> In Tulsa we are having a terrible time getting the rate up
> for a spot. The market could bear a $50 - $100 rate, but CC
> and Cox are low-balling the rate at $35 and giving away
> their ugly sister as a bonus even. It makes it hard to make
> money. I can't imagine what their budgets look like, or that
> they can even be making money at those rates. And, with CC
> cutting their spot load down to 6 :30s instead of 6 :60s,
> (at the same rate?)are they making money? Are their
> advertisers still paying the same rate for a :30 as they
> were for a :60?
I can't speak for how Cox is doing, but a company I used to work for sold the cluster I was at to Cumulus last year for almost $40 million and was frequently bashed by its competition, which I later worked for, for doing exactly that. As I understand, the competition's cluster, which consists of more stations, isn't even worth $30 million. Actually, the competitors accused them of lowballing the rate down to $5 and forcing their prices down to compete, though I know it was never that low, even in overnights, when I was there. The former Cumulus cluster had all of its avails sold and most of its contracts renewed in a couple of months while the competition had empty avails in stopsets four months into the year. From what I was told, the ex-Cumulus cluster was making a profit but not at the margins the former owners would have liked.
