Rush moving to 106.9 WKDN

[Interstate 78]

I think the fact that this is a huge election year will help the new station out. Studies show that talk radio does better when big political events are going on, like a huge election year. People forgot about Beck and Hannity, but if marketed properly with Rush Limbaugh and in conjunction with the upcoming big election, I think the new station will do ok.

 

[imhomerjay]

It can last far more than a year. One local host, plus all syndication? That model can chug on for a while, doing unspectacular but servicable revenue. It's not like Merlin so drastically overpaid that they need to hit the jackpot out of the gate. No, the shows aren't cheap, but if they can maintain low overhead beyond those costs, and aren't leveraged at unsustainable levels, then they can survive for the forseeable future.

 

[kenneykop]

We saw what an election year in 2000 did for WWDB. Good ol' Beasley pulled the plug the day before Election Day. Of course, the race wasn't decided for weeks. I'm just sayin.....

 

[wprt949]

I wonder if merlins flip to talk would make beasley reconsider talk on 96.5 agian ?

 

[phils07]

We saw what an election year in 2000 did for WWDB. Good ol' Beasley pulled the plug the day before Election Day. Of course, the race wasn't decided for weeks. I'm just sayin.....

That day, did WWDB announce on air that they were flipping?

 

[badjef]

Jeff, you're just a wee bit off in your timeline of WCAU 1210. Many of us were never comfortable with it as a NEWS station! It was one of (if not thee) nation's 1st talk station dating back to the early 60's marketed as WCAU 121. (One To One talk) There were stringent FCC regulations of tapping into AT&T and Bell Telephone lines, and they worked around it by technically 'not' being connected directly by having the outside call lines wired through isolation transformers. The callers heard a 400 cycle beep every 15 seconds to let them know they were on the air or being recorded. The beep was eliminated through a notch filter, and all was fed through a "B-Cart" tape delay. I remember the 121 billboards on the Walt Whitman Bridge and full page ads in The Evening Bulletin. They did clear almost every CBS Radio Network feature and News as well. They didn't go News head to head against KYW until the early 70's.

Prior to the all news format, WCAU-AM was not one of those stations on my radar as I lived in Newark prior to 1970. The idea of 1-2-1 is creative in just name alone. I love it.

I had cousins in Norristown and was much more familiar with WFIL and WIBG on radio, and Sally Star on TV during the 60's. The news/talkers in Philly were not interesting to me because, as my Grandfather used to say, "Philadelphia was that small town down the street". After 1970, is a different matter and after I returned to New Jersey in 1979, (at the time) #4 market became more appealing.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[imhomerjay]

We saw what an election year in 2000 did for WWDB. Good ol' Beasley pulled the plug the day before Election Day. Of course, the race wasn't decided for weeks. I'm just sayin.....

Let's say they hadn't pulled the plug that day. What would it have bought them? A few days or weeks of a temporary spike? And that has to assume they would have gotten the spike--a big assumption considering things were already far enough down the road of decline to warrant bailing out.