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Trio goes dark!
- Thread starter Whiplash
- Start date
1250WTAE said:
Wow. Financial or legal issues?
The reason they are off the air is that they are retooling the country music the country music format into a more dynamic product. Owner Nick Bolton told the newspapers here it was a difficult decision to take they stations dark while they do this, but he felt in order to do this right he needed everyone's attention on the project.
I live right here in Lake City and needless to say I do not think this is a money issue as they seem to have plenty of advertisers and sponsors including S&S Food Stores which is major player in this area. I am not so sure this move will payoff for them or not once they return in the fall
I live right here in Lake City and needless to say I do not think this is a money issue as they seem to have plenty of advertisers and sponsors including S&S Food Stores which is major player in this area. I am not so sure this move will payoff for them or not once they return in the fall
Who goes OFF the air for 2 or 3 months to "re-tool" c'mon now... I smell a sell.
ThatGuyOnTheRadio said:
I agree that nobody takes stations off the air to "retool" a format. The stated reason sounds like lip service. You continue to let the automation play and you bring in a program director or music director or sales manager, etc. to revamp the operation. Taking the stations off the air creates a vacuum that competitors will fill, gladly. You also either lose your staff or you have to pay them to sit around and twiddle their thumbs for months. It also does not make sense to take stations off the air in prep for a sale. That reduces billing to zero and you have to sell the properties for their "stick value". I can only think that this decision has to be due to financial hardship. If there's another legitimate reason, I'd sure be interested in hearing it.
First define "re-tool". When a station goes dark, in this case three stations, there is no revenue, loss of advertisers, loss of rapport with the community, and to a lessor degree, loss of trust from the marketplace. While I realize sometimes it is unavoidable and necessary to take a station off the air, in this case I don't understand why it is necessary to take three stations off the air simultaneously so each station may "re-tool" especially when that term is loosely used and clearly undefined as no further elaboration was given as to exactly what "re-tool" actually means. In its absence, I see WQHL filling the void left by WQLC while it "re-tools" itself. In Perry, I don't see any significant difference any re-tooling will make as every FM station there is programming the same country format in a market that can only support and sustain one AM and one FM provided said AM and FM are commonly owned. By the time either of these stations return to the air, it may be too little, too late as all three stations will literally start over from scratch as start-up operations which is highly costly to do. I'm not management at Power Country, Inc., so I have no inside information nor inside knowledge of what is really going on behind the scenes; however, my years of direct experience in sales, management, ownership, consulting and general business knowledge tells me it makes much more business sense to leave the stations "as is" even if automated while management "re-tools" the stations to create a better product and better overall operation.
I haven't heard a peep out of WGRO in months. The other 2 are now definitely gone too though. This area is over-served by country stations anyway, so I hope it really is a sale, if that's what it may take for a format flip. I have heard before, that this company wasn't doing too well financially.
Although I live here in Lake City, I have not heard much peep about any of this at all as to if anyone knows what the story really is behind going dark like that. Considering this was all at the last second and looking back now they just revamped the whole dang thing about a year ago and I thought they approach they were taking was fine with a Country/Southern Rock approach. I got to really think the stations are in trouble at this point...
As for WGRO...the station was off the air for a long while due to flooding at the transmitter site. As far as I am concern they could turn in that license and shut the AM down. Lake City still has 91.3 WOLR, 94.3 WNFB and 1340 WDSR as stations still licensed to Lake City so there is no problem I see for them to do that.
If I hear anything out and about, I will let you all know.
As for WGRO...the station was off the air for a long while due to flooding at the transmitter site. As far as I am concern they could turn in that license and shut the AM down. Lake City still has 91.3 WOLR, 94.3 WNFB and 1340 WDSR as stations still licensed to Lake City so there is no problem I see for them to do that.
If I hear anything out and about, I will let you all know.
It's a tale of two owners. Newman survives and even prospers because he's knowledgeable while Power Country struggles. Even Newman's WDSR-AM is holding its own doing a music format (though it does have a very nice translator to help out). WDSR also has an excellent signal because of its very tall tower for that frequency and due to being in the middle of a bona-fide lake.
Power Country just needs a very good manager/GSM that can merge with the community if they hope to survive. All three of PC's signals are excellent in their primary areas.
Power Country just needs a very good manager/GSM that can merge with the community if they hope to survive. All three of PC's signals are excellent in their primary areas.
cceng said:
Agreed. No one sends their station(s) dark in anticipation of a retooling or rebranding.
BostonRandy said:
You are correct. If "re-tooling" is what I interpret it to imply (although it was never clearly defined), I would say the re-tooling amounts to reformatting or fine tuning its programming. If this is the case, one does not take the station silent, but rather one will plan and implement the new and improved "re-tooling" while the station or stations continue operating "as is" until the new "re-tooling" is ready to debut. Planned and implemented correctly, one can "re-tool" and entire group without missing a beat and no one in the listening and business community will be none the wiser.
Kmagrill said:
If it were me in management and that is what my ultimate plan was to do, I'd simply terminate the "counter-productive" personnel and be done with it. I certainly would not sign the stations off the air due to lay-offs or personnel terminations and lose any ad revenue I had. That would be counter-productive. My intuition tells me there is more at play than simply a "re-tooling" effort.
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