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Renda gives away 1360
- Thread starter Whiplash
- Start date
here is a link to a little more info:
http://radioinsight.com/blog/headlines/84210/pittsburgh-am-donated/
I wonder if Rush will say anything about this.
http://radioinsight.com/blog/headlines/84210/pittsburgh-am-donated/
I wonder if Rush will say anything about this.
Rev. Mann will turn off 1150, which combined with the departure of WKZV, will clear the way for Clear Channel to move 1170 WWVA into the Pittsburgh market. This becomes the Pittsburgh outlet for Rush and the other conservative shows (which they already carry) and allows for a format change on 104.7.
Without running the numbers, I'm thinking Renda's WCCS would still be an obstacle to that move, even if it made sense, which it doesn't, considering the cost that would be involved in building out a new 50 kW AM DA in 2013 and the difficulty CC would face in moving the talk audience from 104.7 back to AM. One would think they'd have learned that lesson from the very expensive attempt a few years ago to launch a new talk AM in Boston, which flopped spectacularly.
The talk audience is shrinking and over 55. They want a sports FM.
It is at least a possibility that while Renda received "no consideration" from Pentecotal Temple for 1360, CC could be involved, and if they facilitated the donation of 1360, I'm sure that 1160 belonging to the same owner would be part of the conversation as well.
Remember CC tried to move 1170 to Stow, OH until WV lawmakers stepped in. A move to, for instance, WKZV's former site (somebody came up with the cash to take those towers down already) would still fully cover the Wheeling market and maybe not even require a new COL.
It is at least a possibility that while Renda received "no consideration" from Pentecotal Temple for 1360, CC could be involved, and if they facilitated the donation of 1360, I'm sure that 1160 belonging to the same owner would be part of the conversation as well.
Remember CC tried to move 1170 to Stow, OH until WV lawmakers stepped in. A move to, for instance, WKZV's former site (somebody came up with the cash to take those towers down already) would still fully cover the Wheeling market and maybe not even require a new COL.
And the last piece of the puzzle is 910. PBRTV reports that there are "serious conversations" in progress on that facility, and there is a history of Renda having once negotiated a 910-for-1360 swap that was not completed. So Renda gets money from Clear Channel, buys 910, and shuts off 1160.
Renda appears to have already decided quite some time back that it wasn't worth the very considerable expense that would have been involved in building out an upgraded 910. One can reasonably assume that Renda determined there was no format it could have put on a more powerful 910 signal that would have justified the move. What's more, the new 910 facility was only possible if 1360 moved to Apollo to replace the lost "first local service" there, and now that won't be possible under 1360's new owners. (To put it differently: if Renda still wanted to do a deal for 910, one of the prerequisites for that deal would be retaining control of 1360, which they've just decided not to do.)
As for WWVA, it most certainly cannot go anywhere in PA and remain licensed to Wheeling. Full-time AM stations must maintain a 5 mV/m signal over their city of license both day and night. Even if WWVA could still cover Wheeling with 5 mV by day from the former WKZV site (and it probably couldn't), a move into Washington would put Wheeling right into the very deep null that WWVA has to maintain at night toward its clear-channel partner on 1170, KFAQ in Tulsa. That's the whole reason the WWVA site was built in Ohio in the first place - the night signal goes east and the null falls westward, out of the Wheeling market toward Cambridge, Ohio. Any move into Pennsylvania would have to come with a new city of license somewhere east of the new transmitting site.
So this scenario is now into the multiple millions of dollars - two new multiple-tower AM arrays (910 and 1170) to be built from scratch, the considerable legal effort involved in shepherding those projects past local zoning boards and NIMBYs, plus whatever Renda would want to give up the revenue stream it now gets out of 1160 as part of its Indiana cluster. And for what? Two new competing talk AMs? In 2013?
My read on the situation is this:
Renda was no doubt losing a fairly sizable sum of money keeping 1360 wheezing along with an aging nighttime DA site and a leased daytime site, and no worthwhile programming for it. By donating the license to a nonprofit, they can at least reap a small tax dividend. Renda has no further interest in anything more on the AM dial in Pittsburgh beyond WJAS.
The Pentecostal Temple folks might be able to find a greater fool to take 1150 off their hands for a small sum of money. If not, they'll take it dark and focus on 1360.
That greater fool won't be Clear Channel. Let's not forget that the thwarted attempt to move WWVA to "Stow" came along because CC had the choice back then of moving WWVA to either Pittsburgh or Cleveland, and chose Cleveland as the better of the two possibilities. Clear is still spending some money maintaining its existing AMs; it's not spending anything at all to expand its AM portfolio, and in fact it's shrinking that portfolio where it makes sense to exit AM (as in Detroit's 1310 and Minneapolis' 690, for instance.)
As for WWVA, it most certainly cannot go anywhere in PA and remain licensed to Wheeling. Full-time AM stations must maintain a 5 mV/m signal over their city of license both day and night. Even if WWVA could still cover Wheeling with 5 mV by day from the former WKZV site (and it probably couldn't), a move into Washington would put Wheeling right into the very deep null that WWVA has to maintain at night toward its clear-channel partner on 1170, KFAQ in Tulsa. That's the whole reason the WWVA site was built in Ohio in the first place - the night signal goes east and the null falls westward, out of the Wheeling market toward Cambridge, Ohio. Any move into Pennsylvania would have to come with a new city of license somewhere east of the new transmitting site.
So this scenario is now into the multiple millions of dollars - two new multiple-tower AM arrays (910 and 1170) to be built from scratch, the considerable legal effort involved in shepherding those projects past local zoning boards and NIMBYs, plus whatever Renda would want to give up the revenue stream it now gets out of 1160 as part of its Indiana cluster. And for what? Two new competing talk AMs? In 2013?
My read on the situation is this:
Renda was no doubt losing a fairly sizable sum of money keeping 1360 wheezing along with an aging nighttime DA site and a leased daytime site, and no worthwhile programming for it. By donating the license to a nonprofit, they can at least reap a small tax dividend. Renda has no further interest in anything more on the AM dial in Pittsburgh beyond WJAS.
The Pentecostal Temple folks might be able to find a greater fool to take 1150 off their hands for a small sum of money. If not, they'll take it dark and focus on 1360.
That greater fool won't be Clear Channel. Let's not forget that the thwarted attempt to move WWVA to "Stow" came along because CC had the choice back then of moving WWVA to either Pittsburgh or Cleveland, and chose Cleveland as the better of the two possibilities. Clear is still spending some money maintaining its existing AMs; it's not spending anything at all to expand its AM portfolio, and in fact it's shrinking that portfolio where it makes sense to exit AM (as in Detroit's 1310 and Minneapolis' 690, for instance.)
>>>Clear is still spending some money maintaining its existing AMs; it's not spending anything at all to expand its AM portfolio.<<<
Well, except for buying 710 WOR New York. But that was a deal worth making, considering AM listening is still very high in the NY market... maybe the highest in the country?
Well, except for buying 710 WOR New York. But that was a deal worth making, considering AM listening is still very high in the NY market... maybe the highest in the country?
If what Part is theorizing would come to fruition, Pittsburgh would have two 50KW AM stations.
Now, you can tell me that doesn't matter, that AM is dead, all of that.
But I just think that's a positive for the market.
Now, you can tell me that doesn't matter, that AM is dead, all of that.
But I just think that's a positive for the market.
Parttimer said:
Not as easy as you're theorizing. Even if 910 were to fit in Homer City/Indiana (which is not a slam-dunk, not against 900 in Clearfield, 920 in Lewistown and especially against WSBA in York), you can't just move the existing WAVL license there because it would leave Apollo without first local service. Nor can you just take WAVL dark and then move the existing WCCS license to 910, because that's not considered a minor change and would therefore have to wait for the FCC to open a window for AM major changes - at which point it would go to auction.
And why would Renda go to all this trouble (and end up with a worse signal than it has now for WCCS) just to benefit one of its biggest competitors in Pittsburgh, potentially sucking more revenue away from WSHH and WJAS?
Scott Fybush said:
910 does not move at all in this scenario. I have listened to 910 in my car in Indiana, PA, I'm not just loking at this on paper. 1160 programming moves to 910, which covers probably 5 times the area of 1160's highly directional sgnal which mostly blasts into the side of a mountain to the east. 1160 can go dark because it is not Indiana's only service.
Why would Renda do this? Again, my entire premise here is that Clear Channel is spending money behind the scenes to move WWVA.
If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I have seen CC orchestrate moves far more complicated in markets like Tampa.
Parttimer said:
1160 isn't Indiana's service at all, legally speaking. It's licensed to Homer City, and is the only local service to Homer City. That notwithstanding, any licensee can simply surrender its license if it so chooses, even if it leaves a community without local service.
So Renda could do that, legally (or even "move" one of its other Indiana stations to Homer City)...but they'd be trading 10 kW of day power that absolutely blankets Indiana County for 5 kW from 25 miles away. Yes, WAVL is audible in a car in Indiana...but it doesn't even put 2 mV/m over downtown Indiana by day. Even in a smaller town like Indiana, you need at least 10 mV/m to overcome ambient electrical noise and penetrate buildings. The current WCCS signal delivers about 93 mV/m at the Indiana post office. And that's by day. At night, WAVL's 69 watts doesn't get anywhere even vaguely close to Indiana. Think Renda wants to give up all this high school sports revenue at night?
http://www.1160wccs.com/highschoolbasketball2012-13.aspx
Me either.
Which move are you thinking of in Tampa? CC has shifted formats around, but the only signal that's made any real moves in the Tampa cluster is what's now WFUS, which shifted from 103.3 to 103.5.
If CC were really behind this move, it wouldn't be going down this way. Renda's not going to give away an AM (even a failing one) if it's going to benefit the competition. If CC's goal was to get WGBN out of the way, it could have given up its own failing AM, 970, to make it happen (your theory moves 970's current programming to 104.7, so CC wouldn't need 970 anymore, right?). Or CC would have just paid WGBN cash for the 1150 license and turned it off. That would surely have been cheaper than trying to negotiate some weird arrangement to pay Renda to donate 1360.
(Also, if CC really intended to move WWVA, they'd have had a perfect opportunity when that storm took down the WWVA towers a few years ago. Rebuilding that site had to have been a high six-figure project, minimum, and probably closer to a million dollars. You don't put that kind of money into an AM site in the 21st century if you don't intend to stay there.)
Again, Renda and CC are competitors in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh is one of just two big markets left in Renda's fold now that it's sold off OKC and Tulsa. Everything you're suggesting here would hurt Renda's competitive position: in Pittsburgh, more CC revenue (with WWVA on the AM side and sports on 104.7) would cut into Renda's revenue at WSHH/WJAS, and in Indiana, a hypothetical move of WCCS to a rimshot 910 would make it a non-player in town. If Renda's going to agree to all that, it's not going to do so cheaply.
So now you're hypothesizing that CC's going to:
- Pay Renda some relatively high price under the table to give away 1360 to the WGBN folks and thus get WGBN taken dark
- Pay the WAVL folks whatever their price is to acquire 910
- Pay Renda even more money to surrender WCCS and accept the far less useful 910 signal
- Go through all the legal and NIMBY hurdles to get a new WWVA site approved somewhere out to the west of Pittsburgh
- Acquire a big piece of land for the purpose
- Build three new towers and install a ground system and new transmitter and phasor at that site
- Take the PR hit that would come from removing WWVA from Wheeling
This takes us well up into the multiple millions of dollars in expenses...all for the questionable endeavor of trying to preserve the talk format's current FM revenues on an AM signal that's unknown to the market? (At the further risk of bringing talk listeners back to the AM dial where they're more likely to rediscover KDKA, too.) And putting sports on 104.7 only shifts the revenue CC already has. Sure, you'd put the Steelers there, and maybe the Penguins, but would you end up with a penny more than you're already getting from those teams on WDVE and WXDX?
By the time you get done doing all that, you may as well just buy Renda out completely and add WSHH as a fifth FM in the cluster.
Clear Channel can't add any "new" stations to their cluster because of market saturation, the same with CBS
The just -vacated WKZV site would encounter very little resistance because it has already been a site for 30+ years. It also is probably close enough to Wheeling so that the COL would not have to change. Insurance likely paid for the rebuild after the storm.
104.7 has had conversations with NBC Sports Radio, meaning ESPN stays on 970. ESPN wants clearance of daytime talk shows, 104.7 wants to be local and just needs network shows for nights and weekends.
Yes, Renda could part with WSHH as well in the future with that signal going to Keymaarket or Salem.
The Tampa scenario was a lengthy series of moves that saw them trade up from daytime 820 to 620 WDAE. A broker held and operated 620 for a while to make it work.
104.7 has had conversations with NBC Sports Radio, meaning ESPN stays on 970. ESPN wants clearance of daytime talk shows, 104.7 wants to be local and just needs network shows for nights and weekends.
Yes, Renda could part with WSHH as well in the future with that signal going to Keymaarket or Salem.
The Tampa scenario was a lengthy series of moves that saw them trade up from daytime 820 to 620 WDAE. A broker held and operated 620 for a while to make it work.
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