WADO 1280 AM-Tiny Audience

[Barry]

If a potential buyer was considering purchasing either WADO or WLIB, are their signals similar?
Perhaps WWRL is also available for purchase. It has a cume of 6,000.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

I thought the number "200 stations" had to be a typo until I looked, and one source said 272 stations in the Buenos Aires proper. A lot of them have to be really small, as several FM frequencies have several different stations on them, and virtually every AM is occupied.

I was amazed by the massive number of apparent broadcast antennas bristling from the buildings when I visited. I wondered what they could all be, but I was too busy taking in the rest of the city to do any kind of band scan to try to find out.

 

[davideduardo]

Note that I am suggesting that WADO ditch the Spanish and go after a much larger English speaking audience. There is no requirement that LMN has to broadcast in any one language.

LMN does not own the station. TelevisaUnivision does.

There is ultimately a requirement that a business use their resources to the maximum potential. If Mexican sports can't do it in New York, and Carribean Sports and Music are already covered,

There is no such thing as "Caribbean sports". There is Puerto Rican sports, Cuban sports, Dominican sports, Jamaican sports and so on. There is no league or even a common sport that unifies the region that is even made up of a while bunch of different languages and cultures... Spanish, English, Kreyol, Dutch, French, Papiamento and even more if you include "the Guayanas".

it may be time to look at other potentials that are not covered. An English language counter to conservative talk might be one of them, especially now.

Not with that signal. Good for Hispanics and maybe some other immigrant groups, but not a metro area full signal.

And if they would like to sell the station, it seems to me it is a lot more marketable with a program that has some listenership,

Liberal talk has not been a radio success in the past (Air America, etc.) and on a limited NYC signal it's not got much of a chance. And that would be a rather expensive startup for a company with no English language talk experience at all.

 

[davideduardo]

Univision's only English stations are in San Antonio,

And those are targeting later generation Hispanics. San Antonio's Hispanics are less than 20% Spanish dominant.

and Liberal Talk only seems to do well with FM signals.

Where is there a liberal FM talk station that is not non-commercial (Pacifica for example) and is profitable?

 

[davideduardo]

I was amazed by the massive number of apparent broadcast antennas bristling from the buildings when I visited. I wondered what they could all be, but I was too busy taking in the rest of the city to do any kind of band scan to try to find out.

The "big" FMs are all on tall towers on the south side of the market (where they don't waste signal over the River Plate and Uruguay). The neighborhood stations tend to be on whatever is the tallest building in their area. Also there are lots of illegal stations.

When I was involved with Mega 98.3 there, we had a team that patrolled the whole greater Buenos Aires area with the intent of "convincing" pirates to shut down or move to another frequency. Those were not "friendly" visits.

 

[TheBigA]

My take on this situation is that this is not a station that cares about Nielsen. They make enough money from the Spanish feeds of the sports coverage, and that's enough to pay the bills. They're not selling 6+ audience. They're selling a NYC clear for the teams. That business model seems to work fine for other stations as well.

 

[davideduardo]

My take on this situation is that this is not a station that cares about Nielsen. They make enough money from the Spanish feeds of the sports coverage, and that's enough to pay the bills. They're not selling 6+ audience. They're selling a NYC clear for the teams. That business model seems to work fine for other stations as well.

The only thing they are selling is the station itself. After the failed sale to LRN, they have not found a buyer and are resolving the environmental issues at the transmitter site (which is no longer any fun since the old Blaw Knox was disarmed as part of the power increase).

They may cover expenses with the team clearances, but it's not a profit center as there is essentially no Spanish language sports marketing money out there.

 

[TheBigA]

They may cover expenses with the tem clearances, but it's not a profit center as there is essentially no Spanish language sports marketing money out there.

What I meant is they're being paid to carry the games.

 

[davideduardo]

What I meant is they're being paid to carry the games.

Not enough to be overall profitable.

 

[101.9 La Kalle]

Not enough to be overall profitable.

I could be wrong, but maybe Univision is selling ads on Qué Buena as a network and that's where WADO gets revenue from? Or similarly to KQBU in Houston/Golden Triangle, WADO comes free when buying ads on WXNY.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

Yes.

That is a generalized statement, but because the community is much younger on average, and most young people only listen to AM if they use radio at all, there is little listening to Spanish language AM unless, as in some small markets, there is no FM en español.

With the exception of Argentina (where AM is very strong) the band is dead or dying in nearly every nation in Latin America. In San Salvador, for example, all the AMs except two are religious, and less than half the stations that existed in the 80's and 90's exist today. Quito, Ecuador, where at one time there were 40 AM stations, now there are 12 or 13. And so on across the countries.

RCN Cadena Básica closed down. Todelar has been turning in AM licenses at a fast rate. So has RCN. In one city (Cali), Todelar turned in three earlier this year.

Even some religious outfits are abandoning AM for streaming. in that same city, Radio Huellas turned in both its 1470 and 1550 licenses and went exclusively to web-casting.

It's not looking good. 😟

 

[davideduardo]

RCN Cadena Básica closed down. Todelar has been turning in AM licenses at a fast rate. So has RCN. In one city (Cali), Todelar turned in three earlier this year.

And, IIRC, Todelar had some really good frequencies in Cali... 900, 980 and 1080 or something like that. I visited them in 1963 (really) and the receptionist was the most beautiful girl I had ever met, Blanca Nelly Rivera. She invited me to lunch, and then wanted me to stay over the weekend and meet her parents. That sounded a bit drastic for a 17-year-old, but I always wonder.

Little sidebar: of the three big Colombian radio chains, Todelar, Caracol and RCN, two were acronyms.

RCN was just the initials for Radio Cadena Nacional. Caracol was CAdena RAdial COLombiana, which also means "snail". Todelar was made up of the first letters of its owner's last name: TObón DE LA Roche; no ego there!

 

[AlNYC]

If WADO 1280 AM of Que Buena (Regional Mexican) is going less audience, that means that Latino Media Network (Uforia) will be sold to Audacy and maybe will be new 24/7 news/talk radio AM station name or something like that.

And since July 5, 2025, Jenny Cruz and Oscar Ramirez was let go on 93.1 Amor for unknown reasons and was replaced by a younger demographics, according to Instagram.

And Los Coco Clásicos con Coco Cabrera (73) on X96.3 by Sundays at 12-2PM programming block will wind down the ratings by this year or next year because the audience doesn't care to listen the tropical classics anymore because X96.3 is playing more with today's Reggaeton and Bachata with a little bit of today's Salsa and Merengue. Punto.

 

[101.9 La Kalle]

If WADO 1280 AM of Que Buena (Regional Mexican) is going less audience, that means that Latino Media Network (Uforia) will be sold to Audacy and maybe will be new 24/7 news/talk radio AM station name or something like that.

Uforia is still its own individual division. Latino Media Network only purchased a fraction of the Uforia stations. Even if WADO was owned by LMN, that wouldn't necessarily mean that it'd be immediately flipped back to Spanish Talk.

And since July 5, 2025, Jenny Cruz and Oscar Ramirez was let go on 93.1 Amor for unknown reasons and was replaced by a younger demographics, according to Instagram.

And how does this relate to WADO?

And Los Coco Clásicos con Coco Cabrera (73) on X96.3 by Sundays at 12-2PM programming block will wind down the ratings by this year or next year because the audience doesn't care to listen the tropical classics anymore because X96.3 is playing more with today's Reggaeton and Bachata with a little bit of today's Salsa and Merengue. Punto.

Still doesn't relate to WADO. (P.S. Coco Clásicos isn't entirely classic. I've heard songs as recent as the late 2010s.)

 

[davideduardo]

If WADO 1280 AM of Que Buena (Regional Mexican) is going less audience, that means that Latino Media Network (Uforia) will be sold to Audacy and maybe will be new 24/7 news/talk radio AM station name or something like that.

As Mr. 101.9 said, LMN is not Uforia.

Uforia is the radio brand for TelevisaUnivision's owned and operated radio stations and networks. LMN bought some of the stations owned by TelevisaUnivision, particularly in diary markets (Fresno, McAllen) and AM stations like KTNQ, WAQI, WAQI, etc. They (buyer and seller) had included WADO in that deal but due diligence revealed issues with WADO that would have stalled the transaction, so TelevisaUnivision kept it and it continued to be their station. LMN never owned or controlled it.