audacy

Audacy’s Los Angeles news radio station KNX is ending its simulcast on 97.1 FM, which will move to a sports talk format on May 11.

The New York-based audio company announced Tuesday that the frequency will be re-branded as the Fan, becoming the first all-sports FM station in the Los Angeles market.

Sports talk listeners are currently served by KLAC, an AM station co-owned by iHeartRadio and the Dodgers, ESPN LA 710, and KLAA at 830 AM, owned by the Los Angeles Angels.

KNX will continue its all-news format on its AM frequency 1070. The station will also be heard on 97.1 HD2, mostly available in vehicles equipped with digital radios.

Chris Oliviero, chief business officer for Audacy, said the moves are aimed at providing more local content to listeners in the Los Angeles market. The Fan will be stocked with on-air talent well-versed in the area’s teams.

“We’re going to be providing twice as much original local L.A. content than we were previously,” Oliviero said. “We are taking these two broadcast frequencies, and getting more out of them.”

KNX’s news format benefited from the FM simulcast, with its share of the audience up more than 25% since it began in December 2021. Oliviero said Audacy remains committed to the format, which has a significant number of listeners through the station’s app and other streaming platforms.

Audacy has a proven track record in sports talk radio, which is attractive to advertisers. Los Angeles was the only top 10 market where the company did not have a station carrying the format.

Oliviero noted that the upcoming sports calendar that includes the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles will likely drive up listener appetite for the station.

The Fan will launch without any live play-by-play of Los Angeles teams. KLAC has the audio rights to the Dodgers, the Clippers of the NBA, the Chargers of the NFL and UCLA football.

Oliviero said Audacy will look at acquiring audio rights to Los Angeles teams as they become available. He noted that the Fan will carry local hosts during daytime hours when KLAC offers syndicated hosts Dan Patrick and Colin Cowherd. KLAC has a popular local team, Petros and Money, in the afternoon, and a Dodgers-focused talk show in the evening.

In addition to KNX, Audacy owns classic hits station KRTH-FM (101.1), rhythmic hits outlet KTWV-FM (94.7), adult hits station KCBS-FM (93.1) and KROQ-FM (106.7), which has an alternative rock format. The stations broadcast out of studios on the Miracle Mile.

Audacy has owned KNX since 2017, when it merged with the radio division of CBS Corp. The company was known as Entercom at the time of the transaction.

The announcement of the end of CBS News Radio last Friday was met with elegiac tributes to the service that built the foundation of William Paley’s company nearly 100 years ago and brought the heroic work of journalists such as Edward R. Murrow to millions of listeners.

But for the 700 affiliates carrying CBS News Radio, the concerns are more practical as they are faced with finding new national programming that will replace it. CBS Radio News will go silent on May 22.

The shutdown of the historic radio division was part of a division-wide staff cut that will affect 6% of the CBS News workforce. Affiliate stations learned of the decision only minutes before it was released to the press.

The local all-news radio stations carrying the service had to post messages on social media to assure listeners that they were not disappearing — only the national newscasts that were provided by CBS.

KNX, the all-news station in Los Angeles that has carried CBS programming since 1936, posted a lengthy segment on the impending closure and explained how “KNX News is not going anywhere.”

KNX was owned by CBS until 2017. The New York-based Audacy, under its previous name Entercom, acquired the CBS radio stations in 2017. KNX and the other Audacy news stations such as WBBM in Chicago, KCBS in San Francisco and WWJ in Detroit remained CBS affiliates, carrying the hourly CBS newscasts.

The Audacy all-news outlets, which reach around 9 million listeners a month, provided about one-third of U.S. coverage for CBS News Radio, the most of any station group carrying the service.

Audacy said it will find a replacement for CBS News Radio to provide national and international coverage, noting that the mission of its all-news stations will not be affected.

“The vast majority of our news and talk programming remains original and locally-produced, and we are beginning conversations with other national news providers to ensure our listeners continue to have access to world-class programming they value and trust.” said Chris Oliviero, chief business officer for Audacy.

Educating the listening public and advertisers that the stations will be fundamentally the same once CBS is gone will require some effort. KNX and the other Audacy all-news stations have a long association with CBS, which launched their formats starting in the late 1960s.

Along with the hourly newscasts, the stations carried “The Osgood Files,” a massively popular commentary segment hosted by the late former “CBS Sunday Morning” host Charles Osgood, for 46 years until 2017. The jingles and sounders used to identify CBS News network programming heard on the stations for decades have also been part of the listening experience.

Among the possible replacements for CBS News Radio is ABC News Audio, which is the largest network radio news service in the U.S. with 1,500 affiliates. The Audacy stations currently use ABC News content outside of its hourly newscasts.

KFI-AM currently carries the ABC News Audio newscasts in Los Angeles. Exclusivity of the ABC News Audio affiliations are determined on a market-by-market basis, according to a representative at the network.

Fox News Media, the home of the conservative-leaning cable channel, also offers a radio service with hourly newscasts and dedicated reporters, which airs on several hundred stations (the company does not supply a specific number).

While Fox News Radio delivers straight reporting, the service is likely to find a home on some of the conservative talk stations that are currently CBS News affiliates.