In the San Francisco Bay Area, conservative talk programs been heard on a 5kw AM radio station with a transmitter in the Pier 94 wetlands. Come Monday, this longtime Talker and one-time flanker to a News/Talk station at 810 kHz is moving to that bigger frequency, displacing the sports wagering...
rbr.com
It will be interesting to see when WABC-AM would need to change their call letters in the way San Francisco's Cumulus outlet is renaming KGO-AM into KSFO-AM on 810 AM. WABC-AM and KGO-AM are former ABC Radio affiliates that was sold to Citadel two decades ago and the former ABC Radio affiliates call letters expire soon. In WABC-AM's case they went to Cumulus and now Red Apple Networks. In both cases those call letters WABC and KGO has to go back to Disney when those agreements expire or they flip formats. I don't know if that's what Cats had in mind when he said in the OP but in Cats case it's about having their affiliation agreement with Salem when it comes to Red Apple wanting their shows to be heard outside of New York.
First, a friendly reminder: AM stations don't have "-AM" suffixes. It's just plain WABC, KSFO, and KGO. It would be more accurate to write it as such.
Now, back to topic...
Regarding that relationship between Salem and Red Apple Media: Cats has been buying time on WNYM since 2014, first for his "Cats Roundtable" program on Sunday mornings, then for a Wednesday late afternoon hour that eventually morphed into what is now "Cats and Cosby".
When Catsimatidis purchased WABC, all of those shows started to air over there. But, Cats wanted to maintain a presence on 970. Red Apple now pays Salem to air "Cats and Cosby" on WNYM and throws in "Cats Roundtable" as a bonus.
In addition...I've heard from a source whom I trust that Salem NY staff put the Sunday show together as per the agreement with Red Apple–all this while Cats has his own station with his own staff, mind you–and Salem distributes the program to several other stations which Red Apple buys time on. WABC also distributes the program through its own "Red Apple Media Network" or whatever their syndication arm is called.
And one more thing: "Cats and Cosby" never ends on time at 6:00p, going past the top of the hour on a nightly basis, and WNYM is bound to carry the program in its entirety. They cannot cut it off until they wrap up. Never mind that WNYM has its own programing commitments.
(Now, the rest is a personal opinion: It's sloppy programing, but this is what you would expect when a radio station is run by a non-radio person who is more interested in pushing their personal agendas. So when i hear/read comnents praising Cats for making WABC relevant again, i take them with a grain of salt. Post-election, the tone on the station's shows has predictably shifted to celebration and anticipation. Cats believes America will change for the better, and he wants you to believe it too while he contemplates who he'll support for NYC Mayor in '25 if he doesn't enter the race himself [and if he does, that opens up a new can of worms]. After all, America has been "saved" and now it's time for New York City to be "saved" and "come back", and Cats will use his $12.5 million play toy to see that it happens. Today's WABC is nothing more than a tax write-off for an wealthy owner who uses it as both a megaphone for his other business interests and a bully pulpit for what he thinks is wrong with NYC and the USA. Predictable, lowest-common-denominator conservative talk programing with token, moderate liberals you can count on one hand. And Cousin Brucie, Tony Orlando, and Joe Piscopo doing Sinatra on weekends! Consider all of this when you hear Cats talk about wanting a second signal here, AM or FM. Expect nothing innovative, just more of the same.)
