I remember when KEGL was in Fort Worth, KSCS and WBAP were in FW and The Wolf (KPLX) and KRLD were in Arlington. I get it that in the late 80's everything was centered around Dallas but Fort Worth has really grown into its' on city. Why don't you see a couple of 100,000 watts stations moving back or into FW?
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Why are most of the D/FW stations in Dallas?
- Thread starter jeffdfw
- Start date
Consolidation is the reason for this.
The DFW area used to be two different radio markets and all the stations mentioned above were in their respective cities to serve the market they were licensed to. Ever since the markets merged its been a slow shift to having more of the stations in the larger of the two cities.
Ultimately, I don't think for the radio stations it matters all that much. It matters more for news gathering, but few stations do news anymore..so what's the difference?
The point about Fort Worth is quite valid though. It's a big city deserving of more media than it has.
The DFW area used to be two different radio markets and all the stations mentioned above were in their respective cities to serve the market they were licensed to. Ever since the markets merged its been a slow shift to having more of the stations in the larger of the two cities.
Ultimately, I don't think for the radio stations it matters all that much. It matters more for news gathering, but few stations do news anymore..so what's the difference?
The point about Fort Worth is quite valid though. It's a big city deserving of more media than it has.
tested said:
Actually, TV and FM are the reasons for this.
Until FM made inroads on the total listening in Dallas and Tarrant counties, a large part of the radio listening was to AM stations that were local to each county.
TV had been a "DFW" thing as the allocations pretty much created a single market for the visual medium, just as happened in places like Miami-Ft Lauderdale or Flint- Bay City - Saginaw to name a few.
KLIF did not have much of a Tarrant signal at night, and KXOL did not have much of a Dallas signal. Each market was rated separately. But in 1973 Arbitron combined the markets as can be seen here....
http://www.dfwradioarchives.info/1973.htm
As the FMs moved to the TV sites there was no difference in signal in Dallas or Ft Worth. Stations with big signals loved it, as the market moved up in national rank, and that increased significantly the national dollars.
When consolidation came, clusters with stations licensed to different cities ended up picking the best place to be for business... but that was just a final move; the real radio market "consolidation" came in 1973, long before the 1996 relaxation of ownership rules.
I was program director of KEGL when we moved it first from Fort Worth to Arlington (on Pioneer Parkway, across the street from the Lake Arlington dam), and then to the Urban Center in Las Colinas (Irving).
KEGL's city of license was (and is) Fort Worth.
Upon our applying for it, the FCC granted the station what's known as "The Arizona Waiver," allowing the station to locate its studio operations outside the city of license. (Hard to believe, but back in the day, you had to get this Arizona Waiver from the FCC to be able to broadcast from elsewhere but your city of license.)
I think in hindsight, the move to Arlington was more about Gery Swanson wanting to sell the station, and figuring that it would bring more if it were in its own building. That move was as much about getting us out of the old Channel 11 building on West Freeway (I-30 and Hulen) as it was about moving to Arlington.
But the move to Las Colinas in Dallas County was expressly for the purpose of getting our sales operation (and frankly, the entire operation) closer to where the most market dollars were. Prior to the move to Las Colinas, KEGL had always operated a satellite sales office in Dallas. Not only did that add operating cost, but it also caused some operating complications. Sales people would bring back tapes of commercials and they had to be shuttled clear across town just to get them on the air. This was before the days of digital audio and the internet.
The move to Las Colinas enabled the station to have ONE base of operation for all departments. And it put us in much closer proximity to where the dollars were.
It's radio, man. It's always about the money. Don't you know that?
KEGL's city of license was (and is) Fort Worth.
Upon our applying for it, the FCC granted the station what's known as "The Arizona Waiver," allowing the station to locate its studio operations outside the city of license. (Hard to believe, but back in the day, you had to get this Arizona Waiver from the FCC to be able to broadcast from elsewhere but your city of license.)
I think in hindsight, the move to Arlington was more about Gery Swanson wanting to sell the station, and figuring that it would bring more if it were in its own building. That move was as much about getting us out of the old Channel 11 building on West Freeway (I-30 and Hulen) as it was about moving to Arlington.
But the move to Las Colinas in Dallas County was expressly for the purpose of getting our sales operation (and frankly, the entire operation) closer to where the most market dollars were. Prior to the move to Las Colinas, KEGL had always operated a satellite sales office in Dallas. Not only did that add operating cost, but it also caused some operating complications. Sales people would bring back tapes of commercials and they had to be shuttled clear across town just to get them on the air. This was before the days of digital audio and the internet.
The move to Las Colinas enabled the station to have ONE base of operation for all departments. And it put us in much closer proximity to where the dollars were.
It's radio, man. It's always about the money. Don't you know that?
I remember when I first started at KVIL in 1978, the office and studio was at the Park Cities Bank Building at Preston and Mockingbird. It had been there after moving from across the street a few years earlier.
As the station grew, it quickly outgrew the small floor space in the bank building. We had staff literally working in cramped spaces along hallways and such.
The original "auditorium" was created out of this space crunch. The "audiotorium" was actually a small hallway closet converted into one of the smallest studio's I've ever seen. Ron needed his own place to do promo's without disrupting the Production Room, so they put one turntable, one mic, one reel to reel and one cart recorder in there along with a very small custom console. It was about 3 feet by 3 feet! Some of the greatest promo's ever came out of that small closet! Because of its silly size, Ron jokingly referred to it as the "auditorium", and the name stuck.
On Memorial Day Weekend 1979, we moved to the spaceous Capitol Bank at Central and Mockingbird and within a few years outgrew that space too and finally took over the whole floor!
When we moved to the Capitol Bank, we had to get the waiver too. That building was on the east side of Central Expressway. The west side of the freeway was still in the city limits of Highland Park, the assigned city of license. Because the studio was on the 5th floor, it 'overlooked' Highland Park, therefore the waiver was approved and we were allowed to broadcast from technically outside the Highland Park city limits.
...now you know the rest .. of the story...
As the station grew, it quickly outgrew the small floor space in the bank building. We had staff literally working in cramped spaces along hallways and such.
The original "auditorium" was created out of this space crunch. The "audiotorium" was actually a small hallway closet converted into one of the smallest studio's I've ever seen. Ron needed his own place to do promo's without disrupting the Production Room, so they put one turntable, one mic, one reel to reel and one cart recorder in there along with a very small custom console. It was about 3 feet by 3 feet! Some of the greatest promo's ever came out of that small closet! Because of its silly size, Ron jokingly referred to it as the "auditorium", and the name stuck.
On Memorial Day Weekend 1979, we moved to the spaceous Capitol Bank at Central and Mockingbird and within a few years outgrew that space too and finally took over the whole floor!
When we moved to the Capitol Bank, we had to get the waiver too. That building was on the east side of Central Expressway. The west side of the freeway was still in the city limits of Highland Park, the assigned city of license. Because the studio was on the 5th floor, it 'overlooked' Highland Park, therefore the waiver was approved and we were allowed to broadcast from technically outside the Highland Park city limits.
...now you know the rest .. of the story...
DavidEduardo said:
Add Seattle/Tacoma to that list -- while I've lived in Dallas since the eighties, I grew up in Tacoma, and remember it as having separate ratings from Seattle into well into the seventies. Since FM became dominant later in the hilly Pacific Northwest than it did in North Texas, I suspect that the combining of the two cities into one market happened later for Seattle & Tacoma than for Dallas & Fort Worth.
But there is a separate question, which is when the majority of the stations' studio facilities moved to the Dallas area. And consolidation is a factor in that, I suspect. Because when stations were combined under common ownership, the new ownership wanted a combined studio operation for the obvious cost savings. And I suspect that the Dallas studio locations ended up winning out when these combinations occurred, since more of the population in the market is on the Dallas side.
It's consolidation.. and somewhat stupidity if you ask me.
It used to be that radio stations would be in some place "visible" to people passing by. That was done by design to help promote the station.
KLIF used to be in a strange wedged-shaped building in downtown Dallas. You could see the DJ's from time to time when you looked in and definitely saw the big sign.
The old KOAX easy listening station on 105.3 was high atop Reunion Tower. Anytime you went to the top of the tower, you saw the DJ's etc. It was a great promotional tool too.
KRLD moved into the Ballpark in Arlington and you could always see them doing their shows in there.
I know WBAP, The Ticket, KSCS, etc moved to Victory Park.. but I'm not sure you can see much of what they're doing there. It's just not the same thing.
It seems to me that with so many people just turning off radio in general you would want to do something to draw attention to yourself and get people to give it a listen.
It used to be that radio stations would be in some place "visible" to people passing by. That was done by design to help promote the station.
KLIF used to be in a strange wedged-shaped building in downtown Dallas. You could see the DJ's from time to time when you looked in and definitely saw the big sign.
The old KOAX easy listening station on 105.3 was high atop Reunion Tower. Anytime you went to the top of the tower, you saw the DJ's etc. It was a great promotional tool too.
KRLD moved into the Ballpark in Arlington and you could always see them doing their shows in there.
I know WBAP, The Ticket, KSCS, etc moved to Victory Park.. but I'm not sure you can see much of what they're doing there. It's just not the same thing.
It seems to me that with so many people just turning off radio in general you would want to do something to draw attention to yourself and get people to give it a listen.
tested said:
DFW is a huge place, and few people are going to pass by any particular radio studio.
I remember the wedge-shaped KLIF studios. Don't think I would want to work in such a setup today, with all the whack jobs that might want to target your air talent with a high-powered rifle or bomb. I knew one female jock in a medium market who worked in a second-floor fishbowl studio on the night shift. She was terrified someone would take some pot shots at her.
In the summer of '91, a full year before duopoly became legal, of the full-market commercial signals, only co-owned WBAP and KSCS had studios in Ft. Worth. So, it's hard for me to buy that consolidation drove the moves to Dallas, unless you're talking about consolidation of markets rather than stations. It's true that consolidation finally drove WBAP and KSCS out of Tarrant County, though they left Ft. Worth for Arlington roughly 15 years earlier.
And, much like Mediafrog mentions, I've had friends who were a little worried about being in a zoo setup during work. When The Oasis, V-100 and Heaven 97 were in the old 1080 Metromedia Place, all three stations had panic buttons in the studios. I worked for a small market cluster a few years ago that had a "batphone" so we had a direct link to authorities should anything happen.
And, much like Mediafrog mentions, I've had friends who were a little worried about being in a zoo setup during work. When The Oasis, V-100 and Heaven 97 were in the old 1080 Metromedia Place, all three stations had panic buttons in the studios. I worked for a small market cluster a few years ago that had a "batphone" so we had a direct link to authorities should anything happen.
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