One station I went to work for had spent its first year in ultra poverty. Back before auctions when you found a frequency a Public Notice was issued and anybody could apply for what you had spent money to find. The station opted for lower power than it could have applied for to deter filers. $500,000 later after fending off 6 other applications, my owner won the CP and had to build as cheaply as possible: an old transmitter from the 1950s and studio to match all in a construction site portable office. With only one employee, the AM daytimer got started. There was so little billing, they opted to record the first 5 hours and 45 minutes on a VCR, rewind it while going live 15 minutes and play it back as the sole employee spent the afternoon trying to sell. When I got there at 18 months on the air, billing was $6,000 a month and breakeven was $17,000 a month.
I worked a AM daytimer, only station in a town of 3,100 and literally a vacant dial except for a 5 watt FM translator. Again, this was a year after the new owner took over. The station had been mostly Big Band and old country from the 1940s and 1950s with live commercials read by the jocks. The station began in the 1950s and was run the same way it was run on it's first day. When the station sold, the owner was placed in an assisted care facility and before the new staff came in, most equipment and the entire record library had vanished. Billing only $5,000 a year, it had been the owner's hobby. You got free ads if the owner liked you or 25 cents a spot if they didn't. This was in 1980. Billing was up to $1,300 a month when I arrived. In a year I got it to about $3,000 more or less depending on the month. We had no news service (couldn't afford the AP ticker or National Weather Service teletype). The morning guy was charged with watching the forecast on cable TV and writing it down. No news director so local news was whatever was mailed or dropped by. If you played every record we had in rotation it would repeat about every 7 hours. We had, I think, 4 albums and 5 gospel music albums. I got us $50 a month in petty cash so I'd call a music label distributor and order singles off the Billboard chart a friend would mail me. I eventually became country hit radio instead of the same songs twice a day. I managed to find us a couple of cart machines (one a record/play) for $400. At least we were running 45 currents (about 1/4th were non-offensive adult contemporary that leaned soft or could cross-over) and 90 recurrents. The station was no better off when I left mainly because I was not a good salesperson then and the town disliked a person from California owning the station and a manager who was not local. I was happy to get out of that town. Lousy people.
I worked a AM daytimer, only station in a town of 3,100 and literally a vacant dial except for a 5 watt FM translator. Again, this was a year after the new owner took over. The station had been mostly Big Band and old country from the 1940s and 1950s with live commercials read by the jocks. The station began in the 1950s and was run the same way it was run on it's first day. When the station sold, the owner was placed in an assisted care facility and before the new staff came in, most equipment and the entire record library had vanished. Billing only $5,000 a year, it had been the owner's hobby. You got free ads if the owner liked you or 25 cents a spot if they didn't. This was in 1980. Billing was up to $1,300 a month when I arrived. In a year I got it to about $3,000 more or less depending on the month. We had no news service (couldn't afford the AP ticker or National Weather Service teletype). The morning guy was charged with watching the forecast on cable TV and writing it down. No news director so local news was whatever was mailed or dropped by. If you played every record we had in rotation it would repeat about every 7 hours. We had, I think, 4 albums and 5 gospel music albums. I got us $50 a month in petty cash so I'd call a music label distributor and order singles off the Billboard chart a friend would mail me. I eventually became country hit radio instead of the same songs twice a day. I managed to find us a couple of cart machines (one a record/play) for $400. At least we were running 45 currents (about 1/4th were non-offensive adult contemporary that leaned soft or could cross-over) and 90 recurrents. The station was no better off when I left mainly because I was not a good salesperson then and the town disliked a person from California owning the station and a manager who was not local. I was happy to get out of that town. Lousy people.