By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Marcus Vanderberg on FishbowlLA, October 2011
In early October 2011, an immigrant-rights coalition announced it was moving forward with a boycott of the John and Ken Show on KFI AM 640 after KFI management canceled a scheduled meeting between the coalition and station leadership. Greg Ashlock, Clear Channel Radio LA’s market manager, told the LA Times the station was “more than happy to sit down with anybody who has a concern and talk it out” but would not be “held hostage to demands that are outlandish.” The original FishbowlLA framing tracked the broader advocacy-and-talk-radio conflict cycle the boycott represented.
Then
The John and Ken Show, hosted by John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, had been one of LA’s highest-rated afternoon talk-radio programs for years prior to the October 2011 boycott announcement. The show’s editorial register on immigration policy, illegal-border-crossing enforcement, and California immigration-related political conflict had produced a substantial recurring tension with LA-region immigrant-rights organizations.
The proximate trigger for the boycott had been a series of on-air segments on the show that the immigrant-rights coalition had identified as crossing into territory the group considered structurally harmful to undocumented-immigrant communities in LA. The pre-meeting-cancellation phase had produced multiple back-and-forth communications between the coalition and Clear Channel; the meeting cancellation was the procedural trigger that moved the conflict from negotiation to boycott.
Greg Ashlock’s “not going to be held hostage” framing was characteristic of the Clear Channel corporate-defense register of the early-2010s. The corporate-talk-radio industry was, in 2011, operating with substantial pushback from advertiser-pressure campaigns aimed at controversial hosts — the post-2010 Glenn Beck advertiser-pressure cycle had set the broader playbook that the Kobylt-Chiampou case was now operating within.
The original FishbowlLA framing, by Marcus Vanderberg, was a straightforward read of the LA Times’s coverage. The piece picked up the corporate-versus-coalition dynamic without explicitly siding with either institutional position.
Now
The John and Ken Show continued at KFI through the entire post-2011 interval. Kobylt and Chiampou’s run is now one of the longest continuously-running afternoon talk-radio host pairings in American radio — they began in 1992 and have continued for more than three decades. Their broader influence on California-region conservative talk radio has been substantial across the entire interval.
Clear Channel Radio rebranded to iHeartMedia in 2014. The corporate ownership has continued through multiple subsequent ownership and debt-restructuring cycles. KFI itself has continued as the LA-region anchor talk-radio station across the same window.
The immigrant-rights organizations that drove the 2011 boycott have continued to be active in California immigration-related advocacy. The 2017-2025 federal immigration enforcement cycles produced substantially expanded LA-region immigrant-rights mobilization; many of the organizations involved in the 2011 KFI boycott have continued operating as part of the broader California immigrant-rights infrastructure.
The 2011 piece reads now as a documented moment in the long arc of LA-region talk-radio-and-immigrant-rights conflict. The boycott itself did not substantially affect the John and Ken Show’s longevity at KFI; the broader category of advertiser-and-listener pressure campaigns against talk-radio hosts has continued to be one of the recurring tactical pressures shaping how stations and corporate parents manage controversial-host editorial positioning. The dynamic the original piece captured — coalition advocacy meeting corporate-radio defensive posture — has continued as a recurring template through the entire interval since.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.
More from the FishbowlLA archive
- LAPD’s October 2011 social-media policy review — Detective Sal LaBarbera and the cops-on-Twitter question
- Bill Handel’s March 2012 on-air flashpoint — KFI, the Black Media Alliance, and the Limbaugh aftermath
- Carol Muske-Dukes’s October 2012 HuffPost defense of Patt Morrison — and how the KPCC schedule shuffle played