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K-Love Acquires B93.3 & FM102.1

crainbebo said:
I think VCY is even more hard-core religion than AFR. Think of them competing with BBN. VCY won't even air the Focus on the Family shows (and Adventures in Odyssey), and their music is very traditional and hymnal. Not a station that most 25-54 Christians would listen to.
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They definitely seek a very narrow demographic, albeit with the most powerful FM signal in Milwaukee. And they could've even had a chance to appeal to the heavy Catholic population in the market, except that a) there's already Relevant Radio for that; and b) they hate Catholics.
 
Fighting Irish said:
VCY is definitely not local. The programming is all out of, coincidentally, Milwaukee.

And it is definitely not CCM. They actually consider CCM to be evil. VCY is for the hardcore religious radicals that hate everything and everyone, but still hope to get to heaven. Not sure what they expected to do with a small FM station covering San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley.

They went on a buying spree over the past few years after getting tens of millions of dollars selling the UHF spectrum of their Milwaukee TV station (WVCY-TV is still around, piggy-backing on another station). They probably needed the money, because I certainly can't imagine why anyone would want to send them money.
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I noticed WVCY -TV is piggybacking off of WITI (Fox 6)
 
K.M. Richards said:
It's called channel sharing, not piggybacking, and there is a lot of it since the last spectrum auction which forced everyone off channels higher than 36.

In other words, not unusual and not sinister.
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Channel sharing agreements were pretty common after the spectrum auction. A station could sell their spectrum, and strike a deal with another station to use part of their bandwidth. They keep the license, and still have must-carry rights on cable. Considering that WVCY still puts out an SD picture (though rumored to have considered HD), it's a pretty easy fit on the bandwidth.

And WITI was owned by Tribune, then Nexstar at the time of the agreement. FOX bought back the station not long after, but the WVCY agreement is still there.
 
Fighting Irish said:
And WITI was owned by Tribune, then Nexstar at the time of the agreement. FOX bought back the station not long after, but the WVCY agreement is still there.
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As near as I have been able to tell since the spectrum auction, undoing channel sharing agreements are both a legal and technical PITA.
 
K.M. Richards said:
As near as I have been able to tell since the spectrum auction, undoing channel sharing agreements are both a legal and technical PITA.
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I doubt it matters much to Fox. They're not known to cram their stations with a huge amount of subchannels. WVCY's miniscule 480i SD signal takes up minimal real estate on WITI's bandwidth.
 
K.M. Richards said:
As near as I have been able to tell since the spectrum auction, undoing channel sharing agreements are both a legal and technical PITA.
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How do you even undo a channel sharing agreement? There is no spectrum to go back to. You’d have to find some other “host” if you are the “guest” license.
 
Fighting Irish said:
Channel sharing agreements were pretty common after the spectrum auction. A station could sell their spectrum, and strike a deal with another station to use part of their bandwidth. They keep the license, and still have must-carry rights on cable. Considering that WVCY still puts out an SD picture (though rumored to have considered HD), it's a pretty easy fit on the bandwidth.

And WITI was owned by Tribune, then Nexstar at the time of the agreement. FOX bought back the station not long after, but the WVCY agreement is still there.
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Do you know how long it will last? Sounds like a lease / rental.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
How do you even undo a channel sharing agreement? There is no spectrum to go back to. You’d have to find some other “host” if you are the “guest” license.
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Exactly. That is the technical issue I was alluding to.
 
IKHNetworks said:
Do you know how long it will last? Sounds like a lease / rental.
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Permanent, essentially. Those stations that gave up their spectrum in the auction have to use channel sharing to remain in operation. That is not what you are interpreting that as; the stations hold individual licenses but share a common transmitter. There are operating agreements for sharing the common expense of the transmitters between the sharing stations, but because each station is licensed separately by the FCC, it is not considered to be a lease of one station's facilities by the other.

Since Wikipedia does not go into detail, I think it's simplified enough for the layperson to understand:

Frequency sharing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
crainbebo said:
I think VCY is even more hard-core religion than AFR. Think of them competing with BBN. VCY won't even air the Focus on the Family shows (and Adventures in Odyssey), and their music is very traditional and hymnal. Not a station that most 25-54 Christians would listen to.
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As someone who does get WVCY-TV (for a long time they didn't provide an acceptable signal for must carry...before Spectrum hubbed it all in Milwaukee), these days outside older content to comfort the nursing home crowd and the ancient episodes of Sunshine Factory for their educational check-off, it's basically OAN; lots and lots of doomer and endtimes programming through a hardcore religious lens, unlimited Muslim dragging, and at 10pm against the local news, Worldview Report with Brannon Howse, a daily podcast from a Drudge wannabe prepper who thinks Washington is a cabal death cult or something. We're not even getting into their extreme anti-abortion content.

And yes, people in the WOW counties love it; I see VCY bumper stickers plenty of times out in public, even north of Milwaukee. It helps that their TBN competition from WWRS barely gets into the market from Dodge County at all, while VCY covers the radio and television sides, along with their Internet presence.

But as KM said, WITI/Fox consider the channel-sharing a pure business transaction and have never mentioned them or the arrangement on their air or even online. WVCY did upgrade to HD last year (still at a very low 720p and closed captioning has been broken), but unless you care about which channel it comes from for manual channel scanning, you wouldn't know Fox is involved at all (and they weren't, it was a Tribune arrangement and they were just as hands-off).

ETA - 'Enjoy' a sample of what you're seeing on-air this week on the station.

 
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Fighting Irish said:
The remaining MRA signals (1290 WZTI and the 100.3/107.3 translators) are being acquired by Civic Media.
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No surprise. The country staff has already been laid off.

The sale of Milwaukee Radio Alliance's stations to Christian broadcaster K-Love Inc. will soon mark the end of WLDB-HD3/Milwaukee, also heard on W262CJ and in South Milwaukee on W297BY, which collectively went Country as "Froggy 100.3 & 107.3" last November (CAT 11/7/24). Dir./Programming and afternoon host Gordon Mays tells Country Aircheck, "Our baby Froggy will ultimately be going away before its first birthday, as well as the entire Milwaukee Radio Alliance staff, me included." Mays and a few others remain through the closing, expected in a few weeks. The former Mid-West Family Rockford and DeKalb, IL Dir./Programming & Content is seeking his next opportunity; reach him here. Also affected are VP/Programming Michelle Rutkowski and Froggy midday host Julie Davidson, who has been with Milwaukee Radio Alliance since 1996.
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TheBigA said:
No surprise. The country staff has already been laid off.
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That was from a few weeks ago. Old news. Somebody already posted it.

Currently, all the MRA stations are running jockless. I did notice that they are running recorded notices/spots on WLUM and WLDB announcing their sale to K-Love, and that interested people can see the public file on the FCC website, and even submit comment.
 
Civic impresses me. I don't know how the numbers look but when they buy something they seem to get things tuned up technically, have decent branding and presentation. I hope it continues to work out for them, and maybe having some bigger markets will also strengthen them.
 
Andy Travis said:
Civic impresses me. I don't know how the numbers look but when they buy something they seem to get things tuned up technically, have decent branding and presentation. I hope it continues to work out for them, and maybe having some bigger markets will also strengthen them.
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They don't seem to be doing very well on their current two Milwaukee market signals (540/101.1). Almost all PSA's and promos filling the breaks.
 


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