The largest venue in the NYC metro is probably MetLife Stadium. That holds 82,500 people. You need WAY more than that many listeners to have a remotely successful radio station.
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Country for Frisco,zilch for NYC
- Thread starter JoeBenjamin
- Start date
The market is important to have the content cleared. Cumulus understood that. Audacy looked at it strictly from a local sales viewpoint.
The record labels and the CMA both recognize the value of having their content in NY. But it still wasn't enough for Audacy.
There was an earlier post that stated WNSH took in 7 million dollars in 2014-15. That's not long after the Country station signed on. Can anyone post what it earned just before Cumulus traded it to Audacy? By that time it had been more established and I believe had higher ratings.
And yes, if Audacy had taken a more national sales approach, they should have been able to bill a number of Nashville record labels and promoters of the various Country artists (not to mention NJ businesses). New York is the largest consumer of Country recordings.
Also, unlike Cumulus/Nash, I don't think Audacy sponsored any Country concerts in New York. Concerts can be a good source of additional revenue.
And yes, if Audacy had taken a more national sales approach, they should have been able to bill a number of Nashville record labels and promoters of the various Country artists (not to mention NJ businesses). New York is the largest consumer of Country recordings.
Also, unlike Cumulus/Nash, I don't think Audacy sponsored any Country concerts in New York. Concerts can be a good source of additional revenue.
They did not "make" $2 million. They billed $2 million, and obviously lost money.
Ratings for a format that is not deemed necessary by ad buyers don't help... and the station was way, way outside the top 10 to 12 in ratings in any key demo and few buys go any deeper than that.
Ad buyers don't generally and necessarily buy the program content, although there are some formats that are harder to sell like alternative rock and rightist talk. The fact is that Nash did not rank high enough in any demographic cell to be a "must buy".
The billing peaked in 2014 in the mid 6's. From there, it dropped every year thereafter.
The Cumulus sale to Entercom was consummated in April, 2019. In 2108 it billed (not "earned"), about $5.2 million. It dropped by nearly 30% more in the transfer year... which is not unusual due to staff leaving, uncertainty, etc. In other words, it was steeply declining in every year that Cumulus owned it.
All along it averaged about a 2.2 to 2.1 share 25-54. That is around 18th or 19th in the market, and just not good enough to get it on buys. It had no extra-strong cell within 25-54, either.
They were already getting all the concert money there was for the market, and record label artist support on radio is less and less all the time. That is not a big enough category to make a significant difference anyway.
Little NJ area businesses that don't buy with an agency can't afford what is nearly a full market radio station. And businesses that cover large areas of NJ will have an agency.
Keep in mind that concerts that advertise as "WXXX presents" are usually not really station concerts. They are, at most, revenue sharing deals so that the "presents" is legal.)
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If you live in nyc you'll know that hardly anyone is aware of our listens to country music. Radii discussions aside, I'd be willing to bet that 95% of concert attendees come from outside the 5 boroughs if not more. Not to mention that concert antendece doesn't sell ad buys.
Audacy doesn't seem to take as much of a national approach to its branding as some of the other big conglomerates. As far as I know they don't have a syndication arm, and they don't really have a stable of national stars that they build brands and national sales strategies around either.
Cumulus had a national brand strategy with NASH, and if iHeart hypothetically had a county station in NYC they would surely clear Bobby Bones in the morning as they do in many other markets. That would make more sense than trying to program and sell country locally in a difficult country market like NYC, like Audacy did.
Even with Audacy's Alt stations, which is as close as I think they get to a partially national brand, they don't carry in-house national talent across the stations in that format. They're now rolling out Elliot Segal across a number of them, but he originates at iHeart's WWDC and is picked up by Audacy from the outside syndicator.
Audacy does VT some of its in-house talent across various markets but that's not really the same as national star talent with strong nationwide name recognition and a national sales strategy. Audacy seems to trail in that respect, or maybe their corporate philosophy is just to keep things more localized. At least that's my perception.
From what I read, they were already getting that label money and tour promo money by virtue of being a trade reporter for BDS and Mediabase. The money wasn't music, and they weren't able to convert the concert promotion into revenue. The Audacy country station in Houston did a much better job. i blame a lot of it on a very NY-centric approach on the part of sales. These were old guard former-CBS folks who mainly do new/talk/sports.
Prior buying CBS, Entercom was a very traditional local radio company, built on local sales, and no syndication. Scott Shannon does a national show with United Stations. They didn't get a syndication group when they bought CBS. Most of the CBS radio network infrastructure stayed with Westwood One, which was managed by CBS in the 90s, but released in 2006. So Entercom is really starting from scratch, and they are way behind in the process.
Regardless country didn't warrant a station in nyc. Was never going to be a true money maker
Not every format is going to be a money maker. As I said, Cumulus had that part figured out. Audacy didn't.
The music isn't the problem here, so don't blame the music for the failure.
But the NYC radio market is much more than just the 5 boroughs. It is two counties on LI, three north of the city, half of one in CT and 9 counties in NJ (error corrected).
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Huh? If previous posts are correct and at it's height WNSH billed only 7k, if it isn't the music why exactly did it fail? Why have countless other country stations failed in nyc?
You do know country music isn't popular in New York?
Of course but I was responding to the poster who claimed that country concerts selling out couldn't all be from the suburbs
Also Northern NJ where I actually heard NASH / Country 94.7 being played in more places than I expected.
No, it is just not popular enough to get a station with that format into the group of stations that do well enough in 25-54 to be frequent if not "must" buys.
In the market you mean. In the 5 boroughs really not at all.
WHN didn't fail. It was well programmed, it was a Top 10 station, and very profitable for it's owners.
WYNY 103.5 didn't fail. The only reason the station was sold was because the owner was about to merge with CBS, and the station would push the company over ownership limits.
There are only a handful of formats that can get ratings and revenue in NYC. That's pretty obvious. But I think if iHeart could somehow buy one more FM, they'd choose country as the format.
For all practical purposes, there are no ad buys that look just at the 5 boroughs. Agencies buy "markets". The few direct buys you will find in big markets like NYC are small businesses that do not have market-wide outlets and clients that look for cheap, negotiated rates such as accident law firms.
Even clients that have only partial market coverage with their outlets may have an agency which will pick media that delivers the target area efficiently without wasting money on useless coverage.
If anyone remembers back to Hills supermarkets on LI in the later 70's, we had an agency that bought local media... local print, LI radio, and used shoppers and other methods to reach just Long Island consumers. Back then, even the NYC newspapers had LI editions that ran only ads for that area.
WYNY 103.5 had been owned by Westwood One from 1988-1993, then was sold to Broadcast Partners, which sold the station to Evergreen Media in May 1995. Evergreen ended the Country format in the early morning hours of 2/5/1996. After stunting for 5 days, the "Dance-CHR" format debuted on Sat. 2/10/1996.
I believe you were referring to Infinity Broadcasting (which did merge with CBS Radio effective on 12/31/1996).
Infinity and/or CBS Radio were not involved with any transactions regarding WYNY in that time period.
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