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107.3 Hit Music "NOW" losing STEAM?

They only doubled their share because the people that listen to that kind of music are the ones willing to fill out a diary. Whenever Arbitron calls me I'm to busy to deal with them and say "put me on your do not call list" and hang up. Sometimes they even send me a package with a $10 bill in it. I keep the cash and throw out the rest of the crap... ignore the followup phone calls asking if I'm keeping up with the diary.
Why? Because I know my listening habits are not typical and I'm not going to help any station move up in the rankings.

"Now" needs to flip to "WOWW 107 Sports" before college football season starts back up. Yeah, they would hurt a few local broadcasters currently airing sports on weak signals, but 107.3 could make a huge impact with Sports and maybe even add in a little news/talk to test the waters. Whenever Rush's contract is up with Cumulus/WCOA in Pensacola CC could add a full power FM News Talker to the Mobile/Pensacola market. Unlike Mobile, CC Pensacola only has two stations under it's umbrella... surely they could acquire one of the other 100kw Pensacola/Mobile stations and add it to the Pensacola cluster... or just kill off one of their music stations. Music seems to be a dying format for radio stations. Put music on the translators and leave the monster signals for news/talk/sports.
 
Poledo, 18-34's are actually the least likely to fill out diaries (followed closely by guys in general). There is no question that 107.3 immediately gained a couple shares in Pensacola and probably a share in Mobile completely owing to WJLQ's shift into the middle of the AC/Classic Hits mess, regardless of "Now's" programming brilliance or lack thereof. They effectively replaced i100 as the Second CHR in both markets. Country listeners have 3 or 4 buttons to push. Classic-this-or-that listeners have around 83 buttons to push. CHR listeners have two. If "Now" can get to a 40/60 split sharing the audience with 97.5 within the next few years, they're golden. Most importantly, it gives the CC sales crew a new and positive story to tell. After years of having to defend 107.3 (or deny it, altogether), they finally get to play offense.

The commission has a special place in its heart for Mobile-Pensacola when it comes to the local ownership caps, considering that all the Class C signals licensed to both markets are all mounted on one 1500-foot pine tree off a dirt road in Baldwin County (or it seems that way). Remember how CC was forced to pretend they didn't really own 107 for about a decade? What was the shell company called--Concord? Point is, their portfolio is full, as-is.
 
With CC only having two signals licenced to Florida couldn't they just change the COL on one of the Mobile stations to someplace like "Jay, FL" (incorporated) or Perdido Key, FL (has a zip code and post office and such) as a first local service and keep Mobile under the market cap and add one to Pensacola?

How about CC buying WHWY Highway 98.1 from Apex and targeting Pensacola with that signal?

I'm far too tired to be typing now, this most likely makes no sense at all.
 
Oh, you're making sense, as always. But the FCC did catch on fairly quickly to odd-ball markets like Mobile-Pensacola, where Arbitron definitions don't square with realty. Reality is that M-P is one radio market--market #60, nudging out Greenville-Spartanburg--and more to the point, all the Class C FM sticks dominating both markets are centrally located between the two cities... and, at this point, mostly owned by the same folks.

So when it comes to ownership caps, the commission doesn't use the standard criteria--Arbitron markets--to determine who can own what. That is why CC had to use one of their shell corporations (Concord) for so many years to "hide" 107.3--even though it was co-located with WTKX and run by the same people... shared the same coffee pot, the same sales staff, et cetera. Incredibly stupid.

The FCC recognizes Mobile and Pensacola as one unified market. Just don't tell Arbitron.
 
Addendum: In situations like this the commission uses signal overlap criteria to determine the local ownership caps. So the station count in either Mobile or Pensacola is irrelevant in Clear Channel's case... or Cumulus, etc.
 
I was going that direction when I gave up on my last post. Cumulus or Clear Channel could pick up or use one of the bigger Fort Walton signals and pair it up with a Mobile only signal to create a simulcast (possibly with localized commercials). Fort Walton's 98.1 would pair up nicely with Mobile's 98.3. Fort Walton's 96.5 would pair up nicely with Mobile's 106.5. Destin and Mobile's 92.1's combined with a 250 watt Pensacola translator (on say 92.3 moved in from Foley) would create another full market station. Fort Walton's 104.7 paired with Biloxi's 104.9... All these seem like viable ways to cover the entire Mobile/Pensacola TV market with FM radio signals while staying under the Mobile market cap.

With new ownership in of the #2 Fort Walton cluster, perhaps Cumulus and/or Clear Channel could increase their dominance in the area. With the way radio's been going downhill over the past decade, I'm not sure this would be a bad thing. It might just result in fewer Country stations and a little more variety.
 
104.7 will probably never ever be sold. If it does, I can see Clear Channel buying it, relocating the tower to Hollywood and adding more height to it. If Crum bought it, Country 105.5 would be perfect to compete with 98.1 - 100KW and a booming signal.

Why not a WFLF station? They can rebrand to "The Florida Talk Network" once they have translators all across the state.

104.7 is really losing steam and the guys were supposed to get a new building in 2011 with automation and full stereo and 24/7 operation. Who knows about 1050, maybe sell that to a community station up in Crestview so they still have a local station there.

I will miss the old country if it does get sold. Kinda grew up on classic country. However, it's 2012, not 1989.

-Rob
 
Don't worry Rob, my suggestions were only theoretical pairings using close or simmilar frequencies. I do, however, think that simulcasting FWB and Mobile stations with local add inserts would be a good and cheap way for the "niche" formats to get back on the radio. The bland "cookie cutter" formats could be left to the big stations in Baldwin County. At this point 75% of radio has no local flair except for a few commercials. There's far too much duplication due to the seperate Arbitron markets for Mobile and Pensacola. Creating a few Mobile/Fort Walton simulcast using the 50kw and 100kw Fort Walton stations could possibly be a back door into getting something interesting on the air.

Years ago when 104.9 moved from the Mobile market to the Biloxi market I was sure something was about to happen with WAAZ 104.7, expecially since they had just upgraded from 50k to 100k. Nothing happened. Never figured out CC's move of 104.9 except that I have read that the Biloxi casinos provide a significant amount of radio add revenue... apparently more than the Mobile market.

Florida laws are a changing. We may have legalized casinos here in North Florida in the near future (Seminole/Hard Rock already has Miami and Tampa casinos going). The Wind Creek Indians from Atmore are already making significant investments in Pensacola and there are many rumors floating around the Pensacola "downtown crowd/power players" that Pensacola could very well be "the next big thing" and make Biloxi look more like Atmore in the next ten years. I have no doubt that the folks from Alabama and Georgia would prefer to gamble in the Florida panhandle than along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. If things work out the way "my people" think they will, I'll be retired in less than 10 years!
 
poledo said:
If things work out the way "my people" think they will, I'll be retired in less than 10 years!
Click to expand...

Are you a Poarch Creek? :)

This is the first I've heard of gambling in the panhandle. I know Disney is behind a push to keep it from happening on the "adult coast" south of their mouse house because they're scared it will sap away revenue.

I figure this is as good a tangent as any for this thread since the possible Mobile/FWB station pairings will never happen. Or we could go back to TV and wonder why WALA hasn't gotten a translator on air for people who can't get their digital signal on channel 9 in FWB. :D
 
Not a porch creek Indian... but I bought vacant real estate adjacent to the proposed Pensacola casino site about 5 years back. I'll know (in advance) when the right people are going to show up looking to buy... I'm reasonable but I'm not cheap and I'm not as dumb as I act! I just turned down a good offer from "Dollar General". "My people" (lawyers and politicians) gave me advice on a "dumb" "over priced" real estate investment 20 years ago. I sold 5 years ago. Now there's a Wallly World on my old land. The right people can do whatever they want with a crappy piece of land. How do you think this college dropout got ahead in life without working my ass off in construction and farming? Don't get me wrong, I love driving bulldozers and tractors... but my aching back tells me to go hire cheap labor to do the work for me.

And with computer automation, voice tracking, budget cuts, cluster consolidation and the fact that Mobile/Pensacola/Fort Walton are already one TV market, I could easily see a couple simulcasts pop up involving at least one of the sub-100kw stations to cover the entire TV market with a quality FM signal. Why don't you think this is possible/probable Zach?

As for FWB, I remember a newspaper article from over a decade ago that said FWB had the highest concentration of cable households in the nation. Perhaps there are only 100 or so people that would view a translator for Fox down that way. I just can't see how Mobile and PCB can both have full power TV stations on channel 9. Seems like it would cause interference for Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, and Walton counties... and that's just on days that the tropo doesn't fire up.
 
poledo said:
Why don't you think this is possible/probable Zach?
Click to expand...

I dunno, it sounds like a good plan but I don't see the owners of any of the FWB (or panhandle) stations giving up and selling out anytime soon. The money seems to be in Mobile and the eastern shore, or in Pensacola, so a station entering a multicast would probably try to target Pensacola and not FWB. And none of the FWB signals I'm aware of do a realy thorough job of covering all of Pensacola. Maybe if someone could wrestle K-Love off 95.7…

But then isn't there an issue of ownership caps? The FCC goes by overlapping signals, not Arbitron markets, so any overlap between a Mobile signal and a Pensacola signal would be prohibited, I think. Without overlap they would probably lose a good part of Baldwin County including the tourist-heavy beaches.

I don't actually know how the overlap rule works, if it's 70 or 60 or 54 dBu or whatever, so maybe it would be possible. It just doesn't seem probable.
 
I'm not smart enough to do the math, but since most every Pensacola radio station is really a Mobile radio station I've always thought it would be very smart for a couple of the FWB stations to move to the WUWF-FM/WPAN-TV tower area and become Pensacola targeted stations. FWB seems way over-radioed for it's size and with half the signals wasted over the Gulf.

That whole Military audience down in Fort Walton and the 30A crowd in South Walton really confuses me. They have plenty of disposible income but almost none of them are full time residents. I would think a simulcast of Mobile (or even Panama City) stations would serve them just fine. Apparently that's not the case.
I've heard the DJ's on 99 rock comment many times that they (and the guys on air at Country 105.5) are the only live voices in FWB. The 99 Rock DJs even bash the Cumulus sister stations Z96 and Coast 93 for not having anyone in the studio.
Then there's the obvious hole in Clear Channels' coastal coverage. They practically own every single Gulf Coast market yet they have no interest at all in FWB.
It just doesn't add up. I thought I was good at math, but I can't put this equation together.
 
MOVED: OTA: 107.3 Hit Music "NOW" losing STEAM?

Some posts in this topic have been moved to Off The Air.

[iurl=http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=205734.0]http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=205734.0[/iurl]
 
Okay, gang--no more chit-chat about casinos. This here is about RADIO. LOL

Poledo, if you remember back to the Clear Channel-Capstar (AMFM) buying frenzy of 1996-1999, they were scooping up stations by the truckload, and some smaller-market stuff just got gobbled up as part of the madness. As an example, if Group X included stations in Nashville, Birmingham, Knoxville and, say, Cookeville--the latter was included rather than take the time and bother to split it out. TK & WOWW were just part of the massive Paxson transaction, f'rinstance.

At the same time, there seems to have been (only the Mays boys & Tom Hicks know for sure) a notion floating that CC's small-market acquisitions were made in order to present national agencies with the opportunity to buy top-rated stations in EVERY RATED MARKET (or nearly so) with one, easy purchase--essentially to buy "the radio industry" with one phone call. Trouble is, those national agencies resisted the pitch, insisting on splitting-out each market... justifying each station... and/or cutting the buy at "top 50 markets" or "top 100 markets." In other words, the buyers wouldn't let CC lump WKSI (Winchester, VA) in with KIIS (LA)--unless Winchester was basically free. The concept ran into the radio networks--where the Winchesters of the world are freebies...

Anyway, they eventually determined that small-market radio wasn't cost-effective. Welcome to the Aloha Trust!
 
Yeah, we got a little slap on this thread. I wonder if it was the sysop or if one of the readers complained about us?

All these years I never knew that 98.1 was part of a cluster (Paxon's I assume) when CC acquired it. I thought it had been a stand alone up until the day CC bought it.
Now I'm wondering did CC launch "The Ticket" sports format or was it already in place when they bought 98.1? Tibbs will know the answer, I just know he will.
 
Poledo - I must admit I am officially getting old. I can't remember all the facts and dates exactly. What I do know is that by not dealing with it since the mid-90's, I apologize if I am incorrect below.

Pre-Mid 90's
MetroCities Communications owned WWSF it until it was bought by Steve Riggs and company and it was changed to WXCR and quickly became the #2 12+ (and 25-54) station in the market with a tin can signal and tinny sound playing a great blend of, uh, brilliantly inspired (hehe) fairly normal Classic Rock and a rather large dose of 70's non-traditional Classic Rock that made it really unique (and damn goooood?!?!) Years of
disasters in the making.

Mid-90's
Not overly profitable before, a little hurricane named 0pal affirmed it's fate and kinda missing a city 7.5 hrs north where Music is king became a change catalyst, so the decision to sell/lease the station to Affable Comm. (a couple of old timers that should have never been allowed to get their $$$butts in a sling) and re-flipped 98.1 Classic Rock back to WWSF and offered a weird version of Top 40 for those ages 75-100 (* excluding CCENG, of course.) Disasters continue.

Post Mid-90's (2000?)
The station finally is sold thanks to divine de-regulation and suits with briefcases full of payola that think that anything on a coast is liquid gold (and never see the real world beyond 1,000 ft. from the beaches on 30-A.) They pour $$$$ in from the sans-Paxon/CC(??) via Capstar Corp (??-I can't remember who all it really was. Maybe CCENG knows.) They,I think, did flip it to Sports. I don't think it was the next "owner." Then they gracefully gave the gift that kept never giving to Ron Hale. The rest of the story is pretty much covered in sordid detail on here in numerous (and lovingly) great and colorful descriptions. Disasters that
made hurricanes seem like 70 degree sunny days.

And the beat goes on...

This might help. And I am 122.75% sober. Just kinda sick thinking about all this again....

Moral of the story: Just have Charlie Wooten sell you some strobeys and hook them up on a flag pole and PLAY radio...it's cheaper.
 
Wikipedia says it was Capstar who owned 98.1 when it flipped to sports. Whether that was before or after Clear Channel gobbled them up, I have no idea. The station's ownership history seems kind of wonky. Like that article and RECnet show it going from Capstar to Chancellor in 1999, then from AMFM to Clear Channel in 2000 after those two merged. Then it's transferred from Capstar TX to Star in 2003. Star to Qantam happened in 2004, with a failed transfer to Cumulus in 2005-6. Finally to Apex in December 2011. REC doesn't show anything prior to 1999 as far as company names go, just that the license was transferred seven times in 10 years.
 
Wow, and I know the owner of RECnet as well, I'm now seeing we lost 106.3 the seabreeze to Coyote Country. If this is true, no more smooth jazz stations anymore.

(sorry for being off topic)
 
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