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How Boston AM's will either go silent, or already are?

nowradioguy said:
Some of us listeners in the 'burbs where 'BZ comes in strong but is subject to local static would probably welcome a nice clean copy of WBZ's audio for their homes and cars.
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I just said, in my home office near Palm Springs, Republic of California, "Alexa, play WBZ radio Boston" and instantly got, well, WBZ in Boston.

I think station owners believe that the few people in areas they care about inside the Metro Survey Area have plenty of alternatives. They don't need a whole FM to be given to WBZ's programming yet.
nowradioguy said:
Right, but that's my wish, and "the business" is all about "revenue", so forget what I just wrote above.
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Yep, just like your drug store, your doctor, your auto mechanic. Money has to come from somewhere or we would be trading some of the wheat harvest for a hog.
 
DavidEduardo said:
I just said, in my home office near Palm Springs, Republic of California, "Alexa, play WBZ radio Boston" and instantly got, well, WBZ in Boston.

I think station owners believe that the few people in areas they care about inside the Metro Survey Area have plenty of alternatives. They don't need a whole FM to be given to WBZ's programming yet.

Yep, just like your drug store, your doctor, your auto mechanic. Money has to come from somewhere or we would be trading some of the wheat harvest for a hog.
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The only place where it stinks with the streaming model is for people who don't have unlimited data on their mobile plans. Many people do, yet many people don't. With that, I agree that a station like WBZ doesn't necessarily need an FM signal, with the combination of streaming and HD substations.
 
Least said:
I agree that a station like WBZ doesn't necessarily need an FM signal, with the combination of streaming and HD substations.
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My take is that iHeart has more of a commitment to preserving big AMs than other companies. They are less likely to simulcast an AM on an FM than Audacy. At the same time, iHeart is pushing its streaming platform heavily, so they'd prefer people stream WBZ.
 
TheBigA said:
My take is that iHeart has more of a commitment to preserving big AMs than other companies. They are less likely to simulcast an AM on an FM than Audacy. At the same time, iHeart is pushing its streaming platform heavily, so they'd prefer people stream WBZ.
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I didn't think of that, but I agree with you as I read your statement.
 
TheBigA said:
Sure, and WABC didn't drop music until 1982. The point is that they continued to provide great programming until the audiences left. AM stations kept doing what had made them successful until it was no longer viable.
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I can remember some news coverage of WABC leaving the music format, and talking to people who were sad about the demise of the format. When asked "when was the last time you listened to WABC, the answere were "when I graduated hight school 7 years ago".

WLS's music format went out with a whimper as they added more and more talk before the official flip to Talkradio 890. (the music format had been on FM since the early 80s the way it was).

CKLW added talk and sports along with the music as the CRTC refused to allow them to flip the music format to FM. Pat Holiday tried one last kamikaze attempt to revive top 40 on the Big 8 before "black Friday", mass layoffs and a flip to Music of Your Life.
 
gr8oldies said:
iHeart is still stuck with some of those AMs from the early Oil speculator days of consolodation.
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Randy had the idea that a company could buy in every significant market in a state and sell as a group. They did this to the greatest extent in Ohio, buying stations in towns you've never heard of. They tried to sell the concept to advertisers, based on the idea that TV was bought that way. It did not work.
 
gr8oldies said:
CKLW added talk and sports along with the music as the CRTC refused to allow them to flip the music format to FM.
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And that is because the CRTC had rules about maximum song repetition on FM that prohibited Top 40 FMs at the time.
 
TheBigA said:
My take is that iHeart has more of a commitment to preserving big AMs than other companies. They are less likely to simulcast an AM on an FM than Audacy.
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Clear Channel had some bad experiences with replication of AM talk on FM. San Diego was a very good example, where they tried putting KOGO on an FM and it did nothing to make the numbers grow or to bring in younger demos.
 
DavidEduardo said:
And that is because the CRTC had rules about maximum song repetition on FM that prohibited Top 40 FMs at the time.
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Pat Holiday put together a format "94 Fox FM" that checked all the boxes, hit/nonhit, Cancon,repetition, etc, etc, which the CRTC preliminarily approved but then only allowed 4 hours a day. Obviously r=that didn't work with the other 20 hours being Big Band
 
gr8oldies said:
Pat Holiday put together a format "94 Fox FM" that checked all the boxes, hit/nonhit, Cancon,repetition, etc, etc, which the CRTC preliminarily approved but then only allowed 4 hours a day. Obviously r=that didn't work with the other 20 hours being Big Band
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There is nothing worse than having a government regulate taste.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Randy had the idea that a company could buy in every significant market in a state and sell as a group.
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Randy had a lot of great ideas that didn't work. He proved it when he owned stations himself a few years ago.

Randy was not an original Clear Channel employee. They inherited him when they bought Jacor. The fact that he only lasted a couple years after they bought the company says a lot.
 
I think that IHeart will blow up either Jam'n 94.5 or Kiss 108 FM and move WBZ's News format to either 94.5 or 107.9. And then they'll close AM 1030 down.
 
Retro said:
WXKS-FM is going nowhere! WJMN on the otherhand...
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IN that case, WJMN will be the one who has its format blown up. WBZ will park its news format onto 94.5 and use that as a simulcast. And on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, they'll do 30 hours of Holiday music.
 
blackgold said:
IN that case, WJMN will be the one who has its format blown up. WBZ will park its news format onto 94.5 and use that as a simulcast. And on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, they'll do 30 hours of Holiday music.
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Hey, works for me! My personal choice for Top 40/Rhythmic, or their variation is "Hot 96.9." It is my opinion, that we do not really need Jam'n around anymore at all.
 
TheBigA said:
Randy had a lot of great ideas that didn't work. He proved it when he owned stations himself a few years ago.

Randy was not an original Clear Channel employee. They inherited him when they bought Jacor. The fact that he only lasted a couple years after they bought the company says a lot.
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I'm sure the buying spree was in order to engineer move-ins, which he had some success with in Ohio (Chillicothe and Marion into Columbus most notably). I mean, what in the world did Clear Channel need with a graveyarder and a daytimer in Crossville, TN?
 
gr8oldies said:
I mean, what in the world did Clear Channel need with a graveyarder and a daytimer in Crossville, TN?
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I don't know about that particular situation, but they often bought groups of stations, and then got stuck with boat anchors from within those groups. It took years to get rid of them. Some ended up in the Aloha Trust.
 
gr8oldies said:
I'm sure the buying spree was in order to engineer move-ins, which he had some success with in Ohio (Chillicothe and Marion into Columbus most notably). I mean, what in the world did Clear Channel need with a graveyarder and a daytimer in Crossville, TN?
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Very few of the small market buys were to engineer move-ins. Most were to create state-wide buys, but that never worked. They put a lot of money in that concept, but got little results despite major campaigns at the ad agency level to "buy the whole state".

They even got Arbitron to compile state and regional ratings summaries.
 
TheBigA said:
I don't know about that particular situation, but they often bought groups of stations, and then got stuck with boat anchors from within those groups. It took years to get rid of them. Some ended up in the Aloha Trust.
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This is a small market an hour west of Knoxville and didn't come with any Knoxville stations. CC was buying like "got a CB? Here's $50,000!" I remember being in Crossville for a visit and hearing the GM voice a spot for a print shop, with "We've used (print shop) name for years, and we did not have to change printers after the national company came in".

Knoxville escaped Jacor/Clear Channel/iHeart completely as far as I know. I would guess we have Mr. Pirkle to thank for that.
 
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