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Will Audacy's Troubles Affect Cleveland?

S

Santa fe

Radio Insight posted an article Friday about Audacy's financial troubles and the many steps they're taking to cut costs and sell assets to try to keep this once proud stock from being de-listed from the NYSE for having a price less than a dollar a share, 27 cents to be exact.

One line caught my attention: "There are increasing rumors of a separate divestiture of stations coming soon with the belief that Educational Media Foundation will enter at least one market where it has to this point been unable to launch its “K-Love” brand."

While that description can apply to several markets, it does describe Cleveland where EMF has only HD signals and translators. What station might go? WDOK? The Fan? Anyone hearing anything?

And please explain again why broadcast deregulation was a Good Thing.
 
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While Cleveland meets that description, the most educated guess is that it
the market in question is Dallas/Fort Worth. The heritage Christian AC does very well there, so there is a lot of incentive for EMF to enter the market. They have been unable to in part due to Audacy owning KLUV.
 
Could Cumulus make a play for the Cleveland stations? Or could Salem or Radio One add to their clusters?

If EMF does buy one of the stations, what would happen to their translators and HD appearances on the iHeart stations?
 
MediaLover said:
Could Cumulus make a play for the Cleveland stations? Or could Salem or Radio One add to their clusters?
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While Cleveland fits the mold of a typical Cumulus market, I’d have to think they’d be more interested in getting a WTSS and further bolster their existing Buffalo cluster.

Radio One might be amenable to a larger asset swap between several markets (they did one with Audacy a few years ago) and Lance is hinting at a possible asset swap in Memphis and Buffalo with an unnamed third party. Salem, OTOH, doesn’t need any other signals, especially on the FM dial; their core formats—Christian talk, CCM and conservative talk—are all represented here.
MediaLover said:
If EMF does buy one of the stations, what would happen to their translators and HD appearances on the iHeart stations?
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In all but one market they’re in (Houston b/c of service mark issues) EMF has K-Love on the largest signal, while the other signals carry Air1.

In Cleveland, K-Love is nominally heard on 89.1 in Hinckley. They probably wouldn’t have much of an issue switching it to Air1. Translator 90.7 in Wadsworth and full-power 90.9 in Wooster (the former WCWS) are outside of the market and wouldn’t have to change.

To be honest, if EMF ever enters the market, they’d be more Iikely to buy a stand-alone rimshot.
 
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Santa fe said:
And please explain again why broadcast deregulation was a Good Thing.
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Due in a great part to Docket 80-90's overpopulation of the dial, by the early 90's over half of all US radio stations were not profitable. Deregulation worked well until the recession of 2008 and the introduction of the smartphone that same year. Between those two and the large market introduction of the PPM, radio revenues decreased about 60%.

Today, we have far less ad revenue for far more stations.
 
Nathan Obral said:
In Cleveland, K-Love is nominally heard on 89.1 in Hinckley. They probably wouldn’t have much of an issue switching it to Air1. Translator 90.7 in Wadsworth and full-power 90.9 in Wooster (the former WCWS) are outside of the market and wouldn’t have to change.
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It irritates me that translator 90.7 IDs as Wadsworth. It's on a tower in Akron along the Norton/Akron border. That's like me having a tow truck company in Cleveland and advertising "best towing company in the Charleston, WV. area!"
 
DavidEduardo said:
Due in a great part to Docket 80-90's overpopulation of the dial, by the early 90's over half of all US radio stations were not profitable. Deregulation worked well until the recession of 2008 and the introduction of the smartphone that same year. Between those two and the large market introduction of the PPM, radio revenues decreased about 60%.

Today, we have far less ad revenue for far more stations.
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I mean, there was a reason why the majority of smaller chains cashed out between 1996 and 2000. It just completed the self-fulfilling prophesy of 25 years leading up to it. Some couldn't compete and others found themselves outnumbered after other groups cashed out (for much the same reasons). Even when the initial duopolies came into play c. 1992-93, economies of scale issues emerged.

You can't blame the people for wanting to sell and get out at truly overinflated numbers (remember when six radio stations in Cleveland sold at once in 1998 for a combined $275 million?!), they saw an opportunity they'd never see again. Sure enough, they were correct.

And absolutely, Docket 80-90 was far, far more devastating to terrestrial radio than dereg.
 
MediaLover said:
Cleveland went through a lot of ownership changes during the 1990s, especially between 1996 and 2000.
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I think it was the 1996 NAB in Las Vegas where a vendor was handing out lapel buttons that said "Do you who owns your station today?"
 
MediaLover said:
Cleveland went through a lot of ownership changes during the 1990s, especially between 1996 and 2000.
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Since the big station swap of 2001, station ownership in town has been pretty stable.

Clear Channel/iHeart has had the same stable throughout (with WARF being moved into the Cleveland cluster from Akron the only change)

CBS/Entercom/Audacy has maintained the same 4 stations, likewise Radio One/Urban One.

Salem sold WKNR to Good Karma in 2006, but have held their core stations (1220/1420/95.5) for over 20 years

The only real changes have come from the smaller owners

Ideastream took over WKSU and (essentially) moved them to Cleveland.

Rubber City Radio bought WNWV from Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting in 2011, and has had a revolving door of formats under their banner (Boom/V, Wave 2.0, Jeny, Alternative Cleveland)

Radio Disney got out of the radio business in 2015, selling WWMK 1260 to the local St. Peter Rock Media, where it became WCCR 1260 The Rock
 
In the mid-1990's when the drums were beating hard for easing those onerous FCC rules on ownership limits, etc., I clearly recall a well-respected architect of the new era proclaiming that with deregulation, technology and efficiencies of scale radio stations will be able to make 50 per cent profits, or more. 50 percent profit! Well, with 50 percent profit beckoning, no wonder folks paid over value for properties with highly leveraged money. I mean, when you can make 50 cents on the dollar, how can you go wrong?

So why did it go wrong? Maybe you can't sell radio like you sell hamburgers or sewing machines. Apparently no one foresaw how quickly cell phones, the internet and new tech would grow and be embraced by the public at radio's expense. No one believed that when they made their efficidency cuts that affected their product people would go elsewhere to get what they wanted. And no one could have foreseen a worldwide pandemic and the resulting transformation of the way we work, play and entertain ourselves.

So the next time the MBA's start touting how they can transform a moribund industry into a gold mine I'd be highly skeptical, to say the least.
 
Santa fe said:
So the next time the MBA's start touting how they can transform a moribund industry into a gold mine I'd be highly skeptical, to say the least.
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That's what Steve Wozniak was saying. Someday, everyone will own a computer. I was highly skeptical.

You want to know what went wrong with radio? Woz was right. If it hadn't been for him, it would have been better.
 
Nathan Obral said:
While Cleveland fits the mold of a typical Cumulus market, I’d have to think they’d be more interested in getting a WTSS and further bolster their existing Buffalo cluster.

Radio One might be amenable to a larger asset swap between several markets (they did one with Audacy a few years ago) and Lance is hinting at a possible asset swap in Memphis and Buffalo with an unnamed third party. Salem, OTOH, doesn’t need any other signals, especially on the FM dial; their core formats—Christian talk, CCM and conservative talk—are all represented here.

In all but one market they’re in (Houston b/c of service mark issues) EMF has K-Love on the largest signal, while the other signals carry Air1.

In Cleveland, K-Love is nominally heard on 89.1 in Hinckley. They probably wouldn’t have much of an issue switching it to Air1. Translator 90.7 in Wadsworth and full-power 90.9 in Wooster (the former WCWS) are outside of the market and wouldn’t have to change.

To be honest, if EMF ever enters the market, they’d be more Iikely to buy a stand-alone rimshot.
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103.7 FM is an EMF station. They are listed as an Air-1 affiliate, but I heard a mention of K-Love there recently. Where are they located?
 
K-Love is heard in Cleveland on WMJI HD2 and on translator 103.7. Looking at the 103.7 coverage map, it appears they are transmitting from around Warrensville Hts, perhaps from the WFHM tower.
 
This morning I noticed WNCX dropped HD3 and moved the sports betting station to HD2 which previously aired Album Pod. Also, WDOK dropped HD2 which aired Coffee Shop.
 
What's on WDOK HD2 and WNCX HD3 now?

Also, I felt for a long time that EMF and iHeart have both cluttered the airwaves with translators that could have gone to community organizations.
 
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