I guess this answers the question of whether or not they have an engineer. I hope they informed the advertisers that they are covering significantly less heads and adjusted their rates accordingly.
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NEW CONSERVATIVE TALK STATION
- Thread starter radioislife2020
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One way to do that is: You don't. You don't have local staff at all. The national contract you sign includes a flight of national commercials, and a payment for airing those commercials based on market size and reach. For a Top 5 market, that payment can be enough to cover the expenses plus a little extra.
Come on now, I'm an offended RC drinker.
I either didn’t know this station existed or completely forgot it existed. That’s…not a good sign considering I’ve been following Houston radio for 9 years now.
The reduced power STA was filed a month ago, but I don’t see any notification of a return to normal operation. They would be operating with 1kw days and 500 watts night under the STA.
We've had an ongoing narrative of the GM/OM of another brokered time-sales station in this group. 10 KW, a full market signal but daytime only. As it became harder to find clients, the station finally went silent.
Those national shows don't provide enough cash (most shows don't pay at all for clearance if sponsored). You get the content, and have to make enough local spots to pay the expenses. In this case, the station is not a full market signal and would not get much.
The change in format is kinda' proof that they had no revenue at all.
Correct. If you are perhaps in the top two or three markets, you may be able to receive some revenue share on the national spots, but don't count on it.
The usual syndication deal is, in exchange for an exclusive contract for the market, the station is expected to air the program, complete with the embedded national spots, and the station's revenue comes from the local avails. So, the station doesn't have to pay for the content, because the payment is the consideration of airing the national spots. It's bartered programming.
Most contracts have a clause that provides that certain morning programming is optional, which gives the station the choice of airing a locally-originated program in the mornings. Both Westwood One and Salem allow this.
Do you really think this rimshot station that doesn't report to Nielsen is going to hire a local sales person to sell spots in controversial conservative radio shows? I don't. They can't sell audience because there isn't much. They can't sell demos because it's over 65. Based on what I've seen at similar stations in LA (KEIB) or Boston (Talk 1200), there's no local sales. It's all national, from drugs, health & medical products, insurance, and other 1-800 stuff.
It does "report to Nielsen". It is encoded, but it does not subscribe.
But KEIB and 1200 in Boston are both iHeart stations and they are sold nationally by the owner who does the programming, station operations and sales. In the case of that suburban station in Houston, they don't have an owner who creates the programming and sells it. They are on their own and most of the even second tier networked shows are already taken.
My recommendation is that, rather than being another Conservative News/Talk outlet (competing with KTRH, KSEV, KPRC, KNTH, and KLVI), they make the bold move to become Houston's first Spanish-language Conservative News/Talk radio station.
Do you think they will hire a local salesperson to sell this station to local advertisers? I don't. bturner has already tried this on a much better signal in this same market.
Too late. Read post #1 in this thread. Faith, Family Freedom. All anglo all the time.
News/talk in Spanish is a very limited field, and has not worked well except for a couple of markets... and then it was decades ago. And today, it would not work on AM at all as Hispanics use that band even less than other groups.
No, Salem won't be doing anything with them, unless they take SRN News (Townhall News) like KSEV airs at the top of the clock. If it was a Spanish language conservative talker, Salem does provide that format. I have promos on the air which states, if any one is talking about "The Patriot," they're talking about AM1070, The Answer. A few years ago, there was a station that was going to start using "The Patriot." I hit the airwaves with that moniker before that station would start using it. The only time when that station had a good signal when it was a 1KW daytimer non-directional, known as KTLW. The tower was in wetlands and the signal went everywhere. That's the same place I started on the radio in 1972. It's not going to work with that poor signal.
Not only is this not happening, Spanish-language conservative talk only works in just one market: Miami, home to a large Cuban diaspora. And those stations, all on AM, attract old demos and tiny ratings.
Americano Media tried to do a national Spanish-language conservative talk format a few months ago amid much hype, and failed outright because it couldn’t make any money.
Hey now, people at least buy RC Cola.
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Hard to believe that after almost 40 years of continuous service to the Hispanic community, the Velasquez family is suddenly switching 920 back to English language programming.
Unless this is an LMA, I just don't buy it.
Unless this is an LMA, I just don't buy it.
The KYST transfer of control a year ago was due to the death of the family patriarch. The younger generation now in control might have very different ideas as to what to do with the station.
They probably figure they can make more money leasing out the station, even for bottom-of-the-barrel right-wing talk, than they can by trying to sell it.
From what I can see, the president of the station attended a private function with former president Trump, and was convinced by that meeting that he needed to change the format of the station to conservative talk. Not necessarily for more money, but ideology. New format begins Jan 1.
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