With WPEN's ratings so bad and it being an expensive station to run with the talent, why didn't Beasley from a money-saving perspective just put WJBR on 97.5 and a morning show and then voicetracked and Delilah the rest of the day. Would be a lot cheaper, probably would get better ratings than WPEN, maybe make it lean a little softer like "The Breeze," and if they have contracts with live sports, then keep that. There are music stations that have live sports in the evenings and it can work. Not saying I personally agree with this. I kinda like the format as it is, but I'm just thinking from a money-saving perspective. They just sold a station that they paid like quadruple for, for a fraction. So they must need money. This seems like it could have been a good solution and they could have directed their listeners there instead of to an HD-2 that no one knows how to access.
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Why Didn't Beasley Do This?
- Thread starter Route 222
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It's not just live sports, they also have a contract with NBC Sports Philadelphia for the mid-day show.
WJBR is not a Philadelphia radio station. Moving Wilmington content to a Philadelphia frequency doesn't guarantee it will get the same results as it had in Wilmington.
It wouldn't save money. The people working at WPEN would still have to get paid under the terms of their contracts, plus severance.
Why don’t they do that?
Because they’re not fools? Just spitballin’.
Because they’re not fools? Just spitballin’.
Possibly because being the second-rung sports station still nets them more money than being the second-run AC station?
This would be an unmitigated disaster for multiple reasons beyond those already mentioned.
Ratings are not the end all be all. Stations generate revenue in many other ways and Sports has more opportunities to do so from direct sponsorships of segments, endorsements, live ads reads, etc...
You want to pair a Softer leaning AC with NBA and NHL play-by-play. Do you think the 55 year old women this format would target would keep coming back if one day all they hear is a goal siren? And you think Sixers fans would keep the station on when it's playing "Haven't Met You Yet" for the fifth time that day?
What Beasley paid for the station when they bought it to now is irrelevant. All public radio companies have taken major write-downs on their asset values from licenses being worth less. They were operating WJBR as a stand-alone in Wilmington, with no ability to build a cluster and the cost savings that come with it. Getting $5 million for a non-core asset helps their bottom line and is in line with what stations in similar sized markets would go for in stick value. It's not like housing valuations.
Totally true, of course, but it brought back memories of WIP in the MOR days being the home of the Eagles and Flyers. From the likes of Neil Diamond into football, or Neil Sedaka into hockey. Just amusing how that worked back then. And I know they weren't alone, and that it's a vastly different world. Funny memories of back in the day.
That's a bad idea Julius lol
Lots of schmoozing at the Flyers games, since the on-ice product sure isn’t worth much. 😉
MOR back than wasn't nearly the sharply focused, painstakingly researched, female-targeted format that AC is today. Plenty of older men listened to MOR, too.
Oh sure. My dad included.
It’s just funny to recall the days you would bounce from Barry Manilow being about as “hard” as the music got to football.
Granted, in WIP’s case, that helped pave the way to the early days of adding sports talk to their schedule, too. And here the Eagles are all these years later back on WIP. Circle of life and all that.
It’s just funny to recall the days you would bounce from Barry Manilow being about as “hard” as the music got to football.
Granted, in WIP’s case, that helped pave the way to the early days of adding sports talk to their schedule, too. And here the Eagles are all these years later back on WIP. Circle of life and all that.
Same at WBZ Boston in the late '60s/early '70s. light pop music by day, then "Calling All Sports" at 6 p.m., leading into nighttime talk programming (and during hockey season, Bruins play-by-play).
One big difference is the Eagles play once a week (and back then almost always Sunday afternoons) and if I remember correct Merrill Reese was a big part of the WIP Ken Garland morning show. Between the Flyers and 76ers evening programming (in this case Delilah) would be prempted almost every weeknight from fall to late winter/early spring. I think that would be too many preemptions
Oh it would. The Flyers messed with their schedule more than the Eagles did obviously.
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