When they're merging onto the freeway and figuring whether they need "traffic on the ones" or on the fives -- that, for many Southland listeners, used to be the sole distinction between all-news radio stations KFWB and KNX.
Now the two are trying to stake out separate identities, even while they pool their newsrooms for the first time ever.
"It has been the case that people didn't quite understand if there was a difference, or if there should be a difference," said Andy Ludlum, director of news programming for both KFWB-AM (980) and KNX-AM (1070). Now KNX is being fashioned as the go-to source for world and national news and an in-depth local report, while KFWB offers quick headlines and specializes in the news and business of the entertainment industry -- what Ludlum called "the ultimate local story."
And because KNX's signal is 10 times that of its sister station, Ludlum said, "if the ground starts shaking or the hills are on fire, that should be the station you go to. It really doesn't make a lot of sense for two stations to try to be doing the same thing."
For more than four decades, however, that's exactly what they did -- from 1968, when they switched to all-news formats within a month of each other, until recently, even though they've been owned by the same company since 1995, what is now called CBS Radio.
KFWB was always more short-form, with a staccato, headline-news style carried over from its days as an affiliate of the Westinghouse chain, exemplified by the slogan, "Give us 22 minutes and we'll give you the world." Meanwhile, KNX took a broader approach and played up the cachet of its CBS News affiliation.
However discrete the differences between the two, apparently they were enough for many people to pick a favorite, Ludlum said. According to station research, 75% of the stations' listeners stuck with one or the other, with only 25% crossing over between the two.
George Nicholaw, general manager of KNX from 1967 to 2003, said that even after the merger, the two stations remained independent and continued pushing each other, seeing that as the best way to serve listeners. However, he instructed his sales staff never to bad-mouth KFWB: "We want as many news listeners as we can get."
But in the current shrinking economy, the stations have trimmed staff and pooled resources, so now reporters are filing dispatches for both stations. "We're like every other business, where we're going to be practical," Ludlum said.
