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CBS Radio To Purchase 107.9 FM, Challenge WTOP

DToTheJ

DToTheJ

Wow... a couple of quick thoughts...

In the 70s, Washington had TWO All-News stations: 1500 WTOP and WAVA-AM-FM, also a 24 hour news station. WAVA was on 730, at the time a day-only signal. And WAVA-FM ran 24 hours on 105.1, which still has the same call letters today but as a Salem Religion station. The station was given a waiver by the FCC to run simulcast, just like WGMS-AM-FM, due to the nature of its format, needing both stations to provide service in an era when not all radios had FM. I don't know how long the All-News format lasted... maybe a few years. The idea of All-News on FM was far ahead of its time.

Also 99.1 may be a better signal than 107.9 but not by much. It's still an Annapolis licensed station stuck tightly between 98.7 WMZQ and 99.5 WIHT. You might have trouble getting it on a clock radio or inside an office building in downtown Washington or to the west of the city. With such an expensive format to operate, having to compete with full-signal WTOP, why isn't All-News going on underperforming 94.7 WIAD, which has a full Washington signal? Maybe put WIAD on 99.1 or 107.9.


Gregg
[email protected]
 
I cannot believe CBS would be stupid enough to put the All-News format on 99.1 FM instead of a more formidable DC Metro signal such as 94.7 FM!!!

Not only will this new station have the disadvantageous on being the "new guy on the block" against a mammoth powerhouse, but now they're going to have signal issues to boot. Dumb, dumb, dumb!
 
Mike said:
cbs should have relaunched WHFS on 99.1
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Hate to have to say it, but I can't see WHFS coming back unless it's on an out of the way signal like maybe like 104.1, 106.7; and those are long shots!
 
Gregg said:
Wow... a couple of quick thoughts...

In the 70s, Washington had TWO All-News stations: 1500 WTOP and WAVA-AM-FM, also a 24 hour news station. WAVA was on 730, at the time a day-only signal. And WAVA-FM ran 24 hours on 105.1, which still has the same call letters today but as a Salem Religion station. The station was given a waiver by the FCC to run simulcast, just like WGMS-AM-FM, due to the nature of its format, needing both stations to provide service in an era when not all radios had FM. I don't know how long the All-News format lasted... maybe a few years. The idea of All-News on FM was far ahead of its time.
Click to expand...
Don't forget that WRC was also all-news from 1975 to about 1978. From what I understand, they were little more than a flash-in-the-pan, though. Also from what I was once told, WAVA was all-news form about 1965 until 1978 or '79. The stations were then bought up by two different owners with the FM going rock and the AM going religious as WABS.

Radio-One made a big mistake by not hopping on this opportunity! They could've moved Praise to 107.9 and could've blanketed Baltimore and Washington and parts of southern Maryland and the eastern shore with a decent signal and could've forced Heaven 600 to go to another format.

Gregg said:
Also 99.1 may be a better signal than 107.9 but not by much. It's still an Annapolis licensed station stuck tightly between 98.7 WMZQ and 99.5 WIHT. You might have trouble getting it on a clock radio or inside an office building in downtown Washington or to the west of the city. With such an expensive format to operate, having to compete with full-signal WTOP, why isn't All-News going on underperforming 94.7 WIAD, which has a full Washington signal? Maybe put WIAD on 99.1 or 107.9.


Gregg
[email protected]
Click to expand...
If you want to hear one of my wild ideas, CBS could move 106.7 to 94.7 and put the new all-news format on 106.7 as well. Another option might be to make a deal with Hubbard and swap 94.7 for 103.5. One problem you have with 94.7 is that it's impossible to receive east of the Patapsco River crossing on I-95 as WDSD out of Dover DE interferes.
 
klutch00 said:
If you want to hear one of my wild ideas, CBS could move 106.7 to 94.7 and put the new all-news format on 106.7 as well. Another option might be to make a deal with Hubbard and swap 94.7 for 103.5. One problem you have with 94.7 is that it's impossible to receive east of the Patapsco River crossing on I-95 as WDSD out of Dover DE interferes.
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I'm guessing CBS wants to cover the Baltimore market as well, which is why 106.7 or 94.7 won't do. DC is quite a large market, but so is Ball'mer! If they turn the stereo off it will do a very good job of covering most of Baltimore and a good chunk of the DC market.

I think of it this way: CBS probably wants this new 99.1 to be Maryland's news station, and it will probably be more Maryland-centric, much like WTOP has long geared programming toward the commuters down in VA. So, there is a market untapped...but the thing that got me was the sheer lack of staff that will be working there. WTOP will still have 3 times the staff! If all you're doing is throwing the Sports Junkies from the sister station to chat with the announcer and kill time, or you're just playing a whole lot of national news...this station will sink further than the news FM in NYC

klutch00 said:
Gregg said:
Wow... a couple of quick thoughts...

In the 70s, Washington had TWO All-News stations: 1500 WTOP and WAVA-AM-FM, also a 24 hour news station. WAVA was on 730, at the time a day-only signal. And WAVA-FM ran 24 hours on 105.1, which still has the same call letters today but as a Salem Religion station. The station was given a waiver by the FCC to run simulcast, just like WGMS-AM-FM, due to the nature of its format, needing both stations to provide service in an era when not all radios had FM. I don't know how long the All-News format lasted... maybe a few years. The idea of All-News on FM was far ahead of its time.
Click to expand...
Don't forget that WRC was also all-news from 1975 to about 1978. From what I understand, they were little more than a flash-in-the-pan, though. Also from what I was once told, WAVA was all-news form about 1965 until 1978 or '79. The stations were then bought up by two different owners with the FM going rock and the AM going religious as WABS.
Click to expand...

I know WRC was part of the ill-fated NBC "News and Information Service" which was national, with local opt-outs. Although it was a 3 year run, they did sort of invent news on-FM in a large scale as many of the affiliates were unprofitable FM's.

I know WTOP has had locally-run news since they started the format. But how about WAVA? Was that a 24/7 live and local news deal? And even though it's over 30 years ago, why did they switch formats? Will CBS learn from previous news station's mistakes?

Radio-X
 
Agreed with @radiodxrichmond that the likely reason CBS is choosing to put all-news on 99.1, as opposed to 94.7 or the 106.9 stick that they are buying, is because 99.1 dually serves the Baltimore and Washington markets. That being said, I think all of the predictions that this new yet-to-launch news format on 99.1 is going to fail are unfair, partly because CBS has the wherewithal to operate a news format. This isn't, say, Merlin launching an all-news station.

Will it ever beat WTOP? Probably not. But could it make an impact on WTOP's ratings? I have reason to believe CBS can make it happen. We'll see.

By the by... I reckon those WIAD calls are going to be moving to 99.1 FM in due time.

Edited to add: Recall a poster on a previous thread noting that the 107.9 signal is impacted partially due to IBOC on 107.7.
 
More about 780-105.1 WAVA-AM-FM. WAVA-FM was All-News around the clock and WAVA-AM simulcast from sunrise to sunset. They used the same sounders and program elements that WCBS New York had used to introduce weather, sports, etc. I believe they also had helicopter traffic.

Like many All-News stations of their day, they used tele-type sound effects in the background of their audio, just as WCBS had in those days. WINS NYC and KYW Philadelphia still have those sound effects to this day.

I don't have any info on WAVA's ratings but I was surprised to see klutch00 tell us the station lasted from 1965 to 1978 or '79. Then if you add NBC-owned 980 WRC running its NIS syndicated All-News service from '75 to '78 and 97.9 WBAL-FM doing the same in nearby Baltimore, that's a lot of All-News on both AM and FM!

I can understand the theory that 99.1 hits both DC and Baltimore. But WLZL currently doesn't even rate a one-share in Baltimore, even though Arbitron says the market is 4.7% Hispanic. Are there signal problems there, too? I seem to remember Alternative 99.1 WHFS didn't do well in the Baltimore ratings either. And will DC listeners to 99.1 want to sit through Baltimore news and traffic? Baltimore is Market #21. Do you dilute your coverage of Washington and its suburbs for more Baltimore info, hoping to get revenue from that smaller market?

Someone from CBS should go around Washington and Baltimore with a cheap radio, into office buildings and apartment house basements, to see how that 99.1 signal works. You can't just count that it comes in OK on expensive car radios. And they also better hire enough staff to compete equally with WTOP or this will be a bad experiment.

I also wonder if WTOP will now drop CBS News on The Hour, if they know CBS is introducing its own competitor? Just use some audio clips and run the required spots till the contract runs out? Although I guess it's really Dial Global who owns distribution of CBS Radio News, and they're not involved in this fight.


Gregg
[email protected]
 
Yes WIAD does have interference problems to the east because of WDSD in Dover. If the stations were proposed today, they could not exist together, since the distance between them is less than that required for Class A's, however they are grandfather in along with the 94.7 in Newark, New Jersey and two other stations from the early 60's before the FCC instituted the rules requiring minimum distances. One advantage that 94.7 in Bethesda has is antenna height, they are at 235 meters, while WDSD is at 115 meters. As for the signal to the east, that shouldn't really matter for a station that is targeted to the Washington Metro. WTOP FM has signal issues up I-95 because of adjacent WXCY in Havre De Grace. By the way, WFSI was one time owned by the late owner of WANN. Like may AM Daytimers of the 50's and early 60's, the FCC wanted FM to grown, and one way was to convince the daytimes to add an FM, this is one of the reasons FM became popular early in areas like the Eastern Shore, where station at sign off would tell listeners to tune into their FM frequency. I hear a rumor once that when Rau Radio was selling WWDC in Washington, that at the settlement, they buyer asked about WWDC-FM, and that Mr. Rau said they could have it for $1. I don't know if the story is true, but it's a great story.
 
Gregg said:
I seem to remember Alternative 99.1 WHFS didn't do well in the Baltimore ratings either.
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Actually, even towards the end of 99.1's days as WHFS, it was usually just inside the top ten (12+), often beating WIYY. The signal covered metro Baltimore better than it covered metro DC. I suspect the main reason for WLZL's anemic performance in Baltimore is that they have never made any attempts to promote it to that market.
 
None of the press releases suggest this new station is going to routinely cover Baltimore news & traffic. They all describe the new product as a "Washington, D.C." station. There's absolutely zero mention of Baltimore.

And if this station were to give Baltimore a fair amount of attention, why would Washingtonians want to sit through that when they can just tune into WTOP?

Radiodxrichmond makes a great point about staffing, too. No way in hell will this station be able to compete in D.C. with only 1/3 the staff of WTOP.

Weak signal + poor staffing + extremely formidable competitor = FAILURE.

CBS would be much better off making this a Baltimore-centric station, IMO. They'd be the first all-news station in that market, and WBAL would be much easier to knock off than WTOP!
 
Gregg said:
...WLZL currently doesn't even rate a one-share in Baltimore, even though Arbitron says the market is 4.7% Hispanic. Are there signal problems there, too?

...Someone from CBS should go around Washington and Baltimore with a cheap radio, into office buildings and apartment house basements, to see how that 99.1 signal works.
Click to expand...

Item 1: If a station serves a mere fifth of a population, a 1 share is a blessing. Maybe a larger population would reap a bigger rating there. Supply and demand...

Item 2: This actually took place in Cleveland earlier this year - and if Nate Obral is lurking, he can back me up on this one: Prior to 92.3 FM in Cleveland replacing alternative rock with all-sports "The Fan," they had Maxwell, then-classic rock 98.5 FM (WNCX) morning host, do an impromptu afternoon show on 92.3; legend has it that it was to test the strength of 92.3's signal for spoken word programming. Word is, should 92.3's new sports format catch like wildfire, it'll eventually move to the stronger 98.5 signal, either flip-flopping with WNCX or replacing the classic rock format completely. By the way, Maxwell is no longer on the air in Cleveland.
 
Reports say that WTOP is hanging on to it's contract with CBS Radio News, both Top of the Hour and features. This would indicate that CBS will most likely model the new 99.1 FM after WINS-AM in New York. More of a "Headline News" station that will perhaps focus on Maryland. So don't be surprised to hear "All News 99.1 FM. You give us 20 minutes, we'll give you the world!"
 
RadioFanBoy said:
Reports say that WTOP is hanging on to it's contract with CBS Radio News, both Top of the Hour and features. This would indicate that CBS will most likely model the new 99.1 FM after WINS-AM in New York. More of a "Headline News" station that will perhaps focus on Maryland. So don't be surprised to hear "All News 99.1 FM. You give us 20 minutes, we'll give you the world!"
Click to expand...

Im thinking the smart money would be as suggested on another site, is to try and affiliate with WUSA-TV. The only problem would be Gannett, who probably doesnt want to screw with what largely aint broke! I could see WUSA-FM calls and capitalizing off of "9 News Now" slogans.

However why not the simple "CBS News 99.1". It looks like WTOP is ready to start a pissing contest with them and they have plenty of time to do it. So they may try to sue CBS Radio for use of that name since TOP has TOH CBS news. However, TOP owns the desireable cbswashington.com domain so they may be willing to make a deal.

I really picture this getting ugly with CBS losing to WTOP. THEN we will see the return of HFS :)

Radio-x

PS: The smarty-pants at CBS should look at maybe purchasing a suburban VA signal for it to be truly competitive. 95.9 or 104.5 in Fredericksburg or Danny Snyders epic radio failure on 94.3. Without targeting either Baltimore areas or the more rural suburbs of No Va (BTW: Lots of money and commuters there!) they will be fried turkey.

CBS News 99.1...you give us 2 hours of irritated traffic jam listening, we'll give you the world!
 
Ken said:
It was said eariler in the year CBS would want to buy WTOP.
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Of course, CBS wants the nation's top biller. I want to buy it, too. Of course, I can't buy it for what Hubbard would want, and I suspect CBS either found WFSI and that $8.5 million to be a better deal despite the obvious risks in doing an all news startup or Hubbard said, "Sorry, not for sale."
 
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