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K-Love Adds Third South Bay Signal With KBAY Purchase

Its not that San Francisco has shrunk.

1. Dallas and Houston have grown rapidly

2. While the Bay Area has lost some population. It is still a strong economy. In fact, it’s been quoted between 1 and 1.5 trillion?

3. The billing is like a smaller market can be a fair assessment, but can be misleading. A: how do the numbers compare to other markets? Since revenue is down everywhere. B: the “ people using terrestrial radio” numbers in the Bay Area may be far lower than everyone else given its tech rich history.

1. True and Austin is sometimes mentioned here for growing the same way.


2. same given the attention that there were companies moving their headquarters from California for Texas in the past 6 years but startups have taken the void in the Bay Area and we had to wait for the long term effects to find out.


3. same with TV given the history of San Francisco sometimes changing DMA ranking within their history.
 
I'd like to quickly reply to the first paragraph of this post, while generally agreeing with the rest without commenting.

I can appreciate that sentiment and it might work if the pie was stable. It isn't. As the numbers on the previous pages show—and as most of us in the industry already know—the pie continues to shrink.

Perhaps those who welcome a competitor being removed from the for-profit battle see a larger piece of a smaller pie as the difference between staying afloat and sinking.
 
...At one time, KBAY operated on that frequency, but not as a country station.
No it didn't. Never was. KBAY used to be on 101.3 100.3, these days the Spanish "Amor" station in the market. Before that and for many years prior it was a beautiful music station, and evolved into a soft AC. The old KBAY was often #1 in the San Jose/South Bay embedded market.

Edit: I mistyped the original KBAY frequency.
 
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1. Dallas and Houston have grown rapidly...
1. True and Austin is sometimes mentioned here for growing the same way.

2. same given the attention that there were companies moving their headquarters from California for Texas in the past 6 years but startups have taken the void in the Bay Area and we had to wait for the long term effects to find out.
Also San Antonio. It's grown into a major market, in or near the top 10 in recent years. (And while now not nearly as big, El Paso has also benefitted from some of that corporate migration.) Some of that is the aftereffect of the pandemic.

So Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio have all been eating California's lunch over the last decade or so.

It's going to be interesting to see how many immigrants to Texas decide they like it there and want to stay, verses how many are just biding their time till they can engineer a return to the West Coast. (The smart money never minimizes the "Hotel California" effect.) Though there is the cost of re-entry, i.e. home prices. If someone was a renter, then it's a non-issue. If they owned and rented out their home while simultaneously renting in Texas, the probability's higher that they plan to return eventually. But if they cashed out and bought in Texas, they might never be able to buy back into the California housing market. (All of which presumes that current and long-time trends don't collapse.)
 
Also San Antonio. It's grown into a major market, in or near the top 10 in recent years. (And while now not nearly as big, El Paso has also benefitted from some of that corporate migration.) Some of that is the aftereffect of the pandemic.

So Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio have all been eating California's lunch over the last decade or so.

It's going to be interesting to see how many immigrants to Texas decide they like it there and want to stay, verses how many are just biding their time till they can engineer a return to the West Coast. (The smart money never minimizes the "Hotel California" effect.) Though there is the cost of re-entry, i.e. home prices. If someone was a renter, then it's a non-issue. If they owned and rented out their home while simultaneously renting in Texas, the probability's higher that they plan to return eventually. But if they cashed out and bought in Texas, they might never be able to buy back into the California housing market. (All of which presumes that current and long-time trends don't collapse.)
San Antonio is ranked at 24th.

Also, GDP wise Dallas and Houston are not eating the Bay Area for lunch. While they are both gaining ground, San Francisco/Oakland without San Jose is 4th economy in the country. Adding San Jose it’s nearly tied with LA at 1.3 trillion.
 
GDP wise Dallas and Houston are not eating the Bay Area for lunch. While they are both gaining ground, San Francisco/Oakland without San Jose is 4th economy in the country. Adding San Jose it’s nearly tied with LA at 1.3 trillion.

A lot of it is taxes and cost of living. Those Californians in Texas are the reason why Texas is turning blue, and why rural Texans are trying to redistrict those cities in ways that limit the impact they're having. It's been my experience that you can move Californians to different areas, but they remain Californian culturally. Same with New Yorkers moving to Florida. It's a different kind of immigration.

Those changes are also affecting the Bay area. There was a time when a country station could be Top 5 or better in San Francisco. KSAN as a country station was huge in the 80s. There were actually two country stations in San Francisco in the 90s: KSAN and KYCY. But then the population changed and both stations went away. Just as there was an audience for KGO, but it went away.
 
The bad news is the pie will continue to shrink, so the benefit is temporary.

No argument from me there, and that should also be an indicator to the armchair quarterbacks who frequent RD with their own ideas of how radio is "supposed to operate" as to why we have downsizing. Why we have fully automated formats with little or no air talent. Why we will increase the length of stopsets to accommodate the local business who will actually pay for airtime. Why a lot of us have infomercials on weekend mornings. Why we program "consensus favorites" and not a lot of deeper cuts in order to hold on to what audience isn't using an app on their phone or Alexa instead of tuning in.

To those wannabes, I will say again (for about the 1,264th time) that radio is not in the entertainment business. We are in the advertising business, and those ads which you uniformly detest are what allows you to tune in and listen without a monthly subscription charged to your Visa or Mastercard. The programming is deliberately designed to attract and hold the highest amount of audience possible, to make the station more attractive as a promotional vehicle for the local businesses.

Every time you want us to add a personal favorite song that we already know is a potential tune out for the other 99.999% of the audience, every time you think station downsizing shouldn't be happening, every time a station changes formats to go after a larger part of that shrinking pie of ad dollars, you insult us with a total lack of understanding the "why" of those decisions.

Yeah, some format is going to go away in the San Francisco-San Jose market because K-Love made another acquisition. But that has increasingly become a fact of life for us ... and it should be for everyone here on RD, professionals or just fans.

Just remember: Those sales largely happen because of that shrinking ad dollar pie, because there comes a point where the operating costs exceed the size of that pie slice.
 
Just remember: Those sales largely happen because of that shrinking ad dollar pie, because there comes a point where the operating costs exceed the size of that pie slice.

Meanwhile the ad boom is happening in social media and digital. Those of us in content creation see it. There was a time when you threw in digital as a bonus to get on-air money. That's starting to shift. Not to the point where digital is equal. It's not. But you don't throw it in as a bonus. That means you adjust your budget so you have smaller staffs for on-air, and more staff in digital. It's also part of the shift from local staff to national, because of the demise of local retail. It's all happened since covid.
 
I'd like to quickly reply to the first paragraph of this post, while generally agreeing with the rest without commenting.



Perhaps those who welcome a competitor being removed from the for-profit battle see a larger piece of a smaller pie as the difference between staying afloat and sinking.
No disagreement with the concept that operators like a competitor being removed. In certain markets that might be enough - maybe for years.

For instance, say you are a country station in a market with three country stations and a competitor sells to a non-comm. Hallelujah! Even there a few more people will sample alternatives now that their favorite station is gone. While the surviving country station's share went up, the ad pie continues getting smaller. Then the AC competitor takes action to cut costs and again, the pie gets smaller.

BTW, I'm not arguing with you. I'm agreeing. What gets tiresome is the kneejerk "blame K-Love" that happens by some every time there is a transaction. There are way more stations for sale than people realize and it is kind of shocking how tight things are for most operators. At the same time, I think the religious broadcasters have to be careful. If they aren't careful, there will also come a point where the FM dial doesn't offer enough choice for the people who don't like their offering. At that point, even the share gains they are seeing in recent years will begin to translate to fewer actual listeners.
 
If they aren't careful, there will also come a point where the FM dial doesn't offer enough choice for the people who don't like their offering. At that point, even the share gains they are seeing in recent years will begin to translate to fewer actual listeners.

I think it's already starting to affect sampling. People aren't looking for new formats on the radio anymore. The people listening now are happy with what they have. But KBAY needs to be careful when they move the country format to a new frequency. They may lose people the way KSFO lost listeners when they moved to 610. People aren't looking for what they want on the radio. The minute their station goes away, they go to streaming.
 


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