I didn't necessarily say it was his fault. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Let's not sugar coat things, though.
KFNX never had ratings because that wasn't the model. Barna may have been right to go local, but bringing back tired has-beens didn't work out too well. The station lost a ton of money. That's what happens when you build a news-talk station, but when the station in question is in bankruptcy, maybe you ought to take that into account. Now KFNX is back doing brokered time (albeit it somewhat differently than before) and making a lot more money than when it had ratings. Which is more important? It's almost impossible to sell spots on an independent, one-in-the-cluster AM with a 0.5 or a 0.7. That's why KSAZ, the Jolt, etc. have a difficult time. You have no economies of scale and few people know who you are... people (stupidly) want to advertise on their favorite station, and if you've got a 0.7, chances are, you aren't it.
The Ehlingers are nice people and it's unfortunate they got caught up in all this. That's why it's called being in business, and why most people work at a desk for $20 an hour rather than take on the risk. It's billing eight times what it did before because for much of the time the Ehlingers ran it, the office was empty during the day and they didn't really care about making money. The only time I worked for an actual station after age 21, I increased the billing by 10x in six months. Hooray for me, but in reality, when the owner lives 1500 miles away and has half a dozen other ventures occupying him, it wasn't tough. When I left, it went below the abysmmal levels it was at when I came in. Which is probably what will happen to KSAZ; some operators can fund the deficits, others can't.
Of course it's tough operating a one man show. That proves why there is so much brokered time on AM. If stations playing "legitimate" formats could make enough to have more than one staffer, they would. It's out of necessity. KSAZ's signal makes it more sad, but they have been late to the game selling themselves. You can make fun of the brokered stations like KFNX, but many of them have staffs much larger than the "one man shows" you speak of. I'd bet KFNX has several times the staff of both of CC's Phoenix AMs excluding KFYI. Same for similar stations.
