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Warm starts winking?

T

theradiokid

Guest
Radioinsight.com is reporting this morning that WARM-FM(103.3) is now Hot AC "Wink 103.3." Can anyone confirm that "Warm" is gone? I liked that station online.

While the sight did report there would be some overlap, Venta did state that since Harisburg and York were 2 different markets, it wouldn't mater much to the folks at Cumclueless.

If radioinsight's reports are true, I can only conclude that Cumulus is only hurting themselves by puting the same format on 2 signals that overlap the way WARM-FM and WNNK do.

--The Radio Kid
(Oswego, NY.)
My Email: [email protected].
 
That makes NO sense what so ever, two stations in hte same market with the same names and only one number apart 103, 104? If they wanted to beef up warm 103, why not be a bit more creative and come up with a diffrent name to give 103 its own identity? I am glad I just re-newed my sat. sub. It is only going to get worse.
 
See all the buzz about the merger on the main page of radio-info. They need to offload two more stations, not just 92.1 and 102.3.

That would appear to be 1400 and 104.1. I assume the first, because it is the least valuable of the remaining cluster, and the second based on the emergence of Wink 103.3, which as you say, appears to have a great deal of overlap with 104.1.

So who will be the new player for four stations in the area? Hall, Greater Media, Times Shamrock?
 
observer2 said:
See all the buzz about the merger on the main page of radio-info. They need to offload two more stations, not just 92.1 and 102.3.

That would appear to be 1400 and 104.1. I assume the first, because it is the least valuable of the remaining cluster, and the second based on the emergence of Wink 103.3, which as you say, appears to have a great deal of overlap with 104.1.

So who will be the new player for four stations in the area? Hall, Greater Media, Times Shamrock?
[/quote

It might be Main line media, who owns several medium market stations, and is owned by former WINK GM Dan Savadove. Ya never know.
Click to expand...
 
This is really silly. While it looks ok on paper because the York, Lancaster, and Harrisburg markets are all separate and Wink 103 is marketing themselves as York and Lancaster and Wink 104 as Harrisburg, let's face it. Most people consider Lancaster/York/Harrisburg/Lebanon/sometimes even Reading, all one general area. Having two Wink's with such signal overlap seems silly. No?
 
It looks silly on the surface, but, when you dig deeper, it might make some degree of sense. While 103.3 and 104.1 have 50-60% overlap on coverage, people have always listened to the Harrisburg stations in Harrisburg and the York stations in York. So, if the Wink brand has the potential to be successful in York, it could be a good move because WNNK doesn't target York, and the potential audience there knows it.

By the way, the common wisdom is that the changes at 103.3 indicate Cumulus will get rid of WNNK, but I'm not convinced of that. The DOJ has probably already given Cumulus the scenarios it will accept, and I can't imagine they'd allow them to get rid of WNNK while keeping the intellectual property. The DOJ has not previously allowed such an arrangement. Given that 103.3 will be running 104.1's morning show, I have to think Cumulus plans on keeping WNNK as that's something they couldn't do if they divested it.
 
So basically WARM-FM becomes a Hot AC station after being Soft AC for many years (and before that Easy Listening).

So that leaves WROZ as the only Soft to Mid-tempo AC in the four city market. Well, maybe WQIC also qualifies, although its signal is limited.

I can remember when 92.1, 97.3 (WHP-FM), 101.3 (WGAL-FM) and 103.3 (WSBA-FM) were all Easy Listening.

Gregg
[email protected]
 
If they put another format on 104.1 before choosing it to divest. Why not?

Besides did Clear Channel not do this sort of thing when they sold 104.9 in the East Bay Area in SF, and moved the calls and the intellectual property to 92.3 to create Channel 92.3? (Although they eventually sold 92.3 as well.)

The idea that a full market B signal like 103.3 that respectably covers most of the Harrisburg area, including the West Shore, would only be able to "target York" seems like outdated thinking. On the other hand, if you were to suggest, for example, that 101.3 could cover the Harrisburg market, I would agree with you.

The obvious counterargument that supports what you say would be in the Scranton/W-B area where several FM simulcasts exist (Rock 107, WKRZ, Hot 97). I think that terrain has much to do with that, though.
 
observer2 said:
If they put another format on 104.1 before choosing it to divest. Why not?
Click to expand...

Simply put, the DOJ has not, in the past, allowed an operator to take the intellectual property that got them over the revenue cap they set, move it to another property and sell the extra license for stick value. The FCC can't, and won't, prohibit such deals, though they've recently indicated they have their limits with buying stations just to shuffle real estate. The DOJ, however, operates mostly on total market revenue and doesn't look at strict numbers of stations. Of course, the DOJ can also do pretty much whatever it wants, and we haven't seen the what the Obama Justice Department will require versus what the previous ones did. However, I'd expect the decisions and logic to be similar.

Besides did Clear Channel not do this sort of thing when they sold 104.9 in the East Bay Area in SF, and moved the calls and the intellectual property to 92.3 to create Channel 92.3? (Although they eventually sold 92.3 as well.)
Click to expand...

No, not exactly. Clear Channel was required to divest their Spanish-language stations by the DOJ because the same private equity firms that bought Clear Channel also owned a stake in Univision. The San Jose divestitures were already mandated by the FCC because San Jose and San Francisco are not separate markets in Arbitron's eyes; San Jose is embedded within San Francisco. So, if they were going to keep any San Jose stations, they would've had to divest some in the heart of San Francisco. They're not that stupid. Clear Channel shuffled formats around on stations they were already going to divest based on potential buyers and the revenue they could get. Divesting the 104.1 stick while keeping the intellectual property at 103.3 would be more like taking La Preciosa off of 92.3 and moving it to KIOI 101.3 or to KKSF 103.7. The DOJ would not have allowed that because Clear Channel's share of the Hispanic market wouldn't have changed, and the whole purpose of requiring divestitures was to get Clear Channel out of targeting that audience.
 
By the way, Scott Fybush is reporting that Cumulus will satisfy the DOJ's concerns by shuffling WTPA to 92.1 and running the rhythmic CHR format currently at 92.1 on 93.5.
 
Kent said:
By the way, Scott Fybush is reporting that Cumulus will satisfy the DOJ's concerns by shuffling WTPA to 92.1 and running the rhythmic CHR format currently at 92.1 on 93.5.
Click to expand...

So that tells us, assuming it's correct, that Cumulus sees more value in WQXA than TPA. That should protect most at the X. They also want their CHR product on a better signal. That would make sense. So, the additional spinoff on FM comes down to 104.1 or 1067.
 
The "additional spinoff" is 102.3. The Justice Department settlement (available for anyone to look at) lays it out quite cleanly: in order to satisfy the antitrust regulators, Cumulus must abide by its already-agreed-upon plans to sell 102.3 and one additional signal. Cumulus had planned to sell WWKL and keep WTPA; the settlement modifies those plans to specify that the more valuable WTPA intellectual property must go along with the 92.1 license. Cumulus adds QXA and 106.7 and keeps everything else it has, including 104.1.
 
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