KCAL-FM 96.7 flipped to an automated classic rock format on Saturday and let its entire airstaff go, RadioInsight reported.
The station is licensed to Redlands and serves the Riverside and San Bernardino market. It is owned by Anaheim Broadcasting. Until this weekend it ran an active rock format with live hosts. It now runs, in the trade's word, jockless.
Who is out
Four on-air hosts are named in the trade reporting: Patrick Tish in mornings, Nikki Preston in middays, Daryl Norsell in afternoons and John DeSantis in evenings.
RadioInsight reports the entire airstaff was released. It does not give a total headcount beyond those four, and we are not going to invent one. Production, promotions and part-time staff are the roles usually cut alongside hosts in a flip like this, but nothing in the verified reporting says how many people that was here.
What the company said
Kelly Sanders, the chief operating officer of Anaheim Broadcasting, framed it as a product decision. "KCAL will deliver a focused, consistent listening experience with broader appeal for both our audience and advertising partners," he said.
Read that sentence carefully, because it is the whole argument. Consistent means the same thing every hour without a person deciding. Broader appeal means classic rock instead of active rock. And "for our audience and advertising partners" puts the two in that order while describing a change that removes the part of the station only the audience valued.
The detail that complicates it
The station's ratings had just improved.
RadioInsight reports KCAL rose from a 2.0 to a 2.9 share in the June Nielsen Audio numbers. That is a substantial move in a market this size, and it happened with the hosts on the air.
A station that cuts its airstaff immediately after a ratings rise is not making a decision about performance. It is making one about cost, which is a legitimate thing for a business to do and a different thing from what the statement describes.
Why this is a Los Angeles story
Because live local radio in Southern California keeps getting quieter, and each individual instance looks small.
A rock station in Redlands is not a newsroom. Nobody lost an investigative unit here. But an airstaff is the last thing on a music station that is actually local: someone who knows the market, says the name of the town, reads a traffic tie-up on the 10, and can be interrupted by news. Automation cannot do any of that, and once it is switched on the equipment does not need anyone in the building.
That is the sort of thing a region loses in a single weekend and does not rebuild.
What we could not confirm
We found no statement from any of the four hosts that we could verify, no total number of people laid off, and no comment from a union. Anaheim Broadcasting's statement above is the only company comment in the verified reporting.
