First of all ,do we really need 3 spanish speaking AM radio stations with fairly low power....next we have WEMG with a fairly decent signal...and has the majority of spanish speaking listeners with tower in Camden...then we have WUBA a 5000 watt daytimer which also has a fairly decent signal...except it is really restricted by being a directional signal...and now comes the 3rd spanish speaking station,,,they would have probably had better ratings staying an adult standards station...with a fair at best daytime signal and terrible nightime graveyard signal...planted right next to WEMG on the dial in Camden with a much better signal both day and night and not a graveyarder...if WHAT makes it to the next rating,Ill be shocked..without going bankrupt....adult standards was perfect for WHAT or they should have made a deal with GARY FISHER owner of WMID classic oldies 1340 Atlantic city to simulcast their format....seems to me that WHAT just put the last nail in its coffin ...Why they didnt contact WMID is beyond me...listenership would have risen quite a bit...imagine the only oldies station in the philly area playing 50s and 60s music...all they would have needed was adding JERRY BLAVATS 2 hour show in the mix......and some sort of doo wop show...then they might have a chance....
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WHAT radio has to be kidding !!!
- Thread starter rob1010
- Start date
I grew up listening to WMID as a real Jersey Shore girl...when Atlantic City had no casinos, but did have some theaters. While others are strolling around as wannabes, it was we who had the best times. My mother started the great ice cream caper by saying to us kids, "Whoever wants ice cream, come with me.". She had a whole town full of people telling her what kind they wanted. LOL.
I still enjoy WMID, especially while working.
I still enjoy WMID, especially while working.
@Rob: Couldn't most people in the area already get the "50's and 60's" oldies format you speak of on 92.1 FM out of Vineland? They even have Blavat every afternoon.
@Silkie re: "I grew up listening to WMID as a real Jersey Shore girl..." Are you saying Snooki and her cohorts are phonies? :
@Silkie re: "I grew up listening to WMID as a real Jersey Shore girl..." Are you saying Snooki and her cohorts are phonies? :
There was talk on some other radio board -- I think one domiciled within the Metro Mecca market -- that Arthur Liu is developing premature curvature of the spine from bending over the cash register and hauling away lots of revenue from three New York City AM stations (all regionals) , none of which have made the ratings since the days when Hooper measured the audience.
I kinda miss the 1989 days of WHAT myself, when they sounded a lot like WNJR 1430 Newark. Almost too cool for the antenna. I have several untelescoped casettes of WHAT from those days. Hard to believe those were from 20 years ago. Did anyone here run tape of their standards format, btw?
Perhaps Blavat can affect a renaissance, like he did long ago, by buying time on 1340.
I kinda miss the 1989 days of WHAT myself, when they sounded a lot like WNJR 1430 Newark. Almost too cool for the antenna. I have several untelescoped casettes of WHAT from those days. Hard to believe those were from 20 years ago. Did anyone here run tape of their standards format, btw?
Perhaps Blavat can affect a renaissance, like he did long ago, by buying time on 1340.
DToTheJ said:
Of course! I spent the better portion of my childhood in NJ - from north Jersey and weekly trainrides to NYC to south Jersey and the seashore. Snooki is no Jersey girl; please trust me on that. I have happy memories of NJ. Then again, I also have happy memories of the drive-ins in Miami. Come to think of it, I have wonderful memories of just about any place to which I have traveled and lived, with few hiccups in the road along the way; as with others who hit those hiccups I deal with them as necessary to continue to be happy. The disappear in due course, and we move on past them, catapulting them to the junk heap of junk history, leaving them behind in the dust.
max88 said:
Skimmer7 said:
I
imhomerjay
Guest
Um hmmmmmm. So they're supposed to just pour money down the drain and not focus on actually staying solvent?
It may be hard to believe, but it was easy to "love" a business when a given industry was basically printing money. Times have changed, technology has changed, and that necessitates conducting business differently.
It may be hard to believe, but it was easy to "love" a business when a given industry was basically printing money. Times have changed, technology has changed, and that necessitates conducting business differently.
imhomerjay said:
I've always been told, and do believe, you do what you love, work hard and what you love to make it a success. When you begin to compromise your ideals, and it becomes 100% ALL about the cash, what you wound with is a lousy product.
I
imhomerjay
Guest
In the real world, one can do what they love, do it to the best of their ability, and still fail from a business perspective for myriad reasons.
And shockingly, 20, 30 or 40 years ago, there were people in business to make the benjamins.
And shockingly, 20, 30 or 40 years ago, there were people in business to make the benjamins.
imhomerjay said:
EXACTLY,and I would rather fail then sell out to the highest bidder.
I
imhomerjay
Guest
Charming. Some of us would rather pay the bills, maybe even put some cash away for the future, and consider that to be a benchmark of success.
Gotta try to do it with class, though, whenever possible.
Crass is not class.
You make more friends with class -- the ability to assert your position without P-offing anyone.
As long as the tenet 'any publicity is good publicity' remains true, Good Lord : How about remembering that GOOD publicity is included in that? Is 'good publicity' another one of those 55+ things that marketers threw into a ravine along with the audience?
Crass is not class.
You make more friends with class -- the ability to assert your position without P-offing anyone.
As long as the tenet 'any publicity is good publicity' remains true, Good Lord : How about remembering that GOOD publicity is included in that? Is 'good publicity' another one of those 55+ things that marketers threw into a ravine along with the audience?
It seems like that is exactly what the adult standards format did. It financially "failed" BIG TIME.
Marconi Broadcasting bought the 1-kw station about five years ago for $5-million, and just sold it for $475-million. And that was undoubtedly the "highest bidder."
With operating costs counted in, Marconi probably lost a million dollars a year on that station.
Do the math, that is almost $20,000 a week, or almost $3,000 a day every day for the last five years. With recent cume figures showing WHAT with a total weekly audience of about 50,000 listeners. It was losing about $2.50 a week on each and every person who tuned in.
Low power AMs are now declining assets, and the new owners, obviously, are just looking to generate income from it before it becomes totally worthless.
Spanish speakers have only a couple of other AM signals to listen too. Somebody came to the new owners of WHAT and offered them an LMA that "obviously" covers their costs and guarantees them an acceptable profit.
That is a whole lot better than kissing off three grand a day to the wind like Marconi wound up doing for the sake of putting standards on the radio.
By the way, I am a standards fan, but times and technology change.
I
imhomerjay
Guest
Steve Green NEPA said:
But how does that apply to this scenario? A company tried and failed to make a go of a business, and quietly faded away, while another entity bought the remnants of the business and is trying their own approach.
TimeIsTight said:
You mean $475 THOUSAND.
When the station was sold for $5 million, station prices had not yet tanked big time. Nevertheless, there were MANY postings here (and probably elsewhere) asking whether the buyers were in their right minds and predicting that they would go broke. I don't think anyone expected that bankruptcy would take as long as five years. I doubt whether anyone was giving them more than two years before they filed for bankruptcy. I've now read that the $5 million did not include the site and the tower. The $5 million price would have been too high by an order of magnitude EVEN IF the real estate had been included. In today's market, the $475k price is too high by at least a factor of three unless the real estate was included this time.
The point is that the original deal five years ago (or whenever it was) required a modicum of business acumen. Apparently, the buyer lacked that. The result was not only predictable; it was predicted by quite a few people.
One of these days I am going to learn NOT to attempt to post when I am short of time. I also did some of the math in that post backward and it should have been that they were losing 40-cents a week on each and every listener in their cume. Haste makes waste. :-[
Barnum said "there is a sucker born every minute" and you hate to see people lose that much so quickly in one bad move. Not only the buyers but whomever provided the financing had to be delusional.
When it comes to AM stations it appears the only way their value is going from here is down. That could all change very quickly if the FCC decided to allow some AM stations to broadcast in full power digital, and the market responded by mass selling compatible radios at reasonable prices. Potential buyers might be members of currently under served age and ethnic groups. Current HD radio technology might have been an attempt to have that happen gradually, but it looks like brute force and full power digital starting with one section of the band might be the only hope. The conversion to full power medium wave digital is happening in other countries around the world, it will be interesting to see if it catches on there, and how bad things have to get here before anybody starts seriously thinking about it.
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