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John Catsimatidis Will be Acquiring another Station

Or how about this:
At the risk of sounding like a "tinfoil-hat" person, your ISP's network systems, and every intermediate internet node, is a computer (or router) that maintains activity logs. Those logs can track your browsing or streaming activity for anyone with enough juice to get access to them, and enough motivation to audit your activity. (And "Best Practices" would be to backup and maintain those logs for a period of time before deleting them.)

I'm not claiming that anyone is motivated enough to do this with *your* activity, but it's there if they did want to see it. So if, for example, you routinely listened to Democracy Now for an alternate take on the news, or occasionally streamed the PRK's (North Korea) Wake-up Calisthenics broadcast for the sheer entertainment of watching a million Koreans grunting in unison, Kash Patel's FBI could track that and use it in any number of nefarious ways. As could the NSA, CIA, military intelligence, any number of agencies that have too much time on their hands and become suspicious of you.

The beauty of a radio is that nobody has to know that you're listening, much less what you're listening to.
 
Same, I'm not even that into sports, but if it's late at night and I want to hear a human voice on the radio, I'm happy to listen to sports yap and callers, there'll be something mildly interesting on, some pleasant people and light-hearted chat, and it's intensely preferable to political ranting. I wonder how many sports radio listeners, especially at night, are like me, people who just want to hear chat but not political chat.

Everything is politics these days on talk radio - I miss the days of the old non-political radio talk show, where they'd weave around all sorts of subjects through the night.
I used to listen to a lot of sports talk, but on commercial radio here, it's mostly turned crude and right wing-leaning. There are specialized channels for individual sports on the SiriusXM satellite radio service that stick to their respective sports, but they can get very repetitive when there's not much going on.

For entertainment, I've actually started to turn to scanning the amateur bands. The technical conversations about transceivers and antennas are insomnia cures, for sure, and there's only so much cancer/arthritis/colonoscopy talk I can bear -- but I get a good chuckle over the half-baked, misinformed ideas tossed out during the exchanges on sports, politics, food, entertainment and the "good old days."

The other night, I heard a group of hams somewhere in the Midwest yapping about the price of eggs and the bird flu epidemic that's being blamed for their rise. The dominant "alpha male" in the bunch announced to the others that he had heard on the news ("Not the regular news," he said. "Something I saw on YouTube.") that former President Biden had ordered the killing of 150 million hens right before he left office! Ah, that explains it!
 
At the risk of sounding like a "tinfoil-hat" person, your ISP's network systems, and every intermediate internet node, is a computer (or router) that maintains activity logs. Those logs can track your browsing or streaming activity for anyone with enough juice to get access to them, and enough motivation to audit your activity. (And "Best Practices" would be to backup and maintain those logs for a period of time before deleting them.)

I'm not claiming that anyone is motivated enough to do this with *your* activity, but it's there if they did want to see it. So if, for example, you routinely listened to Democracy Now for an alternate take on the news, or occasionally streamed the PRK's (North Korea) Wake-up Calisthenics broadcast for the sheer entertainment of watching a million Koreans grunting in unison, Kash Patel's FBI could track that and use it in any number of nefarious ways. As could the NSA, CIA, military intelligence, any number of agencies that have too much time on their hands and become suspicious of you.

The beauty of a radio is that nobody has to know that you're listening, much less what you're listening to.
Yeah, but today there's no way to stay "off the grid" unless you want to turn off all your electronics -- that means no email and no radio forums! I don't like it either but it's something I'm afraid we have to live with.
 
Yeah, but today there's no way to stay "off the grid" unless you want to turn off all your electronics -- that means no email and no radio forums! I don't like it either but it's something I'm afraid we have to live with.
What you say is true. My point though was to be selective in what you watch and listen to over the internet when there's another acceptable option that is much less traceable. And to do what you can to stay off the radar for frivolous reasons.
 
I used to listen to a lot of sports talk, but on commercial radio here, it's mostly turned crude and right wing-leaning. There are specialized channels for individual sports on the SiriusXM satellite radio service that stick to their respective sports, but they can get very repetitive when there's not much going on.

For entertainment, I've actually started to turn to scanning the amateur bands. The technical conversations about transceivers and antennas are insomnia cures, for sure, and there's only so much cancer/arthritis/colonoscopy talk I can bear -- but I get a good chuckle over the half-baked, misinformed ideas tossed out during the exchanges on sports, politics, food, entertainment and the "good old days."

The other night, I heard a group of hams somewhere in the Midwest yapping about the price of eggs and the bird flu epidemic that's being blamed for their rise. The dominant "alpha male" in the bunch announced to the others that he had heard on the news ("Not the regular news," he said. "Something I saw on YouTube.") that former President Biden had ordered the killing of 150 million hens right before he left office! Ah, that explains it!
Over here, if it's a slow news day on sports talk radio, it tends to fall back on reminiscences of past great players and teams and games, which is quite nice to listen to while falling asleep. A lot of the presenters are former players or coaches. During the pandemic, when there was no sports taking place at all, the stations were relatively popular to listen to because they provided an alternative to the endless corona talk elsewhere.

European ham bands are fairly dull - either long conversations in Russian or German that I can't understand, or hams who can't speak each other's language going through the "I am located in the north west part of Italy, 73 to you and your family" motions in basic English.

As for "Cats" and his supposed acquisition of a station...
 
He is also a conspiracy theorist, which is something we need a lot less of in elected office.

I wouldn't classify Morano as a conspiracy theorist. Granted, his topical material does tend to have some conspiracy theory stuff in it, but consider his principal competition overnight is Coast-to-Coast which caters to that crowd, it's understandable he might include some material in an attempt to draw listeners from other stations.

Rabble-rouser? Probably. But these days being the "establishment candidate" isn't necessarily a good thing.
 
I wouldn't classify Morano as a conspiracy theorist. Granted, his topical material does tend to have some conspiracy theory stuff in it, but consider his principal competition overnight is Coast-to-Coast which caters to that crowd, it's understandable he might include some material in an attempt to draw listeners from other stations.

Rabble-rouser? Probably. But these days being the "establishment candidate" isn't necessarily a good thing.
He does talk conspiracies some of the time on his show, but unlike Coast to Coast He does not spend two hours on one topic or one subject witch can get boring if it is not interesting. He spends one segment on a topic and usually moves on in the next segment to something else. I used to listen to both shows, but now just his show on KMOX.
 
Bumping, because...

Red Apple is purchasing an AM on Long Island, along with some associated FM translators. Sale price: a cool half-million dollars.

The AM is garbage. He probably wants the FM translators.
 
Is the reception of WABC poor in central Suffolk County?

The real question is about the reception of WLIR-FM. That station gets a .2 share.

WABC is the #2 station in the Nassau-Suffolk book. So obviously reception of the AM isn't a problem. I agree with the view that he bought this station primarily for its FM translators.
 
The real question is about the reception of WLIR-FM. That station gets a .2 share.

WABC is the #2 station in the Nassau-Suffolk book. So obviously reception of the AM isn't a problem. I agree with the view that he bought this station primarily for its FM translators.
WLIR-FM's ratings dropped when WABC jumped up to the top of the market. It's simply meter placement in the current panel enhancing the New York City signals over the locals.

In February WABC had a 2.6 share and WLIR-FM a 1.3. By May, WABC was up to a 6.5 and WLIR-FM down to 0.2. Last month WABC had a 6.2 share and WLIR-FM back up to 0.5.

Other similar Suffolk County only signals have dropped as well over the past year. 94.3 The Shark was at a 3.1 in February and dropped to a 1.1 in October. 103.1 The Wolf has fallen from a 3.5 in Holiday 2024 dropping to a 1.7 in June and up to a 2.1 in October. Other stronger signals such as WBAB, WBLI, and WALK are all down from earlier this year as well.


To see the previous six months:

 
WLIR-FM's ratings dropped when WABC jumped up to the top of the market. It's simply meter placement in the current panel enhancing the New York City signals over the locals.
Remember, each county and every HDBA and HDHA in the metro has a quota of meters. So, theoretically, the Nassau and Suffolk county placements are proportional. But there is no guaranteed placement within a county (although Nielsen has established zone objectives in densely populated counties).

So, if they lost a few meters at the eastern edge of the county, the better Nassau county signals and even the NYC signals will do better.
 
WLIR-FM's ratings dropped when WABC jumped up to the top of the market. It's simply meter placement in the current panel enhancing the New York City signals over the locals.

there is no guaranteed placement within a county...

So, if they lost a few meters at the eastern edge of the county, the better Nassau county signals and even the NYC signals will do better.

These statements show how problematic Nielsen's estimates and methodology really are.
 
These statements show how problematic Nielsen's estimates and methodology really are.
Again: radio pays for ratings so that ad agencies and large time buyers (house agencies, buying services) have a reliable metric.

"Reliable" is not the same as "precise". It means "good enough to base ad buys on". That is all that is needed. Nobody needs the precision of mechanical parts in a rocket launch. "Estimates" are good enough.

Again, Nielsen has quotas in proportion to the population of each county and each HDHA and HDBA on all the stratification variables (age, gender, ethnicity/race, education, income, etc). Those are core to each market's survey. In addition, some counties are divided into zones with desired quotas. For example, LA county has a number of zones like the San Fernando Valley, Central South, Central, San Gabriel Valley, Santa Clarita/High Desert.

The controlling factor is cost. Nielsen would happily quadruple the price to increase by one standard error the reliability of the survey. Stations would not ´pay for that, and advertisers have expressed no need for it.
 
Again: radio pays for ratings so that ad agencies and large time buyers (house agencies, buying services) have a reliable metric.

"Reliable" is not the same as "precise". It means "good enough to base ad buys on". That is all that is needed. Nobody needs the precision of mechanical parts in a rocket launch. "Estimates" are good enough.

Except it's not reliable. Let's review:

WLIR-FM's ratings dropped when WABC jumped up to the top of the market. It's simply meter placement in the current panel enhancing the New York City signals over the locals.

In February WABC had a 2.6 share and WLIR-FM a 1.3. By May, WABC was up to a 6.5 and WLIR-FM down to 0.2. Last month WABC had a 6.2 share and WLIR-FM back up to 0.5.

Other similar Suffolk County only signals have dropped as well over the past year. 94.3 The Shark was at a 3.1 in February and dropped to a 1.1 in October. 103.1 The Wolf has fallen from a 3.5 in Holiday 2024 dropping to a 1.7 in June and up to a 2.1 in October. Other stronger signals such as WBAB, WBLI, and WALK are all down from earlier this year as well.
 


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