Is there any way I can see a schedule for the CRI programming on KYND and KGBC?
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KYND/KGBC Schedule?
- Thread starter someperson
- Start date
I did not have time to explore this site. However, it is a start.
http://english.cri.cn/cribb/index.htm
You may have to contact them through email.
http://english.cri.cn/cribb/index.htm
You may have to contact them through email.
P
purpledevil
Guest
someperson said:
If you can hear the signal from your location, listen at the TOH. The recorded message will tell you how to contact the station, obtain programming schedules, etc. I've never jotted down the information and can't remember it verbatim.
...or wait for bturner to respond to this topic. He manages KYND.
[/quote]
I
...or wait for bturner to respond to this topic. He manages KYND.
[/quote]
If bturner runs KYND, who runs KGBC? KYND, good signals around my QTH near Richmond and Hillcroft. Will/can it ever become 24 hours?
OLD CHICAGO
I
...or wait for bturner to respond to this topic. He manages KYND.
[/quote]
If bturner runs KYND, who runs KGBC? KYND, good signals around my QTH near Richmond and Hillcroft. Will/can it ever become 24 hours?
OLD CHICAGO
KGBC is different ownership from KYND. I handle KYND.
KYND has a tough time with nighttime. Any nighttime power would be minimal and not cover many people. You have to weigh the cost versus the coverage. I wonder if any income from nighttime could every put a dent into the construction costs.
KYND has a tough time with nighttime. Any nighttime power would be minimal and not cover many people. You have to weigh the cost versus the coverage. I wonder if any income from nighttime could every put a dent into the construction costs.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
bturner said:
If you are over it - any way KYND can fill the huge format hole for oldies we have in Houston? A consistent, dependable outlet done by somebody who knows the oldies format, and does it as the station's primary music format 7 days 24 (or operating) hours simply could not lose in Houston. Even AM would be welcome. Right now, the music is all over the place, and that almost never works. Focus it on good songs from the 50's, 60's and early 70's - you simply could not lose!
Oh yes I would lose. Right now we pay our bills and have low overhead. If I went to a station driven format, any format, I would begin with zero income, have to hire a sales staff, support staff, air talent, build more elaborate studios, do some marketing to radio listeners and operate in the hopes of gaining more cash in billing eventually to pay for the length of time and dollars out of pocket it took to reach that point. And if I did reach that point financially and especially if I began appearing in Arbitron, a hungry FM would steal the format or another AM or two would splinter the audience. Plus, keep in mind, nighttime coverage would never be anywhere close to market coverage, so in winter months I'd be coming up to full power in about the middle of morning drive and going off before the end of afternoon drive. Granted I could load up on small businesses buying advertising but the renewal ratio is pretty low and the cost to obtain a client is about what they can afford to pay (from our past experience).
I'd love to have an oldies station here as well since it's the stuff I grew up with (and I loved being the high energy top 40 jock) but if you run the numbers, I could easily cost the company a million dollars and maybe millions just to reach the point of breakeven on monthly operating expenses. Even if I could bill a substantial amount, it might be a decade or more before I could put a dent in the start up costs and I am almost positive someone else out there will have tried to take it away from me several times. There are simply too many available signals for that not to happen. The only way to prevent that is to spend more money trying to LMA the struggling stations to eliminate the possible competition and that only increases the investment and operating costs.
The jock in me is smiling at the thought and wishing I could go oldies. The manager in me has me running, screaming, in the opposite direction. From the management side, my job is to keep the station self-supporting. I trimmed everywhere I could to make that happen and keep the 'stress' level as low as possible. Literally my goal has been to have the station pay its bills for the least amount of work and hassle.
I'd love to have an oldies station here as well since it's the stuff I grew up with (and I loved being the high energy top 40 jock) but if you run the numbers, I could easily cost the company a million dollars and maybe millions just to reach the point of breakeven on monthly operating expenses. Even if I could bill a substantial amount, it might be a decade or more before I could put a dent in the start up costs and I am almost positive someone else out there will have tried to take it away from me several times. There are simply too many available signals for that not to happen. The only way to prevent that is to spend more money trying to LMA the struggling stations to eliminate the possible competition and that only increases the investment and operating costs.
The jock in me is smiling at the thought and wishing I could go oldies. The manager in me has me running, screaming, in the opposite direction. From the management side, my job is to keep the station self-supporting. I trimmed everywhere I could to make that happen and keep the 'stress' level as low as possible. Literally my goal has been to have the station pay its bills for the least amount of work and hassle.
someperson said:
New to this thread but find it of interest. I recall when the new Huntsville station signed on the air
in about 1980 on 1520.. Could hear that station in SW Houston on a Radio Shack TRF back then.
Believe it or not, they had all local DJs in the early 80s. KYND purchased that station and took it dark a few years ago.This allowed them have a stronger signal over Houston.
KYND, according to Wikipedia:
"KYND (1520 AM) is a brokered time radio station in the Houston, Texas metropolitan area. KYND is owned by Pro Broadcasting, Inc. The station is leased and currently airs an English language service from China Radio International."
Who/Whom is paying the KYND LMA?
How much dose it cost to LMA an AM station in Houston?
It appears quite a few AM stations in Houston have a LMA in place these days.
Might you be thinking Hallettsville instead of Huntsville? We bought KHLT and moved it toward San Antonio to allow KYND to move south and west and increase power.
CRI provides funds to an American company that originates some programming and cherry picks CRI programs to build a schedule and then they acquire signals in various markets in the USA to run the programming. We do not LMA them the station but rather sell them the time. In essence they pay us to provide the programming to us while we handle the remainder of the operation.
What does it cost to lease a station? That depends on the station and the client. I have heard of rates as low as $25,000 up to $80,000+ per month. Much like renting a place, an upfront deposit is usually in the neighborhood three times the monthly rate. Most contacts are multi-year and have increases in rate to compensate for cost of living increases. You can LMA a station for less since you turn the whole operation over to the party that also pays the monthly operating expenses.
The ideal situation is finding a good client, getting enough up front, growing with them and leaving enough cash on the table for the client to be successful and turn an average profit. You work together as issues come up because you both want the same thing, success for both parties.
Houston is a market where there are numerous ethnic communities of various sizes, all unable to handle the purchase of a major market signal, can manage to buy time of a station to serve their community. In a way it is a great public service and likely keeps several stations that otherwise would have a tough time stopping the red ink from flowing. It's really one of the best options for an AM station, especially a daytimer or station lacking full market coverage. We looked at it all, paid religion, suburban station, etc., and all were a lot tougher financially. I would say anything else is pretty risky not because it is tough to hit break-even but the added staff and expenses you have until you reach that point. Generally speaking, once you start turning a profit, the potential is typically not enough to pay the debt you have in getting it to the point of breaking even. A buddy of mine runs such a station and while he does about $100,000 a month in a Midwest major market, he had about $450,000 in debt from the startup to pay back and only about 7% profit providing no parts burned out, no lightning struck his station and a console didn't blow up on him. On the other hand, I might go a few months between clients at the most and can make that back in about 3 to 5 years.
CRI provides funds to an American company that originates some programming and cherry picks CRI programs to build a schedule and then they acquire signals in various markets in the USA to run the programming. We do not LMA them the station but rather sell them the time. In essence they pay us to provide the programming to us while we handle the remainder of the operation.
What does it cost to lease a station? That depends on the station and the client. I have heard of rates as low as $25,000 up to $80,000+ per month. Much like renting a place, an upfront deposit is usually in the neighborhood three times the monthly rate. Most contacts are multi-year and have increases in rate to compensate for cost of living increases. You can LMA a station for less since you turn the whole operation over to the party that also pays the monthly operating expenses.
The ideal situation is finding a good client, getting enough up front, growing with them and leaving enough cash on the table for the client to be successful and turn an average profit. You work together as issues come up because you both want the same thing, success for both parties.
Houston is a market where there are numerous ethnic communities of various sizes, all unable to handle the purchase of a major market signal, can manage to buy time of a station to serve their community. In a way it is a great public service and likely keeps several stations that otherwise would have a tough time stopping the red ink from flowing. It's really one of the best options for an AM station, especially a daytimer or station lacking full market coverage. We looked at it all, paid religion, suburban station, etc., and all were a lot tougher financially. I would say anything else is pretty risky not because it is tough to hit break-even but the added staff and expenses you have until you reach that point. Generally speaking, once you start turning a profit, the potential is typically not enough to pay the debt you have in getting it to the point of breaking even. A buddy of mine runs such a station and while he does about $100,000 a month in a Midwest major market, he had about $450,000 in debt from the startup to pay back and only about 7% profit providing no parts burned out, no lightning struck his station and a console didn't blow up on him. On the other hand, I might go a few months between clients at the most and can make that back in about 3 to 5 years.
bturner said:
I'll admit I have absolutely no experience in the industry, but that being said, I have to ask: is there really no way that the format could be done on the cheap? Given the state of radio in this town, I would even be happy with a mostly automated station. I've heard plenty of amateur online stations that sound decent enough to me, despite being run without proper equipment, staff, or even air talent. What prevents something like this from being done with an actual station? I can see how sales staff would be required in order to generate advertising revenue, and some marketing would be needed to get the word out there, but what other overhead would be necessary to get an extremely basic station like this going?
I do agree that the signal of KYND would pose problems, but I still say it would be better than nothing. I certainly don't see any of the commercial stations running this format anytime soon.
bturner - If an oldies station is run well it will be a success fairly quickly, depending on what the vision of success is. In Columbus, Ohio we ran an oldies station billing just shy of 1 million a month, in a town about half the size of the Houston market. High energy jocks as well as a playlist that had a few hidden gems that weren't played to death in the regular rotation.
Despite what some say, the oldies format is very viable if run well
Despite what some say, the oldies format is very viable if run well
Wow, an oldies station doing just under a million a month. The top station in Houston only does double that, a heritage FM so to speak.
There are tons of stations that would love to do that here in Houston. Was this an AM daytime stand alone with the big boys for competition?
Let me ask you this: If you owned KYND and it was turning a little profit and paying its bills would you pull the plug, go to zero income, start a new format, hire a staff (somebody has to go out and sell commercials and we'd need much more payroll than we currently have) and take the chance that you would do well? And would you do this knowing once you do well someone else in the market would steal your format?
It is not so much the monthly operating costs as much as the ramp up costs. Let's say an AM daytime stand alone could go to the format. If you want listeners you have to do it right. That means good people. Good people make good pay. Your funding is sales. If the ad agencies think oldies skew too 'old' for their target demos, then your major advertisers are gone. That leaves the little mom and pop businesses that might spend $300 to $500 a month and tend not to be steady month after month buyers. If you want good salespeople, you have to pay just as good and certainly their connections would come with that but how hard are they willing to work to make the same money?
Add in all the additional 'unseen costs' like promotion (billboards, bumper stickers, showing up at live events, maintaining the operation, etc.). It all adds up quickly and can easily top $100,000 a month on mostly nickel and dime stuff. Let's say you can reach that $100,000 in two years and you managed to convince an advertising agency or two to put you on their buy sheet for a client or two after months of cultivating that. It would be easy to have $1,000,000 invested in the ramp up (covering each monthly loss). Now you're doing $100,000 a month and it costs you $93,000 a month to run the thing, how do you pay back that $1,000,000?
Realize to get to $100,000 a month, you have to have listeners, so you're showing up in Arbitron. Don't you think that Clear Channel or Cumulus AM fulltime station with a .4 will be eyeballing you? If they steal your format, then what? Spend another $1,000,000 try something else after they hire away your staff and offer 24/7 service?
I'm not trying to be doom and gloom. One post said 'mainly automated' might be an option. True. It still takes money and staff even if it is a jukebox. But if it is a jukebox, you'll never get the listeners or ad dollars you'd get by doing it right. In my opinion, the best oldies stations sound like the top 40 stations of the time, high energy personalities, jingles etc. (just price a quality jingle package for a major market station). I've known of AM daytimers actually trying oldies. These were suburban stations and by today's dollars they managed to bill about $10,000 to $15,000 a month. Some of those are now dark but almost all the others are brokered time, selling blocks to Spanish language entities or religious broadcasters.
Don't misunderstand me, I love radio. I loved being on the air. I loved programming. I enjoyed sales. I enjoyed writing and producing commercials. In management I loved watching my staff take the ball and run with it, always exceeding my expectations (I believe in having everybody on staff knowing the goal then taking ownership of one aspect and running it their way with enough rope to hang themselves. I found this is an environment where people excel...I'm only as good as my staff allows me to be). But my position today is to make the station work financially and I have to set aside my desire for the sake of achieving what my boss wants. I just can't see an oldies format as viable for our signal. Another station might be a whole other matter, especially an FM.
When you can run a station with two people, not have to generate programming or promotion or go out and sell a commercial, just keep it going, legal and collect a check each month, why would you want to take such a risk?
I recall my owner asking what I'd do if it was my station. His second question was 'How does that make me money?' He'd say, can you do it on a million? How do I get my million back? Is it guaranteed? Would you co-sign the note? If not, why? He was trying to point out radio is still a business and any investor wants an assurance of the return of his money, usually with interest that beats what he could earn by it sitting there doing nothing.
There are tons of stations that would love to do that here in Houston. Was this an AM daytime stand alone with the big boys for competition?
Let me ask you this: If you owned KYND and it was turning a little profit and paying its bills would you pull the plug, go to zero income, start a new format, hire a staff (somebody has to go out and sell commercials and we'd need much more payroll than we currently have) and take the chance that you would do well? And would you do this knowing once you do well someone else in the market would steal your format?
It is not so much the monthly operating costs as much as the ramp up costs. Let's say an AM daytime stand alone could go to the format. If you want listeners you have to do it right. That means good people. Good people make good pay. Your funding is sales. If the ad agencies think oldies skew too 'old' for their target demos, then your major advertisers are gone. That leaves the little mom and pop businesses that might spend $300 to $500 a month and tend not to be steady month after month buyers. If you want good salespeople, you have to pay just as good and certainly their connections would come with that but how hard are they willing to work to make the same money?
Add in all the additional 'unseen costs' like promotion (billboards, bumper stickers, showing up at live events, maintaining the operation, etc.). It all adds up quickly and can easily top $100,000 a month on mostly nickel and dime stuff. Let's say you can reach that $100,000 in two years and you managed to convince an advertising agency or two to put you on their buy sheet for a client or two after months of cultivating that. It would be easy to have $1,000,000 invested in the ramp up (covering each monthly loss). Now you're doing $100,000 a month and it costs you $93,000 a month to run the thing, how do you pay back that $1,000,000?
Realize to get to $100,000 a month, you have to have listeners, so you're showing up in Arbitron. Don't you think that Clear Channel or Cumulus AM fulltime station with a .4 will be eyeballing you? If they steal your format, then what? Spend another $1,000,000 try something else after they hire away your staff and offer 24/7 service?
I'm not trying to be doom and gloom. One post said 'mainly automated' might be an option. True. It still takes money and staff even if it is a jukebox. But if it is a jukebox, you'll never get the listeners or ad dollars you'd get by doing it right. In my opinion, the best oldies stations sound like the top 40 stations of the time, high energy personalities, jingles etc. (just price a quality jingle package for a major market station). I've known of AM daytimers actually trying oldies. These were suburban stations and by today's dollars they managed to bill about $10,000 to $15,000 a month. Some of those are now dark but almost all the others are brokered time, selling blocks to Spanish language entities or religious broadcasters.
Don't misunderstand me, I love radio. I loved being on the air. I loved programming. I enjoyed sales. I enjoyed writing and producing commercials. In management I loved watching my staff take the ball and run with it, always exceeding my expectations (I believe in having everybody on staff knowing the goal then taking ownership of one aspect and running it their way with enough rope to hang themselves. I found this is an environment where people excel...I'm only as good as my staff allows me to be). But my position today is to make the station work financially and I have to set aside my desire for the sake of achieving what my boss wants. I just can't see an oldies format as viable for our signal. Another station might be a whole other matter, especially an FM.
When you can run a station with two people, not have to generate programming or promotion or go out and sell a commercial, just keep it going, legal and collect a check each month, why would you want to take such a risk?
I recall my owner asking what I'd do if it was my station. His second question was 'How does that make me money?' He'd say, can you do it on a million? How do I get my million back? Is it guaranteed? Would you co-sign the note? If not, why? He was trying to point out radio is still a business and any investor wants an assurance of the return of his money, usually with interest that beats what he could earn by it sitting there doing nothing.
I totally understand what you're saying, and I can't say there's anything wrong with running KYND the way you're doing it. If it pays the bills, then the business is a success, and I can see why you wouldn't want to change that.
My comments were based on nothing: no experience in the industry, and practically no understanding of the management side of radio. In fact, I thank you for giving me some more knowledge on the subject and a bit of insight into how things are run.
In the end, the bills have to be paid, and from what you've said, I can see that running oldies on KYND probably isn't the way to do it. I do still think oldies could work on an AM station here, but probably not a daytimer. It would have to be done by somebody with very deep pockets to cover the upfront costs, with a strong enough station to fully penetrate the market in order to make it worth it. Even then, it would still be a huge risk, and like you said, a major media company could easily splinter the market if it does become successful.
My comments were based on nothing: no experience in the industry, and practically no understanding of the management side of radio. In fact, I thank you for giving me some more knowledge on the subject and a bit of insight into how things are run.
In the end, the bills have to be paid, and from what you've said, I can see that running oldies on KYND probably isn't the way to do it. I do still think oldies could work on an AM station here, but probably not a daytimer. It would have to be done by somebody with very deep pockets to cover the upfront costs, with a strong enough station to fully penetrate the market in order to make it worth it. Even then, it would still be a huge risk, and like you said, a major media company could easily splinter the market if it does become successful.
KYND did oldies on Sunday afternoons at one time in its early days. When I started in 1993, we had a couple of guys working the weekdays, a recently divorced guy that asked to work all day Saturdays, our engineer handling Sunday mornings and a jock that had worked in a few markets doing noon to sign off Sundays. The Sunday afternoon guy said he'd volunteer to cover the shift if he got to 'play radio' after the paid programs were finished for the day, which I think was 1:30 or 2pm. It was all stuff from our personal libraries. During summer, that was 6.5 or 7 hours, so I took half. It sure was fun to play 60 minute music hours and jock it just like the top 40 stations when the hits came out. We even had a few produced liners done for us as favors. We got a few requests which was pretty amazing back then. We'd play something that didn't make the safe list about every half hour and claim we were proving the other 'oldies' stations were just wimps and plugging 'while they're talking, we're still rocking through another 60 minute music hour'. We concentrated on the 1970s decade. And it sure was fun even though the equipment was lousy.
The only budget option for turning an AM station to oldies in a market like Houston would be likely going satellite and filling breaks with mom and pop businesses. At least this way you have jocks and while it won't sound local and be the same songs over and over, I think it a better option than a computer unannounced. You'd still need salespeople and from what I've seen, likely not bill too much but if you were losing money, it would be an option. It's tough when you have the big operators in your city because they have the means to take you down if they want what you have. You're kind of like the skinny wimpy kid defending the ball from the Dallas Cowboys front line. You're going to go down, it will hurt and it might leave a mark.
I knew one guy in a much smaller major market that went smooth jazz on his AM daytimer when smooth jazz was evolving from a more Windham Hill styled format to what smooth jazz became. He started doing well and an FM in town started doing the format. About 4 or 5 months later he switched to talk back when Rush Limbaugh had just started. Once the station showed in the ratings a few books, one of the larger group owners managed to convince the powers that be to move a few of the talkers this guy had on his station to their higher wattage fulltime station. He stayed talk but with those who did not carry the weight Rush did. After about a year he went Southern Gospel and started selling ministries. Since I knew the guy personally, I think of him when I think of doing something that a larger station might want to grab as their format.
For sure an AM daytimer in a major market has few options. The best options are formats that either turn too little money for your competition to worry about or have such a small audience they cannot monetize the numbers to fit their expenses. Sad but true. Even so, there will be a few other AMs that will be in a worse position trying to get what you have but only once they're out of ideas.
My earlier postings are not intended to be doom and gloom. I had to be taught the thought process I used and it was a banker/CPA that was my boss that taught me. He loved radio too but his banker/CPA mind kept him focused on cost of operation versus income potential. The coolest thing he ever said to me was to find the easiest way to run a station and that I could never spend too much time on figuring it out. His thinking is once you figure it out, you can do it over and over again elsewhere, adapting it to the specific market. We are both idea guys: big on new radio concepts but not as big on figuring out every minute detail. We talked to a major print publisher about a classifieds/swap show radio format in conjunction with the print. We figured we needed a major market to make it go, then we thought about screening out the bad guys.
The only budget option for turning an AM station to oldies in a market like Houston would be likely going satellite and filling breaks with mom and pop businesses. At least this way you have jocks and while it won't sound local and be the same songs over and over, I think it a better option than a computer unannounced. You'd still need salespeople and from what I've seen, likely not bill too much but if you were losing money, it would be an option. It's tough when you have the big operators in your city because they have the means to take you down if they want what you have. You're kind of like the skinny wimpy kid defending the ball from the Dallas Cowboys front line. You're going to go down, it will hurt and it might leave a mark.
I knew one guy in a much smaller major market that went smooth jazz on his AM daytimer when smooth jazz was evolving from a more Windham Hill styled format to what smooth jazz became. He started doing well and an FM in town started doing the format. About 4 or 5 months later he switched to talk back when Rush Limbaugh had just started. Once the station showed in the ratings a few books, one of the larger group owners managed to convince the powers that be to move a few of the talkers this guy had on his station to their higher wattage fulltime station. He stayed talk but with those who did not carry the weight Rush did. After about a year he went Southern Gospel and started selling ministries. Since I knew the guy personally, I think of him when I think of doing something that a larger station might want to grab as their format.
For sure an AM daytimer in a major market has few options. The best options are formats that either turn too little money for your competition to worry about or have such a small audience they cannot monetize the numbers to fit their expenses. Sad but true. Even so, there will be a few other AMs that will be in a worse position trying to get what you have but only once they're out of ideas.
My earlier postings are not intended to be doom and gloom. I had to be taught the thought process I used and it was a banker/CPA that was my boss that taught me. He loved radio too but his banker/CPA mind kept him focused on cost of operation versus income potential. The coolest thing he ever said to me was to find the easiest way to run a station and that I could never spend too much time on figuring it out. His thinking is once you figure it out, you can do it over and over again elsewhere, adapting it to the specific market. We are both idea guys: big on new radio concepts but not as big on figuring out every minute detail. We talked to a major print publisher about a classifieds/swap show radio format in conjunction with the print. We figured we needed a major market to make it go, then we thought about screening out the bad guys.
bturner said:
About 10 years ago, a friend of mine who had slogged long and hard in the business talked the owner of the AM that was across the street from where he grew up in a small mining town to sell to him. He came to me for money.
So, I did my due diligence. Besides having an old RCA transmitter that would need to be replaced in short order, the station was 3 months behind in mortgage payments on the tower site, and the owner would have wanted us to bring those current the day we signed the LMA, plus make the mortgage payment on the tower site for him until it closed.
I didn't have much money then (and sure have less now) and I saw where this was going to unravel quickly. Friend wanted to change the format. That meant losing the existing (tiny) client base and starting from zero. How were we going to pay the bills? "We're going to sell ads." Plus friend would have kept his day job at Metro. That meant that we'd have to pay someone to sell ads because if he was keeping his day job, nobody would be at the station during the day. I passed on the deal.
Someone else bought it and turned it religious, and the old RCA blew up a month after the sale closed.
Sometimes the best deals are the ones you never do. Everyone wants to play radio, but it's a lot harder than it looks.
bturner said:
Yes, I was thinking of the old KHLT in Hallettsville, Texas. Hallettsville is not included in the spell check vocabulary but Huntsville is. Thanks for the correction.
Forgot why the old KHLT was able to move into San Antonio on 1520. That station is now in Spanish.
KYND did apply of Nightime authorization some time ago. Any chance getting 5KW at night on 1520?
KYND wanted to buy the Hallettsville AM for years. The owner we first spoke with said if we found him a frequency with a little nighttime so he could run live high school sports and built it out for him, he'd hand it over to us. We couldn't find a good frequency for him. This guy sold the station eventually and a deal became impossible. Finally the station came up for sale again and KYND purchased it. Initially we were going to turn in the license but learned it could be moved toward San Antonio with a directional array at more power.
The purchase and move of KHLT meant we could move KYND further west and increase power.
KYND had applied for nighttime some years ago. The idea was to 'protect what was ours' and our plan was to add towers to the original site. This was approved but we would have needed to buy a strip of land either side of us or lease it. None of us were keen on that idea but as you know, once you have a CP, you can generally modify the plan and await approval. The nail in the coffin was when Cypress Rosehill Road was expanded to 4 lanes, cutting into some of the ground on one of the nighttime towers. The more pressing problem was a family matter that diverted the owner's attention.
We had a programmer on the station that was begging for nighttime, so we dropped the initial CP to try for a tiny nighttime power in the neighborhoods crucial to the client. An objection was filed and the application was dismissed. Even if the original nighttime had been built, it would not have covered much of the Houston area. I think the grant was 249 watts which I liked since we could use it or not. My thought was it might be nice for Cy-Fair, Tomball and Klein schools sports.
At our current site we are running 25kw, up from 3kw at the old site. The ground conductivity is off the scale compared to the old site. If we got nighttime at the current site, we likely wouldn't get past Katy. I'm not sure that would be worth doing.
The purchase and move of KHLT meant we could move KYND further west and increase power.
KYND had applied for nighttime some years ago. The idea was to 'protect what was ours' and our plan was to add towers to the original site. This was approved but we would have needed to buy a strip of land either side of us or lease it. None of us were keen on that idea but as you know, once you have a CP, you can generally modify the plan and await approval. The nail in the coffin was when Cypress Rosehill Road was expanded to 4 lanes, cutting into some of the ground on one of the nighttime towers. The more pressing problem was a family matter that diverted the owner's attention.
We had a programmer on the station that was begging for nighttime, so we dropped the initial CP to try for a tiny nighttime power in the neighborhoods crucial to the client. An objection was filed and the application was dismissed. Even if the original nighttime had been built, it would not have covered much of the Houston area. I think the grant was 249 watts which I liked since we could use it or not. My thought was it might be nice for Cy-Fair, Tomball and Klein schools sports.
At our current site we are running 25kw, up from 3kw at the old site. The ground conductivity is off the scale compared to the old site. If we got nighttime at the current site, we likely wouldn't get past Katy. I'm not sure that would be worth doing.
The details of the mining town station is exactly what I'm talking about. Buying a station or switching formats might be akin to buying an apartment complex. It must be entirely refurbished before you can rent even one unit. The refurbishing takes plenty of time, more than you figured. Finally you can rent the units but the bad reputation is still around and you need to get the word out. You struggle with only a few units rented. Finally a couple of years after you signed the note, your monthly operating expenses are met but you have the mortgage payment, taxes, all the refurbishing costs, management costs and such for the two years that you need to have returned to you. In many instances, it would take winning the lottery to get those dollars back because the complex at 100% occupancy cannot produce the revenue to cover all the initial debt and maybe not even the interest on the note. Some would say to raise the rent but a market can only handle so much so you have to be careful about what you ask for rent. Everybody says 'you can get a tax write-off' but that's pretty worthless when you didn't have the cash to burn in the first place or cannot throw off the cash to repay the investment. Plus, you can take a write-off only so long before you must show a profit.
About the best case scenario is doing everything on the least cash outlay possible and while that greatly stunts growth, it makes managing the start up much easier to pay off eventually. And as I have told people who want to do everything day one, starting as a lowly humble station and climbing that ladder one rung at a time creates a success story listeners, you and your advertisers see as winning one little step at a time. I believe in running a station at less than you can do so you can always improve inch by inch in good times and bad. The death knell seems to be the station that starts big and has to cut back. Listeners and advertisers alike perceive it as being unsuccessful...a station on its way down. Everyone wants to be with the winner as especially the succeeding underdog that started as the weak insignificant contender.
About the best case scenario is doing everything on the least cash outlay possible and while that greatly stunts growth, it makes managing the start up much easier to pay off eventually. And as I have told people who want to do everything day one, starting as a lowly humble station and climbing that ladder one rung at a time creates a success story listeners, you and your advertisers see as winning one little step at a time. I believe in running a station at less than you can do so you can always improve inch by inch in good times and bad. The death knell seems to be the station that starts big and has to cut back. Listeners and advertisers alike perceive it as being unsuccessful...a station on its way down. Everyone wants to be with the winner as especially the succeeding underdog that started as the weak insignificant contender.
Not to mention that when you're running a radio station, the money does not beat a path to your door; you have to go seek it out. That means being able to carry the load while you try to collect on a bunch of ad buys. Even when you have a good business plan, it can all come crumbling down.
Another friend of mine put a FM on the air along the Colorado River on the AZ/California border. They had enough capital to get them through the winter when they signed on and business in the town would be light and carry them through the beginning of the summer tourist season when the population of the town would double and everyone would make their money. By all accounts they were doing everything right: being involved in the community, starting small and building things up, playing a music mix that appealed both to the full-time residents as well as the visitors. By their numbers, they'd make enough in May and June alone to catch up from the slow winter season, and by the middle of the summer they'd begin to build their nest egg to get them through the slow times ahead. It was how every business in that town was built.
Problem was, the state health department found too much fecal bacteria in the lake and closed the state park before Memorial Day. The summer tourist season never happened that year and the whole town went broke. I helped him keep the needles moving after he closed up shop to try to keep the license alive but he eventually lost the station. He says if everyone in that town that owed him money could pay him back, he could retire today.
There is no such thing as a "can't lose" radio station. There is always a risk. The joke of making a small fortune owning a radio station begins with starting with a large fortune is all too true.
I don't begrudge you for brokering out the time on KYND, nor do I begrudge the stations that lease out time to any of the underserved foreign language communities (Hindi, Vietnamese, etc.) Those folks deserve a radio station and you deserve to make a living.
Whether you run a 2 person shop at a daytimer or you're a corporate owner of a 100,000 watt stick, the same risks apply (only the scale changes), and when you're talking about putting food on peoples tables, you don't take any of those risks lightly.
Another friend of mine put a FM on the air along the Colorado River on the AZ/California border. They had enough capital to get them through the winter when they signed on and business in the town would be light and carry them through the beginning of the summer tourist season when the population of the town would double and everyone would make their money. By all accounts they were doing everything right: being involved in the community, starting small and building things up, playing a music mix that appealed both to the full-time residents as well as the visitors. By their numbers, they'd make enough in May and June alone to catch up from the slow winter season, and by the middle of the summer they'd begin to build their nest egg to get them through the slow times ahead. It was how every business in that town was built.
Problem was, the state health department found too much fecal bacteria in the lake and closed the state park before Memorial Day. The summer tourist season never happened that year and the whole town went broke. I helped him keep the needles moving after he closed up shop to try to keep the license alive but he eventually lost the station. He says if everyone in that town that owed him money could pay him back, he could retire today.
There is no such thing as a "can't lose" radio station. There is always a risk. The joke of making a small fortune owning a radio station begins with starting with a large fortune is all too true.
I don't begrudge you for brokering out the time on KYND, nor do I begrudge the stations that lease out time to any of the underserved foreign language communities (Hindi, Vietnamese, etc.) Those folks deserve a radio station and you deserve to make a living.
Whether you run a 2 person shop at a daytimer or you're a corporate owner of a 100,000 watt stick, the same risks apply (only the scale changes), and when you're talking about putting food on peoples tables, you don't take any of those risks lightly.
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