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Good Karma To Lease 880; WCBS News Programming To End

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TheBigA said:
They're likely not in a position to buy 880 outright. The deal they made with Disney for 1050 was a real good deal. So it's good to hold onto it.

www.insideradio.com

Price For Good Karma’s 3-Station Deal With ESPN: $15 Million.

Last week’s announcement from Good Karma Brands that it will buy The Walt Disney Company’s ESPN Radio sports stations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago included lots of details
www.insideradio.com www.insideradio.com
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1050 is still an AM signal with mediocre coverage. Chances are they will probably get the best deal selling it now than by waiting a few years when it gets further and further devalued and it risks having a WWGK-level fate.

880 is essentially being leased to simulcast the "ESPN New York" digital platform, which might only need three years, if that. Good Karma doesn't need to buy it, but they needed a deal that wasn't cost-prohibitive like 98.7 was. And again, this added additional sports rights that help the digital platform.
 
Nathan Obral said:
Why the WHSQ calls? And what does Good Karma do with WEPN?
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If Good Karma keeps WEPN and simply adds 880 as a cluster mate as some have speculated, then W Hudson Square Q-something. Q Sports? Q880? BetQL?

Having a cluster mate would give them a second signal for overflow games and Good Karma does run some other formats, primarily in Wisconsin.

EDIT:
NYCsporty said:
Good Karma wasting no time getting ready for the switch....
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OK, never mind...
 
Theater of My Mind said:
If Good Karma keeps WEPN and simply adds 880 as a cluster mate as some have speculated, then W Hudson Square Q-something. Q Sports? Q880? BetQL?

Having a cluster mate would give them a second signal for overflow games and Good Karma does run some other formats, primarily in Wisconsin.
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The Wisconsin stations are rare exceptions. WTMJ was basically gifted to them by Scripps, WGKB is Black-focused talk that is more of a pet project format (as noble as it is), and WBEV-FM has been the heritage "full-service" format in Beaver Dam, where Good Karma is headquartered at. Otherwise it's a chain of ESPN Radio stations, almost all of them formerly owned by Disney itself, and primarily in the Midwest.

The WHSQ calls only exist because Audacy needed something to replace the WCBS calls in this level of haste; per the SEC agreement between them and CBS, they probably had to drop "WCBS" upon a format change. "WHSQ" probably doesn't mean anything and don't suggest anything for the future. Heck, Audacy could have renamed it WODS, WAAF or WHFS and it'd be the same thing.

As for overflow, is it worth it holding onto an extra AM station just for a few games that could easily be purchased on another station like a WBBR via time-buy?

Edit: here's the SEC document, and yes, there are strict stipulations as to how the CBS-owned call signs could be shared.
 
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Nathan Obral said:
might be quality, but unless there's an inherited contract from this deal, 880 will disappear entirely from the public Nielsen books because Good Karma ended their subscriptions chain-wide. So how does anyone even try to gauge their success at that point?
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As Audacy still owns the station and GK is leasing it I’d assume 880 AM would still be part of Audacy’s subscription to Nielsen as I think their subscription has to include all the stations they own unless there is a leasing exception
 
I can't wait to hear Howie Rose say we are listening to the WHSQ Mets radio network 😊. I guess maybe he will say Audacy instead.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
If Good Karma keeps WEPN and simply adds 880 as a cluster mate as some have speculated, then W Hudson Square Q-something. Q Sports? Q880? BetQL?
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Simpler: W-HudsonSQuare. I agree it's nothing more than a placeholder set of calls that happened to be available. It could have been WZYX or WZYZ, if either of those were available, for all the [three seconds once-an-hour] use they'll be getting.

(EDIT: And they're not. One's an AM, the other's an FM, both somewhere in Tennessee.)
 
Weiserguy said:
Does this move automatically turn WCBS-FM/101.1 into "WCBS", similar to what happened when WNEW/1130 got sold to Bloomberg and the "-FM" suffix disappeared from WNEW-FM? Or would Audacy specifically need to file for a change of calls, assuming they even wanted this to happen?
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Last I knew, it would have to be applied for.
 
Weiserguy said:
Does this move automatically turn WCBS-FM/101.1 into "WCBS", similar to what happened when WNEW/1130 got sold to Bloomberg and the "-FM" suffix disappeared from WNEW-FM? Or would Audacy specifically need to file for a change of calls, assuming they even wanted this to happen?
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Paramount Global owns the "WCBS" callsign as it's a registered trademark so they should have first dibs.
 
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