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Smaller market stations that can be picked up in larger markets.
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
There is a term in the industry for stations outside a market that attempt to get big market revenue: rimshot.
Most markets have a station or three that position their transmitter as close to them as they can, despite not being licensed to anyplace in the market. Some do well, others can't get enough audience in the bigger market to make them attractive to advertisers and still others stick to they suburban or fringe local market and, often, do well with that approach.
I haven’t listened for years, but they used to have a solid Newark advertising base while skimming the cream off the top of the Columbus and Zanesville markets. I don’t know if that’s still the case.
Cool 101 does decent in listeners but seems as if advertising is almost entirely Newark centric.
I think it's more common for small cities that are outside the rated metro of a large city to hear the larger city's stations. The larger city has more stations, which usually have a bigger broadcast range. But overall, people in the smaller city probably listen to the smaller city's stations more. But I don't know for sure, because I've never seen ratings for many of these small cities.
An example might be Richmond, Indiana. I know that some people in Richmond listened to a Dayton station.
An example might be Richmond, Indiana. I know that some people in Richmond listened to a Dayton station.
WDDH Ridgway, PA barely Erie from 65 miles to the SE with 19kw at 801 feet. It's listenable-ish NW of Titusville and Corry if youre on high terrain and have good radios. I speak from 4 years of expierience there.
The signal also sails through Jamestown and Olean 35 to 40 miles to the NW and NE... it was, i dont think intended as a NY signal.. though they get business there... much more of the stations business is in PA. When ratings used to come out for Olean,, WDDH beat out in market country station Bob at the time but was below the Pig
The signal also sails through Jamestown and Olean 35 to 40 miles to the NW and NE... it was, i dont think intended as a NY signal.. though they get business there... much more of the stations business is in PA. When ratings used to come out for Olean,, WDDH beat out in market country station Bob at the time but was below the Pig
I personally believe that if a smaller market station has a "listenable" signal in a largerer market someone would try their very best to make it a "move in" to the larger market unless the station has solid sales in the smaller market and the larger market is "over radioed".
Back in my day some the Dayton stations showed up in the Cincinnati ratings and at least a couple Cincy stations were in the Dayton book. There was a radio "triangle" Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington KY that occasionally had people that lived in one market actually worked one of the other markets that got counted in the market they lived in. To my knowledge with the possible exception of McDonald's and Kroger which covered all three markets, there little impact on any radio station's sales but some stores in the "triangle" got charged for two markets advertisements.
Back in my day some the Dayton stations showed up in the Cincinnati ratings and at least a couple Cincy stations were in the Dayton book. There was a radio "triangle" Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington KY that occasionally had people that lived in one market actually worked one of the other markets that got counted in the market they lived in. To my knowledge with the possible exception of McDonald's and Kroger which covered all three markets, there little impact on any radio station's sales but some stores in the "triangle" got charged for two markets advertisements.
I think some context is needed to fully understand the question. KKJO is in St. Joseph, Mo. While that's its own market, most full-power Kansas City stations are easily receivable. (St. Joseph is a weird market in both radio and TV.) KKSW is in Lawrence, Kansas, halfway between the Topeka and Kansas City metropolitan areas. Neither really tries to pull listeners or money out of the bigger Kansas City market, though I'm sure they'd be happy with whatever they can get there. So, while they might look like rimshots, they're not "attempting to get big market revenue" - rather, they stick to their home market. In the case of KKSW, that may include Topeka.
In fact, when KKSW was KLZR, it actually moved its transmitter site farther away from Kansas City in the late 1980s to Lecompton, which is closer to Topeka. The original transmitter site in Lawrence had better coverage to the east, i.e. Kansas City. Still, under local ownership at the time, it was very much a Lawrence station. When it adopted a modern-rock format around 1993, it attracted some Kansas City advertising and listening (since Kansas City was a very slow market to pick up modern rock/alternative, with some incredibly stale and complacent programming among its stations). But the primary appeal was to University of Kansas students and the businesses that catered to them.
KKJO seemed content for years with its facility at 105.1 but accepted the offer to move to 105.5 and got a nice full-C1 facility out of the deal, giving it better coverage of Kansas City. Moreover, the Kansas City metropolitan area has been creeping northward for years, somewhat in the direction of St. Joe. So there's some overlap there. But KKJO continues to program and sell primarily to St. Joseph and vicinity. Eagle pretty much has the market locked up now.
As I mentioned, KLZR got a little bit of traction in Kansas City in the 1990s during the years when it was programming a format that wasn't available in Kansas City (I'll ignore KISF 107.3 here, which really was a rimshot back when it was licensed to Lexington and had coverage problems in Kansas City proper) but KKJO never did. KLZR was difficult to receive on the Missouri side of the metro, which didn't help.
Before Cumulus came along and made all sorts of moves, Topeka's KMAJ was easily received in much of Kansas City but never showed up in ratings as far as I know.
So I interpret the question as asking, "has a station in a smaller community near a larger metropolitan area consistently been able to pick up listeners and advertising from that larger area while continuing to program primarily to its own community and without explicitly appealing to the larger metro area?"
WWLV Lexington NC built a new taller tower so it could better cover the Greensboro NC market. At 94.1 it was too close to 93.9 FM in Burlington until that station committed to Raleigh-Durham and moved its tower away from Greensboro. But WWLV by whatever letters it had seemed too interested in also covering Charlotte. There was talk of a new tower closer to Charlotte but WFMX had already removed their tall tower, which would have been ideal. The format was oldies but the owner "temporarily" affiliated with K-Love, switching to the WWLV letters. Well, that wasn't temporary and the station is serving both markets.
WFMX was a county station in Statesville north of Charlotte. The station built a taller tower and was able to serve both Charlotte and Greensboro. Then the opportunity came to move to Greensboro. The signal was reduced considerably but at least the station was committed to a market. But the station has had a number of different formats.
The reason for WFMX's move was WAGI, a country and gospel station in Gaffney SC. It served Greenville SC and Charlotte. Then it committed to Charlotte with a Spanish language format and moved its tower closer to Charlotte. "Old school" R&B has made it a success.
WYMY is a Spanish language station serving both Greensboro and Raleigh. It couldn't move west when it was a country station with the letters WPCM. It was too close to WROQ in Greenville. Moving east wasn't an option either with stations at 100.7 and 101.5. It tried to serve both markets and eventually paired with a station at 96.9 which was east of Raleigh but couldn't fully cover that market. The station at 96.9 paired with a smaller Raleigh station for a while but now has translators in Raleigh proper.
WFMX was a county station in Statesville north of Charlotte. The station built a taller tower and was able to serve both Charlotte and Greensboro. Then the opportunity came to move to Greensboro. The signal was reduced considerably but at least the station was committed to a market. But the station has had a number of different formats.
The reason for WFMX's move was WAGI, a country and gospel station in Gaffney SC. It served Greenville SC and Charlotte. Then it committed to Charlotte with a Spanish language format and moved its tower closer to Charlotte. "Old school" R&B has made it a success.
WYMY is a Spanish language station serving both Greensboro and Raleigh. It couldn't move west when it was a country station with the letters WPCM. It was too close to WROQ in Greenville. Moving east wasn't an option either with stations at 100.7 and 101.5. It tried to serve both markets and eventually paired with a station at 96.9 which was east of Raleigh but couldn't fully cover that market. The station at 96.9 paired with a smaller Raleigh station for a while but now has translators in Raleigh proper.
WEBE 108 can be picked up in various parts of NYC, including Brooklyn. Cape Cod stations can often be heard in parts of Boston, especially during summer tropo season and in eastern parts of the city.
I'd say from my experience, it is easier to make good money in a small market versus being a rimshot where you are in a dog fight and fighting groups of stations bidding for the ad dollars while you try to make any inroads with listeners and with sales. With a small town station it is easy to market and easier to sell direct to business owners.
Cue: the story of KSIQ-FM in Brawley, California, near my neck of the woods. Wikipedia says it came on air in November of 1981 with a top-40 format. The first I heard it was riding back from the college I attended in Los Angeles to my home in Phoenix around Christmastime of that year. KSIQ-FM was the little station that could, eventually topping the ratings in the Imperial Valley and gaining national attention for its dance-heavy top-40 format during the 1990s.
That all changed when a conglomerate purchased it ant its sister AM station, KROP. The AM was sold off, and the FM got FCC permission to move to Campo, California, in the San Jacinto Mountains between El Centro and San diego. The power was reduced, but it still could be heard in parts of San Diego with an FCC-okayed booster to try to get the station more San Diego coverage. The results? There were technical problems between the Campo transmitter and the booster forcing the station to go off the air a lot and the rimshot coverage of San Diego did not improve its ratings. To further add insult to injury, even if the station owners wanted to, they could no longer go back to Brawley. Shortly after the move-in, the FCC authorized a new station at 95.9mHz in Welton, Arizona (covering Yuma), and, a little later, the same agency authorized Calipatria, California's sole radio station to move from 100.9 (where it was giving Yuma's KQSR-FM headaches) to 96.3. Ultimately, KSIQ-FM was sold to the Educational Media Foundation and now carries the Air1 network, mostly for a very sparsely populated area in the mountains of southeastern California.
That story should be alesson to all but the promise of more riches and the big city are sure enticing...
WAAF, a Worcester rimshotter, staged a similar "invasion" of Boston, with only slightly more success. The signal had been upgraded to cover Boston, but Boston rock listeners, for the most part, stuck with Boston-based radio.
David mentions the term “rimshot,” which is what usually describes stations from a rural area or adjacent area that try to target a larger market. The reality is, if you can, you’re always better going after a larger market. The top stations in Kansas City will gross more money in 90 days than the entire Topeka market does in a year. KCHZ 95.7 was an Ottawa station that moved into Topeka and still covered about half of KC. Previous incarnations of KHUM and KZTO were never successful targeting Topeka. In the early 90’s, KHUM was on Massachusetts St in Lawrence and was still targeting Topeka. You could still see the 96 Hum FM logo where its studios used to be for well over a decade after the station left the air. When “Super” Frank Copsidas bought the station, he targeted KC instead of Topeka. He got a lot of flak for being a bad operator, but he got that right.
KC, by the way, had the country's only reverse rimshot about 30 years ago. WHB 710/810 was run by the Carters, who operated KAOL/KMZU, and used it to target the vast areas of rural Kansas and Missouri with farm news and programming. It had studios in the KC Stockyards but otherwise mostly ignored Kansas City. That arrangement lasted about six years. I don’t believe it made much, if any, money, but the Carters turned down offers for several years from other operators, including Jacor, American Radio Systems, and CBS before accepting a deal from Union Broadcasting in 1999.
Of course, recall that KHUM and KZTO were off the air. A lot.
There was also some attempt to get KWWR from Mexico, Mo. to downgrade to allow a Kansas City move-in on 95.7. That didn't succeed for whatever reason.
For context for those not familiar, Massachusetts St. in Lawrence is downtown's main street. That office was in a prominent location. I remember it well.
Pretty much exactly six years. Shamrock sold it off to the Carter family in 1993 while retaining KUDL(FM). It mostly simulcasted KOAL/KMZU. I always wondered what was the point considering that KFEQ to the north and WIBW to the west served the farm audience with decent regional signals. Maybe there was money to be made along the US 71 corridor? The 90s were fairly awful years for Kansas City radio programming anyway, and that WHB sale didn't help.
I wonder how smaller stations like KKJO are impacted by being so close to KC? A lot of Kansas Citians are able to listen to them, even though they serve the small town of St. Joe.
The population of St. Joseph is almost 77,000, hardly the kind of Lake Wobegon material you seem to make it out to be.
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