Those who made that assumption obviously had no idea how long the process of getting FCC approval along with the lead time for new programming introduction might be.
I guess those rumor sources had no idea at all about how the radio business works.
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Buffalo Cumulus sells AM to Buddy Shula
- Thread starter exdjted
- Start date
I guess those rumor sources had no idea at all about how the radio business works.
One of them is now the secretary of state.
And another runs the VOA.
The most common misunderstanding of facts today involves the belief that the FCC regulates TV networks, whether they provide content to OTA TV stations or cable "networks" that are not broadcast over the air.
That's honestly stunning. Outside of maybe WAQI, why would Salem have wanted any of those stations? Or anyone else, for that matter?
I continue to maintain my belief that LMN was completely inexperienced, unprepared and helped TelevisaUnivision clear a bunch of deadweight from their portfolio.
And, from all I know, they kept Miami's right-wing "Radio Mambí" the same after they closed the deal.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And it was about as successful as his television network was.
It's kind of my doing for bringing up Audacy in this thread, since he did mention that on Inside Radio. I was trying to be as objective as possible, and just wondering why he brought up the Audacy ownership structure without mentioning that the stream on WECK is powered by an Audacy-owned company. Probably the same reason a lot of stations use Katz despite being an iHeart (Clear Channel) subsidiary for 25 years (and every effort of creating a viable alternative rep firm after Interep's liquidation hasn't worked).
Because business is business. Nobody cares about a streaming company. But the S word scores points with the people he wants this station to reach.
How else can he say to potential listeners that WUSW is better than WBEN, which has decades of name recognition and has live/local talent throughout the day? It's a marketing tactic not unlike political ads... or when Pirate Radio WFLZ aggressively targeted WRBQ.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
But we are talking about something he said in an interview with a trade publication. His potential advertisers aren't reading that.
But it ended up being posted here. The rule today is anything you say can be seen by potential users. You're always talking to them.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
While that is obviously true, I would think that few -- if any -- of Buddy's possible advertisers in Buffalo even know about RD's existence, much less Inside Radio.
Securenet Systems It uses modified Icecast KH on port 80, unfortunately all its accounts are on the same installation. Therefore, it is prone to problems. Meanwhile, Triton is also Icecast with a series of scripts for CDN mounting. Neither of these platforms has migrated to Nginx.
I’m skeptical that some sort of lighter topic trend on WBEN means they’re tilting leftward. Maybe the hosts or audience were just burnt out that day and wanted to talk about sandwiches.
When you're the only talk station in a city, people want you to be all things to all people. We've had threads here where people want to listen to emergency information during a snow storm, but they don't want to be bogged down by national politics. They've spent a long time building that heritage as a news station, and the political talk can interfere with that heritage. So having WUSW come along with no heritage or pretense sort of relieves WBEN of that more divisive aspect. In a way, it's good for them. WBEN can be what KFI is to LA, while WUSW will be KEIB.
We've also had threads here about large markets which haven't been able to really embrace the news/talk format, like Las Vegas. Yet, for some reason, Will Kemp kept trying different things on his relatively new-signal AM there (KMZQ). It was originally a poorly-executed talk radio station from a center-right point of view with mainly syndicated personalities in the late 2000s, then sports for a while, now it's full right-wing talk. I imagine he hasn't learned much about professionalism in radio in the 24 years since he signed on his first station (I imagine KMZQ is a tax writeoff for him, as well as his Payson, Arizona simulcast FM).
Historically, that was what talk radio was. It wasn’t politics free, but, in addition to politics, you could get financial information, news, sports, and more-or-less irrelevant entertainment. The heavy emphasis on politics is relatively new.
I tend to agree with you here. Personally, I'd like to see talk radio go back to what it used to be, but stations obviously wouldn’t be airing so much political talk if it didn’t make money. Plus, the “little bit of this, little bit of that” approach can be expensive. Seems like not so much of the general entertainment talk approach is available on satellite anymore.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I think you just created a good example of the "vicious circle" there, Kent.
No one runs the "everything" version of talk, which lowers the availability of such programming nationally, which causes more of the same because that's the only cost-effective option.
It keeps reminding me of the threads about "Boomer" stations like MeTV FM, The Wow Factor in Phoenix, etc. "No advertiser is willing to buy a 55+ station." Yet, we're here, talking about a talk radio station (the ultimate older-skewing format) as a way to make money.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Spoken word formats are treated differently than music stations by the ad buyers. It's well documented that all-Sports attracts certain advertising categories that don't buy other formats (what comes to mind is that I haven't heard a beer commercial on the radio for years anywhere but on those stations). News, Talk, and hybrids of the two also attract certain advertisers who find the demographics for those formats to be desirable; note that none of this is age-based.
But -- paradoxically -- we still see music formats targeted at over-55s as being undesirable for national advertisers, which is why most successful stations serving older demos survive almost entirely on local buys.