Cumulus Media Talk 790 KABC Los Angeles will ring-in 2020 with an increased emphasis on syndicated programming.
The station will add The Armstrong & Getty Show for mornings from 6-10am. 105.9 WMAL Washington DC’s Larry O’Connor will remain in the 10am-12pm slot with his Los Angeles focused show. Former morning host John Phillips will move to 12-3pm as the only locally based host on the station. Westwood One’s Ben Shapiro remains in the 3-6pm afternoon slot, while Michael Savage is added for nights. KABC will also continue to broadcast USC Trojans football and basketball.
Off the lineup are morning co-host Jillian Barberie, 12-3pm hosts Dr. Drew Pinsky and Leeann Tweeden, and 6-9pm host Peter Tilden.
CUMULUS MEDIA’s KABC-AM welcomes a new lineup for the New Year, debuting January 1, 2020. New to mornings on the station is The Armstrong & Getty Show, featuring national radio celebrities Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, weekdays from 6:00am-10:00am. Continuing in the midday is Larry O’Connor, followed by John Phillips. Top podcaster and superstar conservative talk host Ben Shapiro continues weekdays from 3:00pm-6:00pm. Dr. Michael Savage and The Savage Nation joins the station for evenings.
“KABC has a proud history as one of the first ‘all-talk’ radio stations in the United States,” said Drew Hayes, General Manager of KABC Los Angeles. “With these great additions to our lineup, KABC will offer our audiences even more of the content that they love, featuring outstanding local and nationally recognized talent.”
The station will continue to air news and traffic 24/7 as well as host USC Trojans football and basketball.
Nathan Obral 
doublebogey 
jhon 
That is the saddest press release I’ve ever read. In no way is any of this a “great addition” to a once-proud station that was long ago totally overshadowed and steamrolled by KFI (let alone 40 other stations in the 12+ beauty pageant topline).
Drew Hayes is a caretaker until Cumulus can divest itself of this signal, and this just reinforces that notion.
I totally agree with you Nathan. I accidently discovered KABC while searching for a independent talk radio show on IHeart. I live 2500 miles and 4 states away but found Dr Drew and company so fresh and compelling I try to listen as often as possible. This is the problem with mega broadcasting cooperates that squash individualism free thought. Let’s have more of the Ben Shapiro’s, Rush Limbaughs, and the Sean Hannities of the world to remove all the independent voices of free speech all in the name of profits and thought control. A very sad day indeed.
Hope they land new jobs soon and I learn where they land to follow
Clearing A&G, Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin is cheap and a total money saver. With the ratings KABC had, there was no way to justify having a labor-intensive local talk lineup, even as greatly reduced as it had become from 2008 onward.
I mean, KABC has literally no ratings in the 12+ topline. Key demos have to be as bad, if not worse. It’s actually shocking that the creditors controlling Cumulus post-bankruptcy tolerated having such a terrible return on investment, especially when KABC is all by itself now and reportedly on the block.
Didn’t KABC do something like this about 10 years ago? Then needed totally backtracked 2 years later?
KABC simply had local hosts slowly replaced in favor of lower-tier syndicated stuff, and bounced existing hosts around (Peter Tilden, Doug McIntryre, John Phillips) repeatedly in vain attempts to gain ratings traction for either of them. None of which could make up for a horrible AM signal that the market outgrew long ago.
It was KGO 810 that lost most of their local talk shows in favor of mostly all-news in 2011, and that was an unmitigated disaster. Cumulus’ reasoning (which actually made sense) was that the all-local lineup on KGO was drawing a large, but very old and unsalable audience. Problem was that the move simply alienated all of the existing listener base with no one new, or younger, tuning in.
In KABC’s case, the audience — and John & Ken — left them for KFI in the 1990s, and never came back.