In his 30 years as head of KNX-AM 1070, George Nicholaw has seen it all fires, earthquakes, floods, riots and the Trial of the Century the O.J. Simpson trial.
But two years ago, he went through the unimaginable: KNX owner CBS Inc. was purchased by Westinghouse Electric Corp. meaning that his fiercest competitor, Westinghouse-owned KFWB-AM 980, became his sister station.
Unlike most radio station general managers, Nicholaw is something of an on-air talent himself; his daily editorials have a big following in the Los Angeles radio market.
Question: How did you end up in radio, and why stay in it so long?
Answer: When I made the switch from television to radio it was because (CBS chief) Mr. (William) Paley had decided that his seven major AM radio stations at that time were going to go to an all-news format. That excited me a great deal. I was in television for 12 years with CBS. The fact that you could start a radio news format that was live, 24 hours a day, was very, very exciting to me.
Back in (1973) we were the only commercial station to carry the Watergate hearings. It was a major decision on my part when you consider the fact that the hearings went from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and there were no breaks which meant there were no commericals. And guess what it was a very good decision for the station. The ad agency people were all tuned in to the hearings, and we offered them the opportunity for their commericals to fall whenever they could. Over 90 percent of them agreed.
Q: KNX has had the same basic format for your entire 30 years there. What do you think that says about your listening audience? Have you drawn in younger listeners?
A: I’m very concerned about the listening audience every single day. I want to make decisions that are very in tune with what they want and expect from KNX. We carried the O.J. Simpson trial gavel-to-gavel. That’s thinking about the audience. A lot of people would say, ‘Gee, why would you devote that much of your air time to a case like that?’ I felt very very strongly that there was a great interest. It happened in our backyard. O.J. was a hero to a lot of young people. The numbers reflected a lot of young people coming to the station for the first time to hear O.J. and then staying for the other news that we were presenting.
Q: It’s been almost two years since the Westinghouse and CBS merger. Your competitor is now part of the family. How do you deal with that?
A: It’s a very difficult tightrope that we have to walk. On top of it all, Roger Nadel, who is the vice president and general manager of KFWB, started as an intern here at this station. He became our assistant news director and went on to become the manager of the CBS News station in Detroit, and he comes back as the manager of our chief competitor.
Q: Do you still compete with KFWB?
A: In the business world, you know you’re always competing. It’s no different. Competition is a part of life. If all eight stations are owned by the same company, it doesn’t mean that you’re not graded individually.
Q: How has the explosion of talk radio impacted news radio?
A: News listeners are the ones that are more apt to go to talk radio. So it’s impacted the news stations from the standpoint that all of their listeners now share their listening time between a news station and a talk station.
Q: Did advertising dollars decline?
A: No. Advertising has been on the increase in Southern California, and it has been for radio across the nation. The most important thing for Southern California is the number of automobiles we have and the number of people driving alone, so they are listening while they drive. That’s an advantage that you don’t have with cable or with telelvision.
Q: What do you think is the most compelling news coming out of L.A. right now?
A: Right now the MTA situation is such a mess. I date back to when KNX suggested to the City Council that they turn over the transit program to Walt Disney. I’m not kidding. When he put up his monorail in Disneyland, we said, “Put a bunch of T-bars in all our existing freeways and put Walt Disney’s monorail in there.” And the City Council laughed at it. Well, if they would have done it we wouldn’t be worrying about a transit system.
And then when they decided that they were going to build a hole in the ground, we objected to it very, very strenuously. We said, “Don’t do it.” We’re the only major city on Earth that doesn’t really have the weather problems that most cities experience. There’s no reason for us to go underground.
Q: What direction do you see KNX moving?
A: The most important thing is that the station have the wherewithal to continue to bring news as it happens in our area. And people are going to be more and more involved with news because it’s going to directly affect their lives.
Q: Hasn’t news always affected our lives?
A: You know, you could always say, “Yes the news affects us,” but you know people like music and they don’t want to fool around with news. But as people mature, everything that happens really affects them. The baby boomers are starting to worry about their retirements and are they going to be able to survive the way they have become accustomed to living, and that has a great impact. Everything changes. The more people you have, the traffic problems increase, shopping becomes harder, the medical costs as a result of people living longer. Everything is being impacted.
Q: Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, there has been a tremendous amount of consolidation in the radio business. Some people say that could result in significant antitrust problems. What do you think?
A: There are some people who would say, “They’re taking over too much control.” I can only tell you from experience. To date, the eight stations (owned by Westinghouse) that are working in this marketplace are operating individually. They have different managers and are going about their business like they went about their business beforehand.
It really hasn’t affected our programming. When you take into consideration that the two news stations are owned by the same company now, you would be amazed. They expect us to be competitors and we are competitors and we try to do the best we can and they try do to the best they can. I see it as a positive for the industry itself. It really does make individual stations try that much harder.
GEORGE NICHOLAW
Position: Vice president and general manager at KNX-AM 1070 news radio
Born: Salinas, Calif., 1927
Education: B.A., U.C. Berkeley; M.A., American School of International Management, Phoenix
Hobbies: Tennis, gardening
Personal: Married
