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I'm gonna make a prediction

Just an idle thought ... how do you think a format of "real" Christmas music might do as a one-month break from the usual for conservative talk stations, whose audiences likely agree with the anti-"Happy Holidays" rhetoric of the right? Not classical Christmas music sung by opera singers and choirs, but only recordings of songs focused on Christmas the holiday rather than frozen precipitation, reindeer, toys, elves, Santa Claus, chestnuts and fires. There are many, many recordings of songs like "The First Noel," "Joy to the World," "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," "Mary's Boy Child," "Do You Hear What I Hear," etc. that could be the backbone of such a format. Think it would get ratings?

That sounds like 104.7 The Fish.
 
<About 1/3 of the market does not have a 65 dbu signal, and the 70 dbu only covers about a quarter of Fulton County. >
The sales people countered that by simply placing a radio on the client's desk playing the station softly while s/he made the pitch. A very successful technique.
 


About 1/3 of the market does not have a 65 dbu signal, and the 70 dbu only covers about a quarter of Fulton County.



There are certainly opportunities like the two you mention. The issue is how high the station is on the priority post-Dickey fixes. If it is not losing money, it's a lower priority.


IMHO coverage is not an excuse. The Fish (C1) is usually in the top 4 (6+) @ 24K watts using the SAME ANTENNA ON THE SAME TOWER as WYAY (class C) does @ 77K watts. WYAY with a 53 KW advantage should have better building penetration.

There has to be somebody @ Cumulus responsible for "big picture" asset utilization.

Does 106.7 bill more than 104.7? If so the Cumulus has a duty to it's shareholders to do something.

If Cumulus Needs a "big picture" person I can do that job part time for less than $100K. Just PM me,
 
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That sounds like 104.7 The Fish.

That's what I was thinking. Also, another poster mentioned no ASCAP/BMI royalties for Christmas standards. Aren't the arrangements of most modern (last 40-50 years) performances of public domain Christmas standards copyrighted, and thus due royalties for airplay?
 
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That's what I was thinking. Also, another poster mentioned no ASCAP/BMI royalties for Christmas standards. Aren't the arrangements of most modern (last 40-50 years) performances of public domain Christmas standards copyrighted, and thus due royalties for airplay?

My understanding is that the ASCAP/BMI/SESAC agreements cover the author (of the lyrics) and the composer (of the music) but not arrangers.

The copyright on an arrangement, if it exists, would only prevent another performer or orchestra from using the same set of sheets unless consent were obtained, not the public performance of the recording.
 
IMHO coverage is not an excuse. The Fish (C1) is usually in the top 4 (6+) @ 24K watts using the SAME ANTENNA ON THE SAME TOWER as WYAY (class C) does @ 77K watts. WYAY with a 53 KW advantage should have better building penetration.

There has to be somebody @ Cumulus responsible for "big picture" asset utilization.

Does 106.7 bill more than 104.7? If so the Cumulus has a duty to it's shareholders to do something.

If Cumulus Needs a "big picture" person I can do that job part time for less than $100K. Just PM me,


Exactly. The Fish has a 5.3 share (P6+), and 106.7 has a 1.1 with a stronger signal from the same tower. And the market manager has a duty to himself to keep his job!
 
<About 1/3 of the market does not have a 65 dbu signal, and the 70 dbu only covers about a quarter of Fulton County. >
The sales people countered that by simply placing a radio on the client's desk playing the station softly while s/he made the pitch. A very successful technique.

Now that is clever!

Of course, you would not visit the offices of clients that were on the "wrong side" of the coverage area.
 
Exactly. The Fish has a 5.3 share (P6+), and 106.7 has a 1.1 with a stronger signal from the same tower. And the market manager has a duty to himself to keep his job!

Good point. And The Fish bills double what WYAY bills. So it comes down to where Mary B. wants to apply money to fixing under-performing stations first. I would assume that those that are losing money come first, then the ones that have some billing but should do better.
 


My understanding is that the ASCAP/BMI/SESAC agreements cover the author (of the lyrics) and the composer (of the music) but not arrangers.

The copyright on an arrangement, if it exists, would only prevent another performer or orchestra from using the same set of sheets unless consent were obtained, not the public performance of the recording.

Two of the songs I mentioned, "Mary's Boy Child" and "Do You Hear What I Hear," are not traditional, so I suppose that royalties would be due on anyone's re-recording of those.
 
There has to be somebody @ Cumulus responsible for "big picture" asset utilization.

The market manager has that responsibility. The company has consistently talked about a responsibility to news and talk programming. They've stuck with it on a number of stations, including KGO San Francisco, despite bad ratings.

One of the likely problems is that Cumulus doesn't own an AM in Atlanta. If they did, they could put news-talk there. They could stick it on a translator, flipping with 99X, but the costs would exceed the revenues. There are other variables, including the future of WCNN with Dickey Broadcasting. The format needs a place, and right now, it's 106.7.
 
The market manager has that responsibility. The company has consistently talked about a responsibility to news and talk programming. They've stuck with it on a number of stations, including KGO San Francisco, despite bad ratings.

One of the likely problems is that Cumulus doesn't own an AM in Atlanta. If they did, they could put news-talk there. They could stick it on a translator, flipping with 99X, but the costs would exceed the revenues. There are other variables, including the future of WCNN with Dickey Broadcasting. The format needs a place, and right now, it's 106.7.

There was talk...and maybe that's all it was...that lewis was/is attempting to purchase some of the Cumulus facilities...100.5 in Atlanta as one of them. The story goes that lew wants to put "The Fan" 680 AM on a bigger signal. lewis was supposedly holding out on the reverse split in order to make the deal happen.
I don't put much faith in such gossip but it would be an interesting idea. I would bet my last penny that the dickies aren't "finished" and will return for round 2. Does anyone see Cumulus selling off some of the properties to a Cumulus II led by lew & company?
 
ASCAP and BMI fees on Christmas Music

"Mary's Boy Child" and "Do You Hear What I Hear"

And they certainly would fall under the initial 26 years (or is it 52 years) granted to copyright holders. Well, maybe not "Do You Hear" since Bing Crosby introduced it in about 1965 or 1966 (thinking that the composition would have been copyrighted in 1964 before it was released).
 
There was talk...and maybe that's all it was...that lewis was/is attempting to purchase some of the Cumulus facilities...100.5 in Atlanta as one of them. The story goes that lew wants to put "The Fan" 680 AM on a bigger signal. lewis was supposedly holding out on the reverse split in order to make the deal happen.
I don't put much faith in such gossip but it would be an interesting idea. I would bet my last penny that the dickies aren't "finished" and will return for round 2. Does anyone see Cumulus selling off some of the properties to a Cumulus II led by lew & company?

iHeart is headed toward disaster with their debt. Cumulus has a slight chance of turning things around so anything is possible.
 
Unless Cumulus is able to coax Boortz out of retirement or by some miracle snags Rush from WSB....Newsradio 106.7 really has no reason to exist. The ratings over an extended period prove it.

Want to clear the slate of Westwood One/Cumulus syndie shows for national revenue purposes? Throw 'em on 98.9 as part of a low budget operation. 99X is a complete failure; it cannot even come close to mustering the type of ratings X107.1 earned. Nothing would be lost by ditching 99X.

106.7 is severely underutilized as an FM facility, and Cumulus is leaving a lot of potential cash flow on the table as a result.
 
And they certainly would fall under the initial 26 years (or is it 52 years) granted to copyright holders. Well, maybe not "Do You Hear" since Bing Crosby introduced it in about 1965 or 1966 (thinking that the composition would have been copyrighted in 1964 before it was released).

Isn't pretty much anything from the mid-1920s forward still covered by copyright, as long as you kept up the renewals back when that mattered? Some of the stuff from the 1920s-1950s is public domain, only because the rights owner neglected to renew the copyright or didn't think it was worth the time and money. Christmas standards would likely not fall into that bucket of lapsed copyrights.

Interestingly, the copyrightability of arrangements came into play with the recent lawsuit against Warner/Chappell over whether or not "Happy Birthday To You" was in the public domain. The court ruled that Warner's copyright only extended to one particular arrangement from 1935, the song (melody and lyrics) having predated that by several years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You

There was a similar situation where Paul McCartney's MPL Communications bought the copyright to "Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech", and it turned out that the copyright only applied to a 1931 arrangement by Frank Roman, the song having been around longer than that. Georgia Tech looked into that to ensure they didn't owe Macca any money.

https://mplcommunications.com/music-search
 
Continuing on the Copyright issue …

Thanks, everyone, for providing additional information. Journalism Law was not on of the courses I took to which I paid much attention.

I think part of the concern on this issue came up with "Radio Spirits" jumping on folks who were offering to trade Old Time Radio (OTR) recordings, claiming they had bought the rights to them. IIRC, it was determined that most broadcasts from the 1930s and forward were in the public domain, so "RS" could go pound sand.

And somewhere floating around in my memory is the concept that you can copyright lyrics for the initial term, with 2 renewals, then it becomes PD. Arrangements the same. To be free from pursuit of violation, a musical composition may have four bars that are identical, but every fifth bar must be different. Remember George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord?"

Somebody help me out if I'm messing this up.
 
iHeart is headed toward disaster with their debt. Cumulus has a slight chance of turning things around so anything is possible.

Cumulus stock closed at $1.60 today...down 11%!! Pricing before the reverse slip would be $0.20!! 18 cents was the all time low. I wonder if the earnings call on the 9th will make things better or worse...
 
I wonder if the earnings call on the 9th will make things better or worse...

I don't expect it will make any difference. As the CEO said in the previous call, this will not be a short term fix.

And as I said earlier, the success or failure of a single station or a single market, even if it's Atlanta, won't make a difference.
 
Cumulus stock closed at $1.60 today...down 11%!! Pricing before the reverse slip would be $0.20!! 18 cents was the all time low. I wonder if the earnings call on the 9th will make things better or worse...

I'm wondering if a 1:8 reverse split was enough. They probably should have gone 1:100 to put the stock in the $20 range so it doesn't look like a penny stock.
 
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