“Seattle’s Progressive Talk” to be shut down; CBS Radio converting AM 1090 to sports

Last week, as we report­ed a few days ago, Clear Chan­nel pulled the plug on pro­gres­sive talk radio in Port­land, con­vert­ing AM 620 KPOJ (“Port­land’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”) to a Fox Sports affil­i­ate after more than eight years of serv­ing as a home for pop­u­lar hosts like Thom Hart­mann, Ed Schultz, Ran­di Rhodes, Nor­man Gold­man, Rachel Mad­dow, Al Franken, and Sam Seder.

Now we’ve received con­fir­ma­tion that CBS Radio will be doing the same thing with AM 1090 in Seat­tle as of Jan­u­ary 2nd, 2013.

On Jan­u­ary 2nd, CBS (which used to be known as Via­com before it spun off sev­er­al of its busi­ness units as a sep­a­rate com­pa­ny called Via­com) plans to con­vert KFNQ, for­mer­ly KPTK, to the sports radio for­mat, along with many oth­er sta­tions around the coun­try. The appar­ent objec­tive is to cre­ate a stronger net­work of sports radio sta­tions so that CBS can bet­ter com­pete for nation­al sports pro­gram­ming contracts.

Seat­tle, of course, already has plen­ty of sta­tions offer­ing sports talk. These include KRKO (broad­cast­ing as Fox Sports Radio 1380), KIRO (broad­cast­ing as 710 ESPN Seat­tle) and KJR (broad­cast­ing as Sports Radio 950).

But CBS exec­u­tives don’t care. As far as they’re con­cerned, AM 1090’s cur­rent for­mat isn’t mak­ing enough mon­ey — so they’re going to com­plete­ly trash it, just like Clear Chan­nel did with AM 620 in Portland.

CBS has­n’t yet offi­cial­ly announced the change, and they haven’t autho­rized an on-air announce­ment or an expla­na­tion for AM 1090’s web­site, but staff in Seat­tle have been told that it is hap­pen­ing. And they have com­mu­ni­cat­ed the news to peo­ple they know (includ­ing many of AM 1090’s most loy­al listeners).

So we know this isn’t a rumor.

Man­age­ment at CBS claims that although pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal talk has a ded­i­cat­ed core audi­ence, the over­all audi­ence has been declin­ing, both in our region and nation­al­ly. We haven’t seen any num­bers back­ing up that asser­tion, but that is part of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the for­mat change that CBS Seat­tle staff have been given.

Those unfa­mil­iar with the radio busi­ness might be sur­prised to know that AM 1090 has been through a lot of for­mat shifts before. AM 1090 is Seat­tle’s third old­est-radio sta­tion; it began broad­cast­ing in 1927 as KVL.

In 1947, Dorothy Bul­litt launched KING AM on the fre­quen­cy. KING AM was ini­tial­ly a NBC News affil­i­ate; it also broad­cast tra­di­tion­al pop music, jazz, and swing. In the 1970s, 1090 became “Mus­i­cra­dio 11 KING”, prin­ci­pal­ly broad­cast­ing hits from Bill­board­’s “Top 40” chart. KING AM shift­ed to soft adult con­tem­po­rary music in 1980, but rat­ings remained low, and two years lat­er, the sta­tion stopped broad­cast­ing tunes entire­ly due to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the FM band.

The sta­tion was relaunched in 1982 as KING New­sTalk 1090, with a slate of hosts that includ­ed Mike and Can­dace Siegel, Randy Row­land, Jim Althoff, Carl Dombek, Jeff Ray, and Pat Cash­man (lat­er one of the stars of Almost Live!). Four­teen years lat­er, in 1994, the sta­tion quit pay­ing all of its local tal­ent and instead began car­ry­ing the Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ All News Radio. Not long after, the sta­tion was sold by the Bul­litt fam­i­ly, and its call let­ters were changed near­ly half a dozen times.

By 1996, 1090 AM was broad­cast­ing coun­try music, and it was bought by Infin­i­ty Broad­cast­ing, which lat­er became CBS Radio (a unit of Via­com, now CBS Cor­po­ra­tion). Infin­i­ty exper­i­ment­ed with a news talk for­mat again after the turn of the cen­tu­ry (with local tal­ent such as Bob Rivers and Ron & Don), but pulled the plug after less than a year. 1090, which was by this time known as KYCW, returned to coun­try music, and con­tin­ued broad­cast­ing that until Octo­ber 2004, when it became KPTK (“Seat­tle’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”).

Now the genius­es at CBS want to con­vert 1090 AM to a sports for­mat. They fig­ure the audi­ence for sports pro­gram­ming is larg­er, and the sta­tion will be able to make more mon­ey by com­pet­ing for that audience.

We won­der if they’ve done their home­work. This is not a mar­ket that is cur­rent­ly under-served.

KJR already has Husky foot­ball and bas­ket­ball; KIRO (AM + FM) has the Mariners, Sounders, and the Sea­hawks, and both sta­tions also car­ry plen­ty of sports com­men­tary and analy­sis in addi­tion to games.

And as of a few weeks ago, sports fans in the Pacif­ic North­west have even less incen­tive to lis­ten to games or analy­sis on the radio.

If they sub­scribe to Com­cast cable, Fron­tier FiOS, or Dish Net­work, they can watch all the games that the likes of ESPN and Fox don’t decide to car­ry on the Pac-12 Net­works, a fam­i­ly of tele­vi­sion chan­nels cre­at­ed by the Pacif­ic 12 conference.

The Pacif­ic 12 con­fer­ence, as many read­ers know, con­sists of twelve schools, includ­ing Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon’s four largest pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties. The schools col­lec­tive­ly decid­ed a cou­ple of years ago that they could bet­ter mon­e­tize their ath­let­ic events by cre­at­ing a broad­cast­ing arm under their direct control.

Now that the Pac-12 Net­works are live, col­lege sports fans can watch far more games on TV than they could before. Each region of the con­fer­ence has its own chan­nel, and there’s also a nation­al Pac-12 chan­nel as well.

This is what CBS is up against. They’re mak­ing an extreme­ly risky bet. By con­vert­ing AM 1090, they lose the sta­tion’s cur­rent loy­al audi­ence and all the good­will they have tried to cul­ti­vate over the years through “Precinct 1090” and annu­al town hall forums. No oth­er sta­tion in Seat­tle broad­casts pro­gres­sive talk, which means that AM 1090 — in its present incar­na­tion — has a niche.

And it has boost­ers, too. Many local activists have pro­mot­ed the sta­tion for years with AM 1090 bumper stick­ers or win­dow decals on their vehicles.

CBS exec­u­tives are mis­tak­en if they think this com­mu­ni­ty of lis­ten­ers, which their Seat­tle staff has worked hard to build, are going to stick around once the com­pa­ny turns its back on them by junk­ing “Seat­tle’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”.

At least CBS has­n’t made the switch yet, unlike Clear Chan­nel. If you’re an AM 1090 lis­ten­er who wants pro­gres­sive talk to stay on the air in Seat­tle, you can voice your dis­plea­sure regard­ing CBS’ plans to its cor­po­rate office.

CBS RADIO
1271 Avenue of the Amer­i­c­as FL 44
New York, NY 10020

There’s also a Face­book page called “Keep Pro­gres­sive Talk in Seat­tle” which you can become a fan of. The cre­ator of the page is urg­ing peo­ple to send post­cards to CBS head­quar­ters protest­ing the for­mat change.