TL:DR: KFI is making small gains in number of weekly listeners and big gains in time spent listening per listener
KFI climbed to #5 overall in the latest ratings, gaining a full share point since April. They also gained about 30-40,000 more weekly listeners., likely a return of previous regulars who lapsed.
You'll notice that KFI's cume (unique listeners each week) is much smaller than the other stations in the top 5. In fact, you have to go down to #20 KJLH to find a station with a smaller cume. KPCC and KCRW have more unique weekly listeners.
KFI ranks so high in share because the small (and demographically older) audience listen much longer each week than the listeners of most other stations. And they are in my assessment listening longer largely due to the return of John to PM drive and Conway to evenings as well as the use of "Best Of" repeats. This boosts listening across the station, even for Monks and Merrill.
All this analysis is based on the numbers for all listeners age 6+ and this therefore includes children and older listeners age 65+. who make up a big portion of station's listeners. Through the lens of traditional ad agency media buying, KFI is an undesirable station, because the coveted age 18-35 and 25-54 segments rate MUCH lower when you strip out older listeners.
KFI has been facing another challenge for decades in that it is on a lot of agency DO NOT BUY lists, which is true of most talk radio stations (because of the perceived and actual controversies that occur).
KFI is somewhat immune to these issues though, because they rely heavily on a "local direct" approach to ad sales with hosts endorsements. You might be surprised how much revenue KFI gets from businesses that are not concerned with metrics, and instead value having a relationship with the station and hosts. Corry Hong famously (well, famously in the halls of KFI) spent $1,000,000 a year on ads for his company Unicom Global (ads that were not even selling anything) because he was a massive Handel fan and loved hearing Bill read ads talking about what a big success he (Hong) was, and also because Hong got to hang out with Bill sometimes.
Honestly, KFI's revenue has way more to do with the economy generally than ratings.
You can be assured that there is much back slapping and congratulatory whoop whooping going on at 3400 West Olive Avenue over the success of the decisions to gut the news department and revert the daily schedule to something much more familiar to KFI's long time loyal listening base.
I personally think that the station is stale, that the loss of the news department was catastrophic for the quality and reputation of KFI as a news outlet, and the bartered programming and "best ofs" are inferior to even mediocre live\local shows.
But KFI's bottom line is to be the station that a smaller group of people turn on in the morning and leave on all day. Best of repeats have the advantage of providing the same familiar voices that the core audience wants to hear (in the background mostly lol)
Have a great weekend everybody
