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LA and ICE protests -- when is / isn't the news?

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Over the weekend, we took advantage of free Metro rides to visit Little Tokyo, specifically on Saturday night. We had a delightful time, leaving around 7 p.m. When we got home, I turned on the TV to watch the local news. Suffice to say, we left Little Tokyo just in time. Jason Armond, LA Times In a major market such as Los Angeles, both radio and TV generally do an admirable job with breaking news. The past weekend's protests about local immigration raids was a rapidly evolving story. By Sunday, the LA stations were providing wall-to-wall coverage. But at least on the radio, it wasn't perfect. Rebecca Ellis, LA Times Tuning in Sunday morning, as expected the two major news outlets, KNX and KFI, were providing continuous coverage particularly when fires broke out and freeways were being blocked. Not unexpectely, the Dean of local radio journalists, Pete Demitriou , was leading the KNX team coverage (and taking an indirect shot of pepper spray). He was joined by John Baird and Em...
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Update: (KNX) News making news

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  The local all-news outlet is making some news of their own once again. Julie Chin , the station's Director for the past 19 years, has been released. A veteran of San Francisco's news-talk behemoth KGO, Chin arrived from the Bay Area in 2006. She recently oversaw the station's wall-to-wall coverage of the Palisades and Eaton fires.  A graduate of Cal Berkeley, Chin grew up in a household where the radio was always tuned to KGO.  “I was always interested in news, information, media, etc. so I focused on that. I did a couple of internships, both of which happened to be in radio and my love of radio was solidified. It felt like home,” said Chin.  She’d find herself eventually hired as an editorial assistant and producer, finding herself in management “because I kept saying ‘yes!’” We'd previously reported on the departure of Alex Silverman , who served as KNX's Program and News Director as Audacy's VP of News Programming here in LA. Silverman also was part of the ...
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Quick update: Kevin Ryder returns to the ROQ

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mail. It wasn't an April Fool's joke, as some actually thought. Kevin Ryder , half of the legendary KROQ morning team of Kevin and Bean ( Gene Baxter ) has returned to the station in afternoon drive. Here's the official press release from Audacy: LOS ANGELES, CA – April 2, 2025 –  Audacy’s World Famous KROQ (KROQ-FM) welcomes back Radio Hall of Fame inductee Kevin Ryder. Listeners can tune into his new show on KROQ, weekdays from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. PT. Megan Holiday will now host evenings.  “Kevin Ryder is a Radio Hall of Fame Broadcaster who spent most of his adult life waking up SoCal with his former partner Bean,” said Kevin Weatherly, Senior Vice President of Programming, KROQ. “Their authentic and irreverent morning show is legendary, and I’ve had the privilege of having a front-row seat for the majority of it. Kevin’s return to KROQ in afternoons is a full circle moment in the best way possible.” “I spent half of my life with my fellow favorite weirdos, helping to...
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Local layoffs at Audacy (and a resignation), the 2025 edition

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  The latest downsizing of Audacy involves 250 - 300 layoffs across the country . The company's digital content division is almost completely eliminated. Morning hosts in New York and Boston were let go. RIFs happened with talent, management, sales, and traffic.  T he last major Audacy layoffs locally were in 2022 . The current Audacy layoffs hit the LA market quite significantly, perhaps more signifcantly than three years ago. Ralph Stewart is described as both a strong radio man and a wonderful person. Raised on Seattle rock-n-roll, he started with rock and progressed to CHR. In 1987, his station flipped to the format first heard in LA known as "the WAVE." He suddenly had Yanni's home phone number. He guided the station through the transition until the station itself was sold. As it turned out, there was an opening at the original WAVE whcih brought him to Southern California in 1991. He briefly left CBS Radio to help launch All Comedy Radio in 2003 before returning...
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And a couple more: Arriving afternooner, departing morning host

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  After the release of afternoon hosts Kevin Ryder  and Doug "Sluggo" Roberts last September , it's taken five months for heritage rock station KLOS to hire their successor. Nik Carter , who started this past Monday. Carter most recently served as a host of “Feedback” at SiriusXM’s Music Talk “Volume” channel. The East Coast native got his start at WFNX Boston followed by a brief run in mornings at WDGE-Providence in 1995/96. He would then be the afternooner at active rock WBCN-Boston for a nine year run in through 2004. Carter then headed for 92.3 K-Rock (WXRX-New York) until 2009. He also has been the image voice for several stations including WNEW-NewYork, WXRT-Chicago, WBOS-Boston, WTGB-FM-, Washington DC, and SiriusXM's "Classic Rewind." His voiceover work lists a significant number of national brands, including MTV, VH-1 Classic (where he was also a host), Animal Planet, ESPN, ESPN 2, Nickelodeon, Court TV, PBS, Fusion TV, Geico, Jim Beam, Purina, Opti...
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Quick short take: Awards and correcting an oops

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Congratulations!:   Two LA radio personalities will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards as part of this year's Golden Mike Awards, sponsored by the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California (RTNA).  It's no surprise Pete Demetriou , who we've designated as the Dean of local radio journalists, is a recipient for this honor. Here's what's stated in the RTNA press release: KNX’s Pete Demetriou has reported from the streets of Southern California for  more than four decades, bringing virtually every big story from the Northridge earthquake  to the 1992 LA Riots to the radio airwaves. When there’s breaking news, Demetriou is on  the front lines. He’s won more than two dozen Golden Mikes . Also receiving the honor, sadly posthumously , is KTLA's Sam Rubin . He was best known for his three decades offering entertainment news as well as red carpet coverage, but he also was heard on the local airwaves, including his time as a talk show host on KLSX and...
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Field, FISH, and Fires

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  pokerindustrypro.com Your local radio correspondent is still trying to make sense of the past year on the local dial and the business in general. Nonetheless, while the (now belated) year in review is still in progress, there’s been some recent news worth highlighting. Clearing the Field: Audacy Chairman David Field has stepped down as the CEO of the broadcasting and audio company after 27 years. There’s different ways to view the departing Audacy CEO. Under Field’s leadership, the company has expanded from 15 stations with $35 million in revenue to its current 230 stations, including the former CBS Radio cluster, and $1.2 billion in revenue.     Still, Field has weathered his share of criticism. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (from which they emerged in late September 2024 ), restructuring $1.6 billion of debt to $350 million. The company’s stock price now hovers around 15 cents per share from a high in 2000 (as Entercom) at $66 a share. Part of ...
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