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“The Lou Desmond & Company Show” on KMET-AM will go from one hour to hours starting this week. The change is being made with the upcoming presidential election in mind, but the program’s main emphasis will always be Inland Empire issues, according to the show’s host.
KMET-AM’s afternoon drive-time talk show is about to get bigger. Twice as big, to be exact.
“The Lou Desmond & Company Show,” a daily analysis of news, politics and occasionally sports in the Inland Empire, will expand from one hour to two hours starting Tuesday, according to station officials.
Desmond’s program, which features academics, economists and journalists from Riverside and San Bernardino counties, will air from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, said Mitch McClellan, the station’s general manager.
By adding the extra hour, station officials hope to give listeners more time to call in and voice their opinions. The first hour will be used to establish the day’s topics, the second hour for telephone calls, Desmond said.
“We should get more callers, and we should be able to line up more guests,” McClellan said. “Lou knows a lot of people in the Inland Empire. He’s been doing this for a long time, and he has a good network to draw from.”
Officials with KMET in Redlands – an ABC affiliate that holds the local broadcast rights to the Angels, Lakers, Clippers and Kings – have been considering adding an extra hour to the program for several months, Desmond said.
“Five to 6 p.m. is the absolute height of drive time in any market,” said Desmond, who did a similar show at KTIE-AM in San Bernardino for about five years before moving to KMET [dial position 1490] last November. “It’s when everyone is off work and in their cars, and most of them are listening to the radio.”
But the one-hour format was limiting because it didn’t give people enough time to call in once the show started to gain momentum.
“It didn’t matter what the issues were or what people wanted to talk about,” said Desmond, whose broadcasting career began during his undergraduate days at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, when he was news director of the campus radio station. “We’d spend an hour setting everything up, but by then the show was over.”
Regardless of its length, Desmond’s program’s main selling point will be that it’s the only radio show in the Inland Empire that deals with local issues, like the corruption scandal in Beaumont, the Colonies Crossroads case that is scheduled to go to trial this fall or the dispute over legal marijuana dispensaries in San Bernardino.
“There are other political talk shows in this market, but they’re geared more toward national issues,” Desmond said. “We’re going to talk about national issues, but our primary emphasis will always be local. If you want to talk about the chicken ranches in Yucaipa and the problems associated with them, that’s the kind of thing we’re going to talk about.”
Twenty sixteen is a presidential election year, and that of course will be a hot topic. Mid-summer seemed like a good time to add the extra hour to the show because it will give the program and its listeners time to ease into the election season, McClellan said.
“Fall is when school starts back up and people get back into their normal routine,” McClellan said. “It’s also the time when they start to focus more on the election, especially after Labor Day. Summer is slower, it’s when people go on vacation. It’s a good time to make the change, so people can get used to it.”
McClellan declined to discuss ratings or advertising rates.
“That’s proprietary information, and the way they determine ratings today is very convoluted and hard to explain,” McClellan said. “People used to keep diaries like in television, but they’ve gotten away from that. I can say that most of the advertising we get is local. It’s not someone in New York or Chicago looking at books that tell them what to buy.”
Regardless of its political slat, any talk show has to first be entertaining if it’s going to attract listeners, Desmond said.
“I think a talk show needs to have some humor, and it should poke fun at itself and at the issues once in awhile,” said Desmond, a staunch conservative and Donald Trump supporter whose show tilts right politically. “I don’t think you can give people serious news all of the time. They don’t want to hear that.”
Desmond will continue to do his program from a studio at Toyota of San Bernardino, which dealership owner Cliff Cummings built so that the agency’s television and radio advertisements could be taped and edited on site.
Desmond described the studio as state-of-the-art, with three cameras and a full-service editing bay. The facility is advanced enough that it allows “The Lou Desmond & Company Show” to stream live on KMET’s website, kmet1490.com.
The program can also be viewed there after it’s been broadcast.
A two-hour talk show devoted to local issues will be a good educational tool for the Inland Empire, said Jay Prag, professor of economics and finance at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.
“It’s good to have a place where people can talk about local issues, exchange ideas and disagree,” said Prag, a frequent guest on Desmond’s program going back to his KTIE days. “The Inland Empire has become a diverse community with a lot of different opinions. I think the most interesting part of the new format will be listening to people disagree.”
