In the Chicago market Audacy is selling the land of the legacy WMAQ/KYW transmitter site and moving the diplex pair WSCR and WBBM to the 1160AM site owned by Salem Broadcasting. The current tower is aprox. 750Ft tall giving WSCR the largest groundwave signal in the Midwest if not the entire country. WBBM was added to this site diplexing after their site was sold off for land profit about 5 years ago. The move to the 1160AM site will degrade both the WSCR and WBBM coverage area due to the shorter than recommended tower hight around 150FT.You are correct in the unspoken fact (that a lot of the uninitiated are unaware of) that 660 and 880 are still diplexed after all these years. The tower site is in the Bronx.
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If you switch to satellite images on that link, you'll see that it's essentially a very small separated part of the island, accessed by a single bridge on Terrace St.; the tower is the only thing there, and would be a hard sell to anyone other than a billionaire who might want to put a megamansion on it.
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Good Karma To Lease 880; WCBS News Programming To End
- Thread starter lanceventa
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They still have the deal with Beasley for WCTC and several other stations at least for Rangers & Knicks.
The other thing is that their main platform will be the app. That is where they see the future.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
At least we never have heard of anyone listening to the news on a cassette. 😝
Though no one invited him, John Catsimatidis entered the chat to say that he had a deal with Audacy earlier this year to acquire WCBS, but it fell through. That was according to a story published yesterday (8/26) in Barrett Media...which has apparently been wiped from their site.
Just in case it resurfaces:
Just in case it resurfaces:
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
For something to be removed that quickly from a site, one of two things become suspiciously probable: Either it was something that was posted without required approval of higher ups, or subsequent inquiries determined there were factual inaccuracies.
I'm content to file it under "fantasy scenarios".
When I figure out how, you'll change your mind. I'll make sure to link from somewhere on this site.
BQ's midday Newsline was the only show that took additional production staff (a booker).
I'd refer back to an earlier post - if for many years the substantive differentiating factor between WCBS and WINS was the coverage of the suburbs (aligned with WCBS' signal strength) as WCBS walked back their reporting resources in the suburbs, that differentiating factor went away.
Towards the end they were both primarily covering news in NYC, with the same reporters. The differentiator went from being the what to the how.
In fact at one time WCBS had a "New Jersey bureau." Perhaps shared with TV. I wonder if the change in focus was accompanied by a drop in suburban advertising.
Back when Audacy flipped WNSH to its current WXBK, a trade reported that advertising on the country station was down to $2 million a year. That's a fraction of what a typical NYC station should make. It was a quarter of what Cumulus was billing with the same station. My sense then was they didn't have any sales people in the suburbs. If you're not selling to the suburbs, then you're probably not reporting on them either. And vice versa.
John Catsimatidis has a habit of saying a lot of things to hear himself speak. From what I've learned today, he did make an offer to buy 880. Audacy had no intent to sell and only wanted to lease. Cats decided to use this to make an attack on WCBS and its staffers after it was put down and blame "liberal politics" by invoking Soros' name even though he had absolutely nothing to do with it.
As to why they deleted the article, I can't answer that. But pay attention and you'll notice most of their non-Sports related news content is simply rewritten from RadioInsight, Country Aircheck, and a couple other publications sometimes completely plagiarized. If it was my guess, WABC people saw the people calling out the BS he was spewing and asked the story to be pulled.
Relatedly, what killed WPLJ was directly related to the launch of Nash-FM. Pre 94.7, WPLJ dominated sales in North Jersey. After the launch of Nash, Cumulus focused the Country sales where the signal was strongest and tweaked PLJ's programming and sales target to the city and Long Island. PLJ around 2013/14 moved from a Pop/Alternative leaning Hot AC to a more Pop/Rhythmic base similar to what KTU and Fresh 102.7 were doing at the time. Its sales never rebounded from that. There was even that brief stretch in 2015 where WNSH added artists such as John Mayer, Plain White T’s, Kelly Clarkson, Counting Crows, and Hootie & The Blowfish to its playlist to appease those disgruntled PLJ advertisers and try to get them moved to 94.7.
Chicken and the egg, right?
Audacy cut budgets repeatedly, even pre-COVID, resulting in fewer resources at all of their all-news stations.
The NJ beat reporter (there two in 2015, zero by 2020), and CT beat reporter positions evaporated.
Did the cuts happen and the drop in advertising revenue follow, or did the drop in suburban advertising happen first causing them to focus their reporting on NYC?
Chicken and the egg.
And the recent trends in ratings showed two things:
WINS may benefit from the loss of WCBS in the news arena, which can allow for a rate increase.
WCBS' rating "share" in the purely news blocks had fallen since WINS added FM to the point that it was below a 1 share which is the equivalent of a 0.0 rating.
Here's my view: If you want advertising, you have to go out and get it. The advertisers aren't throwing money at radio stations. You need boots on the ground. Are you familiar with the famous New Yorker cartoon about the New York view of the world? It stopped at the Hudson River. If that was the mentality, then it didn't matter which came first.
As did everybody. Inflation adjusted radio revenue is off by over 65% since 2004.
There is so little local direct "suburban" advertising in the top 10 or so markets that such a consideration is not germane.
The issue here is that there are fewer and fewer independent local advertisers due to the effects of web merchants and big box stores that don't buy local media much or at all. Even car dealers now buy as regional associations, and not as much as individual stores.
All revenue is off, and NY radio is bought as a market for most buys unless the business is very localized, such as "Long Island only" such as was the case with Hills markets decades ago.
Actually, a few stations such as KNAX have greater daytime groundwave coverage.
But both will have "all that is necessary" in the Chicago Metro Survey Area. It does not matter if they have a signal in Peoria or Rockford as there is no revenue there and the stations are not going to pay for the local ratings anyway.
I considered posting the article here, but I changed my mind. It turned to be a wise move after all.
Can't remember who said it, but someone here said that 880 was better on Long Island that 1010 WINS. The ground wave along Long Island Sound may be strong enough to overcome the skywave fading near the shoreline. Maybe they are after the Long Island listeners once it gets past the limits of FM signals. I know there are some first adjacent FMs that are strong near Riverhead. Some prediction sites show that the New York City Area FMs are not that strong toward the far end of Long Island.
Barrett Media is doing a whole lot of tush-kissing with Cats and Red Apple Media as a whole. And we should be lucky nothing materialized beyond talks, because the last thing we need is a copycat version of WABC at 880.
But Cats didn't top the "look at me, here I am" comments of his morning host, the self-proclaimed "WCBS slayer" Sidney Rosenberg.
But the population density declines in proportion to the distance from the East River. So that area of Sag Harbor and the Hamptons that used to be a sub-set rated market in the sub-set rated Long Island market have very few people compared to those cities, towns and villages closest to Manhattan.
There's no particular reason to think reporters in a ZIP code and ad sales in that ZIP code are correlated.
The whole industry has been moving rapidly away from beat reporters. And when I say industry, I include television and newspapers too, not just the handful of all news radio outlets. The industry sees it as a cost savings to have mostly reporters who are dispatched by the assignment editor.
But the biggest change in "suburban" advertising in the last 15 years is new, more efficient advertising methods. A jewelry chain with locations only in New Jersey has no reason to spend big money with WCBS reaching listeners in Queens or further out Long Island, who are unlikely to go to Jersey for shopping.
Those newer methods are primarily online advertisements with YouTube, Amazon, Yelp, Facebook and others. Even though the cost per impression can be quite high, knowing the subject had some interest in your products is
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