MORE KGOW ISSUES

[jd]

For what it's worth, here are some thoughts from David Gow about sports radio and in particular his "triple delivery platform," so to speak:

“When we started, we thought being the stand-alone was going to be a great path,” he said. “But we stumbled into some neat opportunities to grow and expand. Buying the network and buying 97.5 has given us three platform opportunities and a chance to be a leader in sports marketing locally. We can offer our advertisers a combo sale to reach two different audiences and the economies of scale from one company."

The full article is at http://blog.chron.com/sportsmedia/2...-in-arbitrons-gow-touts-sports-medias-future/

 

[Rad10]

Well I want to thank you personally for taking the time to actually speak to me. I guarantee that never would've been the case from a member of the big corporations.

Can I ask you this, since Mr. Gow is a die hard sports fan and wants to hold on to both brands of sports programming, why wouldn't he put the network he owns on the FM as opposed to running the competitor on the superior stick? Seems to me that Y!SR should now be on the FM as the flagship for Gow and the competing ESPN programming moved down to the inferior 1560 signal. Is that a stipulation in the contract signed with Cumulus, or something that simply hasn't been considered by Gow Media?

I value the opinions of you guys that have passion for the industry. Thank you for the kind words.
Sorry i can't be totally specific, but let's just say if it ain't broke don't fix it. (It makes money without changes).

Understood. Don't want to put you in a precarious position. I certainly appreciate that you took the time to talk to me. As an avid radio fan and hobbyist, its certainly nice to know that there are those like you, Chuck Tiller, and bturner that are up to their elbows with the daily grind of operations, yet find the time to have an open and quality conversation with an everyday listener perusing the board. My thanks and respect goes to you sir. All my best to you and yours.

 

[davideduardo]

Music on AM isn't dead. San Antonio proves it every day, as does Dallas and Austin. I hear plenty of music on the band even here in Houston. However, it is 99% Spanish.

And, in the case of the Spanish "music stations" you are hearing one of several possibilities:

- An AM that is otherwise worthless simulcasting an FM "because it might ad a tenth of a point to the total and we have nothing else we can do with it."

- An AM filling in a corner of the market for a rimshot FM

- An AM doing a religious format of some kind that involves music and where the organization does not haver the funds to buy an FM.

If it is profitable enough for Univision,

Univision has no music AMs. They are all either local talk (WADO, WKAQ, WAQI) or fulltime affiliates of Univisión América, the national talk and news network. Yeah, there is one kind-of-exception in El Paso, where there is music as a fill between talk shows on one of the AMs.

Liberman,

Liberman has one slightly profitable music AM in LA, but it has less than a 1 share. But that works, because in the second largest market it gets enough listeners to get sales for clients, even though the audience is very, very old. Otherwise, any Liberman AM music fits one of the cases above.

etc. to continue with those formats, how can it be justified that an English language music station can not survive in this market?

In most places, there are so few Spanish language FMs compared to the total in English that there are viable formats missing from FM (keep in mind that there are probably more possible formats in Spanish than in English) so occasionally one will spill over onto AM. But if it gets any numbers, someone will copy it on FM.

Hispanics tend to use AM even less than the general market. The AM band was in such bad shape financially that the Mexican congress decreed AM to no longer be viable and is allowing about 760 of 880 total AM's in the country to move to FM and close, permanently, the AM facility.

AM is not viable for music.

 

[Mediafrog+]

Music on AM isn't dead. San Antonio proves it every day, as does Dallas and Austin. I hear plenty of music on the band even here in Houston. However, it is 99% Spanish.

And, in the case of the Spanish "music stations" you are hearing one of several possibilities:

The "99% is Spanish" observation is pure hyperbole. A majority of the music you hear on Houston AM is, guess what: in Asian languages. The only Spanish language AM music formats are on KEYH and KQUE, both Liberman stations, and likely, soon on the sales block. The Spanish language religious stations have music mixed amongst the preachers as well.

Hispanics tend to use AM even less than the general market. The AM band was in such bad shape financially that the Mexican congress decreed AM to no longer be viable and is allowing about 760 of 880 total AM's in the country to move to FM and close, permanently, the AM facility.

Some DX forums have recently mentioned that Brazil is considering the same thing. I think they've also added a few extra frequencies (87.5, 87.7, 87.9) to the low end of the FM band as well.

 

[davideduardo]

Some DX forums have recently mentioned that Brazil is considering the same thing. I think they've also added a few extra frequencies (87.5, 87.7, 87.9) to the low end of the FM band as well.

And, of course, Canada has eliminated over 60% of its AMs, with some provinces (PEI, BB and NS, IIRC) having none left or just a straggler or two. Since the move has been gradual, it has not created the "headlines" of the massive move in Mexico, but eventually Canada will only have AMs in a few major cities to provide the added options the regulators believe are needed there.

In some countries AM is dying of pure attrition. El Salvador has only half of its stations left, and of those that remain, most are religious and evangelical operations. As many as half the AMs in Ecuador's larger markets have close and not been relicensed. Several countries, like Austria and South Africa, no longer have any significant numbers of AMs either.