Whittinghill spent most of his career at KMPC. Dick Whittington had a long gig on KGIL, but had stints on about every other major station in LA. Sweet Dick once joked that when he complained to his agent that he didn't think his career was on track, his agent said "What are you complaining about, you're a household name in this market, you're successful!" Dick shot back "if I'M successful, how come YOU live in Beverly Hills and I live in North Hollywood?"
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Is KRDC 1110 am los angeles shutting down on the 22nd?
- Thread starter Syfy
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At one time, KFWB used a wire strung between 2 towers atop a building on Hollywood Blvd just west of Vine. When I first visited L.A. as a kid, that building, which I believe housed Warner Brothers offices, had a big KFWB sign attached to the front. Based on that, I assumed KFWB's studios were in that building. Then I found out they were a block or so east in a 2-story standalone building.
I think the lessons were in how to treat employees, how to put on a show and how to serve the community.
But Gene was able to do what he did because he didn’t care about his margin of profit—-only that the stations didn’t actually lose money.
In 1980, a friend of mine was PD at KMPC. I was programming KOLO in Reno. Both stations had their best billing year in history in 1979. One million dollars for KOLO, 14 million for KMPC. We compared bottom lines. KMPC’s net profit was only 25-thousand dollars more than KOLO’s—-on 13-million more revenue.
Even as much as I admired Gene’s approach (it was KMPC that made me want to be in radio in the first place), that was nuts.
Yep. Whittinghill was at four stations in 40 years—-KIEV, KGFJ, KMPC (for 30 of those years) and KPRZ.
Whittington was on nine stations in 30 years (KNOB, KLAC, KABC, KGIL, KFI, KIEV, KHJ, KMPC and KNJO—-twice each at KABC and KGIL).
A chunk of why Whittington could do long stretches at KGIL and only a year or two anywhere else is that KGIL was happy to have him. The other stations hired him for his talent, then wanted him to conform to them (a common story in radio).
The building with the towers was the Warner Hollywood Theater. Warners’ offices, as I mentioned before, were at 5858 Sunset and then Burbank, where they are today.
When Warners’ started filming movies with sound in 1927, the RF from the towers at 5858 Sunset was causing interference, so new towers were erected atop the theater and the old ones became ornamental.
By the time you first visited L.A., both sets of towers were purely ornamental, KFWB having moved its transmitter to La Cienega and Rodeo (now Obama Dr.) in 1950 and then to the KLAC transmitter site northeast of downtown in 1958.
You’re misremembering which building had the sign. That was the KFWB studio from 1950-1977.
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You are right, I only scanned the story and missed the $2.5 million purchase price. In that case, I gotta believe he has made a lot of money on the station. You pros can help out with what the station is worth today (asset value only), but I am going to bet it has nearly always been cash flow positive and he can take out at least what he has put in. Not too bad for a tiny signal that can only attract geezers (at least in English).
All these people giving him free unsolicited advice all these years, and he has been ignoring them all the way to the bank. Good for him!
Whatever money Saul made was early on, ChannelFlipper. He said a couple of years ago that 1260’s revenue doesn’t even pay the power bill. KKGO subsidizes it, and as long as Saul wants a signal to carry a lost format, he’s got one.
I agree with that - the money was made in probably the first 10 years of ownership. But my back of the napkin calcs (all speculation, of course) indicate he most certainly made back his purchase price, allowing him the luxury of carrying the station. This signal, no matter how impaired, still has a value today and I am guessing it has seven digits to the number, but even if there are only six, Saul still wins, light bill paid or not.
I’m with you except on a sale price, which is usually multiples of cash flow. There is pretty much none. And anyone who bought 1260 would also have the expense of new studios and offices, unless they bought KKGO with it.
David could probably ballpark a figure, but anyone hoping to earn back their investment would want to be frugal about how much they paid going in.
KKGO operates with two local hosts: Morning and afternoon drive. The rest of the day is either artist-hosted or unhosted. So keeping his expenses low leaves more money to operate KMZT. KSUR was a bigger drain because of the streaming royalties. Not so with classical.
That is why the proper sales price has to be for the value of the hard assets, not a multiple of cash flow (which I agree is the usual metric). Whoever buys by definition cannot keep the same format, so the existing cash flow is almost completely irrelevant. What is relevant is what the *expected* cash flow would be from whatever new format the new owner were to come up with as a function of the existing value of the assets.
The model for such transactions is more "opportunity" based than reality based. If there is someone who really wants a station they will pay or overpay. The recent sale of 1580 in LA is an example of over payment.
For that reason, a highly crippled signal such as 1260 is likely worth, without the land, well under $5 million. In fact, the land is likely worth more than the station and we might see the license cancelled and the land used for development.
My take on that is it would have to be a certain type of local owner, who shares his very specific passions for music and radio.
However his kids really enjoy running those stations, and they're young enough to be around for a while.
Geez, Nick Tyler has an 11-hour airshift on KMZT (two of those hours are Evening Concert, which I'm surprised is even still around; the KKGO iteration was a revival of KFAC's Gas Company Evening Concert which had a 49-year long run on 1330-92.3).
Classical music should be ridiculously easy to voicetrack as it is, so Nick would only need to work for... 1-2 hours? If that?
Back in the day Thomas Cassidy cut the voice tracks for KFAC's Evening Concert in advance, for the simple reason that he had to host "Luncheon at the Music Center" live at noon everyday. A board-op played the music "live" with his tracks on carts. Mr. Cassidy once told me he liked to joke that his wife knows where he is weekday evenings, when in reality he was with her at home because the radio audience was lead to believe his show was live.
On another note, does anyone know whatever happened to John Santana, who along with Nick Tyler, was a host on KMZT's
first run a few years ago. John was first heard in LA I believe on KFAC before it was sold.
I would think so. Not much show prep in classical, just looking up the performers, titles of the works presented, and liners/promos they need to read. I'd guess 5-10 minutes of work per hour of programming once you have it down pat.
There is often background material, such as what stage in the composer's life the work was written, anecdotes about when it was first performed, whether the composer was sponsored by a monarch, etc. There is plenty of deep data that never becomes repetitive. Even data on when the recording was made and where (studio or concert hall, for example) and the like.
I can vouch for that. I anchor news at Sacramento’s NPR station, and we have a classical FM as well. I’m continually impressed by our hosts (who are live) and the stories they craft about the composers, the musicians and the pieces themselves. It’s not title, artist, time and temp.
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Actually, the Angels won the World Series in 2002.
From the research I did for the KWKW Wikipedia page (which I only mention because it now has an ungodly number of citations) Santana started working part-time at KFAC c. 1976, then got upped to fulltime in 1987 when the Heifetz-Argow-Goldfarb team bought KFAC and fired all the tenured staff.
I remember seeing Santana as part of the online-only iteration of K-Mozart as late as last year?
As for voice-tracking, KFAC and KFAC-FM had to do it at both stations when the programming was split in 1970; IIRC, Fred Crane hosted mornings on KFAC and voice-tracked KFAC-FM overnights. Cassidy simply preceded everyone else in the trend.
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