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Quinnipiac Univ. AM Station to be Sold for $3000.
- Thread starter Barry
- Start date
The buyer is Clark Smidt, a long time broadcaster whos owned stations before and been a consultant.
good luck, no tower site.. not going to be cheap to rectify for 2 towers and if you go non directional, you'll get maybe 250-300 watts day and less then 100 at night
No FM translator, either. Can't beat the price, I suppose, but I can't even guess what his plans are. He's never been associated with anything but music-formatted FMs, has he? I'm old enough to remember him on-air with "Captain" Ken Shelton on Top 40 WBZ-FM Boston (not the current Sports Hub at 98.5 but the station at 106.7 that is now WMJX) in the early '70s.
Hamden and all the other Hartford/New Haven suburbs along I-91 in southern Connecticut are pretty densely populated, so no matter where the transmitter site winds up, there'll be plenty of potential listeners. But how many of them are still listening to AM, except maybe to WTIC for Red Sox play-by-play in season? (The Sox don't have an FM affiliate in the market.) WQUN itself used to be on the Red Sox network.
For sale ad, dating back to 2017, when the station's call was WQUN.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190506143517/https://stationsale.com/wqun-hamden-ct/
https://web.archive.org/web/20190506143517/https://stationsale.com/wqun-hamden-ct/
I see two towers on Google Earth owned by Vertical Bridge.
Agree- even if it doesn't have a translator, an AM frequency in that area is still valuable and with the right format it could turn out to be a good purchase. My guess is the new format will not be sports, because you're competing with the New Haven ESPN Radio (1300) nearby on the AM dial and with less nighttime power. While many of the locals know 1220's history as a Red Sox affiliate and that Joe Castiglione hails from Hamden, that wasn't the main focus of WQUN's old programming. It was primarily an adult standards station and didn't even air every single Sox game in the old days because Quinnipiac sports obviously took first priority.
Even if the 1220 frequency has been off the air for over a year, many old listeners would still be excited to tune in again just to find out what the new format is. I attended Quinnipiac about ten years ago and listened to the old station a fair amount when on campus. But most of the other students in my dorm area didn't- they streamed the sports broadcasts online if they wanted to listen to them rather than tuning in to the AM station. And since the music the station played (songs like Take Me Home Country Roads, Michael by the Highwaymen, etc) was too old for most of the students' liking, they didn't tune in for that reason either. The adults in the Hamden community were the target audience.
In the old days you could still hear 1220 when driving north on 91 until about Meriden, and then it was gone completely. The signal was also blocked in many parts of downtown New Haven and there was a lot of interference once you got closer to the shoreline.
A classic hits type format could end up working well for the new owner and there wouldn't be that much competition- Kool Radio's signal is spotty once you get to downtown Hamden and WPLR is straight up classic rock.
The broadcast rights to be on the Red Sox radio network are expensive, so if he just bought the station that probably wouldn't be his first move.
WWYZ of course still comes in well in the New Haven area, but since there isn't a major country station right out of New Haven, maybe a classic/older country kind of format could also be a good option for a new AM station in the area?
WTIC does well enough south of Hartford to make 1220 unnecessary, even with the higher noise floor. And when you get down to New Haven and points west, the potential audience you're trying to reach is predominantly Yankees fans. I would imagine Hamden itself is solid Yankees territory. Since country has been a viable format in this part of the state only since 1988, when WWYZ flipped from light rock, maybe a '90s-centered classic country station could work. Of course, 1220 was country in the early '80s as WSCR, and WHN from New York was still country then and for years before, but I doubt enough people were listening to either then to produce as much awareness or appreciation of pre-Garth country as a true classic country station would need to attract an audience today.
Quinnipiac has a lot of students who are from New Jersey as well, so yes- Hamden is mostly Yankees territory. But during one of the Red Sox radio network broadcasts in 2018 Joe Castiglione did a promotion for Modern Apizza, using the fact he grew up in the New Haven area as a way to advertise it. It was a paid mention, of course. There was also another commercial during the Red Sox broadcasts recently for a hot dog place based out of Hamden and once again, the fact that the Red Sox announcer grew up there was the selling point.
The aerial photo showing the towers at the coordinates specified on WQUN's license is dated February 2020.
Only $3000??? Wish I knew. I could afford that.
and what would you do about a lack of a tower site? I havent read any paperwork but i have a feeling theres way more then.. this was cheap at $3000.. kinda deal
The cost of the license is often the cheapest part. Getting the station up and running is where you need deep pockets. Especially if you want to have paid staff. But just the engineering fees, legal fees, and insurance can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Except for a stint as NOAA radio
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