• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WALI goes silent

C

charlestondxman

Sad day in Colleton County. The county has lost its last radio station. WALI 93.7 has signed off, as Karl Hess, its owner, has signed it off for the poor economy and personal reasons. They signed off Monday (Jan. 30).

Here's an article from The Press and Standard of Walterboro:

http://colletontoday.com/news/wally-goes-silent/article_78dccdb2-4de0-11e1-9132-001871e3ce6c.html

Hopefully someone will take it over. They were falling behind, with no website or online feed. They were a very quirky station (fun to listen to). Country music, with lots of sports programming and local stuff. They were pretty much a full-service country station, with the swap shop each morning, obituaries and other items.

Thoughts?
 
I've listened to them frequesntly driving through. They were horrible. Music was not up to date. Swap shop in drive time. Area is large enough to support a station. Does anyone know what rthe asking price is?
 
It's not the first time Walterboro has lost it's radio station. The AM station was moved to some lonely, wide place in the road up toward Myrtle Beach...Still can't figure out what the point was in doing THAT.

I assume the short tower in front of the WALI FM tower is the old AM 1080 stick?
 
Probably. But given the more stringent requirements for such moves, it would be tougher to get the commission to approve the loss of primary service to Walterboro even with the economic hardship.
 
They can't move it in, as there's the 93.7 in Georgetown that simulcasts I-100 out of Myrtle Beach and comes in well in northern Charleston county.

Mr. Hess didn't run that station well. The jingles have been the same for at least a decade, probably more. A big hodgepodge of stuff (country music, almost all automated except for morning show), local and national news (for several years ran hourly network news), lots of sports (Braves, NASCAR, South Carolina, Phil Kornblut), the swap shop every morning, obituaries, and a lot of syndication.

Colleton County football was the only thing that made money there, and that dates back to the WONO days. Another owner would help that signal a lot.

Kirkman could buy it and simulcast one of their sports stations (FM sports?) or maybe WJNI. Apex could buy or LMA it, and do several things with it. If they could pair it with 99.3, that translator, you could have a very good signal. 93.7 covers most of Colleton, western Charleston, and a good amount of Dorchester well, while 99.3 is good inside 526 and in West Ashley. It probably would be just as good as 98.9 in the metro.

You could run any number of formats with Apex, or another local owner could get it and run it the way they want it. This signal shouldn't go away.
 
Cumulus could also grab it and simulcast WTMA on there. Another suggestion. Adding that signal and making it mono could add several miles to the signal. So many possibilities with that signal. Don't even have to move it.
 
charlestondxman said:
They can't move it in, as there's the 93.7 in Georgetown that simulcasts I-100 out of Myrtle Beach and comes in well in northern Charleston county.

Mr. Hess didn't run that station well. The jingles have been the same for at least a decade, probably more. A big hodgepodge of stuff (country music, almost all automated except for morning show), local and national news (for several years ran hourly network news), lots of sports (Braves, NASCAR, South Carolina, Phil Kornblut), the swap shop every morning, obituaries, and a lot of syndication.

Colleton County football was the only thing that made money there, and that dates back to the WONO days. Another owner would help that signal a lot.

Kirkman could buy it and simulcast one of their sports stations (FM sports?) or maybe WJNI. Apex could buy or LMA it, and do several things with it. If they could pair it with 99.3, that translator, you could have a very good signal. 93.7 covers most of Colleton, western Charleston, and a good amount of Dorchester well, while 99.3 is good inside 526 and in West Ashley. It probably would be just as good as 98.9 in the metro.

You could run any number of formats with Apex, or another local owner could get it and run it the way they want it. This signal shouldn't go away.
Click to expand...

Most of your suggestions would drive yet another local radio station straight into irrelevance.
 
There's really not much you can do to keep a local owner. There should be a local owner, but a county of 40,000 that is one of the poorer counties in the state doesn't have that many people who would want to own a radio station.

In most of the county, you're already competing against all the Charleston stations, and in the southern part, you've got Savannah signals.

I really want a local owner, but it'll be tough.
 
DudeFan said:
Probably. But given the more stringent requirements for such moves, it would be tougher to get the commission to approve the loss of primary service to Walterboro even with the economic hardship.
Click to expand...

Then again, there's always a Beaufort Co move in potential with enough city grade to keep the COL in W'boro.

G
 
Just because one guy who didn't know what he was doing and didn't make it doesn't mean that it's a hopeless cause. I know of much smaller market stations that are doing fine. Hope someone steps up to the plate and keeps it LOCAL. That means having local news and sports and executing the country format properly. All this move-in talk makes no sense. That's just what these other markets need is another station. Meanwhile Walterboro has none.
 
somdradioguy1 said:
Just because one guy who didn't know what he was doing and didn't make it doesn't mean that it's a hopeless cause. I know of much smaller market stations that are doing fine. Hope someone steps up to the plate and keeps it LOCAL. That means having local news and sports and executing the country format properly. All this move-in talk makes no sense. That's just what these other markets need is another station. Meanwhile Walterboro has none.
Click to expand...

Why would it have to be country? I think that may have contributed to the station's demise. ???
 
According to Census Bureau the county is 57 percent white and has a small hispanic population. Country is still the mass appeal format for small-town South.
You can pull in non-country fans with local news and sports and other features.
 
somdradioguy1 said:
According to Census Bureau the county is 57 percent white and has a small hispanic population. Country is still the mass appeal format for small-town South.
You can pull in non-country fans with local news and sports and other features.
Click to expand...

So, all white people who live in small towns in the south listen to country... Gee, I'll have to write that one down.

Funny thing though... of all the people I know in rural Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, NONE of them listen to country music. ::)
 
Stereo that be true with some of the people you know but speaking from what we have seen and heard with our station which is smaller than WALI we play country music mix along with a little bluegrass and southern gospel and we keep most of the listeners in our area tuned in on WLRE pretty solid. Now I can tell you that a lot of our listeners are not just white people, I know because I hear from people everyday when I go different places and they tell me about our morning show or some of the things we say during the day and it's not just white people either. I am just glad we have a whole lot of people who enjoy listening to us and we will continue playing country music so long as WLRE is on the air, it's not just a music format for us it's a way of life.
 
stereolane said:
somdradioguy1 said:
According to Census Bureau the county is 57 percent white and has a small hispanic population. Country is still the mass appeal format for small-town South.
You can pull in non-country fans with local news and sports and other features.
Click to expand...

So, all white people who live in small towns in the south listen to country... Gee, I'll have to write that one down.

Funny thing though... of all the people I know in rural Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, NONE of them listen to country music. ::)
Click to expand...
You should drive around down here for a while then.
They hear it, even if they're not listening.
Go run some errands with your windows down (unless it's too cold, then you'll look crazy). Drop by some mom and pop shops where they play the local radio stations.
You'll hear country in A LOT of places.
Probably more than A LOT if you go into some bars. I don't know, it's been years since I was in one of those.
Being heard in A LOT of places is what makes it "mass appeal." "Mass appeal" doesn't mean "every single person in stereolane's friends list listens all the time." ;D
 
Country is a very popular format, as Colleton is a very country county, but you have three or four other stations with the same format. You have 92.5, 96.9, and 103.5 now all with the same format, plus 106.9, and 93.5 in the western part of the county.

The format could have been and can be a lot better. He had several other people working for him, but you never heard anyone other than his voice. He syndicated a lot, even Friday afternoons. He carried all 162 Braves games, which basically took out most summer nights and some days. South Carolina is also on there, all the major sports, along with NASCAR. Those are good fits for the format.

He never did any HS sports other than the football games, which can be a big revenue stream, but Colleton County is one of the worst teams in the area, not winning a game since 2009. They probably lost advertisers there.

A well-executed station like WPUB or WKDK would get some decent ratings. The more likely alternative, sadly, is a move-in. Hopefully a local Walterboro owner will buy it.
 
WALI always has had a very respectable signal in the city of Beaufort for being a class A 30 or so miles away. Given the lack of population to NIMBY about a tower and fairly lax zoning rules, a very tall tower could be built to cover most of the north of the Broad River and still put city-grade into Walterboro as an A. Or, better still, use that unlit 1200' aircraft hazard on the north end of St. Helena Island that 99.7 used to use...I do believe that is still standing as of 2011 and has been cited by various Fed organizations for not having the lights turned on the tower.

However, I just picture (almost bet) this station is going to the God Squad. It's the perfect scenario for them...will be sold for a song and will go AFR or Air 1 simulcast or something. Highly doubtful anybody who has $$ in Colleton will want to mess with it, and I don't see an independent owner from Charleston or Beaufort wanting to play radio down there.

Unless somebody wants to sell me the station for a song! I think if you can't at least tread water in a rural area as the only local station in town, you're doing something wrong! Cut some staff or better yet make them all earn their keep by VTing or doing commercials!

Radio-X

(BTW: No silent STA from WALI yet...wonder if Mr. Hess forgot or if there's something else in the works?)
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom