Fred Leonard said: Both WCOJ and the former WBUX are 5,000 watt class B AM stations.
And these two stations (actually one station with two transmitters now) operate as religious stations so they don't make profits and don't pay taxes. They don't serve the community either.
The earlier post was not about "pressuring" religious broadcasters or an FM station with a music format to do local news. The point is both of these stations did have stong presences in their respective counties, with active news coverage and local programming, for over 50 years. Then this Catholic broadcaster demolished all that. And then one of their employees has the brass to tell us how they "saved" these stations.
So, if a religious broadcaster - possibly this same Catholic organization - does snap up WDEL, I look forward to you telling us it's OK there, too.
"It would seem to me that the key to your statement where the answer may be found is this one sentence from your post: " The point is both of these stations did have strong presences in their respective counties, with active news coverage and local programming, for over 50 years."
The question that's unanswerable so far, is why did those station's owners sell? IF they were making money as Delmarva is with WDEL why sell? IF on the other hand, those two station owners, much like the former owner of Newark's 1260 WNRK was no longer was making money [that in that station's hey day also was a full service station providing the western part of NCC & Avongrove/Kennett Sq. area of PA and Elkton MD with local news]. Nor the former owners of 1380 WAMS Wilmington which also was a full service station providing local news/sports coverage, etc, were no longer making money, both WNRK and WAMS were sold. Even WILM was sold to CC Delaware, because the former owners were not making money, and now most of its programming is from the bird with minor pre-recorded local news updates from CC Delaware's lone news reporter located at their Dover station, WDOV. So yes they are offering some local news, but we're talking headlines, which is better than nothing at all.
My point is, you're bashing these new owners of WCOJ and WBUX for possibly buying two failing AM stations in DelCo PA and keeping them on the air with programming you're not interested in. Radio is a business, just like Walgreens, Walmart, GM, DuPont, Budweiser, etc. These companies make or provide products to make money. It seems to me that probably the reason those stations were sold was because the former owners could no longer make money. So rather than turn the license in and have DelCo lose two stations permanently they sold, probably for a lot less than they'd have liked, to the Catholic Broadcaster. There are a lot of Catholics in that area, so those stations at least are serving some of the people there, just not you. So IF you had been one of those former owners and were no longer making money [possibly bleeding money from your bank account trying to keep your station on the air] what would have you done?
Note: 1260 Newark is gone totally, the license returned - silent. 1380 is now DelDot pre-recorded traffic info that most times is out dated so pretty much useless. At least those two DelCo stations are serving a useful purpose, granted not the purpose you'd like to see, but is serving someone.
If the day comes when WDEL is hemorrhaging money, rather than making money, Delmarva would probably sell it, but hopefully that day won't come any time soon. I understand your frustration, but there are just some things we have no control over, and as I don't own WDEL, nor are on their board of directors, nor even an employee, there truly isn't anything I could do to prevent their owners from selling, other than being a loyal listener, which I am. It's simply business.
From what I've read, the reason WDEL-TV was moved from channel 7 to channel 12 back in the early 50's was due to WDEL-TV interfering with both channel 7's in NYC and DC. Maybe it also helped channel 8 too. The thing that seemed to kill WDEL-TV was when Philly's channel 3, the NBC-TV affiliate complained to the network about the Wilmington TV affiliate being too close, so NBC pulled WDEL-TV's NBC-TV affiliation leaving it without a network, back in the days where there were no reruns, it was all new [NBC kept 1150 WDEL as an NBC-Radio affiliate]. So WDEL-TV struggled to gain viewers and spot revenue by showing "B" movies and whatever they could get their hands on to air, [remember back then Hollywood was not in love with TV broadcasting as it saw television as a threat to their industry, getting people to pay money to go see movies so unlike today where TV can get good movies to air, back then the crap films no one wanted to watch were what was available]. So finally in the mid 1950's WDEL's owners did indeed sell channel 12 thus starting Wilmington's short lived time with a local commercial TV station, because by 1958 the third and final owner Storer closed down and allowed to go dark the former Channel 12 WVUE-Wilmington. It wasn't until 1963 when WUHY-Philly bought channel 12 and its new far longer, much successful history of being WHYY-TV Wilmington/Philly began.
