If the FCC decides to enforce their rules, then 650 AM could be sold/leased to a translator owner. But since this is the wild west, you could be on to something in regards to just surrendering the station outright if no religious broadcasters snatch it up.
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KILT To FM
- Thread starter lanceventa
- Start date
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
When was the last time any of the religious broadcasters even showed a passing interest in buying AMs?
Maybe bring back 102.9 the Planet! 🙂
The statistics are getting worse. Yes, 25 year olds don't own AM/FM radios, other than the one in their car. But more than half of people 45 years old also don't own radios.
Truthfully the audience for sports talk is mainly men 45 to 65. So it's not much younger than adult hits. The difference is they listen longer and are less agitated by commercials. But the main advantage of sports is that the station can resell the content in many ways on many platforms. Not so with music.
97.5 Houston's Classic Hits?
Gow has absolutely no interest in music radio.
The Spot was #26 in the most recent top cume numbers. More cume than KHMX. Make it make sense...
And even way more than KLOL make that make sense. Mix has a bigger legacy, apparently sports will make them more money.
Would Urban One consider splitting the Eagle simulcast to add another station to take the Spot's place? Seems a bit far fetched considering the Eagle's ratings, but with that said, who would have thought that the Spot would have been Audacy's pick for a flip?
Depends on whether Audacy wants to continue clearing Westwood One Sports Network on an AM in Houston, or just relegate it to the current 95.7 HD-3. Speaking of that: Would Audacy want to move WW1 elsewhere (perhaps the soon-to-be-vacated 100.3 HD-2) in order to prevent confusion among two 95.7 sportstalkers on HD receivers?
Although The Fan will be an FM-AM simulcast, I would think at some point Audacy will want to determine how much of the audience is listening to each, and if the AM listenership falls below a certain level, ditch the AM side. 610 could eventually become the new full time home of WW1, while 650 is sold off or shut down. I think that scenario is a couple of years away, if it happens.
I really enjoyed The Spot in its earlier years, but now only occasionally listen, as, to my ears, it has gotten rather stale. The playlist revamps the past few years haven’t helped; at times I found the station completely annoying.
I’m guessing you meant 95.7. Would not surprise me if The Spot winds up as an HD jukebox, as what happened to The Point, Praise, and Country Legends.
Now that would be quite niche, sort of an Hispanic Channel Q if I understand the genre correctly. Not going to happen, unless on an HD subchannel. Has KESS fixed its antenna damage?
That makes a huge amount of sense, which is why it won’t happen here, because:
Agree.
This is Texas, and Spanish language religion is where many AM stations go to die.
It has been, what, 20 years since 97.5 had a music format? (The first version of KIOL being the most recent)
Gow seems to not have interest in much of anything these days, other than collecting a rent check for 1560 and continuing the death march of ESPN 97.5.
I strongly believe the current sports format on 97.5 will be toast in the very near future. The Fan’s Missouri City stick will pulverize the market’s worst rimshot.
The only way Urban One would have broken the Eagle simulcast is if Audacy blew up The Bull instead of The Spot. Then I could have seen UO flipping 106.9 to a gold skewing Country format to complement 93Q. All wild speculation, of course…still plenty of room for two Country FMs in the market, and Country Legends would still be around if it wasn’t for the required divestiture of 97.1 a few years ago.
American Tower’s antenna at Devers was damaged by lightning. Entire antenna will be completely replaced but there issues. American tower has to repair the dirt road, its not passable for the heavier trucks amd equipment the tower crews bring. Several trucks had to pulled out from the deep ruts. Work will take a few weeks but should start soon.
The antenna manufacturer has other antennas on order, this could take a few months for a new antenna to be delivered to Devers.
unless something changes, KESS will be on the aux antenna at a minimum 2-3 months.
Or radio, for that matter.
So move The Spot to KHMX. Problem solved.
Surprised by the move and loss of The Spot although I admit they refreshed their playlist to the point it was no longer the Spot I remember. The few numbers I saw seemed to indicate somewhat of a core audience reduction. It all boils down to dollars and thee attractivensss of the cluster for spot buys. The potential was greater in Sports Talk, obviously. We will see how this plays out. I can say this, the comparison between DFW and Houston is apples and oranges.
It’s crazy that DFW’s Spot has outlasted Houston’s, with generally lagging ratings since its rebranding from KLUV several years ago. Granted, DFW’s Spot is technically classic hits, but gets diluted somewhat by its Jack-FM sister.
During the announcement it was said that was the inspiration for the logo. But it is also a clone of the KWFN San Diego logo.
Thanks for that update. AFAICT co-located KKHT is on a separate antenna and is not affected by the KESS damage?
Getting back on topic, we should note that KILT 610 has an application with the FCC to increase its day power to 4kw from the current 2.7kw, while making slight tweaks to the signal pattern. With the sports format going to an FM simulcast, do they still pursue that? If the CP is granted I could see Audacy waiting to build that out, as they would have three years to evaluate what they ultimately want to do with the 610 signal.
Keeping an eye on FCC applications for the call letter changes. With the KIKK call going to 610 obviously 650 will need a different call after 65 years; it was originally KRCT 1947-61. Does the KILT call move there, or will Audacy come up with a new one? Interestingly the KRCT call appears to be currently available.😆
KKHT is completely off at the devers tower , they are on a aux site. some reason, they never had the KKHT tuned to the combiner for the aux antenna and unable to go on air on the aux antenna at devers.
My question was if KESS and KKHT are normally on separate antennas on the same tower, or are combined into the same antenna? The antenna coordinates for both have a tiny difference.
Back on topic again: Thought occurred to me…will 95.7 shut off the stereo signal when The Fan launches? IIRC sportstalker sibling 105.3 The Fan in DFW is in mono, but I might be misremembering that. Easy to overlook the stereo indicator on car FM radios these days.