No idea. WGY Schenectady is still hanging in there with its 50 kw on 810, but there's no comparing the Capital District and Bay Area markets for competitiveness and the challenges AM stations face.
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A Change Coming to KGO
- Thread starter atthestars
- Start date
You're blaming the horse because he can't run as fast and look as cool as my sports car.
The fact is KGO (like all the other ABC AMs) were in free fall once Disney bought ABC.
If....and I really don't understand sports or betting, so sports betting is.....well, anyway...IF there's enough spot or NTR money in the new format, combined with lower overhead, to improve the bottom line, then I think Cumulus doesn't care about the ratings, even if it's hash marks.
I agree. My take on this is it's a more appealing form of an infomercial.
As an aside, I like sports, but think that betting on sports is a spectacularly bad idea. With that being said, tons of people do it, and if you tune into a sports broadcast, you’re liable to see a ton of content related to sports betting. Apparently it’s a huge business. I actually think that it’s not a terrible idea to launch a radio station like this, but I’m not sure I would have done it on 810.
810 beats 560 hands down in the South Bay. By probably 10 or 15 db. But it has a figure-8 pattern that puts a null into the East Bay. That didn't matter back when 810 was first licensed, but it's significant today. After the 1989 earthquake they were running non-directional on an STA, and I remember there were lots of complaints from Dublin-Livermore-Pleasanton when they finished rebuilding. Considering the format and the demographics, I think Cumulus is wise to sacrifice the larger population of San Jose in order to have a better signal in Contra Costa county.
Dave B.
Those ABC AMs were all too dependent on high TSL but had horrible low cume. So when the PPM arrived, they were decimated. It had far less to do with ownership than with the style and structure of the ABC developed format that just had no P2 listening and very long apparent TSL, causing them to collapse in the PPM.
The KGO signal has been basically the same since the early 40’s and has nothing to. Do with Cumulus, who can’t possible do much if anything to fill in the protective null towards WGY.
Ah. I should have been more specific. I meant Cumulus was wise to keep the conservative talk format on 560 with it's Contra Costa county coverage rather than move those programs to 810.
Dave B.
Audacy is actually doing this today in Houston with its daytimer KIKK 650.
Successfully? Not sure it’s ever even appeared in the books.
Forget ratings. Does it make them money? And does the combination of a low overhead and whatever revenue is coming in result in a better bottom line than whatever KIKK was doing before this?
They're also doing it with their now throwaway 1520 WWKB Buffalo, NY and 850 WEEI Boston, MA. Both at one time were very successful stations. Just the way AM is going, unfortunately.
BetQL is a wholly own company of Audacy. Audacy has (AM) stations that are failing at best. Using these stations to promote BetQL products is a no brainer.
There will be a certain section of BetQL's customer base that will tune into the station, to hear the odds of their chosen sport. The thing is, it's not just traditional US/Canadian sports that are covered. Sports betting takes in all sports, all over the world. So, it's a huge cash cow.
There are ways around state based sports betting bans.
And Texas is another state where sports betting is illegal. Prospects for legislation there are likely poorer than they are in California, although gambling is a complex issue with opponents and proponents on both sides of the political divide. The devout Christians among the Republicans oppose it because it's a sin, according to their reading of the Bible. The libertarian right supports it as a personal freedom being unfairly denied by some states. Among Democrats, you have the libertarian left making pretty much the same argument as its GOP counterpart, but some in the big government Democratic left wing oppose gambling as "a tax on the poor and most vulnerable," and see blocking access to it as a necessary function of government for the sake of the mental health and well-being of citizens they view as potential victims.
I hope I've phrased this as impartially as possible. As most who've read my opinions here know, I do gamble recreationally and responsibly, and sometimes cannot resist having some negativity directed at the other side leak through.
Guessing the rate is about $0.20 cents a kwh, give or take, the monthly transmitter electrical cost is around $8,100. Even with the low ratings, they were billing over $250,000 a month. May other expenses were much, much higher than the light bill.
Likely it is on the books at a higher value than they could sell it for today, so a sale would cause a one-time loss that could look bad on the P&L.
Yes, and many people know about them and use them. The problem, as I stated earlier, is that the foreign-based betting services themselves cannot advertise on licensed American radio stations, and the US-based ones that are legal in, say, Nevada are getting no bang for their buck by advertising in San Francisco.
What they've done for the last 15 years has been a waste of 50,000 watts and a lot of money.
They could have 1 million watts and it would not make a difference. There is nothing they can put on AM that will change the reality.
They will make more with sports betting than the pittance they'd get by selling.
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