Other way around. Radio show first, with a video simulcast. Same as Mike and the Mad Dog and Francesa solo, post-Russo.
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Good Karma To Lease 880; WCBS News Programming To End
- Thread starter lanceventa
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Remember Merlin? A smallish operator who tried all-news WEMP in NYC. It's now WFAN-FM
Yes I do. They became the 3rd all news operator in a crowded market.
Did their billing ever equal that of WCBS or WINS in the time they were operating? No? Then the financials didn't work.
The question maintains, which you haven't answered - if WCBS was owned by a company that wasn't up to its eyeballs in debt and had the same billing, I suspect the format would remain viable and profitable.
They "tried" all news in the loosest sense of the word. "FM News" was an abject failure run by people who had no idea how to operate the format and changed it repeatedly.
The billing apparently was mainly coming from sports, not news. The billing only matters if it exceeds the expenses.
That same company that's in debt also owns several other all news stations, including WINS. They aren't doing this to any of them.
It's really hard to have this discussion without specifics. The company has the specifics. This was their decision. If someone else wants to start an all news station in NYC, there's an FM frequency available.
That's what you get with a smallish company. I was reading about the death of NewsNet in Michigan. A smallish company that tried to do news.
Yes, and this is the point I made above. Did you read my post or are you just on auto-pilot being contrary for the hell of it?
WXIS - Wikipedia
WGL (AM) - Wikipedia
WKVI - Wikipedia
Those stations are WKVI, WGL and WXIS.
Apparently there are all-news stations that are managed by local interests and they are not tied to Audacy as of August 2024.
Good Karma has WTMJ, which is pretty much all news in the morning and afternoon with general talk in between the newscasts. It's the closest thing Milwaukee has to News radio. Not 24/7 news by any means but it has a lot of the news elements such as repeat traffic and weather, sports, etc.
Home
wtmj.com
Thank you for the clarification, btw 🙂
I read all of your posts.
Great. Do you want to answer the question or pose non-sequiturs?
You assume another company could achieve the same level of billing. There are other assumptions in your question. Some might call it a leading question.
As I said, a large chunk of that billing came from sports, and the station will continue to air the sports, and Audacy will continue to make money from it. When the yearly financials are released, I expect the station will still make over $20 million, without incurring the newsgathering operating expenses.
I will try to simplify, they technically have no debt right now. You only pay "necessary current expenses to conduct business" only unless they go Chapter 7 (not going to happen). If you have time to read the filings (literally hundreds of not a few thousand pages) you can see Audacy's collections (cash coming in) and cash expenses. There could be a large amount of cash accumulated. Sooner or later after the lawyers bill enough hours to put their kids thru an Ivy League College, there will be an agreement between the debt holders with or without the current management and the Judge.
All are covered either by AFTRA or Writers Guild contracts that were signed in 2022.
But they still won't have jobs after the 26th.
WCBS' billing was flat from 2018 to 2019 (before the Mets to with the Mets).
Both WINS and WCBS have seen their revenue decline about equally from 2018 to 2023 (~$40m to ~$30m).
If WCBS's billing "came from sports" wouldn't we expect to see a bump when they grabbed the Mets contract?
Digging deeper - Andrew Marchand reported in the NYP in 2018 that WOR had lost money on the prior Mets contract, and that WCBS subsequently outbid them for the 7 year deal starting in 2019.
So are the Mets really generating incremental revenues for WCBS? Hard to tell from the top line numbers that have been reported.
880 WCBS is in 19th place in ages 6+, which likely means it isn't even in the top 20 in persons 25 to 54.
I personally would've liked to have seen 1010's programming shift to 880 to keep all-news programming easily accessible to outlying areas, but one or more stakeholders evidently thought that was unfeasible.
The $25 million to $30 million in WCBS revenue isn't disappearing (again, I am dubious the real-time run rate YTD is on track for such a high number given 880's truly awful ratings). Only a fraction will be lost. Mets baseball revenue is sticking with Audacy. WINS will be able to charge higher ad rates. GKB will probably pay several million in rent annually to Audacy, too. Wouldn't surprise me if that number is $5 million or above. News anchors, producers, meteorologists, and others will be downsized, likely eliminating a few million (maybe more) in per annum expense.
I personally would've liked to have seen 1010's programming shift to 880 to keep all-news programming easily accessible to outlying areas, but one or more stakeholders evidently thought that was unfeasible.
The $25 million to $30 million in WCBS revenue isn't disappearing (again, I am dubious the real-time run rate YTD is on track for such a high number given 880's truly awful ratings). Only a fraction will be lost. Mets baseball revenue is sticking with Audacy. WINS will be able to charge higher ad rates. GKB will probably pay several million in rent annually to Audacy, too. Wouldn't surprise me if that number is $5 million or above. News anchors, producers, meteorologists, and others will be downsized, likely eliminating a few million (maybe more) in per annum expense.
I suspect not.
Companies that are up to their eyeballs in debt are unlikely to touch something that has legacy, because their executives are too busy bailing water out of their boat to actually strategize. So marginal divisions of their business skate by without much thought.
I have written on here many times through the years that maintaining two all-news stations in NYC was a poor decision by David Field & Co. The ratings of WCBS had been a shadow of 1010 WINS for a long time, even before 1010 WINS got the 92.3 FM simulcast.
What I'm saying: A company with attentive executives would have ditched WCBS 880 long ago and focused on their more successful brand, 1010 WINS.
No, because WCBS was selling ads in the time slots when the Mets aired, the year before they acquired the Mets rights.
WCBS was running 22-24 minutes an hour of inventory outside Mets games, and ~9 minutes an hour during Mets games.
The Mets are probably worth several million in revenue to WCBS, but it's not much more than what they were already doing. The story would be different if this was an affiliate in a smaller market (e.g. Wilkes-Barre), where every ad you sell during the baseball game is money you wouldn't otherwise have booked.
BTW, Good Karma was paying a million a month to lease WEPN-FM. Even if you assume WHSQ will fetch a third of that, Audacy is very likely to come out ahead compared to the all-news format of WCBS.
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