Exactly. Audacy gave a fabulous FM signal to WINS and left WCBS to wither on the dying AM band. Then they started running the same local field reports on both stations after conning the union into giving them the opportunity to do that.
The owners worked with the union to show that WCBS was not profitable on the news portion of its operation while the sports deal was the only money-maker. The union wanted to preserve as many jobs as it could, and it did that for a while.
Then Audacy killed live news reports all evening and overnights on WCBS and they continued to run infomercials on the weekend.
So yes, they one hundred percent did everything to kill it with the usual corporate cost cutting plans in mind.
When radio revenues, inflation adjusted, are off by over 60% since Y2K, you expect them not to reduce costs when they have two stations in the same dramatically aging format*
* While "insiders" may think that the two stations have different news formats, to ad buyers they were just "the news stations". And agencies (most NYC market ad buys are through agencies) try not to duplicate formats, preferring to spread the buys across multiple ones to improve "reach" (which is a specific technical term in ad buying).
That probably would not have happened if there were real competition between Audacy and another operator running the two news stations that both ranked among the nation's top-10 billers.
Name another market anywhere in the world where two all-news stations exist successfully. The time was up for several reasons on having more than one news stations: high operating cost, reduced radio revenue pool, aging audience, more sources for traffic, weather and other service elements, the general decline of AM and the reduced usage of ad sponsored audio services.
Name that market, please.
It was a desperation move from a financially and ethically bankrupt corporation and another example of how consolidation has hurt media and the public in America.
It's no such thing. Audacy made the mistake of overpaying for mature stations with zero upside, and nobody calculated the loss of revenue radio has suffered overall due to new media, a quasi-recession and the pandemic.
There is nothing "ethically corrupt" for a company trying to emerge from bankruptcy in a weak ad economy to find ways to make unprofitable stations more productive. You keep talking about "billing" but the fact is that WCBS, aside from sports, was not profitable.
Consolidation saved radio from something even worse as just before the FCC allowed it, over half of all US radio stations were not profitable. That was 30 years ago. Just think how much worse the business would be if consolidation had not happened.
