Albuquerque Commercial FM For Sale

[Kent]

It appears that Delmarva Educational Association has a connection with Salem. Could 104.7 become yet another signal with Religious programming?

There's a good chance it will. Delmarva is apparently run by Stu Epperson's wife and son. Some of its stations air Salem programming in areas where Salem either doesn’t own stations or can't clear all of its programming. However, not all of its stations do. It runs a gospel format in Boston and a conservative talk station in Jacksonville that carries a mix of Salem talkers as well as some affiliated with other networks, for example.

There's already 88.3, 90.7, 91.5, 91.9, 96.9, 98.9, 105.5, 106.7, 107.1 (did I forget any?). How many does Albuquerque need?

Albuquerque has the most stations per capita. This seems to be what happens when a market has more stations than it can comfortably support.

If a company had just the last 5 signals that I listed, the ones on the commercial side of the FM band, that could be a cluster in itself. That would be better than what Vanguard has. Or, if Vanguard had a few of them, they could actually be a viable competitor vs. the "Big Three".

Yet Vanguard had 13+ years to try to make a play for 104.7 and didn’t walk away with it. It did, however, deal with AGM when it had to make spin-offs after buying Univision's properties. I can't pretend to know what, if anything, happened with Vanguard and iHeart regarding KABQ-FM, but one would have to think they at least had a discussion. Given how cheaply iHeart is ultimately letting 104.7 go, one would also have to think price wasn’t the reason a deal couldn’t be reached.

 

[gr8oldies]

How many religious stations does Albuquerque need? To cover all the religious groups out there in Christianity alone, a few thousand should do it. Having worked a station that sold time to ministries, I was always amazed at how one little difference between two denominations was enough for both sides to throw out the baby with the bath water. I always thought they were sort of like football. You have all these teams. They all have the same goal of reaching the end zone. They just have slightly different ways of moving down the field. It might sound like the same thing on each station but they all have their own angle and those that strive not to be denominational in approach, oh, they're accused of 'watering down' the message.

Albequerque must really need savin', or at least these broadcasters may think so. Here in the Bible belt, we still have a bunch of Evangelical stations, just in case anyone has missed the message.

 

[AbqAnonymous]

104.7 will very likely be religious. Do we "need" another such station? Well we can look at the data from best places here: https://www.bestplaces.net/religion/metro/new_mexico/albuquerque So basically 47.3% of the metro population is religious so just under half the total population to work with. But then you have the largest group which are Catholics who make up 28.1% but only KQNM 1550/98.9 targets them. The rest are basically protestant owned so then you also need to subtract the non-Christian religions (1.4%) and also the Mormons (2.4%) and you have a total of 15.4% of the metro population all thinly split between different evangelical, mainline, and "other" denominations. Then there is the issue of how serious they are about their faith to listen to contemporary Christian music or radio preachers or if those preachers are even in line with however they interpret the bible. However excluding translators as well as AMs 920 and 1000 or any others we will soon have a total of 7 full powered class C FM stations mainly targeting protestants. It's just ridiculous! I could be wrong but could this have been done intentionally to sabotage a station that they never should have been allowed to acquire in the first place when they could no longer own it? AGM may have done the same thing with 106.7 four years ago and maybe would have liked to have done the same thing with 106.3 but couldn't find a buyer. Basically you take these signals off of the commercial market to reduce competition for advertisers and put on programming that appeals to a very small percentage of the population that the commercial companies don't care about anyway which then slightly improves conditions for the rest of the market.

The question about Vanguard is interesting. 80k is a whole lot less than what they paid for that station on Mt. Taylor. Or maybe could Entravision have wanted a second FM station? If they were going to just donate it then why not to KANW? Public news and talk does pretty well in ratings just about everywhere and is even top rated in some places. Right now they do the full time format on a barely listenable translator. Non-com contemporary music stations do pretty well in places like Minneapolis and Austin and ok in places like LA, Seattle or Dallas. It is very likely that are better uses for all of these signals but the large companies likely don't want the competition.

 

[davideduardo]

I could be wrong but could this have been done intentionally to sabotage a station that they never should have been allowed to acquire in the first place when they could no longer own it? AGM may have done the same thing with 106.7 four years ago and maybe would have liked to have done the same thing with 106.3 but couldn't find a buyer.

Of course, given two options, any group that has to sell would wish the remaining stations not have a new competitor.

Clear Channel / iHeart had to sell on two occasions: when the rules changed to use Arbitron markets to define quotas and they went through the LBO to a new owner and when they came out of bankruptcy as a "new" company based on the creditors becoming owners. Naturally, they preferred a non-commercial group as a buyer.

Basically you take these signals off of the commercial market to reduce competition for advertisers and put on programming that appeals to a very small percentage of the population that the commercial companies don't care about anyway which then slightly improves conditions for the rest of the market.

ABQ was one of the worst affected by Docket 80-90 and also got a large number of high-elevation translators, so it is over radioed and, as a low CSI market, not a good radio market to begin with. Thinning the commercial herd is a good idea...

Or maybe could Entravision have wanted a second FM station?

None of the Hispanic-targeted groups or stations has been happy with the market, as there are several really bad situations: first, Arbitron and Nielsen can't seem to get the Spanish / English dominant proportions right, with severe changes in many annual updates over the last 20 years. And second, no matter what the percentage, about 80% or more of the Hispanics in ABQ are English dominant and don't listen to Spanish language stations.

Non-com contemporary music stations do pretty well in places like Minneapolis and Austin and ok in places like LA, Seattle or Dallas. It is very likely that are better uses for all of these signals but the large companies likely don't want the competition.

What station in LA is a moderately successful non-com contemporary music operation?

 

[AbqAnonymous]

What station in LA is a moderately successful non-com contemporary music operation?

I was thinking of KCRW. They appear to beat out a few commercial stations including one of the CHRs and some Mt. Wilson stations. Other non-coms there seem to only cover parts of the area while KPFK proves that it's not only preachers who can provide programming that almost no one wants to listen to and somehow they also get an additional 10,000 watts more than the maximum limit. The very low rated KKLA is probably what 104.7 will become like since I think they are also with Salem.

Not counting translators or LPFMs there are a total of 29 FM stations that cover Albuquerque and so with 7 stations that is almost a whole quarter of the FMs here going to Christian radio. I looked at the recent ratings and added the numbers until I got to 50 and the top 12 stations reach 51.1. Just about all of them have at least a 20 year history while KOBQ is riding the coattails of the former KOB-FM which has had a CHR format for about 18 years now. Out of the 12 only KKSS and KABG are not on Sandia but that's about to change for one of them. So that leaves smaller shares for all the remaining stations in the lower half. The AM band here is almost irrelevant now but perhaps they shouldn't have gone beyond 20 FMs. But maybe it seemed like a good idea in the 80s and 90s to add more.

 

[RF101]

Well, I nailed the KABQ prediction. .. The legal liability of having that isolated tower I bet weighed into the decision. Those BASE jumpers love tall towers... There was very limited details on the donation value amount in the FCC filing.

 

[davideduardo]

I was thinking of KCRW. They appear to beat out a few commercial stations including one of the CHRs and some Mt. Wilson stations.

KCRW is an eclectic format, with lots of news/talk programming and block music programming. I don't think you can nail down its format, and it is certainly not pure music.

 

[davideduardo]

Not counting translators or LPFMs there are a total of 29 FM stations that cover Albuquerque

Many of the translators cover 70% to 90% of the market population with a 60 dbu, so they count, although if you want to look for "distinct formats" some of the commercial translators are simply repeating AMs.

The MSA has 65 stations, including 19 translators.

 

[99KTKT]

Over on the Classic AT40 message boards, lots of 'discussion' (well, annoyance and despair) about KABQ's forthcoming flip to a K-God format. Many have that station as their 'go to' stream for the '80s show every Sunday. An apparent station 'insider' has posted that the 'flip' will occur at the end of March.

 

[K6JHU]

Naother board reports that the answer is KNKT (107.1). Also reported to be going commercial.

 

[uncle don]

Paper work was filed yesterday with Calvary proposing to sell KNKT to Bible Broadcasting Network which has stations and satellites throughout the country. Deal is contingent upon FCC approval to modify the license from Commercial to Noncommercial. Price: $1,400,000.00

 

[Ryan Williams]

Calvary is apparently planning to keep Star 88 (KLYT).

 

[Delete My Account]

I'm amazed BBN paid that much, is there really that large a potential donor base in ABQ for their flavor of programming?

 

[RF101]

Agreed. BBN paid way in excess of the market value given the recent KABQ donation. Perhaps the underlying real estate has some value and that it can be subdivided to recover some costs.. ( I have yet to check who owns the likely-ASR'd tower.)

 

[AbqAnonymous]

So Calvary gets 1.4 Million for a 17.5kW C2 which is not really that great of a signal in the city. Meanwhile 104.7 a 100kW C1 goes for a lousy $80k! The bigger 106.7 and 106.3 signals also went for less than what 107.1 sold for!

Now is there a large enough donor base for BBN or Salem in this area? Doubtful! The Calvary stations I think rely on local revenue while the rest are satellite feeds that have a nationwide donor base. This could possibly be a sign of how even Christian radio might be struggling here. First they sold the KLYT statewide translator network to VCY for about $70k in 2019. Now they have just sold off one of their two Albuquerque stations. That 1.4 mil should keep things going for awhile at 88.3 which may or may not see some programming changes. But they also still have to get local support against all of these satellite stations like K-Love. One might think they'd want to see a reduction in Christian stations here so as not to have so much competition for donations. However 107.1 was a secular commercial station from 1988-1994 and had a few format changes that never really caught on. This was even before the arrival of about six new FMs in the mid-1990s!

But also the attempts to reduce the number of commercial stations here could be foiled with KVVD 1100 (and possibly 93.7) bringing us right back to the same number of commercial stations as before!

 

[Ryan Williams]

I'm amazed BBN paid that much, is there really that large a potential donor base in ABQ for their flavor of programming?

For comparison, VCY paid 900k for 106.7 in 2017.

 

[Kent]

I'm amazed BBN paid that much, is there really that large a potential donor base in ABQ for their flavor of programming?

BBN must have a pretty good donor base, though I have to wonder how. Whenever I've tuned in, it’s playing old time hymns. I can't imagine anyone not a senior citizen would listen to that.

I'm guessing it either gets its money from prepaid preaching or those older audience members are mentioning it in their wills. All of them will die before the network, I suppose.

 

[b-turner]

As I understand it, some on the older ministries that are a generation or two old have a good number of donors that leave substantial monies in their will to these ministries. I had a ministry on a station I managed. He had been around 40+ years and had received funds from wills to the point he could operate his ministry perpetually if he didn't go nuts with the money. He wrote a few books and frequently offered them free but asked for a couple of dollars to cover postage. He didn't ask for donations but suggested sending a donation to the station airing his program (and I charged him for the airtime).

 

[Ryan Williams]

He didn't ask for donations but suggested sending a donation to the station airing his program (and I charged him for the airtime).

Do you recall any listeners following his suggestion?

 

[b-turner]

Nope. Nobody sent a dime. Even those ministries we ran on a 50/50 share basis averaged only $80 to $100 a month.