMO-TV and KUNS-TV can stay on as tenants in the high-tech Fisher Plaza, along with the radio stations. While the $160 million in proceeds will pay down a lot of debt. The facility is near Seattle’s Space Needle, and chances are you’ve seen it on TV – Fisher Plaza is the fictional “hospital” on the ABC-TV series “Grey’s Anatomy.” More about the sale from the Seattle Times. 

Shrinking, shrinking... fisher's a one-town horse, now

Fisher Communications ended its agreement last year with classical KING-FM (98.1),  when it reverted back to public radio status.Though everyone knew that was coming, Fisher's radio top line was bashed: cash flow shrank, and revenues fell.

 Radio-Info:

Also hurting revenues, according to CFO Hassan Natha - "the overall market decline" in Seattle, and the format change at KVI (570). They switched it from conservative talk to oldies, and the recent age 6+ trendline has been 0.2-0.2-0.3. Fisher says the radio ratings continue to be strong at hot AC KPLZ (101.5). There's also news/talk KOMO (1000) and its LMA'd FM simulcast, KOMO-FM, Oakville at 97.7.

And then there's the pale pachyderm that is Fisher Plaza. Once touted to be the 9th Wonder of The Media World, they've been trying to dump it since 2005. Since selling it hasn't worked out, CEO Colleen Brown, who still has her job despite all of this, says they continue to "evaluate options." They're getting more "creative," according to Radio-Info, and considering a sale/leaseback or a re-financing.

Brown is confident "there will be a good outcome", though it's tricky trying to sell something that was "built around a TV station."

(BlatherWatch suggests burning it down for the insurance, perhaps leaving the management teamed tied-up in the management suites. That's called "Soprano option").

(photo: "pale pachyderm")

Last week the i's were crossed and t's dotted for the sell-off of the Great Falls, Montana cluster, Fisher is now just a Seattle company, their loopy regional radio dreams are over.

And have you noticed that there's a paucity of talk radio in Seattle anymore?

We keep getting a commenter named 'curious' who asks, ". . .and this has what to do with talk radio?"

Must we say it again? local talk radio, interest of which is what brought us to found this blog almost seven (7!) years ago, has almost disappeared from the Seattle market. 

Foremost in the market is KIROFM, which is very hard listening for deep intellectiuals such as ourselves. They have very successfully propelled themselves to the top once again with some very smart programming decisions. (Note we didn't say smart programs). They've done it by doing what we've long preached to do. They went after a younger, broader demographic and they did it by dumbing stuff down and making the station into tabloid news talk. The celebrity gossip, the YouTube audio, the shallow outrages and weird news gleaned from the Net is nearly unlistenable to the great minds who write BlatherWatch.

Yet we have listened. And written about Dori ad nauseaum. Ron & Don until they came out our ears. About John Curley more than his spotty attendence on the show deserves. We've been kinder to Dave & Luke, because we like them better, though it seems to us that Dave's just putting in his time... that his CBS columns are still the pithiest moments on KIRO. We know you do what you gotta do in any business, and they've saved the station, but listeners like us have been left in the dust. Fuck pith, they've said.

And so be it.

KVI is history. KKKOL is business talk. KOMO is audio wall paper. Maybe we're wrong, but we hearken unto the theory going around that when John Carlson (m-f 9a -12p) and Ken Schram's (m-f, 12-3p) contracts are up, they'll be gone too. leaving the station to the news.

They run old fashioned talk shows over on KOMO, but need to address some of the same YouTube issues of the day to stay relevant in today's terms. John & Ken do it more tediously than the "stars" on KIRO.

The rest, but for Dave Boze's (KTTH m-f, 3-4p) afternoon moments, is syndicated talk beamed down from afar, almost never in the time slot in which it actually happened  

And that bores the shit out of us.

So ... we do as we please around here. When talk radio interests us, we'll write about it. Otherwise, we'll write about farts, Republicans, Moammar Quadaffi's back zits, NPR, and other edifying subjects.

KIROFM shares no. 1 one in the market

Bitch as we will about Dori, Don, and Luke, but something's working over at KIRO.

The September Arbitron ratings show that Bonneville's KIROFM has reached up to share (with rocker KISW) the no. 1 spot in the market. It's the first time in our memory that it's been higher than no. 3. This is definitely the highest ratings any talker has gotten in this market in the PPM era. 

KOMO comes in at fourth place, which ain't bad- especially without Mariners baseball which it had in previous years when it’s surged, according to Radio-Info's Tom Taylor.

Public radio talker KUOW is at 11th place as usual.

Rush Limbaugh's KTTH (also owned by Bonneville) is still scraping along at 24th place but they're beating CBS's KPTK progressive talk which is in the tank at 30th.

As always, these are the most general of all ratings- the only ones publicly available- of those age 6 and older. The most valuable demo is the age 25-54 (folks who allegedly buy most stuff that might be advertised) and the aged 35-64, the group that apparently are the second most liable to buy stuff they hear advertised on the radio.

Here's a fair explanation of radio ratings.

Rent's due at public radio

24/7 blah-blah for money prevails on KUOW... and there's no respite: KPLU is running their pledge drive simultaneously. Send 'em some dough.

Listeners can bitch about these silly panhandlings, but consider this: commercial radio begs for money for nearly 50% of nearly every broadcast hour.

With the Foxification of KIRO, the fade-to-blanding of KOMO, the annihilation of KVI and the over-syndication of KTTH or KPTK, Northwesterners need public radio. (As does the thriving tote-bag industry).

Public radio lets us off easy, they do this but twice a year. What's more, they'll shut up if we send our money to them faster!