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