What Losing FM Is Costing KNX News
KNX has lost nearly 41% of its audience in a year. But the bigger question is what happens to all-news radio from here.
We’re now getting a closer look at the scale of the change for KNX News since it lost the FM frequency and went back solely to AM 1070.
July’s numbers show KNX with a 3.1 share and a cume of 582,400 — the total number of people who tuned in — according to Nielsen ratings reported by Barrett Media.
Those numbers mark another step down since the change on May 18. KNX’s cume has fallen each month since then, while its share has dropped from 3.6 to 3.1.
By contrast, KNX had a 4.6 share and a cume of 983,000 in July of last year, when it still had the FM signal.
A year later, KNX has suffered a nearly 41% decline in cume and lost a point and a half in share.
What we can’t see in these topline 6+ numbers is how much of that decline is directly tied to losing the FM signal. But the timing certainly tells a story.
We also can’t see the numbers for the specific demos and audience KNX is built to reach. Those may tell a different story from the one we can see in the publicly released numbers.
Meanwhile, what’s happening at 97.1 FM?
Since launching the new sports format, 97.1 The Fan, in May, the station has posted a 0.2 share for two months in a row.
There is now a huge L.A. sports story The Fan can use to draw listeners into its analysis and conversations: Former Disney CEO Bob Iger and investor Josh Kushner have agreed to buy the Lakers in a deal valuing the team at $12.5 billion. The sale still needs NBA approval.
Of course, that story is also being covered on KNX and every other station carrying news. Not to mention iHeart’s sports station, AM 570 LA Sports, which has been on an upswing over the past few months — from a 1.3 share to 1.5 and then 1.7 in July.
AM 570 is growing while The Fan is still trying to find traction.
So what does all of this mean?
KNX News is a vitally important station in this market. It is L.A.’s only all-news station. It was indispensable during the January 2025 fires, and it will be again if — gods forbid — another major disaster strikes.
But KNX is also facing the headwinds of the overall media culture, where more and more people, especially in younger demos, are choosing to get their news from social media.
Then there are the changes inside the radio industry itself.
When I first arrived at KNX in 2015, there was a whole team of reporters spread across Los Angeles and Orange County. We had a regular Orange County reporter. Each daypart was hosted by two anchors.
Eventually, the reporting staff was whittled down…and down.
Two-anchor shifts became the domain of mornings. Middays became a solo shift. Afternoons, while still technically having two anchors, were split: One anchor would be on for an hour, then step away to write while the second anchor took over. Then they would trade places again.
That’s the way it was when I left last year.
KNX also once had a live, local anchor overnight. Now it carries a shared overnight newscast with its sister all-news station in San Francisco.
We’re left wondering about the future — what KNX will look like a year from now, what newsradio itself may look like a year from now, or whether all-news will simply become another format that’s too expensive to maintain.
We’ll just have to stay tuned.