WDNY OWNER BUYS WASB BROCKPORT, WRSB CANANDAIGUA

[Savage]

Bryan McGlynn's Genesee Media has purchased WASB 1590 Brockport and WRSB 1310 Canandaigua, both 1kW DA-2, for $450,000. Terms are $100K down with the balance on a seller's note at 6% over 12 years. Deal includes all real estate and other assets. Broker was Dick Kozacko.

Congratulations and best wishes to Brian, a good broadcaster and hail-fellow-well-met.

Don't forget the Canadian content, Brian!! ;D

 

[bmcglynn]

Bryan McGlynn's Genesee Media has purchased WASB 1590 Brockport and WRSB 1310 Canandaigua, both 1kW DA-2, for $450,000. Terms are $100K down with the balance on a seller's note at 6% over 12 years. Deal includes all real estate and other assets. Broker was Dick Kozacko.

Congratulations and best wishes to Brian, a good broadcaster and hail-fellow-well-met.

Don't forget the Canadian content, Brian!! ;D

Thanks Bob. I'll make sure to put lots of the The Poppy Family, Anne Murray, as well as The Midnight Bongo Band (or whatever they are called).


Brian

 

[Element9]

Congratulations and best wishes to Brian, a good broadcaster and hail-fellow-well-met. Don't forget the Canadian content, Brian!! ;D

Thanks Bob. I'll make sure to put lots of the The Poppy Family, Anne Murray, as well as The Midnight Bongo Band (or whatever they are called). Brian

Not to mention Lighthouse, Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot. But we digress. Recall Savage in a WADD thread writing about making an offer to buy WASB with plans to take bolt cutters to the station's guy wires 30 minutes after closing. Although the signals will no doubt be better under GM's ownership, what does an owner-operator put on 1310 and 1590 that isn't already offered by other Rochester area stations, including AM's such as WACK, WBTA and WYSL, not to mention WHAM?

 

[Yeziknoradio]

...and they had no interest in WECK? ???

 

[yugoidar]

...and they had no interest in WECK?  ???

First, we don't know that.

Secondly, as you might expect, there's a significant difference in price between what Bryan bought and what Dick Greene is asking for Buffalo's WECK.  That might have something to do with it.

The question becomes how much of a gamble do you want to take to buy what some believe could become a "dinosaur" within the next 10 years?

If nothing else, Bryan has shown he has a lot of courage.  I wish him well.

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Well, I suspect the WADD Alumni that post on this board are intrigued. I briefly heard the station a few months ago while driving to Rochester and heard a program hosted by a conspiracy theorist that sounded like a caricaturisation. A few summers ago, a friend and I stopped to visit the tower site. What we saw was not encouraging. The signal at the intersection of 31 and 19 was tinny and poorly modulated. Only good things can come from this sale. Good luck, Brian.

 

[Bob1370]

The first challenge will be to make sure WASB is technically in decent shape--there have been posts here suggesting years of neglect. And even if the plant is eventually repaired, its signal doesn't reach enough of the metro to provide much of a revenue base by itself and may need either signal tweaking--or just sale of the whole physical property (which is on a pretty decent piece of land with commercial potential) and maybe relocation a little to the east, where even a tighter pattern would pay off if it truly hits places like Brockport and Spencerport with a decent signal. (I don't think you could ever move it far enough east to get a strong signal into Rochester proper.)

WRSB is a different story. It's a promising rimshot that with the right programming, could make some money super-serving Rochester's eastern 'burbs.

Networking them together in a way that can actually bracket the city and catch the burbs to either side can also work IF the western signal can be improved at all.

Once you resolve signal issues, the next big challenge is what to program those stations with. Maybe it's tempting to continue the current religion-for-hire program format, but that's really an overpopulated format, as overpopulated as news/talk (where only two stations in the whole region, both of them 5,000 to 50,000 watt fulltimers and one of them noncommercial, can even crack a 3 share consistently). Maybe pop standards?

 

[Don Niles]

I have my own personal favorite Canadian Content songs from the 1970's..."Bondi Junction" by Peter Foldy...."This Is Your Song by" Don Goodwin and "Summer Girl" by Craig Ruhnke.

 

[SirRoxalot]

They'll be rockin' Bobcaygeon! OK, maybe Trenton on a good day.

 

[Savage]

Please understand that my "bolt-cutters" comment was a reference to an inspection I made of WASB at the behest of the late Dr. Wolfe. That was almost ten years ago. My remark was prompted by the condition of the 1590 site at that time. I don't recall everything but even before I got out of the car, it was easy to spot FCC violations which could have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in fines. It was hard to miss the lack of tower fencing, no tower ID signage, the young forest growing up through what was left of the ground system, and obvious evidence from ground level that WASB couldn't possibly have been changing antenna patterns. At all.

I presume many of these defects have been corrected over the years, and any remaining issues will I'm sure be dealt with in due course by Mr. McGlynn, who as I observed, is a professional and responsible broadcaster. His acquisition of these properties can only be good for radio in our region.

I always regarded myself as a pretty staunch pro AM Radio-guy, but with this purchase Bryan has already proven himself "a better man than I." Now he presides over two (more) AM sites, four antenna patterns and NINE towers. If you wanna have a monitor-point party, Bryan, I'll bring an FIM and cold beer!

 

[SirRoxalot]

If somebody has a boat, that could be a great way to spend a sunny summer afternoon on Lake Ontario.

 

[bmcglynn]

Please understand that my "bolt-cutters" comment was a reference to an inspection I made of WASB at the behest of the late Dr. Wolfe. That was almost ten years ago. My remark was prompted by the condition of the 1590 site at that time. I don't recall everything but even before I got out of the car, it was easy to spot FCC violations which could have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in fines. It was hard to miss the lack of tower fencing, no tower ID signage, the young forest growing up through what was left of the ground system, and obvious evidence from ground level that WASB couldn't possibly have been changing antenna patterns. At all.

I presume many of these defects have been corrected over the years, and any remaining issues will I'm sure be dealt with in due course by Mr. McGlynn, who as I observed, is a professional and responsible broadcaster. His acquisition of these properties can only be good for radio in our region.

I always regarded myself as a pretty staunch pro AM Radio-guy, but with this purchase Bryan has already proven himself "a better man than I." Now he presides over two (more) AM sites, four antenna patterns and NINE towers. If you wanna have a monitor-point party, Bryan, I'll bring an FIM and cold beer!

Thanks Bob. I'll have to take you up on the monitor point party. Going from a single tower AM to the addition of nine broadcast towers will be interesting. WDNY-AM is extremely simple other than a power shift from 880W to 1000W at sunset. Now, we'll have quite a bit of complexity in the antenna plants between four phasor banks, thirteen contactors, many relays, Potamac instruments Monitoring gear, and more Modulation monitors.

Over the years Dan Wolfe and his engineer Ken Haight did a good job going through a lot of the issues Savage pointed out and correcting them. Lots of vegetation removal, new fencing, signage, replaced isolators, new isocouplers, etc.. Prior to signing the purchase agreement, we've had Bill Sitzman and Ken up there several times tuning up the system and making sure it is in good shape. Bill really knows AM, and I was lucky to learn quite a bit from him about AM engineering which makes FM engineering look like a walk in the park.

1310 is a fantastic facility. It's new and designed for late 1990's population distribution in the eastern corridor of Rochester since Bill Sitzman designed it for George Kimble in 1997 for WCGR. It's on a great site and it puts an amazing signal into Monroe county for 1KW of power output.

1590 is a great fill-in signal for 1310's nighttime coverage to the west. The nighttime pattern puts a solid signal into Greece and points west as Brockport, Spencerpor and the Airport. There is a newer Nautel transmitter there as of several months ago, and after Bill did some tune-up on the array, we've validated the power and alignments (daytime and nighttime). There will be some new processing gear going into the station to boost the modulation to the full 125% positive peaks and 9.5 KHz bandwidth.

Brian

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

A hypothetical question for the RF experts who read and post here. Realizing it would be a massive undertaking on paper and practice, defy cost effectiveness and test the FCC protection requirements: Could 1590 WASB (albeit requiring an even tighter pattern to the east) diplex with 1310 from the WRSB transmitter site, thereby allowing both stations to spread RF westward over Rochester and Monroe county?

To quote Gilda Radner, "Never mind." Just checked radio locator. Seems 1590 WAUB would preclude WASB from moving (more than 27 feet) to the east.

 

[bmcglynn]

A hypothetical question for the RF experts who read and post here. Realizing it would be a massive undertaking on paper and practice, defy cost effectiveness and test the FCC protection requirements: Could 1590 WASB (albeit requiring an even tighter pattern to the east) diplex with 1310 from the WRSB transmitter site, thereby allowing both stations to spread RF westward over Rochester and Monroe county?

1590 in Auburn would be preclusive. The .5 mv/m signal of WASB cannot overlap the .025 mv/m signal of any other stations thus the reason of the severe westward pattern of WASB. Since WAUB's .025 mv/m signal contour overlaps the Canandaigua transmitter site, we could not run 1590 khz on that site with any pattern.

Economically speaking, it is also quite expensive to diplex a directional site - possibly more expensive than acquiring land and putting up a new array on 1590.

 

[JakeLongwell]

I, too, would like to extend my congratulations on this acquisition. It will be interesting to see what format this combo ultimately adopts. Whatever it turns out to be, we can all rest assured it will be far better than the brokered programming that's been running for decades.

Living in Ontario County, I think it is too bad that 1310 will likely be treated as a Rochester signal, and not be used to super serve Canandaigua, a city which has several stations licensed to it, but nothing that could be considered "local" programming. And, no, I don't consider programming originating in Geneva to be "local" to Canandaigua, so please let us not go there.

 

[warsaw35]

Please understand that my "bolt-cutters" comment was a reference to an inspection I made of WASB at the behest of the late Dr. Wolfe. That was almost ten years ago. My remark was prompted by the condition of the 1590 site at that time. I don't recall everything but even before I got out of the car, it was easy to spot FCC violations which could have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in fines. It was hard to miss the lack of tower fencing, no tower ID signage, the young forest growing up through what was left of the ground system, and obvious evidence from ground level that WASB couldn't possibly have been changing antenna patterns. At all.

I presume many of these defects have been corrected over the years, and any remaining issues will I'm sure be dealt with in due course by Mr. McGlynn, who as I observed, is a professional and responsible broadcaster. His acquisition of these properties can only be good for radio in our region.

I always regarded myself as a pretty staunch pro AM Radio-guy, but with this purchase Bryan has already proven himself "a better man than I." Now he presides over two (more) AM sites, four antenna patterns and NINE towers. If you wanna have a monitor-point party, Bryan, I'll bring an FIM and cold beer!

Thanks Bob. I'll have to take you up on the monitor point party. Going from a single tower AM to the addition of nine broadcast towers will be interesting. WDNY-AM is extremely simple other than a power shift from 880W to 1000W at sunset. Now, we'll have quite a bit of complexity in the antenna plants between four phasor banks, thirteen contactors, many relays, Potamac instruments Monitoring gear, and more Modulation monitors.

Over the years Dan Wolfe and his engineer Ken Haight did a good job going through a lot of the issues Savage pointed out and correcting them. Lots of vegetation removal, new fencing, signage, replaced isolators, new isocouplers, etc.. Prior to signing the purchase agreement, we've had Bill Sitzman and Ken up there several times tuning up the system and making sure it is in good shape. Bill really knows AM, and I was lucky to learn quite a bit from him about AM engineering which makes FM engineering look like a walk in the park.

1310 is a fantastic facility. It's new and designed for late 1990's population distribution in the eastern corridor of Rochester since Bill Sitzman designed it for George Kimble in 1997 for WCGR. It's on a great site and it puts an amazing signal into Monroe county for 1KW of power output.

1590 is a great fill-in signal for 1310's nighttime coverage to the west. The nighttime pattern puts a solid signal into Greece and points west as Brockport, Spencerpor and the Airport. There is a newer Nautel transmitter there as of several months ago, and after Bill did some tune-up on the array, we've validated the power and alignments (daytime and nighttime). There will be some new processing gear going into the station to boost the modulation to the full 125% positive peaks and 9.5 KHz bandwidth.

Brian

It is amazing the stuff that rolls out of Bill Sitman's head like we know 2+2=4. I got to witness his work at the power increase at WCJW back in 2000. (I think it was.) Anyway, I wish I had half the knowledge he has forgotten, if he has forgotten any, lol.

 

[Element9]

Reading the posts and reading between the lines, it seems as if 1590 WASB was the red-headed stepchild of this deal. It seems the deal was a combo-only offering with 1310 WRSB being the better of the two stations and the one that attracted the buyer's primary interest.

Only speculating, not ripping the deal.

Some may consider all the attention a tempest in a teapot, but many of us find it fascinating because it's *a deal* for a couple of local AMs. Deals for small market AMs don't often happen and we don't read about them in Radio-Info, Tom Taylor NOW or AllAccess.

Looking at the Radio-Locator signal contours (which are not as precise as those on the FCC website), the 1590 WASB daytime signal covers a lot of water and farm land to the northwest and west of Brockport. The 1310 WRSB night signal shifts the power to Brockport and north (again, over a lot of water) away from Medina and Albion in Orleans county, and Batavia in Genesee county; communities which are covered during the 1590 WASB day pattern but not at night.

Here's what's intriguing about this deal. It almost has to be a simulcast in order to maximize revenue from advertisers. In this regard, there's some viability to the 1310 + 1590 combo. But it's difficult to imagine potential listeners who may live in Brockport and drive to work in Rochester or points east, punching up 1590 on their drive to work, only to lose the signal and having to surf down 1310. Sure, this happens with AMs having multiple FM translators, but it's still a tough row to hoe AM to AM, especially because every Rochester FM covers the 104 and 31 east-to-west corridor, as well as the 390 and 490 north-to-south corridors. And then there's 1180 WHAM and 1370 WXXI-AM, each of which has a potent signal, although the WXXI daytime signal is better than the night pattern.

The 1590 WASB patterns complement (to what seems a limited extent) the 1310 WRSB day pattern and night pattern. But it seems that 1310 WRSB covers more centers of population and reaches more ears than does 1590 WASB day or night, especially at night.

So if radio's strength remains *in the car* how does any signal-challenged AM make a dent? It's not a knock, it's a question... especially for the owner-operators who post here. Radio doesn't happen for free. Nothing happens until the sales guy gets a signed contract, the spots air and the bill is paid.

Bryan McGlynn deserves credit for putting the money on the table and rolling the dice. He's a braver and perhaps more optimistic man than most of us here. Like most posters and readers, I wish him well.

 

[Element9]

Correction, paragraph four should read

The 1590 WASB night signal shifts the power to Brockport and north (again, over a lot of water) away from Medina and Albion in Orleans county, and Batavia in Genesee county; communities which are covered during the 1590 WASB day pattern but not at night.

Had the correct link but wrong call letters.

 

[bmcglynn]

So if radio's strength remains *in the car* how does any signal-challenged AM make a dent? It's not a knock, it's a question... especially for the owner-operators who post here. Radio doesn't happen for free. Nothing happens until the sales guy gets a signed contract, the spots air and the bill is paid.

Bryan McGlynn deserves credit for putting the money on the table and rolling the dice. He's a braver and perhaps more optimistic man than most of us here. Like most posters and readers, I wish him well.

Thanks for the note. These are exciting times - with lots of hard work ahead. We have a great team that is very excited to work with prospective clients on something that we feel is very innovative for this market and radio in general.

Stay tuned next week. We have a format announcement coming out for 1310.

 

[Element9]

Stay tuned next week. We have a format announcement coming out for 1310.

Don't forget to put a kill date on the spot and update the copy.