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104.1 no longer truthful, maybe never was.

C

CAVEMANager

Guest
104.1 is temporarily off the air while the new owners implement the format switch from right wing talk to religion. This market is more than saturated with religion. We have 580, 690, 830, 940 and 1210 on AM and 88.1 and a whole bunch of religious translators on FM including 101.7. God should pick one of them and get everyone to listen to it. The other frequencies can be used to entertain the heathen masses. One blessing is that 790 will be the only channel for political talk from the far right.
 
Here's how it works: If you buy a radio station, you can program it any way you want as long as there's no offensive language. There are no limits or controls on the number of stations in a particular format. So the entire AM band could go religious, and it's perfectly legal.
 
Nobody questions the legality of saturating the market with religion but I think that the listening public are being disregarded. In this case it is looking like 104.1 is going to simulcast 830 and that's what's already happening with 101.7. The public is being provided with nothing new. In fact most of the concepts are at least 2,000 years old and they've been rehashed millions of times. Australia has an interesting approach to religious radio. The government declared religion as being of limited interest and religious stations are required to operate at low power with low levels of modulation too. That would never fly here but it's an interesting idea.
 
104.1 is now back on the air simulcasting 830 a.m. This station has an interesting history. In the early 1990s the construction permit for 104.1 was granted to a company called F.E.M. Ray. This was before the FCC auctioned spectrum. F.E.M. got the green light by promising to program to women, a concept that the FCC liked. Almost instantly the station got sold and the new owners had no interest in feminine programming. Family Life Radio picked up the station for only $800,000 which is a steal compared to prices paid for Tucson stations only a few years ago.

Also part of the Scripps sellout is the dumping of 106.3 which was established in about 1984 by Ted Tucker. This was Tucker's crowning achievement at the time and it took years to accomplish. Tucker sold the station for $6.3 million and used the money to finance a buying spree of radio stations. 106.3 just sold for one million.

I find it hard to understand how the value of radio stations have nosedived to the point that we've been seeing lately. You'd think that nobody is buying radio advertising and nobody listens to radio anymore. If prices continue to plummet like this, just about anyone with above average income will be able to buy a local radio station. One problem is that these sales are done in private and interested members of the public are not allowed to bid.
 
CAVEMANager said:
I find it hard to understand how the value of radio stations have nosedived to the point that we've been seeing lately. You'd think that nobody is buying radio advertising and nobody listens to radio anymore. If prices continue to plummet like this, just about anyone with above average income will be able to buy a local radio station. One problem is that these sales are done in private and interested members of the public are not allowed to bid.
Click to expand...

Station values dropped as the recession deepened.

As I've mentioned before, the recession cut total radio revenue nationally by about 40% in 2009. It has not recovered as the effects of streaming, the 2008 introduction of smart phones and, in the major ad markets, the PPM, cut radio listening.

In the late 90's, the average percent of people listening to radio 6 AM to Midnight was around 17%. Today in the PPM markets it shows as around 8% to 9%. Advertisers buy rating points, and the 5 share station in 2000 may still be 5 shares, but it's 55 of half of the average number of listeners.

With no growth, FMs that were getting 16 to 18 times cash flow are getting 5 to 6 times BCF. And AMs are being given away, save for just a few super signal stations.
 
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