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What Would You Do With WRKO?

R

Retro

I would say just try something new such as news or something, but then again that is expensive. They could keep Howie Carr in the afternoon and daypart the news instead. Or maybe just go against WJIB (nothing against Bob Bitner) and play Nostalgia. Just some thoughts to throw out there.
 
Retro said:
I would say just try something new such as news or something, but then again that is expensive. They could keep Howie Carr in the afternoon and daypart the news instead. Or maybe just go against WJIB (nothing against Bob Bitner) and play Nostalgia. Just some thoughts to throw out there.
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I wouldn't get rid of talk for music just yet.

They OWN the position of THE Talk Station...so I think there is lots more to do to make that work.

The problem with RKO is they don't have good programming, they don't have a good program director, and the company has no money to spend on good talent (or a good talk program director).

The other thing I would do is put back on a credible news product.

I am hoping someone else does Nostalgia with a good signal.
 
WRKO had a top-notch news department in place until about 3+ years ago when they kicked everyone to the curb. All Entercom cares about is the bottom line. Building a quality product costs money. Their ROI is higher with low cost programming.
 
Talk radio has become stale and redundant, and has completely poisoned our national dialogue.

To answer what to do with WRKO, you first have to define just WHAT (or WHO) WRKO is.
WRKO is A., the hardware of a radio station.
WRKO is B., the people who make decisions as to the nature of the radio station.

The current lot of people who are driving WRKO will always, at the bottom line, have an agenda to maintain the status quo - even while bending over backwards to LOOK LIKE they want "change". You cannot not, nor ever will, make any changes to the radio station if you do not COMPLETELY ELIMINATE the people who have been making decisions about it over the 15 years or so.

Should that ever be achieved (I'm not optimistic), other cities, both larger and smaller than Boston manage to have viable music stations on AM.
 
FPB said:
The current lot of people who are driving WRKO will always, at the bottom line, have an agenda to maintain the status quo You cannot not, nor ever will, make any changes to the radio station if you do not COMPLETELY ELIMINATE the people who have been making decisions about it over the 15 years or so.
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Of course your answer has to tinge on the political, which negates you as a source.

FPB said:
...other cities, both larger and smaller than Boston manage to have viable music stations on AM.
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For instance...what larger markets manage to have viable music stations on AM.
 
Sell it, and buy a fleet of businesses that make "easier money."

For example, you could buy LOTS of funeral homes for the 10+ million you'd get for that station, and easily gross a million a year each. Faster money (possibility of a couple hundred k mnonthly) , more stable businesses, a lot less government footprint in your operation, too. There are LOTS of hot franchises, too. Do somethiing you like.

I don't give a rip about radio (I sold my stations and retired) - Now, I look for ways at easy money and now a days, radio is a quite difficuult way to do it.

Thanks!
 
Dollar-a-holler religion. As times get harder, the doomsday hucksters will be crawling all over each other, cash in hand, to get on a blowtorch and get their message out to more of the checkbooks and savings accounts -- oops, I mean more of the faithful.
 
CTListener said:
Dollar-a-holler religion. As times get harder, the doomsday hucksters will be crawling all over each other, cash in hand, to get on a blowtorch and get their message out to more of the checkbooks and savings accounts -- oops, I mean more of the faithful.
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Won't work, for a few reasons, first of all, Salem owns the religious market in this area, secondly I wouldn't call all of the people on their stations dollar for hollers. Some of them are quite good!
 
Won't work, for a few reasons, first of all, Salem owns the religious market in this area
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Oh I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. First, Calvary Chapel has a pretty significant presence in the burbs thanks to WSMA and its repeaters. Second, saying that Salem owns all religious radio listeners in a given area is like saying that WEEI owns all sports radio listeners in a given area; if you don't care about baseball, or if you're a fan of the Yankees, you're probably not a WEEI listener. Religious preference tends to be pretty specific, so if a specific religious broadcaster showed up on WRKO that's NOT already present in the Boston area, it's possible they could attract an audience.

However, we have seen the signs of over-saturation of religious radio in many parts of the country, too. Several chains have sold off some of their translators and even gotten rid of an entire cluster or two...something that'd be unthinkable even three years ago. Faithful or not, if listeners don't write checks then they can't pay the transmitter's electrical bill.

So it's possible that Boston is already at saturation, although personally I doubt that; Boston has consistently been "short" on religious radio for decades...thanks in no small part to the huge number of college and high school stations scattered across the region.
 
Thanks for your input on that, I had forgotten about some of the alternate religious broadcasters in the country. Maybe if they did something a bit different, then it could very well work.
 
Now I'd love a CCM station here, but on the AM though? Also, I thought about R&B also, but this is Entercom that we are talking about. Slim chance on either format.
 
MarcB said:
I think I missed the memo about WMSX being back on the air.
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From the FCC's Big Vault o' Goodies:

"Date station went silent: 12/01/2008

Date station [re]commenced operation: 04/13/2009"
 
Besides speculating on what Entercom MIGHT do with WRKO...I figure it's worth asking: what HAVE they already done with comparable AM facilities in other markets? Honestly, I couldn't tell you, so I'm asking...
 
What, you want to put FACTS into the discussion, Aaron? Don't you know this is radio-info?!?!? :D

Entercom doesn't have that many big talk AMs to compare. Probably the closest comparison was in Seattle, where Entercom had news-talk monster KIRO on 710...and then traded it to Bonneville and got out of the AM business there entirely. OK, maybe that's not a great comparison.

In Greenville, SC, they added an FM simulcast for their two fairly weak-signalled news-talk AMs - but they had an FM with a failing format available for the purpose.

In Kansas City, Entercom has KMBZ 980, one of two big news-talkers in the market, and KCSP 610 (ex-WDAF), one of two big AM sports outlets in town. So far, KC has been a fairly healthy AM market, and there's been little to no pressure to move these behemoths to FM.

In two smaller markets, Entercom has aggressively moved its news-talk presence to FM simulcasts: WWL New Orleans and WILK in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

Entercom strikes me as a company with a lot of local autonomy for its managers, so it's hard to read a lot into what they've done in other markets that are quite different from Boston...
 
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