Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty KFI Handle here on a Tuesday morning. It
Speaker 1: is a Taco Tuesday, January twenty one, and I want
Speaker 1: to spend a minute or two talking about the coverage
Speaker 1: of the LA wildfire. And it is a story of
Speaker 1: the La Times that really struck me as I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that, and it sort of followed what I thought,
Speaker 1: or I followed what it wrote about. And it has
Speaker 1: to do with local coverage of the fire, particularly local
Speaker 1: TV news coverage. Now, usually I don't give much credence
Speaker 1: to local TV stuff. It's a lot of happy talk.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of stories that are kind of they're
Speaker 1: just stories, feel good stories. They don't spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time on what I consider hard news, which is
Speaker 1: why I don't pay much attention to local TV. I
Speaker 1: pay lots of attention to national TV, certainly CNN, Fox,
Speaker 1: I watch BBC, and so I pay attention to that
Speaker 1: because I'm much more interested in that. But local TV
Speaker 1: during the fires was extraordinary. Now, obviously I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of radio because I make my living at it.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that radio does that TV
Speaker 1: will never do is a theater of the mind, and
Speaker 1: that is it's such a powerful medium that when I'm talking,
Speaker 1: I'm explaining, or people are involved in reporting, it's in
Speaker 1: your head and you are hearing it and imagining it
Speaker 1: from you. You don't do that in local TV or
Speaker 1: national TV. It's all visual. Well, what happened during the
Speaker 1: fires was where local TV not only dominated or nominated,
Speaker 1: but it was really the only way for people to
Speaker 1: experience the fires that weren't in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: And even in the middle of it, people were not
Speaker 1: turning to Netflix. Local TV was the was the go
Speaker 1: to for residents who wanted immediate information. The anchors, the
Speaker 1: correspondents spent hours and hours in the field because it
Speaker 1: was literally wall to wall coverage for three days. No
Speaker 1: one else did that, and on the air, life saving
Speaker 1: details were provided, evacuations, damage, as well as the emotional support.
Speaker 1: The emotional support part, you know, I don't think that
Speaker 1: the mayor is saying we care about you, or a
Speaker 1: public official will say a lot of kumbai ya. I
Speaker 1: get really impatient with that. When they were doing these
Speaker 1: news conferences eight o'clock every morning, usually right on time,
Speaker 1: which those of us in the media appreciate and love.
Speaker 1: So outside of that, what we all wanted were facts.
Speaker 1: What was burning, Where were the evacuation areas, Where were
Speaker 1: the firefighters, Which way was the burn going? Where could
Speaker 1: people go if you had a large animal, if you
Speaker 1: had a horse, for example, or let's say a rhino
Speaker 1: or a restaurant or an elephant. There were evacuation centers,
Speaker 1: There were shelters for large animals horses. There were shelters
Speaker 1: that were other for people. There were shelters available for
Speaker 1: small animals, dogs and cats predominantly. We needed to hear there.
Speaker 1: We needed to hear them. Where do I take my dog?
Speaker 1: Because I Am now living in a hotel where I'm
Speaker 1: scrambling or I'm in the car for the next few days.
Speaker 1: The performance of local stations were for phenomenal. Jonathan Wall,
Speaker 1: the veteran TV producer, has worked for NBC CNN and said,
Speaker 1: in the face of incredible tragedy, they are knowledgeable, they
Speaker 1: keep their heads as they cover what's happening, and there
Speaker 1: is well a real quick one. Traditional TV viewing has
Speaker 1: been in steady decline while we're streaming things and about
Speaker 1: half of all video consumption is online. But even with
Speaker 1: these ratings going down, down, profits going down down. We're
Speaker 1: experiencing that right here. The number of people actually listening
Speaker 1: to me right now is a whole lot less than
Speaker 1: it was five years ago. Now, it turns out most
Speaker 1: of the people have left still listen online. It's not
Speaker 1: the same as live radio. It just isn't the same.
Speaker 1: So what ended up happening was the local real time
Speaker 1: TV particularly was where we went to. I had the
Speaker 1: TVs going and it was all local during the entire
Speaker 1: time here in the studio on my monitors, watching every
Speaker 1: minute of it. And why because it was real, it
Speaker 1: was visual. I mean, we had to see what was happening.
Speaker 1: We saw the firefighters at work, we saw what the
Speaker 1: houses look like, the neighborhoods look like. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: important stuff. And those press conferences. We had the fire chief,
Speaker 1: we had the police, we had the DA, we had
Speaker 1: first responders. That was critical information. The Kumbaya stuff I
Speaker 1: could live without, but the rest of it was critical.
Speaker 1: And for the most part, that's what we got. And
Speaker 1: then there's one more aspect. I want to share with
Speaker 1: you what local TV did which nobody else did at all.
Speaker 1: The local television coverage was so extraordinary. Now, this was
Speaker 1: an international story. This was a national story, but it
Speaker 1: was a bigger local story. I just did an interview
Speaker 1: with the Barrett Media where I think came out today,
Speaker 1: where I was asked about local coverage on the radio side,
Speaker 1: and I compared what we did and what happened here
Speaker 1: to what happened nine to eleven. Nine to eleven, of course,
Speaker 1: was a massive international story beyond comprehension. It was also
Speaker 1: a massive national story, but it was also a local
Speaker 1: story because people knew who were in the towers, and
Speaker 1: it became a local story. This fire. Even though these fires,
Speaker 1: even though there it's a huge national story, and if
Speaker 1: you watch national news, which I did, eighty percent of
Speaker 1: the news for days was our fires, and then there
Speaker 1: was just a couple of other stories. Well, here we
Speaker 1: were walled wall, and here the big difference is not
Speaker 1: only did a lot of us know who lost houses,
Speaker 1: who had to be evacuated. My family had to be evacuated,
Speaker 1: Marjorie had to be evacuated, my daughter, one of my
Speaker 1: daughters had to be evacuated and didn't know if the
Speaker 1: fire was going to hit their houses or not. But
Speaker 1: here is also I want to add something to this,
Speaker 1: is the local reporters were part of the story. They
Speaker 1: knew the area, or they do know the area knowing
Speaker 1: people knew the geography. I mean, I knew where the
Speaker 1: palisades were. I knew where these streets were. A national
Speaker 1: reporter doesn't know that. It just comes in, does the news,
Speaker 1: or is maybe has a bureau here. Nothing like living here.
Speaker 1: I've been living here for well. I came to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles when I was five years old. I've spent my
Speaker 1: life here. I know this town and I can give
Speaker 1: you a perspective that a national reporter, national radio reporter
Speaker 1: simply can't do. And that came out and that's why
Speaker 1: local TV did so well. That's why the national programs
Speaker 1: use local feeds, use local reporters, because we just have
Speaker 1: a connection that simply doesn't exist if you are not local.
Speaker 1: On top of it, know the people, can talk to people,
Speaker 1: know who was affected, know the areas, maybe being evacuated yourself.
Speaker 1: That's why local TV did so well. Station saw viewership
Speaker 1: double triple for news programs or news programming. Long local
Speaker 1: TV reporters and anchors and people on radio. We have
Speaker 1: ties to southern California. Well. Here at KFI, we've had
Speaker 1: several people that lost their homes. I had a meeting
Speaker 1: with one of the management people and I got a
Speaker 1: text saying I lost my house, I lost my businesses
Speaker 1: or my wife had a business. She had a couple
Speaker 1: yogurt shops on Pacific Coast Highway and we lost it.
Speaker 1: I mean that's real, that's real, and that is what
Speaker 1: makes or made local TV a very different way of covering.
Speaker 1: And of course, and here's the difference between radio and TV.
Speaker 1: And usually, as I said, you know, happy news, et cetera,
Speaker 1: is usually local TV. This is a time when visuals
Speaker 1: were critical. We had to see what was going on.
Speaker 1: We had to know what areas so our reporters knew
Speaker 1: that that street over there is not as important as
Speaker 1: that other street over here, because there was a better
Speaker 1: story we wanted to know. And local TV brought it
Speaker 1: to the table. And there should be some big wins
Speaker 1: for local TV. They scored beyond scoring. I mean, usually,
Speaker 1: you know, a woman in Pacoima has a pet clam
Speaker 1: that can talk to you. I mean, just really nothing
Speaker 1: TV and it's just crap. Well this was real. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now let me talk a little bit about the ash
Speaker 1: problems in the Atlantic interviewed a family lived in Santa Monica.
Speaker 1: The house was fine, air quality was quote good. Schools
Speaker 1: will reopen. The ash from the palace sides palisades fire
Speaker 1: burning five miles north came all over Santa Monica, coating
Speaker 1: the car, and the interviewee don't have his name, walked.
Speaker 1: He said. Next morning we walked to school, looked at
Speaker 1: blue sky, but the eight year old pointed out piles
Speaker 1: of ash by the curb, and a city owned sweeper
Speaker 1: went past. And how the sweepers work is the bristols,
Speaker 1: of course go clean the streets. Well, when they hit
Speaker 1: pocket of ash, kicked up these plumes of ash, sending
Speaker 1: all of this back up into the air. On Tuesday
Speaker 1: last the debris was continuing to fall. Gardeners armed with
Speaker 1: leaf blowers were blowing the ash to the next door neighbor.
Speaker 1: So you don't have it in front of you. La
Speaker 1: County temporarily you banned leaf blowers because they threw up
Speaker 1: in do throw up so much dust. But no one
Speaker 1: knows exactly how do you clean this mess? And it
Speaker 1: is dangerous stuff. And I'm going to make a point
Speaker 1: in just a moment. With smoke, you see it, you
Speaker 1: smell it, you get out of the way. You get
Speaker 1: air quality indexes with smoke, but they don't measure ash.
Speaker 1: And what is safe We don't know. But I tell
Speaker 1: you the residue from house fires is far more dangerous
Speaker 1: and residue from the wildfires that happen out in the brush.
Speaker 1: Why Well, houses have PBC pipes, lithium ion car batteries,
Speaker 1: plastic siting, flooring, everything else that goes up in the air,
Speaker 1: and a soup of chemicals nickel, chromium, arsenic mercury doesn't
Speaker 1: exist out in the wilderness. Boy does it exist. And
Speaker 1: older homes also have lead an asbestos, and it all
Speaker 1: goes up in the air. And we happen to be
Speaker 1: an outside town. I mean all year long, people are
Speaker 1: eating outside. We're in the middle of a cold snap.
Speaker 1: It's in the sixties. No rain in the forecast that
Speaker 1: will tamp down or wash out the ash. But where's
Speaker 1: the ash gonna go into reservoirs? The water goes into reservoirs,
Speaker 1: goes out to the ocean. I mean, we don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. And once ash comes into your home,
Speaker 1: because it can be really small, microscopic, it comes through
Speaker 1: doors and windows, and it's on shoes and clothes when
Speaker 1: you step out and come back in the house, it
Speaker 1: is a lot harder to get rid of it. Cleaning
Speaker 1: can actually bring that kind of pollution into your home,
Speaker 1: which makes it very hard to get rid of. And
Speaker 1: the real questions regarding health and how long is it
Speaker 1: gonna last? No one knows when it comes to ash.
Speaker 1: Researchers have only recently started to investigate how the ash
Speaker 1: differs from that of wildfires. The one's the structural fires,
Speaker 1: and all we do know it is way way different.
Speaker 1: By the way, clearing ash and fire zones is a
Speaker 1: regulated process. However, the ash flies up in the air
Speaker 1: and goes miles and miles. You go out to the ocean,
Speaker 1: I mean some great view. Did you notice the sunsets
Speaker 1: when there's ash in the air? I mean gorgeous? Go
Speaker 1: out there, take a deep breath, take a picture. Use
Speaker 1: that when you are when you're diagnosed with lung cancer
Speaker 1: and you're in your coffin because you've died. But make
Speaker 1: sure that the picture they put of you has that
Speaker 1: sunset in the background. Let's talk about tourism. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about this fire and tourism. Now I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: a couple of facts. Do you know what the number
Speaker 1: one the number one city in the United States, that's
Speaker 1: the most visited any idea? Amy New York City, that
Speaker 1: is correct. What is there to see in New York
Speaker 1: City buildings? Virtually nothing? All right? You walk around and
Speaker 1: there's New York City. Now there is Broadway, but not
Speaker 1: for straight guys, so that doesn't exist. Number two city,
Speaker 1: any idea? What the number two city is? Las Vegas. No,
Speaker 1: not even Las Vegas. I don't even think it is
Speaker 1: in top five. Miami. Miami is a number two city.
Speaker 1: What does Miami have? It has a bunch of Cubans
Speaker 1: and my mother these old Jewish yentas. That's Miami. Number
Speaker 1: three is lostient. And what does Los Angeles have? Look
Speaker 1: at the theme parks, look at the ocean, look at
Speaker 1: the mountains, I mean extraordinary. I think we have more
Speaker 1: theme parks here in Los Angeles than anyplace else. And
Speaker 1: of course the original theme park is here, Disneyland nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five. So you would think we'd be the number
Speaker 1: one place in the country. We're at number three. Now,
Speaker 1: tell you what's really important to us more so than
Speaker 1: New York and I think more so than Miami are tourists.
Speaker 1: Tourists are really critical to our business. By the way,
Speaker 1: we of course have Hollywood too, so people come out
Speaker 1: here to look at movie stars. And have you ever
Speaker 1: gone on those star tours? You know they have those
Speaker 1: vans look at the homes of the stars and you
Speaker 1: get to drive around. You know, all those stars have
Speaker 1: been dead for forty years. Kerry Grant used to live
Speaker 1: right there, but moved out in nineteen fifty six. It's
Speaker 1: just a quick aside that I thought I would share
Speaker 1: with you. In any case, we rely on tourism, and
Speaker 1: there is right now a precipitous drop in people coming
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles. Why because the obviously because of the
Speaker 1: fires and the aftermath. Now there wasn't one major tourist
Speaker 1: attraction that was burnt down, not one, not even fairly close.
Speaker 1: Yet the fire struck tourism just as we recovered from COVID.
Speaker 1: We were almost there to pre COVID levels in terms
Speaker 1: of COVID, and then boom these hit and so a
Speaker 1: big component of the tourist industry is still scheduled to
Speaker 1: go as planned. For example, the lineup includes one of
Speaker 1: the big ones is the National Association of Anesthesiologists, of
Speaker 1: which NPR just won. By the way, I just want
Speaker 1: to let you know that was number one radio station
Speaker 1: for the anesthesiologists. And most of the conventions are still
Speaker 1: moving ahead. That is the better news. Annual meetings are
Speaker 1: really hard to cancel, so that seems to be okay.
Speaker 1: And the hotels are all there, and the events are
Speaker 1: all there, right, and the convention setters are all there.
Speaker 1: They haven't been affected. But the hotels. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: where people are trying to get to every hotel within
Speaker 1: miles of the burn zones. Occupancy in LA typically hits
Speaker 1: a low point in January and it's way down. Normally
Speaker 1: it goes that goes dropped to below sixty percent. Well,
Speaker 1: it's certainly gone up. The average daily rates jumped that
Speaker 1: this is the really bad news, thirty percent over last year.
Speaker 1: Now you don't get thirty percent jumps in hotel rates,
Speaker 1: certainly not in January. Yet it happened. So the bad
Speaker 1: news of this fire, in addition to the extraordinary heroics
Speaker 1: and people opening their homes and restaurant owners feeding masses
Speaker 1: of people for free and clearly losing buckets of money,
Speaker 1: and the donations that have gone on. Well, the other
Speaker 1: side of it is the looting, which is still relatively small,
Speaker 1: but the overcharging, the gouging, and we've just seen the
Speaker 1: beginning of the gouging. And now it's let me tell you,
Speaker 1: people do come back New Orleans. Remember Urricane Katrina in
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand and five. Napa Valley came back after
Speaker 1: the wildfire in twenty seventeen. Maui is still going on
Speaker 1: and all of Lahina burnt. And now they're asking people
Speaker 1: to come back to Maui. I was going to do that.
Speaker 1: I was going to take a vacation in Maui just
Speaker 1: to give them business. I couldn't believe what they were
Speaker 1: charging for Maui. It was just weird. And you remember
Speaker 1: in Maui, the originally said don't come, and then they realized,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we get our money from these tourists.
Speaker 1: And now they're saying, please come. Are they up to
Speaker 1: the levels? No they're not. We're just building and rebuilding,
Speaker 1: and we're going to come back as most cities do,
Speaker 1: and we're going to come back in a vengeance. And
Speaker 1: I'm not big with the you know, Boston Strong those
Speaker 1: statements because I don't live there, so I don't feel that.
Speaker 1: For the most part. I report it, but I don't
Speaker 1: feel that. LA strong. You bet, you bet. I'm feeling that,
Speaker 1: And I will go on all day saying and wear
Speaker 1: T shirts LA Strong. But Amy gave me one that
Speaker 1: has Costco on the front of it. So which one
Speaker 1: are you gonna wear? Oh? The Costco one? Okay, give
Speaker 1: me a break, of course. And I don't believe there
Speaker 1: was one Costco that was affected? Was there not that
Speaker 1: we can report at this time? Okay, there we go.
Speaker 1: We're done, guys, we are finished. Gary and Shannon are
Speaker 1: up next. They have a lot to cover. Also, they'll
Speaker 1: be post inauguration news and commentary and everything else that
Speaker 1: Gary and Shannon do. I will see you tomorrow when
Speaker 1: we do this all over again. Amy starts with wake
Speaker 1: up call at five am. The rest of us are
Speaker 1: here through nine o'clock, and I'm done. Off we go
Speaker 1: until tomorrow. KFI AM six forty Live on KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1: Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
Speaker 1: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.