"Minor league team of WABC" - Also potentially smart... could end up being a place to develop talent for the big WABC signal. It's not like there are a million places to farm talent from in the radio biz anymore like back in the "good old days." Whatever the case, this ought to be interesting.
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John Catsimatidis Will be Acquiring another Station
- Thread starter Always interested
- Start date
keep in mind he wants to run for mayor. So in that way talk makes more sense than music.
Without enough differentiation, wouldn't that just end up pulling listeners away from WABC, hurting his ratings there?
I'd say John Catsimatidis is likely hinting at 1050 AM. I'm sure he asks himself, "Why doesn't New York have a radio station anymore that plays the great singers of the past? Maybe I have to set it up!" Like many wealthy individuals, he thinks his gut knows what the public likes better than a team of researchers.
So he buys 1050 from Good Karma, which probably doesn't want it anyway, now that it has 880 WHSQ. He puts Sinatra, The Supremes, Dean Martin, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond and others on it, similar to the music playing on WABC on Saturday nights. Maybe move those music shows over to 1050. Make 1050 a 24/7 music station, while 770 is 24/7 conservative politics. I'm sure he can't figure why nobody is doing this currently.
So he buys 1050 from Good Karma, which probably doesn't want it anyway, now that it has 880 WHSQ. He puts Sinatra, The Supremes, Dean Martin, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond and others on it, similar to the music playing on WABC on Saturday nights. Maybe move those music shows over to 1050. Make 1050 a 24/7 music station, while 770 is 24/7 conservative politics. I'm sure he can't figure why nobody is doing this currently.
Good Karma doesn't own WHSQ. They need both stations: One for local, and the other for ESPN national. They sell spots for both.
It may not hurt WABC. Keep the current popular lineup on 770 as is, while building a 2nd talk lineup of new up and coming hosts, maybe even stray away from political topics on some of the shows. Heck, maybe even do music at night and on the weekend, a hybrid of talk and music.
This sounds a lot like WICC, in nearby Bridgeport CT. It is a mix of political talk, news on the hour, local topics, financial talk, sports, and nostalgic music. Owner Connoisseur Media apparently feels it has been showing enough promise to recently start simulcasting it on FM.
Thanks for posting this! It's funny how Cats and Sid kept calling iHeart 'Clear Channel'. Also Cats mentioned another station sale that was put on hold but didn't explain further. I wonder what station that was??? My feeling from listening is that is a for sure thing. What would be the purpose for talking about it, if it wasn't happening?
MassMusicMan
Banned
I bought a Dean Martin compilation a couple of months ago on CD. What content would a station put next to That's Amore that would make me choose crap sound quality with interference over my compact disc? How the (expletive) is this not obvious to everybody four DECADES after WABC dropped music?
Good point on the rich. We've got a guy here who, competing against a classic rocker who honest to Christ played Ace's "How Long" today, plays Americana while telling the local paper "We're not going to sound like the stations in Boston and New York." Hey, it's his money. Someone just needs to point out his 0.0 to whomever is buying media for McDonald's.
Because people answer to their investors.
Just New York
It seems pointless to buy a second station just to develop talk talent for WABC. Do it on weekends or through their podcasts. Given that WABC itself isn't going to get any more valuable, buying another AM just to warm up talent for 770 seems like a hard way to do a relatively straightforward task.
Let's say he does buy WADO and move it to the WABC site upon closing. (Fat chance.) What next? Another conservative talk format? A Spanish-language conservative talk format? Of course, it wouldn't be profitable in New York but this is Catsimatidis were talking about. He's a billionaire, which is how he keeps WABC (barely) alive with just Tunnels To Towers PSAs.
& Gold Commercials gotta remember those Gold Spots
Every municipality in New York uses this nomenclature. "City of Syracuse", "City of Rochester", "City of Buffalo", "City of Albany". Also towns and villages: "Town of Binghamton", "Town of Corning", "Village of Cooperstown".
Let me know when WXXI identifies itself as "WXXI-FM Rochester City" and we can talk.
The state does have a few places that include "City" in their official AND commonly used names: Long Island City and Johnson City, for example.
Garden City (on Long Island) or New City (Rockland County) are a couple of others. But that doesn't change the fact that the FCC doesn't license broadcast facilities to states. There's no "WPRO Rhode Island" for instance, it's "WPRO Providence". (I picked that example since RI is the physically smallest state, so if it doesn't exist there, it doesn't exist in larger ones.) It's Community of License, not State of License. In fact, it used to mean CITY of License. So there's absolutely no ambiguity whether a station identifies as "New York" verses "New York City" verses "City of New York". Get the job done with the minimum of words.
BTW, unlike the other examples, Long Island City is not a municipality in and of itself. It is a section of Queens (similar to Flushing or Jamaica), which is a county, and a borough of New York City. There is no station licensed to Long Island City, or for that matter Flushing, Jamaica, Queens, Brooklyn or The Bronx. Regardless of where the station's studios or transmitter are physically located, they're all licensed to New York [City].
BTW, unlike the other examples, Long Island City is not a municipality in and of itself. It is a section of Queens (similar to Flushing or Jamaica), which is a county, and a borough of New York City. There is no station licensed to Long Island City, or for that matter Flushing, Jamaica, Queens, Brooklyn or The Bronx. Regardless of where the station's studios or transmitter are physically located, they're all licensed to New York [City].
There are two small non-commercial exceptions to that: WKRB Brooklyn and WSIA Staten Island. Both hold full-power licenses, although I believe both were originally granted as class D FMs and thus subject to looser COL-coverage rules.
Aren't those the campus stations of Kings County Community College and Staten Island Community College? Or is the first owned by Brooklyn College? Even so, hard to believe the Commission accepted a COL as a borough of NYC.
The FCC has class B AM WCNN's COL as "North Atlanta" which never was a incorporated town or City. More recently Praise 102.5 WPZE has a COL of Mapleton GA. not Incorporated either Both are or were Neighborhoods. There is controversy over Mapleton's legal status but that is not really a radio issue.
Here in the Vermont/New Hampshire Upper Valley, we have country WXLF (95.3) IDing as Hartford, VT, which is an incorporated town, while W233CC (94.5), simulcasting sports WEEI-FM Boston off a feed from a WHDQ Claremont, NH, HD channel, gives its COL as White River Junction, which is unincorporated, one of five such villages that make up the town of Hartford.