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Audacy New York
- Thread starter CassChopper96
- Start date
The only station primarily intended for NJ is NJ 101.5. Everyone else is trying to reach the big apple.
It doesn't matter where the station is based or where the signal is strongest. WBGO moved its transmitter to Times Square. Not sure it helped, but there's an example of a Jersey station that's aiming for NYC.
Seriously? WDHA. WKMK. WRAT. WCHR. WAYV. WPUR. WMGQ. I could go on. New Jersey is a whole state with lots of stations.
Trenton and Atlantic City are both separate Nielsen radio markets, and each has a good number of stations.
Atlantic City, including translators, has 50 stations. Trenton has 15.
I agree, but the ones located along the border with NYC (which is what we're talking about) are aiming for NYC.
There were once about a dozen radio stations in Essex & Bergen counties that one by one moved across the river.
The rule is 150 air miles from transmitter site to transmitter site. The ESB to Springfield is only 125 miles. This means the two stations are short-spaced, even where 94.7 currently is in West Orange.
The move to the WOR tower is permitted by WMAS and WXBK both installing a directional antenna, now that Audacy controls both stations.
I'm not certain of the engineering realities of needing a particular antenna pattern on the combined antenna system on ESB.
Big A wrote >>>"The other side of that is you're throwing out the revenue of two very hard to get FMs in NYC. Audacy can't buy any more FMs. They're at the limit. The profit margin of FM music stations is higher than that of all-news stations. At the end of the day, profits rule. Right now, both WINS and WCBS are making their revenues without need of an FM simulcast."<<<
In a perfect world, you'd want the revenue of your AM stations and your FM stations. But AM is slowly dying, or maybe not so slowly. That's why Audacy blew up an FM station in Los Angeles to put KNX's All-News format on it. I'm sure they'd like to have the revenue of KNOU's Top 40 format and KNX too. But that's not going to happen forever. So now you have KNX-FM, just like KYW, WBBM and KCBS all have FM simulcasts.
So I leave it to you. Do you want the revenue of Audacy's Alternative station 92.3 WNYL or 1010 WINS? Do you want the revenue of Classic Hip Hop 94.7 WXBK or 880 WCBS? WINS and WCBS have consistently been among Audacy's biggest revenue generators. OK, they have high overhead as well. But unlike a music format, you can sell tons of ads per hour. Their preservation is a much higher priority than two underperforming FM outlets.
In a perfect world, you'd want the revenue of your AM stations and your FM stations. But AM is slowly dying, or maybe not so slowly. That's why Audacy blew up an FM station in Los Angeles to put KNX's All-News format on it. I'm sure they'd like to have the revenue of KNOU's Top 40 format and KNX too. But that's not going to happen forever. So now you have KNX-FM, just like KYW, WBBM and KCBS all have FM simulcasts.
So I leave it to you. Do you want the revenue of Audacy's Alternative station 92.3 WNYL or 1010 WINS? Do you want the revenue of Classic Hip Hop 94.7 WXBK or 880 WCBS? WINS and WCBS have consistently been among Audacy's biggest revenue generators. OK, they have high overhead as well. But unlike a music format, you can sell tons of ads per hour. Their preservation is a much higher priority than two underperforming FM outlets.
Both. It very clearly hasn't reached the point where they need to make that choice yet. WINS still is one of the top revenue producing stations in NYC without a simulcast. There's going to be a point where that starts to drop, but they haven't hit it yet. Keep in mind the NYC market manager knows the actual revenue figures and knows when they have to make a decision. The budget for that market is based on owning 8 stations, not 5 (two music stations and three AM simulcasts).
I believe what Audacy is waiting for is the FCC to decide on if they're going to continue holding AM stations against the market cap. If they release those AM stations from the cap, Audacy will be able to buy more FMs. That changes the math.
I get the short spacing but I just don't see why it has to be 150 miles apart. I look at, for example, WYJB 95.5 out of Albany and WPLJ in NYC. 130 miles apart which is 20 miles closer than the rule but they interfere with each other around Poughkeepsie. Nobody in that area would notice that except a person into DXing like myself because both stations are there but already very weak. The same goes for WMAS vs WXBK, they would only interfere in an area where there's much stronger similar signals.
But they have, at least for the forseeable future. As was mentioned in the Alt 92.3 thread, Audacy has posted a job opening for on-air morning show personality. The fact that Audacy is hiring a morning show host for the alternative format indicates that placing an all-news radio simulcast on 92.3 is not happening for another year or two. Clearly, Audacy is giving the alternative format another chance to succeed.
Add WSUS WHCY and WNNJ to that list too in Sussex County.
94.7 is also short spaced because of 94.3 The Shark, 94.3 The Point, and 94.5 PST.
Wouldn't 93.9 cause the same issues to the 94.3's? Also, 94.7 would be further from PST if moved to ESB
One reason why this particular swap will not happen is that 95.5 covers New York City in a way that 94.7 cannot. EMF bought WPLJ so that it can better serve the city's growing evangelical Christian community. Prior to WPLJ's conversion to K-Love, evangelicals in NYC did not have a music station that they could call their own.
What growing evangelical christian community in NYC? I doubt that exists.
Announcement just came down that Sabrina Sergio, a.k.a. Sabrina From Queens, is returning to "New York's Country 94.7" on the HD-2 channel. Presumably she'll be voicetracked, but the addition of any talent to what was relegated to a typical HD subchannel jukebox after the format flip is at least noteworthy.
Announcement:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CY7lvE6qHiw
Announcement:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CY7lvE6qHiw
The reason you don't notice it is that evangelical Christians are a small minority in NYC. In 2014, only 9% of the population of NYC was evangelical Christian, compared to 38% in Dallas and 33% in Atlanta. However, I have been around the evangelical Christian community long enough to know that NYC has many more churches now than it did in the early 1990s.
Glad to hear they are putting some effort into the Country broadcast. Is there any way it could be rebroadcast on a translator in NJ, or does Audacy already own too many local stations for that to be legal?
The tower for the Enfield (CT)/Springfield (MA) station is not that tall. Right by the Connecticut River, between that and I-91. It has a lot of power as it overloads a cheap Walkman anywhere in downtown or next door in West Springfield.
What about 105.9 FM of Newark/NYC and Hartford? WHCN-FM Hartford has their transmitter on West Peak in Meriden. I will assume it's nulled to the southwest.
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