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Salem talk stations

PTBoardOp94 said:
Salem was teetering close to insolvency two or three years ago. I'm not certain what changed. It could have been the sale of several Salem stations to a Catholic network that may have allowed Salem to pay down debts.
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b-turner said:
You are absolutely right. I suspect unloading some stations helped. I know a few were real dogs.
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I was in a market where one of Salem's more sad excuses for an AM was located. The signal wasn't bad at all, but the only regularly scheduled local program was a morning show which was amateurish at best. It was hosted by a couple who'd started out a few years previous on another AM signal, hosting a restaurant and food review show on weekends more or less as a hobby. Somehow they got the full-time morning gig at the Salem station (maybe their price was right?)...And it was as bad as one would expect. They were overly opinionated right wingers who constantly talked over each other and the few callers they had, they broadcast lots of false information - always "justified" by their saying "yeah, I heard that somewhere" (kind of like the "Drunk Uncle" character from SNL) and they went so far as to create childish nicknames for politicians they didn't like. The rest of the time on that Salem station was all brokered programming - Stock market seminars (which turned out to be a scam in itself), 30 minute infomercials for financial planning firms, a few more local programs broadcast in the evenings, and then weekends featuring Caribbean music in the mornings, and snake oil salesmen the rest of the time - including one guy who was hawking vitamins, when he himself had been dead for more than a year; they had no disclaimer explaining that, or that the show was obviously pre-recorded. Lots of programs were repeated ad-nauseam, sometimes for weeks, as they seemed to lack programming to fill most of the slots.

After a few years, they finally put the station and the few listeners out of their misery and sold it to Immaculate Heart or one of the other religious broadcasters...Who often told a different set of ultra-conservative anti-everything falsehoods in many cases.
 
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semoochie: I doubt K-Love is hurting Salem. K-Love is funded by donations directly from listeners. Salem sells airtime. K-Love is a 100% music format where Salem is primarily spoken word or conservative talk. I doubt there is much overlap on listeners.
 
In Atlanta, there's a three-way competition for the Christian Contemporary audience.

--104.7 WFSH Athens "The Fish" owned by Salem ... 24,000 watts/1660 feet ... #10
--106.7 WAKL Gainesville "K-Love" ... 77,000 watts/860 feet ... not listed by Nielsen
--93.3 WVFJ Greenville "The Joy FM" ... 38,000 watts/1610 feet ... #15 tie

Number 10 is kinda low for The Fish. It went all the way to #1 a year or two ago at Christmas. So is it being hurt by K-Love, which started in Atlanta in 2019? Since K-Love doesn't get listed in the Nielsen ratings, we don't really know.
 
Is Salem very much in the business of syndicating their shows to other non-Salem stations? I can’t recall any of them being syndicated to non-Salem stations that I’m aware of, unless they’re a very small market or relatively unknown AM.

Seems like there probably isn’t a lot of overhead for their stations considering most of the talk stations carry programming syndicated by Salem, and they share a lot of the same national advertisers and seem to manage to get some local advertisers but not a ton on the conservative talk stations. Almost everything non-national on WGTK-FM or WRTH is primarily wealth management, a couple of orthodic shoe stores, and medical practices. A couple of small performance venues advertise as well as a couple restaurants.
 
semoochie said:
I was. Our local Fish station used to have pretty good ratings, if 6+ is any indication. Since we've had a full power K-Love station, they've dropped to a two share or below!
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Unless a commercial Christian station like KCMS, religious stations don't typically care about ratings, let alone 6+. They instead track donations on a geographical basis. When you think about it, what a great way to know how a station is performing in which market.
 
Do any Salem hosts get syndicated to non-Salem stations? Yes, but not much. 560 WGAN Portland runs Hugh Hewitt by delay from 9 to noon. For a while 770 WABC NYC ran Charlie Kirk from noon to 2pm but now it has local hosts.

Salem ran ads in trade publications for talk stations to try either Kirk or Dennis Prager as their "Rush replacement." I don't know if anyone did that after Limbaugh's show was playing repeats after his death.
 
Salem Radio Networks claims to have over 3000 affiliates. I assume many of those are for their SRN and Townhall TOH news services, or possibly short form commentaries they offer.
 
101tm said:
This is like asking which tooth I want the root canal on, but I’d rather hear Elder than Gorka. They’ve also added a show by a guy named “Officer Tatum”, younger dude that’s better than Charlie Kirk if that’s saying much.

Michael Medved is probably one of the better hosts Salem has. He’s been dropped or sidelined by a number of their stations due to his anti-Trump stance he still maintains. He’s kept his word unlike Mark Levin (who originally said he would never, ever vote for trump and is now one of his biggest butt kissers). If I recall, most Salem hosts weren’t very warm to Trump during the primaries in 2016, not sure if they’ve all fallen in place (other than Medved) like Premiere and WW1 hosts.
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Michael Medved and Salem parted ways last year I believe. His show is now syndicated by Genesis Communications, the same company that distributes The Alex Jones Show. GCN currently has 45 Shows available from all different perspectives.
 
Now that I remember, WORD (AM)/WYRD-FM in Greenville/Spartanburg SC carried Mike Gallagher from 9-12 for years. I believe he was close friends with the PD or something like that.

A ton of religious stations carry SRN’s news, so if they’re counting individual stations and networks, I can see how they could get to that number. Also there are some small town talk stations I’ve heard SRN on. I haven’t heard TownHall news outside of some of their conservative talk stations and SiriusXM’s Patriot channel.
 
Kelly A said:
Unless a commercial Christian station like KCMS, religious stations don't typically care about ratings, let alone 6+. They instead track donations on a geographical basis. When you think about it, what a great way to know how a station is performing in which market.
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The Fish is ad supported, like KCMS.
 
101tm said:
I haven’t heard TownHall news outside of some of their conservative talk stations and SiriusXM’s Patriot channel.
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WAVO Charlotte NC had TownHall news at the top of the hour. Some of the company's stations were Christian talk and teaching but the former owner whose estate hadn't sold it yet really liked standards. The station kept playing standards by asking listeners for contributions and they came through for several years. I don't know what happened after the station went back to simulcasting the talk and teaching but the Billy Graham organization owns the station now.
 
radiocph said:
Huh? Apparently, the vitamins didn't work....:)
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wadio said:
That's hysterical! It's impossible to leave the earth these days when the time comes. Just ask the Car Talk guys, Art Bell and Rush Limbaugh.
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What's better is that the long-dead vitamin salesman guy who's show was still being aired every weekend with no disclaimer was referred to as a "doctor" (Dr. Bob if I recall correctly). What they didn't tell you on the show is that he was NOT a medical doctor. He actually had a PhD in Psychology or something similar....So Dr. Bob was prescribing vitamins and supplements, which you could only buy at the vitamin company he'd (and presumably now his relatives) owned, and they guy had been dead for more than a year and wasn't even in medicine, he was a PhD. Can't make this stuff up sometimes :)
 
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Mikey Radio: You should be complaining to somebody other than us. The FCC has no jurisdiction on this one. The advertiser alone is responsible for the content. Seems another branch of government should be involved.
 
b-turner said:
Mikey Radio: You should be complaining to somebody other than us. The FCC has no jurisdiction on this one. The advertiser alone is responsible for the content. Seems another branch of government should be involved.
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It wasn't a complaint. I simply mentioned it as a somewhat humorous observation, as when I mentioned that the guy had been dead yet they still aired his snake oil shows, a few others here made joking comments about it in their posts above.

This will not be the first time I have made a humorous comment or observation, with others on this site being unable to somehow comprehend that it was just that...Humor. I somehow thought the smiley I added to the end of my comment would've helped clarify, but perhaps no...
 
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I am not offended by what you posted but just said the place to let somebody know is another branch of the government and I would report them. First I like to be above board in my business dealings and such advertisers can actually hurt radio by causing a lack of faith is radio advertisers in general if this happens frequently

I recall one radio ministry that features the voice of a guy who did in 1988, Vernon McGee. At least they say so on their website
 
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