Robert Feder had in his robservations about Cumulus Media, that owns WLS AM has interest in buying WGN Radio https://www.robertfeder.com/2018/12/10/robservations-wls-owner-talks-interest-buying-wgn-radio/ , it is the lead story in his Robservations. And personally I don't see how they would be a good fit as they like to have syndicated talk shows, and WGN Radio has been pretty much live and local.
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Cumulus Media buying WGN Radio
- Thread starter staggmovie
- Start date
Just want to point out the subject line here is a bit misleading. Cumulus isn't buying WGN. In fact as of now, the station isn't even for sale.
As I said in the other thread, Cumulus could save itself a lot of money by simply stealing a few of their hosts. Much cheaper than buying another AM.
As I said in the other thread, Cumulus could save itself a lot of money by simply stealing a few of their hosts. Much cheaper than buying another AM.
Or at lease they are thinking abut it, because isn't too late to change the subject title
Oh, yeah. There is a lot of syndicated talk available out there.
Syndicated talk is doing so well at WLS and WIND, isn't it? Sort of predictable results.
It's cheap and does well enough. Cheaper than paying for an entire staff of live and local talkers. WGN-AM as it exists right now is a rarity for a reason in 2018.
An AM talk station getting a 3 share is also a rarity in 2018. Take a look at New York, for example. The only AM talk stations that get good ratings are those with local staffs, such as KFI or WLW. Blow out the staff, and you drop to a 1 share, like WABC or WLS. So is a 1 share good enough?
From what I've seen, the current management at Cumulus has not programmed by firing local staffs. That was the calling card of the previous CEO.
There are plenty of 3 share and above AM talkers. Here are the ones in the top 100 markets.
WLW
WTMJ
KMOX
WSB
WTIC
KFBK
WTAM
WISN
WTVN
KSL
KOA
WBZ (news and talk)
KOGO
WCCO
WPRO
KLBJ
KDKA
WJR
WOAI
WKRC
KTLK
KFI
KTRH
WREC
WFLA
KIRO
WBT
WNIS
There are 29 more that average over a 2 share as well. There might be more were it not for the fact that lots of markets don't have any full-market day and night AM signals, in which case the issue is the facility, not the format.
How many of them rely mainly on syndicated hosts? That was the context of my post.
The second sentence clearly mentions a couple of the stations in your list.
Outside of "really big" stations in "really big" markets (with credit to Ed Sullivan), most of those stations have a mix of syndicated and local shows.
The typical smaller market station like WOAI have Rush and Hannity and others, and a bit of local content.
In the context of my post, if new ownership of WGN were to blow out local hosts and replace them with syndication, neither Rush nor Hannity are available.
So WGN would be forced to run 4th string syndication, likely long forms shows from the Fox Radio Network, currently not cleared in Chicago, now repped by Cumulus. IMHO that's not the way to preserve a 3 share in market #3.
Let me see if I got this right...
Cincinnati
Milwaukee
St. Louis
Atlanta
Hartford
Sacramento
Cleveland
Milwaukee
Columbus
Salt Lake City
Denver
Boston
San Diego
Minneapolis
Providence
Austin
Pittsburgh
Detroit
San Antonio (flagship for iHeartMedia)
Cincinnati (co-owned with WLW)
Twin Cities?
Los Angeles
Houston
Memphis
Tampa
Seattle
Charlotte
Norfolk?
Although in the last few weeks, they've dropped quite a few of those syndicated programs, including Phil Valentine, in order to make room for Fox News Radio shows.
But don't they have to pay to play a syndicated talk show's show, I don't know how that works. Other then WGN Radio has been pretty much a live and local radio show, whit very limited to no syndicated programming. The only syndicated programming on WGN Radio's airwaves are a 1 hour block on Sunday mornings, the rest are all hosts that are live in their studios, in less they are doing a remote broadcast. Like John Williams this week, is doing his Sox on the beach broadcasts where he is broadcasting live from Mexico, and he will be there through Friday's show. Not sure if he plans to be back in the WGN Radio studios for his usual Saturday morning show when not preempted by sports. And Roe Conn sometimes does remote broadcasts from the United Center before a Chicago Blackhawks home game.
Yes, that's my point.
To run a syndicated show, the station has to give up half of it's advertising inventory to the syndicator. So they may not have to pay the talent, but they make only half of the money during the show. So it costs money to run syndication. Unless you're so poorly rated that you can't sell it anyway. That's not the case with WGN, and it's why they prefer not to run syndication.
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