Wow, that's a bunch of money for Paducah. I've been to Paducah many times. There's not much there. In fact, I know a few years ago, the longtime publisher of the Paducah Post, the only newspaper, shut down for lack of revenue only to have a family member give it a try by converting the paper to a few legal size pages versus the usual newspaper format. Circulation was only about 400.
To understand why this new format was used is based on cost. The Paducah Post, like many papers, contracts with a larger paper that owns a press to print their paper. The cost of operating such a press means if you need 100 or 1,000 copies of your paper, the cost is always based on the 1,000 copies rate (the set up requires that number to become affordable). If you're paying $300 a week to print your paper and 600 copies are not distributed, the cost per paper is too high. Literally if you need 100 or 1,000, the press run is going to be about $300. Going to a legal page, a typical printer for an office is affordable and lowers your cost per newspaper because if you need 400 copies, that's all you print.
The above is important because the universe of advertising dollars is so minimal in Paducah, you can expect to max out at around $400 a week and maybe less thanks to the Covid-19 epidemic where many small towns are seeing about a 1/3rd loss in business revenue as a result.
So, with about $20,000 a year in spending on advertising in the county, the essentially Low Power FM/translator wattage level station cannot expect more than a fraction of that. Meeting the monthly payment of a $55,000 note would be unlikely at best.
If you wonder how the Paducah Post survives, it is because the husband and wife that operate it now both have fulltime jobs for a paycheck since the Post isn't paying them for all that work running a paper. Thus, whoever runs the Paducah station needs a good fulltime job because the station is never going to be in the black financially.
