Am I the only one who thinks it’s crazy that Alpha is running Westwood One programming on these stations?! If you would create a new market for that area, it would probably be a top 100 market or close.
Most of the stations from Sherman/Denison moved into DFW 20-25 years ago. I last lived in DFW shortly before the move-ins happened, but the writing was on the wall. KIKM 96.7 and KXGM 106.5 were working on plans to move into DFW, and, as I was leaving to begin my senior year in college, KTCY 104.9, which was the original KMKT, had launched from Pilot Point as "Fab 105, nothing but Beatles." I heard the station by accident on my drive north along I-35 when my seek stopped, and, when I came back home for Labor Day weekend a few weeks later, it was definitely trying to be a DFW station. While I tend to agree taking programming from a direct competitor is a mistake, especially in an area that size, I get why Sherman/Denison only has one or two clusters trying to serve it. Being an also-ran in DFW will make a lot more money than being the top performer in Sherman/Denison. Plus, you have to compete with DFW stations in that area, even if most of the signals are only available on car radios and good home stereos. Even when I was a teenager 35 years ago, my peers there preferred Y95 to the local Top-40, KDSQ 101.7 (now DFW's Air1 station).
On my drive to Illinois and then back to Texas in May and June, there were plenty of small markets that I drove through with local talent. I feel that Alpha has had a lot of missteps over the past decade or so and could definitely be doing better.
Alpha overpaid for a company that wasn't put together based on any strategy other than "get bigger." It also thought it needed a major expansion in order to go public. There was only one large company being pressured to sell, and Alpha committed to buying it only to decide the timing wasn't right to go public. It decided that too late to back out of the Digity acquisition.
If they’re hurting for money so bad, just sell off the stations and be done with it.
I've been told you could have almost any Alpha market up to and including the entire company for the right price. Portland is about the only market it would be reluctant to sell without getting rid of everything else, and I suspect even it wouldn't be a sacred cow if anyone was willing to break the bank for it. The key words, however, are "for the right price." It wants a comparatively high price for its properties, and nobody is overpaying for radio stations for the time being. Plus, few, if any, have much in the way of tangible assets. Alpha has sold most, if not all, of its towers, and, at least near me, the rent on those towers is roughly $4,000/month. When you consider the average radio station bills about $400,000/year, more than 10% of the revenue would now be going to tower rent. OUCH!
radioinsight.com
