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WATO 1290 Oak Ridge

Hi Carson,

Here's a hint --- I live in the DC area now and you last saw me in 2005! I finally got around to signing up for Radio-Info.
 
Has anyone said WHAT caused the tower to fall? Might give a clue what to look for on the other ones.
 
It's a shame that the tower fell but it's even a bigger shame that this facility has been allowed to be a dead horse for so long. There are numerous examples of local AM stations all across America that are succeeding by just doing what they can do best, and that is by providing live LOCAL radio service to their communities. No syndication and no being a translator to some other market. Local radio is nothing new. In fact it sounds old fashioned but it can still work. What it takes are some real radio people who really want to make it happen. Local news, local sports coverage and heck, you can even play music on AM (gasp!) WATO could be programmed and it could be sold... LOCALLY! Too many radio people just don't care about radio anymore.
 
It is also a shame that some local business people were going to purchase the station but the Horne radio group thought they could squeeze out a few more bucks out of the deal and let it fall through. Now Horne got nothing for the station and they don't want to spend the money to get it back on the air.
 
Took a field trip to the towers and old building back in April. Of course, no fence to keep out trespassers and other visitors. The facility is dilapidated; towers and outside equipment are a wreck. Cables, wires, and hunks of metal, not to mention that fallen warped tower, are scattered throughout the field. Thanks to no fence around the facilities, Oak Ridge's finest youth have spray painted vulgarities all over the old studio/transmitter house, and broken glass is everywhere. Total disrespect and neglect for such a part of history. Before one of those towers fell, I don't see how 1290 kHz was even on the air during those last months.
 
If Horne Radio had any sense (lol) they would donate the station to Oak Ridge High School as a tax donation. Because in the shape it's in now they won't get anything for it. They can write it off on their taxes for more than it's worth and the school can run their sports program and generate some money from it. Dick Broadcasting did this years ago with the old 850 AM. They donated it to the University of Tenn. and got to use it as a tax write-off for far more than they could sell it for.
 
I, also like Ratman, was curious about where this station was (I have just been here about 2 1/2 years) so i went looking back in the spring ( before the tower fell ) and found it and, sadly did not find much other than a very badly neglected and basically trashed facility. I did not go any further than the side of the building because at that time the station was still on the air and it just looked like to me that in it's condition, that it would be very possible to step on a energized transmission line or antenna radial and I really did not want to step on a 5000 watt transmitter line. I'm not that big a fan of R.F. Burns or electrocution So, I kept my distance.

Given what I saw and reading what Ratman wrote, it is plain to see that the station had not had an fcc inspection in years. If it had, it would have been off the air before the tower fell.

I do believe that this station could still be a player and not only that, as Cheapman wrote, the way to do this would be to provide LOCAL news, LOCAL sports and LOCAL programming and as far as music goes, heck, really make it a blast from the past and adopt the 'MusicRadio" Format that the old WLSQ used for that short time a while back. We all remember that that little station all the way over in Crossville showed up in the Knoxville ratings. It was small but it showed up. With the right marketing , promotion and this time, giving the format time to really catch on, it could be done again, possibly in a larger way. And back in the day, remembering my time in the business,most of that music was aired on A.M. anyway, so I think that would be a great fit. Thats how I would go about resurrecting it.

Yep, I've got the idea but sadly enough, not the funding. Perhaps someone reading this does and will run with it. I would be great to see. Who knows how this will end. I'm sure the current owners will not do anything with it so hopefully, it will be picked up by someone or some entity that will bring it back to life. It would be a sad thing to see this heritage stations license surrendered and it become a part of history simply because of shoddy operation and neglect.
 
R30, thanks for agreeing. I sure as heck don't have the funding either but I'd love to program a station like that. I've programmed full service stations before. I think you're right, hits from the 60's and 70's could easily fill the gaps between local news and sports and you could mix in some newer AC tracks also. We could be live in the daytime and just run automated at night. Get a local talk show covering community events sometime in the morning or afternoon. Wouldn't be much of an investment to program this but first the facility would need a major overhaul. I haven't seen the site in a couple of years but I do recall it's a classic radio building. Fixed up properly it would really make a statement in the community. Of course I'm not a sales guy either so we'd need a few go-getters to sell it to the local businesses, but covering local sports could be an absolute goldmine. So if anyone reading is a serious buyer I could be game for the PD chair. Just a thought really but you never know!
 
Horne won't rebuild this station. They will sell off the real estate and let a salvage yard cop the metal for what they can get out of it.

They would probably sell the license for a modest sum, but with the cost of building a new AM site, particularly in a zoning challenged environment like Oak Ridge, someone would have to be a fool to invest that kind of money in a bad radio market like O.R.

To be fair, WATO was a rusting pile of junk long before Horne got into radio. They actually pumped it up with some local news and increased promotion when they first bought it, but Oak Ridge yawned and it was left for dead.
 
Six and half weeks until the STA expires. So time is short.

Scrap value is about nothing. The tower steel is about it.

Putting up four short towers (or one) without changing licensing isn't all the expensive in the larger scheme of things. Unless the net income was about nothing. Then any outlay may be too much. For a speculator like Horne, these kinds of investments are a regular decision. Without doing something, any existing perceived value goes to nothing.
 
Income on WATO was zero dollars six months a year. A little bit during football season. A little bit less during basketball season. Otherwise nada.

Replacing that fallen tower would be the only economically viable way to keep WATO on the air. And then hope the other two don[t fall.

But the station is horribly signal challenged at night. All the revenue is from sports (at night). So even 25 or 30 grand to replace the tower and shore up the others is money you likely wouldn't get back. Like many AM stations, the value of WATO fell far below the value of the ground years ago. If you could sell the land and use the proceeds to put up another stick somewhere you might get a little breathing room. But I still doubt if it would be worth it because with one stick you would have 20-25 watts at night.

I have a lot of heritage with that station and town. I hate to see it go under.

They'll extend the STA for their allowed year and then unless someone offers them enough for the license to make it worth not just taking the write down on it, it will be gone forever.
 
With a station like this it's ALL about how you approach the community. You'd be surprised how little you can get by with when running a station. Take a salesman who has 20+ years selling small market radio (not me) and you have a great start. Most small market ad buyers don't give a damn about ratings and stuff. RESULTS is the name of the game. A close relationship with the station helps a lot too. Give me a bunch of young, hungry people from the community that can take direction and I'll show you a money maker.
 
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