Are those the towers on Alvarado Street, off of Glendale Boulevard?
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KBLA-AM sale never consummated
- Thread starter Frequency1
- Start date
Only as a non-profit hobby/community thing.
Which is kind of what he's doing. He's running the radio station as part of a community organization.
Here's what they say on their website:
So after operating this station for two years, he apparently feels the property is worth the money.
So David, what would you call John Catsimatidis's ownership of WABC in New York? Because from where I sit, he's a wealthy man with a need to feel important (because running for NYC mayor wasn't enough) who found a new hobby to play with and prop it up with his billions, all because he can afford to.
His ego got in the way of his intelligence.
Sure, with other people's money that come from unearned donations. Having people give you money for an otherwise unprofitable venture is always a good alternative.
It works for EMF, doesn't it. Asking for donations isn't easy and it isn't "unearned." It doesn't matter if the product is a radio station or girl scout cookies or cars 4 kids. It takes time and effort to get someone to donate. We're trying to judge someone by using our values. My point is that not everyone operates under the same values.
It's not a values thing, its an ROI thing. The more money he gets from no-strings "donations", the better the investment becomes.
Give me enough money and I'll take KFI off of iheart's hands.
But he's not running it strictly as a radio station. If you read the quote, it's part of a community organization. It's as if the United Way bought a radio station and used it to fundraise and promote the charities it supports. Very different from KFI.
Regarding 'no strings donations,' there's no such thing. My company made a good faith donation to Second Harvest ten years ago, and I'm still on their mailing list after all these years. To say there are 'no strings' to donating money is incorrect.
But anyone who listens to the radio is using 'other people's money.' The advertisers spend money in the hopes we'll buy their products, but we're under no obligation to support them. We're just there to hear our favorite music or host.
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I don't know about that pronouncement, Mr. Hagerty. While I'm no fan of the dreck programs on WABC, you can't dispute that (a) the station was virtually moribund under Cumulus, (b) it's doing significantly better than it had been back then, if the last six months trend of 3.3-3.3-3.1-3.9-3.7-3.7 is any indication (admittedly mostly 65+ and almost entirely 55+), (c) it is #9 in 6+, a half point behind WNEW and ahead of such luminaries as WNYC, WFAN, WCBS(AM), Hot97 and Power105. Whether Mr. Cats is going to succeed in monetizing WABC's "geriatric" audience is still an open question, but at least someone is running the experiment.
Since this is the L.A. board, KFI managed to achieve a three-way tie for #5 (at 4.1) in Market #2. Do you think their cume is any higher, or demos significantly better, than WABC's in Market #1? I doubt it, considering New York's total MSA population is nearly 48% larger than L.A.'s.
Cume for WABC is 563K, and KFI is 459K. Demos for each are not very good. For the most part 50+.
Yeah, but did he buy it to prove a point, to make a few bucks a month in profit or what? There was an old saying---"Nobody gets into broadcasting to make a little money. " The essential question is what his asset is worth. It's a stand-alone AM radio station.
Fortunately, RadioInsight's ratings breakout include cume. As TheBigA notes, WABC's is higher, at 563,300, than KFI's at 459,400. But it's close, and when you average out the 48% NY population advantage, WABC clearly doesn't have the per capita audience KFI does.
The thing about talk radio (this applies to KFI, WABC, and KBLA) is that cume is low, but TSL is usually high, compared to music radio.
I don't know what the man's motivation(s) are, beyond what I've read in trades and message boards like this. (I do know Red Apple and WABC are located in the same Third Ave. skyscraper I worked in back in the late 80's, before experiencing the joy of discovering my employer was running a Ponzi scheme. Long story...)
Political influence, pushing a personal agenda, owning the iconic WABC call letters or the Lodi transmitter site? Actually, if I had to venture a guess, it's to ride the AM radio horse till it drops, then sell the Lodi real estate, or use it for a warehouse/trucking depot to supply his supermarket chain. Cheaper than buying the equivalent amount of land outright, getting it zoned appropriately and then developing it. And in the meantime he can claim he tried to breathe life back into a moribund-though-iconic radio station. A long-term win-win.
But notwithstanding what's been written so far, there is no immutable law of nature that says the universe of 55+ listeners shall no longer have any programming aimed at their interests. In fact, I'm really frustrated with the implicit assumption that everyone who hits age 55 should crawl off in a corner and die. The problem is of the ad industry's making, that they can't be bothered developing campaigns for demos older than 18-49 or 25-54, and that is a function of their laziness and incompetence in finding approaches that will make the advertising more effective when selling to older demos. If every 55+ consumer were to join a boycott of major consumer product corporations and their portfolio of products until they changed the composition of their ad buys, I guarantee P&G, Unilever, Johnson, etc. would have a come-to-Jesus moment as soon as they saw how their bottom line cratered.
</soapbox>
Keep in mind that only applies to national advertisers who buy based on Nielsens, not on local advertisers who buy specific stations and programs. This thread is about KBLA in Los Angeles, that obviously can't claim a big Nielsen audience, because there is none. Their business model is very different, so if the audience is over 55, it doesn't matter. KFI also does different things to merchandise its audience. So as I often say, radio is not just one thing, and doesn't act as a unified group. Stations use different methods that hopefully work for them.
The issue here is not about creating campaigns. It is the amply measured fact that consumers become more brand loyal or habit-bound the older they get. The cost of getting them to change or try is generally higher than the potential profit.
The exception is wit goods and services that were not needed or wanted before reaching a certain age, where seniors are very open to new products.
Not going to happen. First, older consumers do not perceive that they are not being “advertised to”. Because they tend to use traditional media more than younger demos, they feel saturated with ads. They just have no need or desire to change their detergent or shampoo or vehicle marque because they are happy/accustomed/familiar with the one they have used, sometimes for decades.
Further, advertisers prefer targeting family units larger than “empty nesters” represent because the volume of sales and consumption is greater.
Additionally, many products are designed with a specific age range in mind, right down to the name and label.
Setting aside Americans' deep-seated love of convenience and distaste for research, given that the problem is fairly deep-rooted buying preferences and the acceptable second-and-third-choice brands would likely also be agency clients, how would you see this working out?
...to say nothing of getting a group of Americans to say "Dammit! I want to see/hear your advertising!"
Okay, you got me there.
It's a two-pronged problem, and more oriented to radio than TV (though not completely). People (not demos, actual breathing adults) over 55 stop hearing programming they enjoy because the companies that advertise through agencies stop buying stations that are heavy in those demos. So you don't hear "your" music because the companies that support the stations that used to (or might in the future) play it won't buy you if you do. Getting that message across to listeners might motivate them to stay away from those advertisers until they indicate to stations that they will return to supporting them if the stations add back that era of music again. Not return to a 100% older music format, but not boycott that era or style in their mix either. I write this with R&R oldies in mind, but it could just as easily apply to other forms of programming (e.g., classic C&W, smooth jazz, standards, whatever). "I support P&G when I buy Tide, but P&G won't support KRTH if they dare play music tailored to 55+ that grew up on that music. So I don't buy P&G products until P&G makes it clear to KRTH that if they re-introduce the occasional Beatles, Stones, Motown, etc. song in the music mix, we keep buying the station." Is it going to happen in the real world? About as likely as finding ham on rye served at next year's Passover seder, I guess.
To your point, you're going to hear ads anyway. Why can't some of them return to being creative enough to influence me to retry their product? I can afford Tide as well as the hypothetical 30 y/o housewife, but at the moment I have no reason to spend the extra bucks to select that option over the better deal I see at Costco. Maybe hearing some of "my" music in close proximity to "your" spots might make that association.
Okay, you got me there.
It's a two-pronged problem, and more oriented to radio than TV (though not completely). People (not demos, actual breathing adults) over 55 stop hearing programming they enjoy because the companies that advertise through agencies stop buying stations that are heavy in those demos. So you don't hear "your" music because the companies that support the stations that used to (or might in the future) play it won't buy you if you do. Getting that message across to listeners might motivate them to stay away from those advertisers until they indicate to stations that they will return to supporting them if the stations add back that era of music again. Not return to a 100% older music format, but not boycott that era or style in their mix either. I write this with R&R oldies in mind, but it could just as easily apply to other forms of programming (e.g., classic C&W, smooth jazz, standards, whatever). "I support P&G when I buy Tide, but P&G won't support KRTH if they dare play music tailored to 55+ that grew up on that music. So I don't buy P&G products until P&G makes it clear to KRTH that if they re-introduce the occasional Beatles, Stones, Motown, etc. song in the music mix, we keep buying the station." Is it going to happen in the real world? About as likely as finding ham on rye served at next year's Passover seder, I guess.
To your point, you're going to hear ads anyway. Why can't some of them return to being creative enough to influence me to retry their product? I can afford Tide as well as the hypothetical 30 y/o housewife, but at the moment I have no reason to spend the extra bucks to select that option over the better deal I see at Costco. Maybe hearing some of "my" music in close proximity to "your" spots might make that association.
Except---most of the 55+ audience that really wants that content has found it---without ads----by leaving OTR radio and TV. And they're probably happier because the music doesn't have to test and they're not hearing the Kars4Kids jingle every 40 minutes.
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