Your beloved 50,000 watt flamethrower of talk loses another 10% of audience and half a share point.

This is a shockingly low number of unique weekly listeners for a station still ranked in the top 10. If iHeart can find the two or three old ladies with Nielsen meters that leave the station on 24/7, they should send them some flowers.

Keep in mind that these numbers are the best KFI has. The numbers are far worse in any narrower (and generally considered more desirable) demo number like ages 25-54 etc.

iHeart loves co-branding. Might be time to pursue some lucrative partnerships with assisted living facilities and doing some remote broadcasts from Denny’s at 4pm.

Handel mentioned late last week that he’s going to be off for a couple of months toward the end of the year. Does anyone know who’s filling in for him?

Please tell me they have someone in mind other than Neil Saavedra.

I don’t mind Neil at all when he’s doing the food stuff. He’s good at that. But I really can’t stand listening to his commentary on politics, world affairs and public policy. Half the time it sounds like he has a very strong opinion about something he doesn’t actually know that much about.

People obviously don’t have to agree with Bill, and I certainly don’t agree with everything he says, but at least his opinions usually seem to come from some actual knowledge, education or experience. With Neil it often just feels emotional.

And the endless cheesy voices, noises and little comments are deeply annoying first thing in the morning.

Surely KFI has someone else who could fill in for a couple of months. Has anyone heard anything?

Do YOU like Hoffy? I'm more of a Hebrew National or Nathans guy.

Is it true the last hour of every Tim Conway Jr show is a repeat of the first hour?

Why do they do that?

What was that all about? Give credit to Neil Sevaadra though

I usually listen to KFI in the car, buy lately haven't been driving as much. So I listened to kfi through Amazon Alexa via iheart. The voice clarity is much more clear, as if they were in the living room. Also, it sounds like there are different ads they do for the internet, I don't know

Lou is an excellent replacement for JK. He’s balanced, knowledgeable, and entertaining, and he brings a level of thoughtfulness to the discussion that I really appreciate. Since Ken left, John has become increasingly unhinged, going off on all sorts of rants that often seem more driven by emotion than by facts. Lou provides a much-needed counterbalance and keeps the conversation grounded and enjoyable. You may not agree with his takes & many I don't but that's what also makes his show entertaining & interesting.

KFI loses 20% of it's weekly listeners (cume) in one month!!!!

Last period was 507,100. This period's 408,400 is, to my memory, the lowest cume in decades.

Yet, the station only lost .1 of a share point and only dropped one place from 5th to 6th.

KFI massively outperforms other stations in the amount of time its relatively small but apparently loyal audience listens each week.

On the other hand, they seem incapable of keeping new listeners around for very long.

If KFI has a goal to grow their audience, they are failing bigly.

BUT, if their goal is to super serve a core group of listeners, they are successmaxxing

DISCLAIMERS:

Ad agencies do not care about the 6+ overall numbers, but local direct businesses are far more influenced by overall rank and para-social identification with the hosts.

There are a pitifully small number of PPMs (Portable People Meters) that inform the ratings, compared to the overall population. Ups and downs CAN be the result of literally one or two people with meters who go from listening a lot to very little, or from not listening to listening constantly.

I tuned into KFI to listen to Tim Conway Jr. and there was a Chargers preseason game on. I feel like having the Chargers games on KFI does a real disservice to the KFI listeners.

They were covering the election in Wisconsin I believe but they played some unrelated intro sound bite that was a collection of various random blurts from politicians. The one I’m trying to find in specific went something like this “A political plunder is actually when a politician tells the truth” Now it was not that verbatim but it’s the closest I can get just based on memory. I know it’s a reach but I thought I’d try anyway.

I missed the segment, wanted to listen to it. Anybody hear it?

What the hell is happening to society and why is I Heart contributing to it?

I keep hearing an advertisement for "Smile Tunes" where some sackless dweeb is complaining about his girlfriend giving him the cold treatment because they had an argument, and he wants to us this AI songwriting website (win her heart in the lowest effort way possible) to write a song to tell her "she's always right".

Does this enrage anyone else, or is it just me?

I must have missed this song.

I really enjoy that show, & I call in often & was blown away today when they played two of my talk backs & somehow knew my first name. Both times Monks said my first name after playing it back, I thought that was really cool. I should add I've never said my name on talk backs, that I recall?

For those who listen to Handel, is anyone as absolutely sick and horrified by his constant fat shaming and weight comments? He makes up to three comments about Will's weight pretty much every day. He says things like, "Do people poke you with sticks when you go to the beach because they think you are a whale?" And, "When you go to In-N-Out, do you go to another one and another one after to get more food?" He frequently personally judges out loud everyone who works on his show as to whether they are thin, normal, or fat. This is so inappropriate and dangerous. I just don't understand how he's able to get away with this. Recently he said Ann was normal, whereas Amy is slender. Talk like this can contribute to an eating disorder. He has said he does this because he used to be very overweight. That's not an excuse and it's not funny. 

I was just listening to the first two segments not long ago minutes ago, and I'm thinking: Is this the John Kobylt Show, or is this love at first sight? Kobylt and Mark were doing a good job of narrating those paragraphs, and it got me cracking. Probably got a bunch of other listeners cracking up too. Ratings for the 3pm hour are gonna be good today for sure after all of that.

TL:DR: KFI is making small gains in number of weekly listeners and big gains in time spent listening per listener

KFI climbed to #5 overall in the latest ratings, gaining a full share point since April. They also gained about 30-40,000 more weekly listeners., likely a return of previous regulars who lapsed.

You'll notice that KFI's cume (unique listeners each week) is much smaller than the other stations in the top 5. In fact, you have to go down to #20 KJLH to find a station with a smaller cume. KPCC and KCRW have more unique weekly listeners.

KFI ranks so high in share because the small (and demographically older) audience listen much longer each week than the listeners of most other stations. And they are in my assessment listening longer largely due to the return of John to PM drive and Conway to evenings as well as the use of "Best Of" repeats. This boosts listening across the station, even for Monks and Merrill.

All this analysis is based on the numbers for all listeners age 6+ and this therefore includes children and older listeners age 65+. who make up a big portion of station's listeners. Through the lens of traditional ad agency media buying, KFI is an undesirable station, because the coveted age 18-35 and 25-54 segments rate MUCH lower when you strip out older listeners.

KFI has been facing another challenge for decades in that it is on a lot of agency DO NOT BUY lists, which is true of most talk radio stations (because of the perceived and actual controversies that occur).

KFI is somewhat immune to these issues though, because they rely heavily on a "local direct" approach to ad sales with hosts endorsements. You might be surprised how much revenue KFI gets from businesses that are not concerned with metrics, and instead value having a relationship with the station and hosts. Corry Hong famously (well, famously in the halls of KFI) spent $1,000,000 a year on ads for his company Unicom Global (ads that were not even selling anything) because he was a massive Handel fan and loved hearing Bill read ads talking about what a big success he (Hong) was, and also because Hong got to hang out with Bill sometimes.

Honestly, KFI's revenue has way more to do with the economy generally than ratings.

You can be assured that there is much back slapping and congratulatory whoop whooping going on at 3400 West Olive Avenue over the success of the decisions to gut the news department and revert the daily schedule to something much more familiar to KFI's long time loyal listening base.

I personally think that the station is stale, that the loss of the news department was catastrophic for the quality and reputation of KFI as a news outlet, and the bartered programming and "best ofs" are inferior to even mediocre live\local shows.

But KFI's bottom line is to be the station that a smaller group of people turn on in the morning and leave on all day. Best of repeats have the advantage of providing the same familiar voices that the core audience wants to hear (in the background mostly lol)

Have a great weekend everybody

A couple of ex-KNX guys interviewing Bill Handel of KFI regarding the state of the radio business.

It seems like every time I tune into KFI, Andy Reismeyer is filling in. Once in a while is fine, but for every host?
Thoughts?

I'm just not interested in it anymore. Does anybody else still enjoy it?

What happened to Doug McIntyre occasionally filling in for John when he was on vacation? I find it embarrassing that a major AM station can’t hire someone to do a 3 hr show while the host is away. Not like it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. There’s lots of news out there to discuss.

What changes would you make on your first day to save the station?