Radio and podcast giant iHeartMedia has laid off 13 employees at KFI-AM (640), cutting the news staff of the Los Angeles radio station in half.
KFI-AM (640) news director Chris Little, who was among the terminated staff members, revealed Tuesday on X that his team of 25 was reduced to 12. Little joined KFI-AM (640) as a news anchor in 1991 and was promoted to news director in 2000.
One of the station’s current hosts, Tim Conway Jr., addressed the layoffs Monday on air.
“You may have heard by now … a lot of people have left the building here at iHeartMedia, and it is tough,” Conway said at the top of his show.
“I’ve known these people my entire life here. When I started here, my daughter was 3 years old. … It just sucks.”
On a programming note, Conway prepared listeners for “a lot of voices on the air that you recognize,” as well as “some voices on the air soon that you won’t recognize.” He promised to provide as much information as possible moving forward while encouraging listeners to read up on the situation themselves.
“A lot of companies go through it,” he said. “A lot of people make a lot of very dear friends. … You see them every day, and you think it’s gonna be like that for the rest of the time, and it’s not.”
IHeartMedia has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs at various stations over the past year.
Bob Pittman, chief executive of the San Antonio-based media giant, said the terminations were part of the company’s “modernization journey” and boasted about using technology to “speed up processes and streamline legacy systems” during a third-quarter earnings call last week, according to Billboard.