Buddy Shula
Joined Jul 23, 2020Last seen 34 minutes ago · Viewing thread Cumulus sells AM to Buddy Shula
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Buffalo Cumulus sells AM to Buddy Shula
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Last seen 34 minutes ago · Viewing thread Cumulus sells AM to Buddy Shula
Radio Aahs (before they became "Aahs World Radio") was much better.
In essence, broadcasters have cast aside the ideas of "public interest, convenience, and necessity" in favor of the pursuit of dollars (or in some cases nickels). It was easier to clear national commercials on syndicated boxes in a closet targeted at a piece of a bigger market than to provide locally targeted service to a smaller community, especially when a Walmart moved into the area and decimated the Main Street businesses that supported local broadcasting. Add the notion that "they'll love big city broadcasters" blathering generalities instead of local talent talking about local events and issues and you have the situation we're stuck with today.
That's exactly what Newton Minow was saying in his vast wasteland speech 60 years ago. That led to the creation of public broadcasting. The goal was to take the profit motive out of broadcasting. After that, the FCC itself started to eliminate various "public interest" requirements. Today we live in a world where even the government isn't focused on public service. The current administration is running the government like a business. I call it the "iHeartization" of the federal government, with massive layoffs. How much attention do you think this FCC will have over matters of "public interest, convenience, and necessity?" One commissioner last week proposed license renewals done by automation and the repurposing of the Media Bureau for other things.
Simington Says FCC Ripe For DOGE-Led Downsizing.
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington and Chief of Staff Gavin Wax call for major reforms at the agency, citing bloat, mission creep, and political bias. In an op-ed, they propose downsizing
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Much of this started, as David has pointed out, with all the stations shoehorned in under Docket 80-90. Those extra stations made the slices of the advertising revenue pie smaller for everyone and that led to stations trying to find ways to maintain their profit margin with lower accounts receivable billing. The concept of "station in a box" started with the small- and unrated markets, with services like Transtar and Satellite Music Network, which were based on the stillborn "SupeRadio" project at ABC.
Then came, as you reference, the "big box" stores, which had the effect of removing potential radio clients. As Walmart, et al expanded into every area where it was a good business model, it started to affect markets of all sizes, right about the time when competing ad platforms such as music streaming services, website banner ads, and the like were beginning to siphon revenue away from traditional media. And that made the "vicious circle" spin even faster as stations cut corners everywhere they could, which led to a lot more automation and syndicated programming.
And part of the problem is that the audience was apathetic about local content. They care more about hearing the music than who presents it. They care more about "sound bites" and celebrity scandals than about the controversy about the local landfill.
The situation we are "stuck with" was years in the making, and even in hindsight I don't know what we could have done to stop it, or at least slow it down. Now, the only solution is to let stations do whatever they need to in order to stay on the air, and if that means "serving the public interest" consists of an hour of public affairs programs at 6:00am on Sunday that also runs on a thousand other stations (often at that same hour) that's going to be more cost-effective than trying to do it in-house, for an audience that by and large tunes out when that content starts playing.
Those who decry the number of stations that have gone permanently silent or gone 24/7 satellite generally don't realize that these stations got to the end of their proverbial rope. Never mind the hue and cry over AM ... given enough time, I foresee a lot of FMs (especially the rimshots) also going silent, in both the over-radioed larger markets and the smaller ones where there isn't enough ad revenue.
Historically it began even earlier, with the growth of FM in the 70s. As choices on the radio dial grew, shares fell. Fewer radio stations had the 20 share books they had enjoyed with AM only. That's when a lot of the companies that founded radio in the 1920s started to get out. Radio has always been a business, but it's a lot easier to fund news departments when your station gets a 20 share. In order to get a 20 share now, a company has to own 5 stations. Even Buddy Shula knows he needs a bigger platform to satisfy his clients. That's partly why he started his ad agency, and why he is adding a second AM in Buffalo.
Americans seem to love Walmart, Burger King, Starbucks and countless other national chains. It's all the same crap everywhere. Radio music formats have always been pretty much the same nationwide. The only local angle was events. As for Sports Talk, people in Alabama want to hear about the Crimson Tide. In Dallas, it's the Cowboys. People in Buffalo only care about The Bills. Nobody is listening to the KB sports format...
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Interesting that you should mention that, A. I have always thought that growth was the impetus for Docket 80-90 in the first place.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I suggest reading this post in another thread that says what I did, with less verbiage.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Simplifying further: The industry saw a new golden egg-laying goose in FM during the 1970s, got greedy by adding more FM stations to get a bigger share of the eggs, then -- to their horror -- discovering (years later) that the goose had a limit on the amount of egg-laying.
So now they are slowly killing the goose.
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I don't agree with that part. I actually have some geese on my property. Like any living animal, geese get old. They only lay eggs for a certain number of years. Then they stop. Then they die. Radio isn't a living thing. But people have found other ways to get what they once got from radio. Those other ways dilute the value of that one thing. One goose was no longer enough in the 70s. Five geese are no longer enough now. The eggs those geese laid have now grown up. The new geese are laying new and different eggs. Having one AM station isn't enough today. That's why Buddy is adding another. He paid less for this new station than he did for WECK.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I think you took my off-the-cuff conclusion and expanded it nicely, A.
I simply didn't do that in the interest of simplification. But those are really good analogies.
I simply didn't do that in the interest of simplification. But those are really good analogies.
True, but WECK came with studios, real estate and Tower. WHLD comes with a relativity expensive tower lease and nothing else. Still no question Buddy got a deal on the station.
When FM began to grow with the simulcast limitation of the later 60's, a fortunate thing happened: most AMs that had limited signals got a chance to have better coverage by focusing on the FM.
There were very few of those companies that exited radio in the 70's. In fact, not that many in the 80s.
Yes, a few missed the boat on the growth of FM, such as Storer and Storz; Storer was still trying to build AM Top 40's like KTNQ well into the 70's and Storz had lost their founder and never grew after 1964.
But most of the other groups were growing... ones like Kluge's Metromedia and Norm Wain and Bob Wiess' Metroplex and even traditional AM operators like Susquehanna.
You are forgetting that radio revenue was growing massively in the period of the 60's through the 80's.
Music stations knew all along that newscasts outside of mornings and community programming was bad. The 80's brought proof that this was, indeed, a fact and most stations tried even harder to hide their news and Public Affairs programming. We did not want news departments because listeners to most formats didn't want news outside of mornings.
No, he needs another station to make more money and to be able to offer additional services, just as he offers outdoor now.
I don't think so, but buddy is here to comment. To me, it looks like Buddy found a solution for local radio and local media by creating an ad agency and offering clients a variety of his own services.
I was thinking about Crosley, which exited radio in 1975. The Buffalo Evening News got out of radio in 1978. GE sold most of its radio stations in the late 70s and was completely out by the mid-80s. National Life sold WSM in 1981. A couple other insurance companies got out around the same time. Of course the big one was NBC selling all radio in 1988. That was the canary in the coal mine.
But there have been sales of stations for a variety of reasons over all the decades.
The venerable Cleveland Plain Dealer sold its last station, WHK, in the late 50's to Kluge; the board chairman of the Plain Dealer, Herman Vail, told me a few years later that he had considered that radio was "over".
Like that example, there were always instances of stations being sold. Sometimes the owner lost faith in radio. Other times the owner was not closely related to the business. And still others happened, like Crosley, when the parent failed. Or like RCA, which dissolved and sold off the pieces.
All along, since the 50's as FCC financial reports revealed, half of all U.S. radio stations did not make a profit.
I recall Nationwide Insurance owned some until the early 90's in several markets. CBS sold all their Buffalo stations long before the "merge or absorption" with Entercom.
The sale price of this AM station is what salesmen used to call--- "A Shameful Sacrifice Price". Cumulus got some pocket change instead of turning it off...
I know, it's so low I almost wish I put a bid in for it.
Nationwide got out around 1998. Once they found out they could get north of $1/2 billion for their properties, they called the broker. Jacor, which had just lost out to CBS on bidding for American Radio Systems, bit and got Nationwide for about $660 million.
From the Simington op-ed @TheBigA linked to:
"Disturbingly, there is credible evidence suggesting that enforcement is not politically neutral: right-leaning broadcasters appear to face disproportionately aggressive scrutiny compared to their left-of-center counterparts.”
He and Carr must not talk often.
"Disturbingly, there is credible evidence suggesting that enforcement is not politically neutral: right-leaning broadcasters appear to face disproportionately aggressive scrutiny compared to their left-of-center counterparts.”
He and Carr must not talk often.