Bishop Fulton Sheen had an ever bigger one on radio and then on television.
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Who's listening to these fm translators?
- Thread starter bobdavcav
- Start date
Bishop Fulton Sheen had an ever bigger one on radio and then on television.
And dollar a holler stations that will sell airtime to any crackpot or conspiracy freak as long as the airtime is paid for.
I looked up Alamo on Radio-Locator, and it does not appear that either translator is considered listenable in Alamo. But it appears (from the maps) that WTRO's translator is the slightly stronger of the two. But it doesn't appear that either of them intended to be heard in Alamo.
For as bad as the SW stations are, the supporting AMs are actually worse. WNQM had airtime for sports-related programs; they sold to infomercial advertisers. I was aware of one broadcaster (who had a music program, despite the station supposedly not being licensed to play music) who was accused by his own account executive at the station of writing "rubber checks." This was all years ago, so I don't know what they are doing now, and their website (not surprisingly) is not of much use.
It gets even worse at WMQM in Memphis, who carries Alex Jones! How does that qualify as Christian programming? It just proves what I've heard and said that their owner's god (Little g) is green.
It's real hard to make it off of religion alone. The big ministries do 'share' or a piece of the donations received from your listening area. They don't buy airtime. The smaller ones still buy but they typically can't afford a reasonable rate (think $10-$15 a quarter hour per day for a Monday through Friday slot). Plus religious broadcasters only want certain hours and days. You can't hardly give away time on days and time slots they don't prefer. When somebody comes along offering to pay for time you can't sell to the religious programmers, pretty much you hold your nose and take the money. Infomercials, oddballs, etc. all add up to meting payroll and paying the light bill. People like Alex Jones, whether we like him or not, can't be on air in so many spots unless the money is coming in to pay for it, so somebody's listening because if not the money would not be there. And you charge them full rate card rates.
Radio gets a bad rap for this but it is pretty much identical to this: you have to have money and your boss is a total jerk but you don't quit until you find something else because you have to have the money to survive. You might not be happy with the situation but you put up with it because you simply have to at that moment. Now if those that gripe about this would have the money and buy the time, that would be better. But they don't. When you're under the gun to find the money to cover the bills and paychecks, you rarely have the option to refuse paying customers...it's survival versus greed or just not caring who you sell. You kind of have to be in those shoes to truly 'get' that. I've been there and it isn't a fun place to be.
Radio gets a bad rap for this but it is pretty much identical to this: you have to have money and your boss is a total jerk but you don't quit until you find something else because you have to have the money to survive. You might not be happy with the situation but you put up with it because you simply have to at that moment. Now if those that gripe about this would have the money and buy the time, that would be better. But they don't. When you're under the gun to find the money to cover the bills and paychecks, you rarely have the option to refuse paying customers...it's survival versus greed or just not caring who you sell. You kind of have to be in those shoes to truly 'get' that. I've been there and it isn't a fun place to be.
They may be doing some of that here. But I would never know (without listening) because they don't have anything resembling a program guide on their website. They do for shortwave, but not for the local AM.It gets even worse at WMQM in Memphis, who carries Alex Jones! How does that qualify as Christian programming? It just proves what I've heard and said that their owner's god (Little g) is green.
I don't think that they have any problem filling the weekday daytime hours. All the usual ministries (Focus on the Family, Love Worth Finding, etc.) use those airtimes. It is the overnights and weekends where they seem to run into issues like you raised here. Sunday morning is probably also not a problem because they have had a live Sunday morning worship service for many years now. Even the evenings are not a problem for them. They have had a Spanish-language ministry for over 20 years now (although they now simulcast it with other area stations). But those overnight hours? They can't give those away! We had a particularly lazy PD who signed us off for a few hours in the overnight hours of Sunday mornings rather than program anything into them. But we eventually filled those hours with the weekend versions of those weekday ministries that I mentioned earlier. But those are bonus airings. No money changes hands.
We even carried Bro. Stair during overnight hours at one time while I was there!
Ironically it is Focus On The Family that started the whole 'share' thing. All the, as I call them, top 40 ministries like Love Worth Finding and others do not pay for the time but give you a share of local donations. I met Dr. Rogers and talked with him a few times...a heck of a nice guy. For the station I worked, that 'share' was $100 to one time about $300 a month for a 30 minute, every weekday program. Focus wouldn't bother until you reached $300 in a calendar month. With every Christian station (music or teaching format) running James Dobson then, we never met the $300 mark any month to qualify us to get a check.
We ran bonus plays in unsold time too and my biggest challenge was to get the jock to announce their regular time to get them a few more listeners. They wanted to play a liner and go straight in to the next program.
As I recall Bro. Stair didn't pay hardly anything but the agency he used would buy any time you had and once we talked about a flat rate to take all the unsold time guaranteeing a minimum number of weekly hours. At least they paid and in a timely fashion, not running us 90 to 120 days like some.
I used the likes of Focus On The Family and Love Worth Finding more as bait to attract better paying like-minded churches locally and smaller national ministries that paid much closer to full rate. I could always attract a few and that justified the low income from the time in my mind because it led to more money. When I got to that station I think they were billing about $6,000 a month. It took almost 4 years to reach break even. Everybody told me it was a tough format. I have to agree.
We ran bonus plays in unsold time too and my biggest challenge was to get the jock to announce their regular time to get them a few more listeners. They wanted to play a liner and go straight in to the next program.
As I recall Bro. Stair didn't pay hardly anything but the agency he used would buy any time you had and once we talked about a flat rate to take all the unsold time guaranteeing a minimum number of weekly hours. At least they paid and in a timely fashion, not running us 90 to 120 days like some.
I used the likes of Focus On The Family and Love Worth Finding more as bait to attract better paying like-minded churches locally and smaller national ministries that paid much closer to full rate. I could always attract a few and that justified the low income from the time in my mind because it led to more money. When I got to that station I think they were billing about $6,000 a month. It took almost 4 years to reach break even. Everybody told me it was a tough format. I have to agree.
You didn't say whether or not your station had other competing stations in your market with the same or similar format. (We had a discussion about that on the Nashville board not too long ago.) It seems like these ministries don't necessarily mind "competing with themselves," but if you are splitting a pie with these other stations, your share of that pie would likely be smaller, unless you could (somehow) demonstrate that your station was garnering a larger share of donations to that ministry than your competitors were. Maybe that is where call letter identification (from the listeners, of course) comes in.
We had openers and/or closers that were REQUIRED to air with each program. Those contained the ministry's address and other contact information. (I've noticed that other stations don't necessarily do this.) There is usually PLENTY of time (more than enough) to run these openers/closers with the programs.
Glad to hear that he paid regularly, but I am wondering it he often SHAMED his listeners into donating to HIM! (He must have used every penny to buy more airtime, based on what he said in his sermons. Programming-wise, his broadcasts were TERRIBLE. LOTS of dead air! I called him "Dead-air Stair." (Some of my coworkers said that the dead air were the best parts of his broadcast because no propagandizing was done at those times! Hard to argue with that!))
There was a time you pretty much HAD to have FotF. In many evangelical families, "thus saith Dr. Spock" was replaced by "Thus saith Dr. Dobson"
Oh yes,we had others doing the same format. We were one of 5 stations doing the format and not only were we the 5th station but our daytime signal wasn't that great. You might reasonably say we were the least desirable of the 5 stations in the format. I even resorted to going to the library to get info on smaller denominations and contact info. I got several smaller denominations on the air doing that (Primitive Baptist, Apostolic Lutheran and such). I even got a bunch of smaller radio ministry sorts (some much better than the big boys) and I had a Bible College running a couple of classes allowing listeners to take a class via radio and mail in tests. It was a tough road to try to get that station to the point it wasn't losing big bucks and unfortunately, it was some secular foreign language programs on weekends that finally got us there, barely.
There was some unusual stuff. I had a guy that essentially was running a one hour live daily call-in infomercial. Imagine Dave Ramsey format but you're hawking a product (as in his case, say a set of DVDs and workbooks to help you get debt free). They did well for almost a year but the agency cancelled after they said the client wasn't paying and they couldn't guarantee payment for us. I still remember I couldn't believe I got them at $1,795 a month. It was our biggest account!
When we had Bro. Stair on, it was placed by an advertising agency that called us. We got a check from the ad agency. What we sold was after 5:30 pm to sunset and unsold blocks on weekends.
And you really did have to have Focus on the Family at one point. In my market everybody ran it and with a few playing it a couple of times a day.I bet you could hear it a dozen times between all the airings in a 24 hour period in my market.
There was some unusual stuff. I had a guy that essentially was running a one hour live daily call-in infomercial. Imagine Dave Ramsey format but you're hawking a product (as in his case, say a set of DVDs and workbooks to help you get debt free). They did well for almost a year but the agency cancelled after they said the client wasn't paying and they couldn't guarantee payment for us. I still remember I couldn't believe I got them at $1,795 a month. It was our biggest account!
When we had Bro. Stair on, it was placed by an advertising agency that called us. We got a check from the ad agency. What we sold was after 5:30 pm to sunset and unsold blocks on weekends.
And you really did have to have Focus on the Family at one point. In my market everybody ran it and with a few playing it a couple of times a day.I bet you could hear it a dozen times between all the airings in a 24 hour period in my market.
The difference between Christian stations that are run by some type of religious organization (even Salem) is that they have a doctrinal statement all ministries have to follow. Stations that are brokered don't care, they'd have Herbert W. Armstrong followed by the Church of Christ followed by Rev. Ike and not care
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