KGO radio says ‘goodbye’ ahead of format changehttps://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/KGO-says-goodbye-ahead-of-format-change-17491675.phpKGO, among the last of the classic news talk call-in radio stations in San Francisco, announced a format change Thursday, after 80 years at 810 on the AM dial.
In a sign of the times reflecting what’s widely considered to be the twilight of terrestrial talk radio, the announcement was issued on Twitter.
“We thank you for your loyalty and for trusting KGO to be your source for information,” the Tweet said. “On Monday, 810AM begins a new era. We hope you will tune in.”
Cumulus Media, which owns the station, declined to comment on what the new format would be. “We’ll be announcing the exciting new brand coming to the Bay Area on Monday morning with a news release,” said Cumulus spokesperson Lisa Dollinger.
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KGO has already killed off most of its local programming, starting a decade ago when most of the local hosts were dismissed. It shifted from news-talk to all news and foundered for years until 2019, when it attempted to regain its hold on the talk-radio format.
While it took me a couple of years to learn of KGO, when I moved to Silicon Valley during Carter's
MalAdministration, KGO
was talk radio in the SF Bay Area. They had a well established format of news during commute times and a stable of well-established popular hosts in the remaining ~75% of the day. The hosts were mostly non-crazy mildly liberal, plus a crazy-racist liberal during late night hours, and a couple of strong conservatives during the weekends (e.g., Michael Savage got his start on KGO).
The liberal hosts being non-crazy and not obsessed/focused with/on politics I found it listenable (except for the late night crazy-racist). At one point in the late 80s, at the recommendation of one of its more extreme liberals who knew him, KGO had Rush Limbaugh do a substitute gig when a host with a one hour program took a vacation. That grew into playing an hour of Rush, live, every week day.
Fast-forwarding into the early-mid 90s, KGO's owner decided to switch another station it owned, KSFO, into a conservatalker and KGO's conservative hosts were moved over to KSFO, along with a few "new" conservative hosts (e.g. Starr Parker). I've been a KSFO listener since that time. After a few years (contract renewal time?), Rush moved over to KSFO, his full 3 hours.
KGO was off my radar screen until about 10 years ago, when Cumulus, in a move whose purpose and wisdom still eludes me, canned most of KGO's well established hosts, replaced them with a few newbie unknowns, and increased news programming. Some the older people were moved, briefly, to some obscure Cumulus station, but that fizzled. As best I can tell, KGO floundered for a decade or so, and now is dropping the talk format it practically invented.
Meanwhile, contrary to the SF Comical's
"the twilight of terrestrial talk radio" crack, KSFO is flourishing, and Salem Communications moved its KTRB 860 to a conservatalk format five or more years ago. KTRB also seems to be doing reasonably well.
