I'm sure that tall_guy1 has been following the news. On the basis of the many questions that he has been asking lately, I sense that he is trying to look for deep philosophical meanings of how things work in the world of radio.
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Audacy Cuts ✂️
- Thread starter MVB13
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Let's bring this back to a New York focus.
Sources close to me, which I trust, have intimated Audacy has quietly made it known that two of its NYC AMs are on the block–with WCBS being one of them.
What makes more sense to me is that if 880 is expendable (more so than 1010) then so is WFAN/660, as both share a transmitter facility. It is easier to see Audacy selling 660 and 880 as a package, partly to avoid themselves (and/or a potential buyer) the troublesome task of untangling the shared operation of the High Island tower should only one of the frequencies be sold off.
Remember, Audacy owns title and deed to High Island.
With a prime location, High Island could bring Audacy a nice chunk of change. They could simply sell the property, sign a long-term lease and become a tenant. Provided that whomever buys the island has no immediate plans for redevelopment, 660 and 880 could stay there indefinitely.
Sources close to me, which I trust, have intimated Audacy has quietly made it known that two of its NYC AMs are on the block–with WCBS being one of them.
What makes more sense to me is that if 880 is expendable (more so than 1010) then so is WFAN/660, as both share a transmitter facility. It is easier to see Audacy selling 660 and 880 as a package, partly to avoid themselves (and/or a potential buyer) the troublesome task of untangling the shared operation of the High Island tower should only one of the frequencies be sold off.
Remember, Audacy owns title and deed to High Island.
With a prime location, High Island could bring Audacy a nice chunk of change. They could simply sell the property, sign a long-term lease and become a tenant. Provided that whomever buys the island has no immediate plans for redevelopment, 660 and 880 could stay there indefinitely.
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With the deeply depressed value of AM sticks, I honestly don't know why they'd bother. That would be like me selling garden veggies to pay for a new roof... a drop in the bucket.
Assuming Audacy would force format changes upon sale any of their AM sticks (to protect all-sports WFAN-FM and all-news WINS), I'd be surprised if any combination of two of them would exceed $10 million. Obviously they would be worth more with the ongoing business.
High Island is uniquely well suited to AM transmission, and less well suited to other uses. I'd guess the most likely re-purposing could be a swanky weekend residence for one or two wealthy investor, similar to the Hamptons.
The fact is that none of the asset sales or cost cutting will erase the $2 billion debt, and nothing will correct the bad decisions Audacy made in attempting to diversify the company into podcasting. It's interesting that neither of the AMs are reported to be in the LLC. That's a very different group.
What this smells like to me is that Audacy has a deal pending with a white knight who will absorb some of the debt issues, and give them some breathing space. But that company has imposed a series of tasks they want Audacy to do before they get involved. Because the white knight doesn't want to come in with an ax. They want the chopping done before they step in and save the day. A lot of these changes are the kinds of things the company would have to do anyway if it filed for Chap 11. But if this happens the right way, the white knight will step in before they go down the drain. I've seen it happen before. Sometimes the original heritage stockholders (in this case, the Fields) are compensated, but they get pushed aside for the new crew. All of this is likely coming from the Board of Directors. That's my best guess about what's happening. It might be a few months before things work through.
It's not just the island itself. The property also includes two lots on City Island that comprise the bridge connecting it to High Island and the front gate at 700 King Avenue. (Bronx, Block 5648, Lots 206 and 299 / Block 5649, Lot 120). Before NBC bought it in 1960 to construct the new WNBC tower, the island housed summer bungalows.
That’s basically what I assume will happen, it will be interesting to see whose deep pockets there will be.
Ironically, BigA, you mention the mistakes that they made trying to diversify into podcasting. I recall they may even be selling off Cadence13, which was supposed to be their foray into Podcasts.
Correct. They burned so much money trying to do something that most people do for free:
WCBS still makes a lot of money. I can't imagine they would sell 880 without moving the format to FM. The only Audacy FM in NYC that is underperforming is 94.7.
Heck, they are just trying to copy iHeart's playbook (e.g. a streaming platform, podcast network, national voice tracking/programming). Except, for whatever reason, that has seemed to not pay off.
I can't keep saying this enough: Audacy made its choice of which all-newser got the FM simulcast. WINS is the stronger brand. End of story. They will not cannibalize the format by simulcasting both stations on FM.
WXBK will be given a chance to grow and, hopefully (and with some more tweaks) succeed. And as we are in a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop, they would be smart to tap into that in order to increase brand awareness.
They got rid of the amazing Radio.com domain/app replacing it with one that no one can spell. The UI and functionality are horrible.
Way too late to the party, no decent program development, and now they're trying to unload the podcast company they vastly overpaid for.
They have no national stars. And they have no syndication arm.
Yes, for whatever reason (s).
WXBK has been on for over a year and the needle hasn't moved. The station can't even break a 2 share. I believe it's been consistently the lowest ranked commercial fm station in market #1.
And it's a new format, not a rehash of rock or CHR.
If anything kills it, it will be Audacy's money problems. But if it holds its weight in billing then it will be okay. Ratings in this day and age are secondary.
Agree with all of the above points. The Audacy rebrand, even when I first heard it rumored, was always a joke; those who I know that work for the company reviled the change.
The Radio.com platform they had when they inherited it from CBS wasn't terrible, but the changes they made about a year and a half ago where they merged the streaming platform and their CMS just made it unusable. They have since released a whole new system which is better but not buy much. Still is riddled with bugs and usability issues.
In regards to syndication, they took in-house staff at various stations and have (with varied success) tried to syndicate from within. They seem to have a good relationship with United Stations, having syndicated Scott Shannon and Gary Bryan's weekend shows, as well as bringing the Katie and Company country mid-day show into syndication (time will tell how that goes). The country efforts seem to work okay, but we all saw how the national Alt programing came (and went).
So "for whatever reason" just seems to be flawed execution for one reason or another. Not having the bandwidth to invest in doing it right, not having a good strategy, etc.
You think Audacy is going to sell one of their top moneymakers without moving it to FM and keep the flea-bitten dog with a 1.x share. I disagree. Guess we will find out eventually, if a sale of 880 ever really happens that is.
Your logic is flawed. If Audacy thought as you did, then WINS-FM would be on 94.7 right now and 92.3 would have continued with alt-rock, which was given more than enough time to succeed and didn't. The hope is that younger audiences will sample WINS-FM and keep the format viable for another 10-15 years at least. Or, perhaps move the money demo needle to 35-64.
The three AMs may still bill well, but all-news is an upper-demo format that will soon have those same dreaded demo issues that oldies and news/talk have and are going through. You don't think Audacy studied the market thoroughly enough before they made these moves?
WFAN may not be as it was, but it's still strong enough in billing and ratings (against their direct competition, if no one else) that they can complete the transition and go FM-only in the next few years (with or without a sale of 660). And, following the newsroom consolidation, WCBS (AM) is in many ways now superfluous with WINS. And again, WINS is and always has been the better performer in both ratings and billing. Those trends will surely continue if WINS-FM remains a consistent top-6 performer ratings-wise and WCBS continues to add more non-news programming and informercials.
There will come a day when there will be only one all-news radio station here. That time hasn't come yet. But I guarantee you that there won't be a WCBS simulcast on FM. If you don't get that, then you don't understand the business.
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The Holiday book and the first 3 weeks of the January book show over 50% growth in 25-54 for WINS, moving from around 18th (monthly average for 6 months prior to starting simulcast) to about 12th the last 7 weeks in the broad prime sales demo.
They made a correct assumption that people in the high end of 25-54 didn't listen or did not listen as much because that meant "changing to AM".
Remember also that far fewer people commute in private cars in NYC and listening in apartments and offices to AM is very hard and noisy.
But why would they? The AM does help in the fringe areas of the metro... Suffolk, the western Jersey counties in the MSA. Compared to the viable alternatives, keeping the simulcast makes sense still.
WCBS (AM) and WINS have been within about 3% of each other in revenue for the last five or six years. WCBS has higher expenses due to the baseball rights, and sports sales inflates revenue, so the two when compare just on news are likely further separated than it appears.
If the AM/FM combo gets just a tiny bit more in the next few months, they could hit Top 10 in 25-54. So far, the move seems to be a shining bright spot in a very gloomy odyssey.
I agree. There is not room for two formats that have less appeal with those under about 45. Anyone from generations named after letters in the alphabet won't listen and can't be enhanced to listen.
Presumably Audacy started planning that strategy long before any of us knew about it, and before Audacy expected to have to sell off their AM stations so soon (assuming your source is even correct about that).
However, the music on 94.7 is old, and the entire radio audience is aging. The crisis goes beyond specific formats today.
The cost-cutting newsroom consolidation actually gives Audacy a good reason to continue both news stations given that kind of efficiency. A music format may still cost less than news, but we've seen plenty of radio industry analysts opine that music formats on FM are not the future. Does Audacy really want to get rid of one of its heritage news brands in the nation's most lucrative market? Why wouldn't they keep it and make format tweaks to differentiate it more from WINS instead? We're already seeing some moves being made along those lines.
Both of which stand to bring in more revenue than a low rated music format.
We shall (or may) see.
Maybe they should have named it Odyssey. That’s what it often sounds like they are saying.
I'd be surprised if the WCBS Newsradio brand is still around five years from now. We shall see what happens.
I completely agree with BigA's earlier comments regarding a white knight scenario.
As a sidenote, it would be cool if WXBK could some day be traded for WBAI, but I cannot recall if the latter is licensed as a non-commercial facility.
I completely agree with BigA's earlier comments regarding a white knight scenario.
As a sidenote, it would be cool if WXBK could some day be traded for WBAI, but I cannot recall if the latter is licensed as a non-commercial facility.
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