Unless someone with insider knowledge could say with a straight face that the billing of WFAN depended on there being a daytime AM signal as part of their package, it could be acknowledged that 660 is a very good candidate for experimentation. I think an orphaned Country audience would have been larger and more attractive to advertisers than a daytime simulcast Sports audience. It would follow that Audacy could have made more money, which is ultimately the point.
WFAN needs the AM for several reasons: first is overlapping sports events and events that are contracted for the AM and not just the FM and, second, is the fact that the AM has better coverage in outlying areas, particularly Suffolk County on LI.
This is part of the reasoning why stations like KSL and WSB have kept the AM despite being on good FMs.
I am challenging the idea that "people won't listen to AM." Industry insiders "knew" that a national daytime show would never fly. This was so much the gospel that I believe the only way Rush could get access to the remains of the ABC Talk network was to do a New York local show for free. As we all know that gamble paid off handsomely. Sometime you have to take risks to get someplace.
Nobody said that a national radio show would not work in the 80's. There were thousands of stations taking satellite formats, and there were lots of regional networks. The issue was the cost of technology.
Before reaching the largest markets, Rush was on literally hundreds of smaller stations. He went on the biggest stations because of success elsewhere. The issue was compensation, not clearance.
If there is similar gospel that under 45's will never listen to AM, let's see some evidence. I suspect that the only "proof" is that top 40 music audiences shifted away 40 years ago and angry political talk and Z-Rock didn't grab them, so nothing will. How about transporting a decently successful FM format to a decently powered AM and see what happens? Such an opportunity never comes up (except in this instance in NY), and had Audacy done so, they would have been risking very little and either proven for real or disproven the gospel.
Music formats have been tried on big AM signals during the 80's and 90's all over Latin America where major markets have many more excellent signals than in the US. I can not name one that has worked. People stopped trying by the beginning of the new Millenium.
If the conventional wisdom were shown to be bull, then all of a sudden there are many properties that might have some potential and thus opportunity for revenue, IF a new format could be found, and I'll admit that is a big problem, and ultimately what could kill AM - no programming.
Besides the fact that FM music sounds horrible, the real issue is that there are only about 180 signals in all the top 100 markets that cover at least 80% of the market day and night. Those good signals are almost all doing one of the profitable talk formats, covering discussion, news and sports depending on the station and market.
There are no further competitive signals in most markets; some markets do not even have one full coverage AM any longer.
In most cases it wouldn't be music, as most markets already have the popular genres on FM. I made some suggestions for new formats, to which someone said they all stink. That may be true, but then the question ought to be turned to radio professionals: what ideas are there for new programming? And if the answer is "we'll spin records better" I would suggest that they ain't got no ideas for something new or something for the future, which is a whole 'nother issue.
There is nothing new on radio, and has not been since the 1930's. Sure, stations went from block programs to genre-specific formats over the decades, but as long as radio is in the business of reflecting aspects of mass-appeal taste preferences, we will not see any startling new concept.
How is today's TV with hundreds of channels any different than early TV around 1950?
