Did you forget the same money that controls Audacy now is also invested in Latino Media Network, and why they invested in that company?
The LMN investment was, in everyone's opinion, motivated by the desire of the investors to keep an ultra conservative group, Salem. The co-heads of the company were political activists, with no radio experience.
KLOL is the last station they'll flip - for the same reason. It'll pay dividends during the next election cycle.
Spanish language stations don't get much campaign money. While this may change a bit in the next cycle, the perception, substantiated by facts and statistics, is that the bulk of listeners are first generation immigrants who are not eligible to vote in their majority.
They just blew up Radio Mambi in Miami, claiming it wasn't profitable with a 1.3 share in the beauty contest. Guess who else has a 1.3 share? SportsRadio 610.
Very different. Sports typically has low shares but delivers very strong adult male listeners in the most desirable demographics. Mambí had an average listener age over 65 and was just one of a half-dozen Miami stations all doing predominantly anti-Castro preaching to the exile community from Cuba.
I was involved off and on with Miami talk-based AMs going back to the early 70's and including stations like WQBA and WAQI, so I have a pretty clear vision of why, unlike SportsRadio 610, it had pretty much lost its advertiser appeal: part of this is due to the new ownership´which is vehemently disliked by the Cuban exile community.
Obviously, I don't see them flipping 610 to cut costs, but suffice it to say, there's more than money at stake here.
While I have no idea what the billing of each of those Houston stations bills, we can suppose that a sports station does reasonably well, even if AM only, because there is both advertising money and sports marketing money available to that format.
KRBE is a cash cow for Cumulus, and again, it is sold in combo with the Dallas cluster.
All the Cumulus stations are sold as packages to national accounts. But no agency buys a single Houston station in combo with a group of stations in a different market.
There's a reason KRBE hasn't followed other Cumulus properties like WPLJ New York, WYAY Atlanta and WRQX Washington D.C. into the ministry.
That is an assumption that none of us can make as we are not party to the financials. But the first things I would suspect are that they are a) waiting to see if the station has greater value if ownership caps are lifted and b) nobody has made a reasonable offer to them for that station.
All that aside, while Audacy is under the FM ownership cap in Houston, an acquisition like KRBE would likely draw the same sort of regulatory scrutiny that caused KHMX and KLOL to end up at CBS Radio in 2008.
Again, the caps appear to be on the way to being relaxed, and that would enhance the value of KRBE to one of the large groups.
That happened because there was BlackRock money in both Cumulus and Clear Channel.
And that was before the value of radio tanked in the last 5 to 6 years due to the economy, the decline in radio usage (PUMM off by about 70% since 2005), and the move of much retail money into new media... and, of course, the decline of local retail due to further market absorption by big box stores that generally don't use much or any local media.
Different ownership and management at Audacy these days, likely with different motivations.
Audacy fell behind in new media, and is not in possession of much content that fits the podcast and streaming hot spots. Audacy has the same problems today it had a couple of years ago... just different people in the management offices and the same challenges every group has as radio's future viability comes into question.
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