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Which Phoenix AM For Sale?
- Thread starter oldiesfan6479
- Start date
Cassette tape or 8" floppies?
Eight track...that's the way we roll!
Darned few brain cells left....blame it on the Monsoon and too many years of being self-medicated.
Looks like ours...right down to the yucky yellow case!
After we build the wall around the Media Hut.
Yup, Tandy is a real dandy.
No whine before its time...
It is mystifying to see the radio community ganging up on AM radio. In many markets, AM stations still command sizable revenue and audience shares with popular news/talk and sports formats. Yes, there are many under-performing AMs, but AM can and should play a large role in a radio resurgence. Under-performing AM stations can be more than brokered time and ethnic narrow-cast operations.
The industry needs a "paradigm shift" with AM. It can be more than it is. In the 60s and 70s, FM grew in popularity with progressive rock, a format eschewed by the vastly more popular AM band of that era.
What can AM do? Rather than being the fourth sports station in a market, why not hire some young people with passion and try "Indie Rock"--or do a real honest-to-goodness locally programmed and staffed Gold station now that Oldies stations have evolved to Classic Hits (and abandoned the baby-boomers).
Commercial radio is competing with variety on SiriusXM (curated) or Pandora (personalized). I don't understand why we want to diminish a band that could contribute niche formats that could add significantly to the choices available on broadcast radio. How can we lose by giving listeners new format options they can get jazzed about?
The industry needs a "paradigm shift" with AM. It can be more than it is. In the 60s and 70s, FM grew in popularity with progressive rock, a format eschewed by the vastly more popular AM band of that era.
What can AM do? Rather than being the fourth sports station in a market, why not hire some young people with passion and try "Indie Rock"--or do a real honest-to-goodness locally programmed and staffed Gold station now that Oldies stations have evolved to Classic Hits (and abandoned the baby-boomers).
Commercial radio is competing with variety on SiriusXM (curated) or Pandora (personalized). I don't understand why we want to diminish a band that could contribute niche formats that could add significantly to the choices available on broadcast radio. How can we lose by giving listeners new format options they can get jazzed about?
The successful AMs are the old-time 50 kW blowtorches in mostly the top markets. They've been around for 80-95 years and are well-established. I'm talking stations like WCBS, WGN, KFI, KOA, etc.
Phoenix does not have any of those stations. Phoenix only has three 50 kW daytime stations that drastically reduce power at night. None of them are general-interest stations (one brokered right-wing talk/infomercials, and two fundamentalist religious stations).
No AM station here covers the entire market at night. At my house in NE Mesa, I have to take my radio outside to hear even KFYI and KTAR, the only two stations with something anywhere close to full-market coverage. If I'm lucky, I can hear KFI as the only AM inside the house. Every other frequency is noise generated inside the house. And this is only on my good Grundig Satellit 750. A consumer-grade AM radio is useless here.
Houses built since the 1980s have RF-shielding lath-and-stucco exteriors. Combine that with the RF noise-generating PCs and TVs, AM reception inside a modern home is as bad as in an office building. I'm willing to bet that folks in Gilbert, Queen Creek, AJ, and Santan Valley have the same problem, since I have trouble with any Phoenix AM station in my car when I'm in those areas after dark.
"Indie rock" on AM? Who in that audience listens to AM? The 1990s equivalent was tried on then-KUKQ 1060 at that time. It's been all-sports KDUS since 1996.
There's also no market for all-news like KNX or WBBM run. First of all, it would require a 50 kW AM or 100 kW FM stick. There are none of the former, and music makes more money on the latter. Second, folks here aren't interested. All news has been tried before (KPHX, KTAR, KNNS), and failed each time. And that was 25-45 years ago.
And as long as AM audio fidelity is limited to a maximum of 10 kHz, it cannot compete with music on FM. I can't think of any format that works on AM other than what's there now -- sports, preaching, right-wing talk, and Spanish-language (maybe -- do the AMs do all that well anymore?).
Keith pointed out the problem in Phoenix where no AM covers the whole market, and many only cover small parts of it.
News seems only successful Top 10 markets in the Northeast. Tried and failed recently in Houston and Atlanta. Gets fairly low shares in LA, and in the sales demos does poorly.
Talk, as Keith said, works best on heritage stations with big signals. Phoenix has none of those.
FM grew in the late 60's and into the 70's due to an FCC mandate to stop most simulcasting. Owners looked for formats that did not compete with the existing cash cow at the AM station. The biggest successes were Beautiful Music stations, and then everything from Album Rock (AOR) to CHR to oldies and country on FM.
AM stations did not do progressive rock as the music sounded terrible on AM. And it was hard to sell.
There are few if any advertisers who would pay to reach the senior crowd. And there are essentially no agency accounts that buy 55+.
In all the top 100 markets there are less than 175 stations... less than an average of two per market... that cover the whole market day and night. Some markets, like DC and Phoenix do not have a single full coverage station on AM.
The niche formats are there... religion, brokered, etc. Even Spanish language today has no AM audience to speak of because the young Hispanic community just does not like listening to AM.
Well, there was KCAC 1010. It was unsuccessful, but it did begat the original incarnation of KDKB. The latter being on FM as well as AM (even if it was a daytimer back then) certainly helped.
Yes--but they are still successful. AM is not an impediment to their generation of large ratings and revenue shares. This is also not limited to the "top markets". There are many medium market stations that also continue to perform exceptionally well.
It's an "out of the box" idea and it goes into the "If you build it they will come" category. They don't currently listen because with the possible exception of sports, there is nothing for them to listen to. The major corporate radio companies don't know what to do with AM stations that are not the major news/talker or sports station in a given market. So, they cycle through liberal talk, sports, business and nostalgia and then rinse and repeat. With all of the stations and all of the programmers these groups have, why not take a shot at doing something new and different. Over the years I've seen a couple of cases where a progressive rock and an urban format actually achieved some success on AM stations with zero marketing and promotion. In each case, they were filling a market void and their listeners were "raving fans" of the station. They didn't care that it was AM--they were just glad to have a station that played their music.
We're not talking about launching an AM AC to compete with KESZ-FM. This is about adding viable and attractive options for listeners. AM sound quality is also not as much of an issue as you might think it is. Today, many will stream it and get the benefit of higher quality audio online. Also, many people are listening on inexpensive table radios where the difference between AM and FM is less noticeable. I've also had a number of rentals cars in recent years where the AM audio quality was actually pretty good.
Radio is often a bewildering industry. There are many Phoenix AM stations that reach 90% of the in-market population with their day-time signals in their 2.0 mV/m contours--some reach 99% and 100%. That's 4-million plus people. Are you telling me properly focused and resourceful broadcasters couldn't make something happen and build a profitable business when reaching that many people? Only in radio would we think that wasn't worth pursuing.
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Radio360 said:
No, there are a few medium market stations that perform well. I'm willing to bet that those stations cover their markets well. I'm also willing to bet that at least a few have FM translators by now.
KFYI (then-KOY) and KTAR have been operating on 550 and 620, respectively, with their current power levels since 1941. The valley's population at the time was around 100,000 people, with few living north of Camelback, south of the river, east of 32nd St., or west of 35th Ave, plus Glendale, Tempe, and Mesa. 5000 watts was a good signal back then, especially at the low end of the dial, even into the 1970s. But today, when the metro Phoenix area is over 4 million people, and people live within about a 60 mile radius from downtown, compared to 5-10 miles in the '40s and 20 miles in the '70s, that just doesn't cut it.
Radio360 said:
Sandusky built it in the early '90s. Nobody came.
True, dat! But c'mon, not many listeners left under the age of 55 that will sample Ancient Modulation regardless of market coverage. Even if 5~Fifty and 6~Twenty were 50kw blowtorches, results would probably remain the same. TMISU were smart to migrate newstalk to one of their two FMs. I ❤ Debt couldn't, simply because all their FMs were generating much needed cash flow and couldn't be sacrificed.
It's not only limited to listeners under 55. None of the Phoenix AM's carry content I am interested in listening to. Despite the fact that I grew up on AM and don't consider it a liability so long as it has a listenable signal. And therein lies another problem. Should I turn my Lexicon system to AM and try to listen to virtually any local AM signal I am rewarded with static and interference of all kinds. Pulling in a parking space next to neon lights on storefronts completely wipes out any nighttime signal in the Valley. Some daytime signals are strong enough to overcome the noise but they don't have the content I like so.....no deal.
The only value I see in AM at all is for range. Blowtorches in rural areas which can cover several states, particularly at night, to give weather or other emergency information. I don't think any lonely over-the-road truckers depend upon AM any longer. The past several coast-to-coast trips I've made have been very quiet on the AM band.
The only value I see in AM at all is for range. Blowtorches in rural areas which can cover several states, particularly at night, to give weather or other emergency information. I don't think any lonely over-the-road truckers depend upon AM any longer. The past several coast-to-coast trips I've made have been very quiet on the AM band.
Somewhere around 90% of AM station listening at home and at work takes place inside the 10 mV/m contour. The market is too filled with man-made noise for a 2 mV/m signal to be useful for most purposes.
And nearly every Phoenix area AM has either no night signal or a vastly inferior one (due to directionality, lower power of co-channel interference) that the are, for most of the population, daytimers. How many successful Top 20 market daytimers do you know?
Actually, then-alt.radio KUKQ was quite influential for its day and most of its then-"new"/now-"moldy oldies" playlist now shows up on 93.3 in spades. Local programs like "Monday Morning Music Meeting" were the precursor to shows like Beef Vegan's TMI on KWSS-LP -- so naturally, if you're going to cite KWSS-LP as an example of why indie rock is not commercial, you would have to take into account that Beef was hired away by a *commercial* station in Tucson.
And speaking of indie rock, "Coast to Coast AM" is one of the worst-kept secrets among hipsters -- the guy from Blink-182 (the one who tinfoil on everyone) and a handful of local bands (including some who inevitably get signed) are among its famous listeners. There's no doubt in my mind that a significant portion of 550's overnight listeners are in the under-30 demo.
The average over the last 6 books shows 3.6% of the KFYI audience in the Midnight to 5 AM period to be under 18 to 34. The biggest group is 45-54, followed by 64-74 and 55-64.
For laughs, I looked at KFI in LA, where 3.7% of the listenership is 18-34, but 70% of the audience is over 55.
3% is not significant. The bulk of the audience is in the geezer demos.
I caught the tail-end of that station when I moved back to the valley in 1994. IIRC, it lasted until early or mid 1995, when it became Yet Another 3rd-Tier Talk Station (somebody else here mentioned Sam Steiger's show om 1060). I believe most of that programming moved to 1310 when 1060 became KDUS.
It may have had a loyal following, but if alt-rock had been successful (read: Made enough money) on 1060, it would have stayed there for awhile.
And, Beef who? Never heard of him. Nobody but you mentioned KWSS. Not only do I not like '90s music, I can't get that station where I live anyway.
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Amazing. It's an LPFM with an actual measured audience and an AQH of 200 to 300 persons. And a cume of 22,000 persons. Now let's see, how does that compare with the market leader at 1,125,000 persons?
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I also remember Mary McCann (The Bone Mama) playing "Chocolate Cake" that you eat with your ears.
That's actually amazing numbers for an LPFM.
Speaking of which, while not technically an LPFM, but EVIT finally split 90.7 from 88.7 and are now playing what I call "variety country" (can't really call it "classic country" because they play a number of post-2000 songs). Given the signal only reaches Apache Junction, Queen Creek, and parts of East Mesa, this might actually register some listenership (I remember seeing the numbers for Wickenburg rimshot KSWG, and was amazed).
Considering the coverage of any LPFM, that is really a decent showing and demonstrates a programming option that is attractive.
90.7 does not show in the book, although 88.7 does have an average 0.1 share and about 44,000 cume. The caveat is whether 88.7 is encoded for PPM; some non-coms don't bother.
The Wickenburg station was not really a rimshot as it is in Maricopa County, but it was spitting' distance from Yavapai and out in the middle of nowhere. But apparently it got enough of the local folks to make an appearance in the book.
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