Entercom Communications missed an opportunity

[DavidZ]

I had made these similar comments in the 96.9 thread earlier and decided to break this out into its own discussion thread.

I really believe that Entercom missed an opportunity with the demise of 96.9 as a talk station in spite of their clever print Ads in today’s Herald (see page 13). The Ad states – There are 96.9 more reasons to listen to WRKO – here are three! And it shows Jeff Kuhner, Rush, and Howie, ending with 680 WRKO – Boston’s ONLY Talk Station!

With WAAF firmly established as a Boston station (they abandoned their city of license years ago), they should have moved the WAAF call letters to 97.7 and brought a simulcast of WRKO to FM on 107.3. This would have immediately had the benefit of grabbing some of the former listeners to WTKK’s talk format and resolved the "after dark" signal issues of 680 AM. Imagine that Howie would be on FM and he wouldn’t be able to whine anymore about the signal challenged WRKO-AM.

And for those that still want WAAF out in Central Massachusetts, I have no trouble getting them on 97.7 in Metrowest or Worcester.

 

[raccoonradio]

Yes true just like they could have stolen the thunder of 98.5 the sports hub by simulcasting WEEI
on 93.7 BEFORE 98.5 changed (the news about Sports Hub came out quite a bit in advance). "Boston's first FM Sports station..WEEI" But it was not to be. Did they not think Sports Hub
would be such a big opponent, or were they doing fine with Mike variety hits? It took them
2 yrs to finally do it. (WBZ-FM debut Aug 09. WEEI-FM 93.7, Sept of '11)

As for WRKO it does go N-S at sunset and Howie jokes about the signal disappearing west of
Kenmore Sq. I would think RKO figures their main thing is days: Kuhner, brokered fiscal, Rush
(was WTKK offered the chance to carry Rush? I think Fybush's column suggests it though CC
may have just gone back to RKO when they killed off 1200) then Howie. Post 7 pm all syndie
with Levin, Doyle (will they go for Savage eventually?) and Coast to Coast. So they could
figure, yeah even with these early sunsets we can do well...and there's WCRN to help with the
post-sunset Howie fans. Maybe post-PM drive isn't as big a deal, but would they like to lure
more listeners, younger listeners, with an FM signal...

or is radio banking on sports and younger music listeners instead of talk..?

Interesting though.

 

[raccoonradio]

They have the WRKO talks app too

 

[itsthesong]

It comes down to - can they make more money having the same station on two signals than they could with two different formats? Most likely not.

 

[HD_Ready]

Now's the time for WRKO to go HD!

 

[MR. JAROME_CALVIN]

I'd say, WRKO would be better off on 97.7, because 97.7, despite their not so strong signal, they can be heard inside some parts of the city, as well as on the Norhshore/Southshore, they have a better signal within inside Boston than 107.3 does

 

[DavidZ]

That's why you leave it as a simulcast. WRKO covers those areas with 680.

 

[raccoonradio]

Where I live in Beverly and where I work in N. Reading (at least on portables) 680 would be a better bet. I was curious to see if I could pick up any HD2 signals on 107.3. HD2? I was barely able
to pick up their main signal (107.3) on that HD portable I have!

 

[OFFICENERD]

107.3 HD 2 just carries WEEI ( fm)- your not missing a thing!

 

[aaronread]

Well, there's a reason why Entercom put the same programming on 97.7 and 107.3; the signals complement each other nicely. 107.3 does not, and never has, reached into the core of the market very well, but it covers a lot of central and eastern Massachusetts with a booming signal. 97.7 from Great Blue Hill covers downtown Boston and the immediate environs quite well. Together, they're excellent coverage. Separately? Eh, not so much.

So you kinda have to start with the premise that 97.7/107.3 are effectively joined at the hip these days.

With that in mind, a simulcast makes little sense. Those FM signals cover an area equal or larger to 680AM, and more importantly, they cover towns/neighborhoods that are a lot more lucrative. Maintaining a simulcast means you're taking two stations' worth of revenue and dropping it to one.

So it might (although probably not) make sense to move WRKO to 97.7/107.3 but then the big question is: what do you do with 680AM at that point? It's a hefty Class B signal that covers too many people to easily make it a dollah-a-hollah station, but it's so limited by it's lack of Metrowest coverage after dark that it's damn hard to make a real profit off it. Entercom already cried uncle on 850 and tossed ESPN Radio on there...what "back up plan" format would possibly be more lucrative than WRKO's existing format? Even if the existing format isn't all that lucrative? They could sell it, I suppose. But I imagine 680's value has taken a nosedive since 2007. I'd be vaguely surprised if it sold for more than $10mil, which is a decent wad of cash but not enough to seriously put a dent in Entercom's existing expenses or its debt load.

Now go to the flip side: Greater Media couldn't make a go of it with talk radio on a single market-covering FM signal. What makes anyone think that WRKO's talk format would magically do SO MUCH better on FM that it's worth throwing away WAAF's revenue stream in the process? That's a pretty high hurdle for a station that has been subject of much derision in the trades and the ratings books.

Entercom has been in lousy situation for years with their signals. ALL of them, individually, have significant limitations; the only true market-covering single-station facilities are owned by CBS, Clear Channel, Greater Media, WGBH, Boston University and Emerson College - none by Entercom. For a long time they had such a cash cow in WEEI 850 that they could afford to overlook problems in the rest of the cluster, but the SportsHub has severely limited that concept and now I have to think their signal "deficiencies," when compared to their competitors, are pinching pretty hard.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

I had made these similar comments in the 96.9 thread earlier and decided to break this out into its own discussion thread.

I really believe that Entercom missed an opportunity with the demise of 96.9 as a talk station in spite of their clever print Ads in today’s Herald (see page 13). The Ad states – There are 96.9 more reasons to listen to WRKO – here are three! And it shows Jeff Kuhner, Rush, and Howie, ending with 680 WRKO – Boston’s ONLY Talk Station!

With WAAF firmly established as a Boston station (they abandoned their city of license years ago), they should have moved the WAAF call letters to 97.7 and brought a simulcast of WRKO to FM on 107.3. This would have immediately had the benefit of grabbing some of the former listeners to WTKK’s talk format and resolved the "after dark" signal issues of 680 AM. Imagine that Howie would be on FM and he wouldn’t be able to whine anymore about the signal challenged WRKO-AM.

And for those that still want WAAF out in Central Massachusetts, I have no trouble getting them on 97.7 in Metrowest or Worcester.

YOU don't have reception issues with 97.7? How does that automatically translate into "no one has reception issues," especially when WKAF's 60dBu contour doesn't even make it past Framingham?

Also, please use all your years of programming expertise to tell us how an angry-white-man talk format, full of hosts who have zero listeners in the under-50 set, is going to automatically succeed just by moving it to FM.

 

[aerie]

Also, please use all your years of programming expertise to tell us how an angry-white-man talk format, full of hosts who have zero listeners in the under-50 set, is going to automatically succeed just by moving it to FM.

I think it's also the ages of the hosts that would turn younger listeners off. Howie and Rush are both in their 60's, Jerry Doyle and Mark Levin are in their mid-50's. The interests of people approaching retirement are not the same as the interests of people just starting out on their own. Are there any young talk show hosts being groomed, or will the genre die out when the current crop of hosts passes on? With soooo many stations nationwide carrying the same few hosts, there must not be many opportunities to break into the business.

 

[Wild and Crazy Radio]

Younger hosts always fail to attract any listeners . Whatever their interests are, they're not down with the listening audience. But older hosts sometimes bomb when they don't seem to have anything to talk about. Rush, Howie and Kuhner rock because they barrage us with info without sounding bored when they do it.

 

[aaronread]

I think it's also the ages of the hosts that would turn younger listeners off. Howie and Rush are both in their 60's, Jerry Doyle and Mark Levin are in their mid-50's.

If that were true, then college radio would have hordes of twentysomethings listening to them by default, while older hosts like Rush would have no young listeners at all. This is demonstrably untrue, so the argument that it's just the host's age that matters is not relevant. Heck, Dr. Demento was in his forties when he was at his peak of appealing to little kids less than a third of his age.

 

[TRF]

I think it's also the ages of the hosts that would turn younger listeners off. Howie and Rush are both in their 60's, Jerry Doyle and Mark Levin are in their mid-50's.

If that were true, then college radio would have hordes of twentysomethings listening to them by default, while older hosts like Rush would have no young listeners at all. This is demonstrably untrue, so the argument that it's just the host's age that matters is not relevant.

Which is not the argument that he's making ('also the ages of the hosts' != 'just the host's age').