I first heard about KCAL-FM, Redlands, California, in 2000 when my favorite local rock band, New American Shame, was getting frequent airplay there.
New American Shame were a hard hitting rock band, which sounded like a cross between AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, and Buckcherry, with a little GNR thrown in. They were all local Seattle, and 'South End' (i.e. South King County) musicians, and veterans of the Seattle and suburban Seattle rock scene. New American Shame had one hit, Under It All, and another smaller radio hit after that, American Shame.
New American Shame stopped playing gigs in 2002 or so (with three gigs in the 2010's), but they had a good run. They turned out one local album, an updated national album with 4 extra tracks, a terrific B-side (Stand On The Pedal), and at least one track that made it to one of the Crow movie soundtracks, Rusted Wings (on 2000's The Crow: Salvation).
And KCAL-FM, a hard rocking Active Rock station out of the 'Inland Empire' -- the large, sprawling suburban region east of LA in sunny Southern California -- played New American Shame a lot more than most other US Rock stations. New American Shame's two hits were getting a lot of airplay, and they were routinely in KCAL's Top 20 of their playlist.
I know, because that the time I had access to the charts for most of the Rock stations in the US, because such charts were printed in the Radio industry publications that were on the big desk where I used to work.
KCAL Rocked, and they Rocked hard.
Now they have gotten rid of the Active Rock format, and they got rid of all of their Airstaff.
KCAL-FM are going 'Classic Rock'. Jockless 'Classic Rock', which means they won't have any DJ's, or airstaff at all.
KCAL-FM are owned by a small radio company, Anaheim Broadcasting, and they have a couple sister stations in the Inland Empire and San Bernardino market. The layoffs of all the airstaff was a surprise, as the station was doing well in the ratings, getting a 2.9 in June, 2026.
But Radio in general is seeing sliding revenue, as online advertising takes over, and a lot of Radio companies are cutting back. My last several blog articles have covered these cutbacks, and shutdowns. Radio is an industry in contraction, and the layoffs at KCAL are just another symptom of an industry in decline.
I hate it, because I worked in Radio for 20 years, and it was the best time of my life in many ways. All the music, and being in an industry I wanted to be in when I was a kid. I was actually able to live the dream, in many respects.
Now that dream is dying for a LOT of people in Radio.
KCAL-FM may or may not make money running AI liners or voicetracks and worn out 'Classic Rock'. But they are not alone in having to deal with declining revenues and an eroding listener base.
Another station has just seen all of its airstaff laid off: 99X FM in Atlanta, WNNX-FM, a station that was recently relaunched, playing Alternative Rock, with real DJ's. All the DJ's just got their pink slips over this past week.
The scuttlebutt on the Radio forums is that Cumulus simply couldn't make money off 99X, they couldn't get enough advertising revenue under the Alternative Rock format.
Then again, Cumulus, WNNX-FM's owners, have been laying off a lot of airstaff and radio programming staff nationwide lately. The online Radio industry magazine Ramp247 says that Cumulus has laid off at least 23 people from their FM stations nationwide, due to Cumulus financial issues.
SiriusXM is the Satellite Radio company where shock talker Howard Stern has been broadcasting since January, 2006. Before that, he had 26 million US terrestrial Radio listeners.
Here is the article.:
LAST BUT NOT LEAST -- HOWARD STERN LAYS OFF MANY OF HIS STAFF
Howard Stern, one of the few remaining 'shock talk' hosts from the 1990's and 2000's, is still well known in Radio circles, even after he moved his popular show from terrestrial radio to Sirius/XM (back then it was just Sirius) in 2006.
During the heyday of his popularity, when he was on a large network of FM rock stations across the US, he had about 26 million listeners. After moving to Sirius Satellite radio in 2006, his numbers understandably dropped, but for a Satellite show, he was the big guy.
He wasn't known for a short time as the 'King Of All Media' for nothing. He was popular. He even had a movie he made in the late 1990's, Private Parts, that had bands like Type O Negative on the soundtrack. The movie actually played in the theaters.
That's how big Howard Stern was.
Then in the 2010's his Satellite radio show started losing listeners. Last September, when he was rumored to be leaving the air, it was also rumored that his listenership numbers were in the hundreds of thousands, with one estimate being 100K listeners or so. I wrote an article about Howard's decline in September 2025 -- you can read it here.:
That said, even after signing his new contract, Howard's show has apparently not been slamming Sirius's version of the 'ratings', and Howard has recently fired about 75% of his staff, and on top of that, he is now only doing two new shows a week (on Monday and Tuesday), and he will drop that down to just one new show a week after Labor Day.
You can read about the layoffs here, on this Yahoo! News article.:
Here is a Barrett Media article on the one show a week.:
What is the real reason Howard is firing so many of his people? No one really knows. But he had over 50 people running his show, and many in the Radio forums are asking 'How many people do you need for just one radio show a week?'
Perhaps Howard is just cutting costs. But the writing seems to be on the wall -- it seems that Howard doesn't really want to do Radio anymore. He used to be on the airwaves every weekday morning. Now, his Satellite show is two new shows weekly, and the rest of the week it's all retreads of old material.
A lot of Stern listeners are wondering if it's worthwhile to tune in a satellite radio show that only has one new show a week, with the rest of the shows broadcast being retreads.
If you go to a few of the Stern-fan forums, the consensus seems to be that Stern's star has faded, he's no longer interesting to listen to as he used to be, and he seems to be looking at the exit door.
It's sad, in a way, because Stern WAS 'shock talk radio', a format which was big in the Roaring 90's and Rip-roaring 2000's. He definitely is a talented talk host. Stern was one of the handful of Radio talk hosts of any type who became household names. One would think he could still do exciting Radio as he did in 2005.
But that was another era -- 20-30 years ago. In the case of the 90's, that was another century.
Everyone apparently has moved on.
EXPECT MORE RADIO LAYOFFS, SHUTDOWNS, IN THE FUTURE
I expect that in the future there will be many more layoffs in Radio, and more stations, including FM stations, shutting down. I will continue to post articles on it as it happens. Why? Because I still love Radio, and I still think it's an important medium. I also think that when stations lay off all their people it's a big deal -- I was laid off from the industry in 2006/2007 (New Year's), so I know how it feels.
I used to listen to KGRG-1, 1330 AM, every day while working out, doing bench presses in my spare room. It was fun hearing Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam's Breath, Alice In Chains, and other classic alternative tracks on my Superadio while trying to increase my bench presses.
KGRG-1 went off the air over a year ago, after having AM transmitter problems. Even after fixing the transmitter, the college decided to pull the plug on the AM.
The FM, KGRG 89.9, went off the air because of some separate issues, and the college has been trying to sell the station, to no avail. FM radio doesn't have the magic pull it used to in the 1970's and 1980's.
We're in a different world.
Some commenters online think that non-commercial FM (i.e., 'College Radio') will weather the storm. They think that college radio will survive.
Oh really? Just 20 miles south of me a college station, KGRG, not only pulled the plug on its AM station on 1330 kHz, which covered South King County with Grunge and Classic Alternative (and they had a stream), they recently pulled the plug on their FM station on 89.9 MHz as well. The FM could be heard in the South County region, as well as Tacoma.
Green River College now have the FM station up for sale. There, so far, have been no takers. The college apparently wants out of the Radio business. Colleges nationwide have seen revenues drop, due to smaller enrollments (GenZ is smaller than the Millennials that preceded them), and other factors. So when they see a college Radio station's budget, and look at the future of Radio, they sometimes put Radio on the chopping block. That's apparently what GRCC, the college that owned KGRG, determined.
Radio in general is fading, folks, and that includes college radio. It sucks, but it's just the reality.
From NEW AMERICAN SHAME to DROP THE STAR
I'll end this article with a couple New American Shame music vids. Why not? They were kickass. I saw them play at least five different times -- once at Bumbershoot, two times at a now-defunct rock club in Algona called Planet Hot Rod, once at the now-defunct rock pub Sit N Spin, and once at the now-defunct Renton rock pub Pounders. New American Shame fans were rabid. Going to a New American Shame show was like experiencing rock family.
Here's a CD version of Under It All, their biggest hit.:
Here is a live track posted to YouTube by New American Shame's singer, Johnny Reidt. It's the official New American Shame to their second radio hit American Shame.:
This is the track that was on one of the Crow soundtracks, Rusted Wings.:
This is one of the opening tracks on their album, a track called Broken Bones.:
And last but not least, this is a track done by Johnny's new band, Drop The Star. It was written for a friend of his who had to spend an extended amount of time away from home and family. It's called Welcome Home. It's damned good. It would probably be a massive radio hit except Radio doesn't support new rock like it used to.
Enjoy.:
And with that, my friends, stay safe, and
Peace.
C.C. August 10th, 2026
