David....you mean KKGO; not KKLA.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Tavis Smiley Buys KBLA
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
David....you mean KKGO; not KKLA.
According to the Radio & TelevisionBusiness Report:
"The deal is valued at $7.15 million. A $357,500 escrow deposit has been made and is being held by Patrick Communications, the buyer’s representative. The transaction will see the newly formed Smiley Radio Properties pay $10,000 per month to lease KBLA’s equipment, with an annual increase of 3%."
I am a bit confused, as usual. So is Tavis playing $120,000 a year (with that 3% increase) for the station and equipment, after the down payment or also making monthly payments plus the $10k equipment lease? That would pay out in 50 years or so.
If he pays the remaining balance off over 10 years (after putting done the $357,500) he is paying about $60k a month (assuming low interest) plus the equipment lease. $70k a month .... before any other expenses. Is this possible? Even if its paid over 15-20-25 years, with lower monthly payments? What could this station potentially "bill?" One thing for sure, he ain't gonna have Dave Ramsey on the station. "Debt is dumb and Tavis is......"
"The deal is valued at $7.15 million. A $357,500 escrow deposit has been made and is being held by Patrick Communications, the buyer’s representative. The transaction will see the newly formed Smiley Radio Properties pay $10,000 per month to lease KBLA’s equipment, with an annual increase of 3%."
I am a bit confused, as usual. So is Tavis playing $120,000 a year (with that 3% increase) for the station and equipment, after the down payment or also making monthly payments plus the $10k equipment lease? That would pay out in 50 years or so.
If he pays the remaining balance off over 10 years (after putting done the $357,500) he is paying about $60k a month (assuming low interest) plus the equipment lease. $70k a month .... before any other expenses. Is this possible? Even if its paid over 15-20-25 years, with lower monthly payments? What could this station potentially "bill?" One thing for sure, he ain't gonna have Dave Ramsey on the station. "Debt is dumb and Tavis is......"
No, it sounds like the seller is keeping the transmitter site and the equipment there and leasing it to Smiley.
That would mean that the $7.15 million price does not include the land. That is a horribly high price today for an AM at the top of the dial where nobody ever visits.
Apparently because the seller owns at least one other station that shares that transmitter site.
The one word that stands out to me is "valued." That's not an actual purchase price. That is taking into account various other elements involved. What we don't see is what makes this deal "valued" at $7.15 million? If he's borrowing from the seller, then the "value" might include interest.
They sold 1230 AM several years ago, and 930 AM is owned by a Catholic organization.
Good catch on the "valued" term used in the release. That would could also include consideration for the seller giving a non-compete in Black targeted radio. Those add-ons to the purchase price are usually done for tax considerations, changing assets to services. This is sort of like real estate deals where the buyer pays for a house and separately for "furnishings" so that the tax value of the house is lower.
Not doubting you, but RadioInsight and InsideRadio both say 1230 is still owned by Multicultural. However, checking their website, it's not among their LA stations.
Yes the term "valued-at" is a PR term for press releases. It can encompass a lot of amorphized non-cash-value.
My read is this deal becomes basically an LMA. Smiley is essentially leasing the station with first right of refusal at some point in time.
KYPA is owned by Woori Media Groupl, with a 2016 purchase from MultiCultural for, get this, $6.2 million for a class IV AM.
https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/w...xt=25&appn=101717799&formid=314&fac_num=18273
According to the purchase agreement, on the day of closing the Buyer pays the Seller the balance due of $7.15m. The $10k per month for tower rental does not apply to the purchase price. Plus the Buyer has to install a separate electrical meter and is responsible for 1/3 of the yearly property taxes on the land.
https://licensing.fcc.gov/cdbs/CDBS...?appn=101823471&qnum=5040©num=1&exhcnum=1
Thanks for finding this. It must have just been posted.
I hope Multicultural got the money from a bank or finance company and did not self-finance. This thing will not last 24 months. Even if the stations gets ad money from companies wishing to support Black enterprises, at some point advertisers want something in return for the support. And what if iHeart puts its Black network on 1150 after Rush is no longer able to do his show?
Wow, this is a bad deal. I always thought Tavis Smiley was a smart guy, watching him on his nightly half-hour PBS show. How could he not know what AM radio stations are selling for these days? How can he think he can attract a decent sized audience all the way up at 1580 kHz? All the advertising in the world is not going to draw listeners that far up the dial, away from KFI, KNX and the sports stations.
I wish it were so. A more progressive talk stations with all local content. But iHeart just blew up a progressive talk AM station in San Francisco, KKSF 960, 20,000 watts days and 5,000 watts nights. The ratings were poor, and when iHeart needed AM stations to launch BIN, this one was in on day one.
One of the things that puzzles me is why many large markets have three conservative talk stations, even places like SF, NYC, Boston, Portland and Seattle. But nobody wants to do Progressive Talk. In all the large markets, the format only exists in Chicago and Minneapolis, mostly because those AM station owners are behind it. Luckily Sirius XM has a Progressive Talk channel, so I hear Thom Hartmann, Stephanie Miller and others on that outlet.
Maybe the audience for Progressive Talk is satisfied with NPR stations, usually with high power FM signals. It can be tuned in easily anywhere in the metro. NPR is not progressive talk. But it does fill that need for enlightened news and information, a bit above the common denominator.
I wish it were so. A more progressive talk stations with all local content. But iHeart just blew up a progressive talk AM station in San Francisco, KKSF 960, 20,000 watts days and 5,000 watts nights. The ratings were poor, and when iHeart needed AM stations to launch BIN, this one was in on day one.
One of the things that puzzles me is why many large markets have three conservative talk stations, even places like SF, NYC, Boston, Portland and Seattle. But nobody wants to do Progressive Talk. In all the large markets, the format only exists in Chicago and Minneapolis, mostly because those AM station owners are behind it. Luckily Sirius XM has a Progressive Talk channel, so I hear Thom Hartmann, Stephanie Miller and others on that outlet.
Maybe the audience for Progressive Talk is satisfied with NPR stations, usually with high power FM signals. It can be tuned in easily anywhere in the metro. NPR is not progressive talk. But it does fill that need for enlightened news and information, a bit above the common denominator.
Not to take this thread on a tangent, but my opinion is that conservative talk is less about politics but more about a group of shared values that are fairly uniform across the board among conservative talker listeners. They apply these values to politics.
Progressive Talk listeners are less uniform in their core values. When a host bases their opinion on a certain core value, that value is not shared by most everyone who identifies as Progressive. That makes programming Progressive Talk more challenging (in my opinion).
Many of the Progressive Talk stations were on signals without good coverage throughout the market. Many conservative talkers are on heritage AMs, many high powered and more apt to cover the full market.
As for the deal Tavis made, I would say it's a horrible deal on the surface. I suppose I will reserve comment until I see what he has up his sleeve.
Progressive Talk listeners are less uniform in their core values. When a host bases their opinion on a certain core value, that value is not shared by most everyone who identifies as Progressive. That makes programming Progressive Talk more challenging (in my opinion).
Many of the Progressive Talk stations were on signals without good coverage throughout the market. Many conservative talkers are on heritage AMs, many high powered and more apt to cover the full market.
As for the deal Tavis made, I would say it's a horrible deal on the surface. I suppose I will reserve comment until I see what he has up his sleeve.
So where is Tavis going to get $7.15 million? Apparently, he's had his house on the market:
https://www.reallylist.com/2020/04/...-2-million-for-longtime-home-in-hancock-park/
https://www.reallylist.com/2020/04/...-2-million-for-longtime-home-in-hancock-park/
Several issues there:
(1) You are right in the sense that nearly all of those old KABC hosts were indeed lefties, however they did not (for the most part, there are always exceptions) take extreme lefty positions lest someone would demand "equal time" under the broadcast regulations at the time. I would also note the most popular personality on the station at the time was Vin Scully, a (quiet) conservative.
(2) They never presented themselves as "libtalk" "progressive radio" or anything like that. To do so would have alienated a large part of their audience for sure (keep in mind, this was the late 70s and early 80s, LA and OC was much more conservative then).
(3) That success lasted right up until the time that KFI went talk, almost entirely conservative, and started crushing KABC in the ratings, a blow that KABC has yet to recover from even 30+ years later. Once exposed to actual competition of formats and ideas, the lefties simply couldn't compete. They still can't. Any list of the most popular political talk show hosts even today is filled with nothing but conservatives.
(4) I think, (and I can't remember or even listen to them all, so I may be wrong on this), Michael Jackson was the most overtly outspoken leftist of the bunch. He has been put on several stations since then, thinking he could recreate that old KABC magic and it never happened. Since he left KABC, he has failed at every station. Furthermore, I am not aware of any of those former KABC hosts having any success after KABC.
So you get the "Technically Correct, but Not Really When You Look at All of the Facts and Put Them in Context" award.
Add in the KGO personalities who did very well being mainstream San Francisco voices, but when the PPM arrived we saw that the audience was not as deep as thought and the TSL was vastly less than the diary revealed.Attempts to make the station behave better in the PPM made it worse, and it went to live around 20th in the market.
Which "equal time" regulations are you talking about? In point of fact, there are "equal time" regulations now. When Rush invited the president to do a rally on his show, Rush was obliged to offer equal time to Joe Biden. But that is about political candidates, and has nothing to do with talk show hosts.
If you're talking about the Fairness Doctrine, Ronald Reagan's FCC got rid of it in 1987. Michael Jackson and the other talk show hosts at KABC had no fairness doctrine to fear after 1987. So maybe you could be a bit clearer about the broadcast regulations.
Howard Stern is pretty popular, don't you think? He was pretty popular when he was on the air in LA. So was Tom Leykis. Tom would tell you every day he wasn't a right wing wacko. So there were popular talk show hosts who weren't conservative in LA.
just in case you need a reminder, over 70% of the legal residents of LA county voted for Joe Biden.
One other thing about KABC. From what I can remember they got far better ratings BEFORE they went hard conservative than after.
Last edited:
It is exactly the "Fairness Doctrine" I am referring to. We are talking about KABC's success in the 70's and 80's. It is not a stretch to say the Fairness Doctrine is what sheltered KABC from competition until it was repealed in 1987. It is not a coincidence that KFI went all talk soon after the repeal of the fairness doctrine.
I don't know where you are going with the Rush hosting the President thing (relevance?). The fairness doctrine ended over 30 years ago as I said. But to indulge your point, I guarantee you Rush would be more than willing to host Joe Biden for two hours, but as of course you know, Joe would never take the offer because he would be subjected to real questions about his real policies that our "real" media protects him from every day.
But going back to my original post, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that KFI didn't kill KABC, Rush Limbaugh himself did. It was when Rush came on in 1989 that KFI's ratings really took off. Today Rush is doing just fine, Michael Jackson and the Old KABC guard, not so much. KABC itself is a shell of its former self. Rush slew them all.
- Status