Is it really that bad for AM stations or did the overpay for it to begin with? KGO has one of the best signals on the West Coast in a major city. It's not exactly a low powered rimshot station or a station in a depressed area.
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A Change Coming to KGO
- Thread starter atthestars
- Start date
Long story. Disney sold ABC radio to Citadel about 15 years ago. That sale bankrupted Citadel. Then Cumulus bought Citadel out of bankruptcy court, and that ended up bankrupting Cumulus. So twice these stations were sold, and twice the company that bought them went bankrupt. After going through bankruptcy, Cumulus sold a bunch of the former ABC stations in NY, DC, Atlanta, and LA. But clearly these former ABC stations are money pits, and KGO was no exception. The power of the station isn't the issue. The problem is AM radio is dying. That's why Audacy just moved its all-news WINS-AM to an FM frequency. If there was a way for KGO to do that, they would. But Cumulus doesn't own enough FMs.
So the short answer is that it's really bad for AM stations. Really bad. Even if Cumulus sold, there's not much a new owner could do with this station.
They must believe they will make up the revenue from losing Alt. Despite being AM, WINS was a national top ten biller last year. AM radio has to be the slowest most painful death around. I remember people speaking of it's demise in the 1980s.
And avoid the loss on the book value which would be an expense when it happens.
I see a lot of car stereo receivers that have only FM and Bluetooth now. That must be why.
Not a lot. A percentage of new and expensive electric vehicles have no AM, but the average US car is now 12 years old.
So if nobody wants to buy KGO, what does that make the 5,000 watt AM station in a small town worth, or a low powered rimshot station down the road from a metro area with a lousy signal?
iHeart has donated some to charity. I think Cumulus just shut a few down.
I’m struggling to understand why AM has lost this much (relative) “value” in such a short period of time. Sure, FM is the clear winner, but that doesn’t immediately indicate to me that the entire AM band is a loss. I’ll be the first to agree that the outlook for most AM stations is NOT good in 2022, but I don’t see why a 50KW clear channel station in one of America’s biggest media markets could be such a drag on the owner’s market portfolio.
And no, this is not a further critique of sports betting on 810. If it works for them, more power to them. However, I really don’t agree that there’s no other programming that could possibly work because 810 is so useless.
And no, this is not a further critique of sports betting on 810. If it works for them, more power to them. However, I really don’t agree that there’s no other programming that could possibly work because 810 is so useless.
Because it hasn't been a "short period of time." It's been 40 years since FM audiences exceeded AM. That's a long time.
After bankruptcy, anything that doesn't make money is a drag on the portfolio. They're not in the charity business.
But that argument doesn’t always hold up. Sure, most of the audience is on FM, but if there is compelling content on an AM station that the listener can pick up, won’t they listen anyway? By that logic, I could put the most compelling content in the market on an AM signal and it will receive few listeners just because it’s on the AM band. In Seattle, ESPN is on 710, and this station performs well in the ratings.
No. The reason why audiences started to abandon AM 40 years ago was NOT because of the content, but because of the audio quality. If you could hear the same music in stereo on FM why would you listen to AM? It made no sense. So AM switched to talk. But now that talk is moving to FM, so once again, we ask the question: Why would you listen to AM?
It's not for ESPN. It's for the Mariners and the Seahawks. And for certain specific talk show hosts. If any of that moves to FM, so will the audience.
I agree, but I don’t think it has to move to FM for people to desire to tune in. Some of the AM naysayers seem to think that any content on AM is automatically doomed. Compelling content is compelling content regardless of where it is on the radio dial from my perspective. And personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the audio quality on 50KW AM stations. I’d actually say that these stations sound just fine.
There are buyers. They're just not willing to pay close to the prices being asked
Some are asking almost nothing. No one is buying a pig in a poke.There are buyers. They're just not willing to pay close to the prices being asked
It's often even hard to justify the power bills for the big AMs.
EDIT: David correctly says that a 50kw station would typically have a $8000 power bill, so that's not very significant.
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Name one AM startup format in the last 20 years that has been successful. The ones that still have audience are nearly all heritage stations with old audiences.
Aren't the ones that no one wants are the ones that are about to lose (or have lost) their antenna sites, or had to move to sites without utility power and run on generator (I recall a couple of Palm Springs area AMs going dark because of that).
I have to admit that I'm waiting for a "hipster revival" of AM in the same way that Vinyl and Cassettes have come back (in a limited way). Only not sure how many people reminisce about 50s and 60s AM radio programming exist.
Here we go again. Even a 50 kw AM is going to spend only around $8,000 a month for electricity for the transmitter. For any station that has decent coverage and a good frequency, that is going to be a relatively minor expense.
I can’t name one because nobody has done it. I guess I could argue that KIRO 710 isn’t a terrible example, because the sports format that launched in the late 2000’s was completely new, and it’s worked out for them pretty well.
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