It's a possibility. 107.7 can cover a lot of ground that's now served by a slew of translators. EMF could do a lot of it with one station, and use that station (or HD channels) to feed multiple formats to multiple translators. OTOH, they could do the same thing over a much more populated area with 102.5. Of course, 102.5 would be significantly more expensive, but if they've got the cash it offers them a much greater audience.
Yeah, but WTSS is the one relegated to Audacy Atlas, the "corporation" selling off assets. WLKK is not. That doesn't mean a deal for WLKK won't happen, but it makes WTSS the prime sale target at this time, maybe because it has a lot more value.
Big signal on 102.5 that covers everything in Niagara, Erie and Chautauqua counties, and reaches Genesee, Orleans, Wyoming with ease, and gets into Monroe county on a fringe. EMF already owns 3kW WBKV on 89.9 which is doing the K-Love format. As such, 107.7 isn't a "must have" signal. 107.7 could go to the local operator who's been banished from these boards.
It's farfetched but sometimes occurs in upper management meetings or legal depositions: All present may have been required to sign non-disclosure statements to protect current billing on Star and to protect their jobs. Then again, staffers may simply and understandably be tight-lipped about the developments.
Good point. While commercial stations can't get much if any revenue from Canada, EMF can capitalize on its huge coverage of the Hamilton-Niagara area. That is 1.4 million per Statistics Canada, larger than the roughly 1.1 million in the Buffalo MSA. Add in the adjacent New York state coverage and you have nearly 3 million... about the size of market 19!
When you say "monetize" you mean convert more recruits and take their money, right. The business models are different, but make no mistake-- EMF is motivated by the Almighty Dollar...
You make that sound like it's a bad thing. For only $15.5-million, you could have had the station with the biggest FM signal in WNY. Maybe if you got your supporters together in time you could have gotten into the bidding. You certainly had notice when they put it into Audacy Atlas. Maybe you can scrape up enough to get into the bidding for 107.7 and restore your Lake dreams. You know what they say, money talks, and...
Yeah, it's bad when companies like EMF use Jesus to make a buck. You can whine about the diminished value of 102.5, but Entercom paid something like 12 million for 107.7 in 2004. It's now worth less than 1 million. If they had only used your savvy years ago, they wouldn't be having this Fire Sale...
No, they aren't. The dollar is just a tool to spread the message. Look at their financial statements, most of the money they raise goes back into the program, and their executive pay is not absurd for a $200 million dollar company:
Commercial radio is dying, because there is a LOT of competition for ears. Now-large broadcast companies thought they could use economies of scale to remain profitable, and to a point they were right. But the race to "gobble everything up" caused them to overspend massively, and eventually those loans are going to come due. Since ad dollars have been disappearing for decades, Radio is no longer an attractive business, so the demand to buy signals that existed in the 90s is gone, while the "supply" of sellers has only gone up as companies do whatever they can to survive these debt payments.
The 15.5 million also includes WLFP in Memphis, putting the value of Star at what, maybe 8-9 million?
No, they are motivated by faith. Money is a tool used to achieve that objective.
