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Rest of Florida WGRO Lake City Deleted

Maybe the FCC should take a hint with all of the AM's being deleted lately that owners aren't going to worry about fixing them when they break, and would rather turn in the license than be bothered with wasting one more dollar on a band nobody bothers to tune in anymore. Forget AM in every vehicle and AM revitalization. Maybe, just maybe, if you weed out the failing stations and put your dollars into your top performers, having fewer, but stronger-performing and billing stations, is preferable to having a bunch of mediocre-performing, barely breaking-even or money-losing stations. Maybe less is more.
 
exdjted said:
Maybe the FCC should take a hint with all of the AM's being deleted lately that owners aren't going to worry about fixing them when they break, and would rather turn in the license than be bothered with wasting one more dollar on a band nobody bothers to tune in anymore. Forget AM in every vehicle and AM revitalization. Maybe, just maybe, if you weed out the failing stations and put your dollars into your top performers, having fewer, but stronger-performing and billing stations, is preferable to having a bunch of mediocre-performing, barely breaking-even or money-losing stations. Maybe less is more.
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So which radio stations would you delete? Would you have the FCC send someone who owns a daytimer station on 1350 a letter saying, we are cancelling your license? Maybe they're doing OK, especially if they have an FM translator.

The marketplace will do the work for you. Stations that can't make a go of it will hand in the license. Stations that are profitable won't.
 
Gregg. said:
So which radio stations would you delete? Would you have the FCC send someone who owns a daytimer station on 1350 a letter saying, we are cancelling your license? Maybe they're doing OK, especially if they have an FM translator.

The marketplace will do the work for you. Stations that can't make a go of it will hand in the license. Stations that are profitable won't.
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My comment of weeding out the stations is that the operators themselves will do it. If it makes more sense for a station owner to turn in the license and sell the land, then the license should be gone forever. Fred Dockins obviously looked at the economics of the situation and decided that turning in the license was better financially than repairing the AMs and keeping them on the air. I never said that anyone other than the marketplace will decide which stations are no longer needed.

Ad revenues are shrinking. Less stations competing means a bigger slice of the pie for the remaining stations. A town of 5000 people doesn't need 6 commercial signals.
 
JJSPC said:
After surrendering their WPRY 1400 facility, Dockins has now also turned in the license for 960 WGRO.

Draft Copy « Licensing and Management System « FCC

Licensing and Management System
enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov
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I was involved with Lake City's WDSR and its sister FM around 1988-1922 when the Puerto Rico group I was with could not expand further on the Island and bought some North Florida stations.

In Lake City and nearby Live Oak, Docket 80-90 doubled the number of total stations. Of course, local revenue did not increase. In fact, in that period a Walmart and several other "big box" stores opened and killed a lot of local business.

Despite spending a lot of money on an FM upgrade and new gear throughout, revenues fell by 50% and it was impossible to make a profit. On the AM, we had had about 5 hours of local content every day, right down to hospital birth notices and the like in local newscasts. We did all kinds of fundraisers, like putting the manager in "jail" until the desired amount of funds for a local charity were donate. All of that ended, and we automated 24/7 because there just was not enough money in the market to pay for news and service.

Now, the market is seeing its AMs turned off. It is still unprofitable overall.
 
David you said:
Now, the market is seeing its AMs turned off. It is still unprofitable overall.
Shades of the station in Jasper AL.....sleezebag manager....station had been off the air for 2 years.....he said it was not worth it to fix it....keeping the FM translator on the air in violation of FCC Rules......the tower fell (rusted out) and he alledgely staged the "landscape crew incident" who that "discovered" the tower was gone along with all of the equipment .....then he sets up a "Go Fund Me" and so far he has 77 fools who have given him over $10.000.
 
Like so many AM stations, the land is now worth more than the station(s). The cancelations were later rescinded by Dockins and the stations taken silent instead. That buys a year for him to decide what to do with them.
 
Kmagrill said:
Like so many AM stations, the land is now worth more than the station(s). The cancelations were later rescinded by Dockins and the stations taken silent instead. That buys a year for him to decide what to do with them.
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But in smaller cities land value pressures are much less. Small cities and towns are not growing in nearly all the country, so land is not generally an issue.
 
I know Fred personally, so this would have to be a business decision based on the market being over-radioed and where his outlay makes the most sense. This wasn't a knee-jerk reaction.
 
DavidEduardo said:
But in smaller cities land value pressures are much less. Small cities and towns are not growing in nearly all the country, so land is not generally an issue.
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Surprisingly a lot of small towns (west of the Rockies) I look at for real estate have property priced pretty high. A 3 to 10 acre site in town or on the edge of town in many places will go for a nice chunk of change that is likely worth way more than the AM station would ever be again. For an owner looking to retire and no buyer interested in the AM station, taking $75,000 or $100,000 for the land is a great option.
 
I asked Fred about the situation in Lake City and he said that the 20 acres of land that WGRO is on has value as residential home sites. So, even in Lake City, developers are waiting in the wings for AM stations to get off the land.
 
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