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WILD. No goin back now!

T

TowerBuzz

Guest
Not like there ever was any possibility but with the rally's and all. It is now official. The fork has been stuck in. R.I.P to a Boston institution.


Radio One's WILD-F To Entercom Deal Approved
Avoiding getting itself involved in a programming decision, and correctly falling back on long-established policy, the FCC -- while noting a "significant number of listeners expressing strong appreciation for the current (Urban) programming" and asking the Commission to bar the proposed sale of WILD-F/BOSTON to ENTERCOM -- has approved the $30 million deal. It's now got the calls WKAF and is simulcasting Active Rocker WAAF which is signal-challenged in the southern reaches of the metro.
 
What are they going to do with the AM and FM frequencies. Eventually it will be the internet that broadcasts everything and we'll finally have choice.

Is Star 93.7 still broadcasting on the web?

Yes! powered by Liquid Compass - you have to download Flash8.

http://www.star937fm.com/star937fm/

WILD and WCRB and other niche entities should consider this option - especially when the internet
finally takes over, which could be sooner than you think. WCRB just doesn't sound as good anymore,
too much interference.

Great station that WBOS should listen to for ideas:
http://www.radioparadise.com
 
What do you mean? they have already done what they are doing with the Fm signal. They are simulcasting waaf. The Am is still on the market but so far no buyer can be found. It was actually on sale in combo with the Fm but no takers. Why would anyone want it? it is a bad AM signal and a DAYTIMER at that.
 
AM and FM frequencies in general. ALL stations. Across the board. AM and FM will go the way of the 8 track.

It will be all internet. I wasn't speaking just of WILD. Radio will remove itself to the land of cyberspace. Pure streaming. No static at all. A new song for Steely Dan.
 
Varulven said:
AM and FM frequencies in general. ALL stations. Across the board. AM and FM will go the way of the 8 track.

It will be all internet. I wasn't speaking just of WILD. Radio will remove itself to the land of cyberspace. Pure streaming. No static at all. A new song for Steely Dan.
Click to expand...

No way JOSE. Not even close to accurate my friend. Internet radio was supposed to have been the next big thing 10 years ago. If thatdid not happen during the internet boom it will not hapen now. If HD radio has not become the next big thing (as it has not) certainly internet radio will not be any bigger than it is now, and now it is pretty meaningless.
 
ten years ago the internet was hardly as essential as it is now. The web will be holding much more than radio.

regional jocks like Howie Carr and Jay Severin will become obsolete. A world of choices will be available.
Not thousands of choices, hundreds of thousands of choices.
 
The FCC does not get involved in programming decisions no matter how much "support" for a particular format. If approves or denies sales solely on market concentration issues and the buyers fitness as a licensee.
No citizen petition to stop a sale has ever succeeded AFAIK.
Read "The public and broadcasting" available in every stations public file or from the FCC website.

(snip) and asking the Commission to bar the proposed sale of WILD-F/BOSTON to ENTERCOM -- has approved the $30 million deal
 
Does anyone else remember a few years back when WAAF was simulcasting on 1150 AM? What a joke that was. I mean has there ever been a successful hard rocker on the AM dial? WAAF has been trying to be a Boston station for years and it just never works. I suspect in the long run this won't work either. Shame Brockton lost its FM. And a bigger shame if WILD AM ever stops surving the black community. That station's a legend.
 
Radio has been dying a slow death since the 40's... It's popularity has been in decline ever since then. The pieces of the pie have been getting smaller. It's easy to blame the big media corporations, the government and consolidation but that's just a short period in radio history and I don't think it's fair. The industry was dying long before that. What happens is when your alive long enough you see just the dramatic changes in the small part of your own radio history. But this is a long slide that started way before that and will continue long after these large companies release their grasp when they give up. Any that hold on too long will probably be brought down by it. If you put yourself in the place of the FCC or the Congress trying to eliminate the politics or the interests of big business (Obviously this is impossible and plays a role...but bare with me...) and simply think how to keep Radio a player I think you'd realize why deregulation happened and why it will probably go further.
Radio was already terminal. It's really quite simple. When it started it had virtually had no competition. It then went through expansion, along came TV and then a million other products to further dissolve the listening public. When we complain about the changes in radio of today have you have you ever noticed that your parents or your grandparents just quietly chuckle to themselves. They know radio stations used to have staff's well into the hundreds. With their own orchestras, booth announcers, news departments and Networks that reached across the country when transmission costs where out of this world. If you looked at their costs, sales and salaries measured with the cost of living at that time these where huge outfits. Radio was a much bigger business before any of us where born and has been in decline ever since. And when we complain about what has happened to it in our lifetime we are looking at a small picture of the total landscape. We are still near a major market so the the decline here has been much slower. But you don't have to go too far up into the sticks or out into middle America to see it's demise. And if you where at the FCC you'd see it daily. When licenses are returned, stations go dark, simulcasting and under market price sales. FM itself was a government hope to bring back radio. And so was deregulation. Sure we all miss some of our locally owned stations but you wouldn't have to go too far up into New Hampshire or Vermont without CC or Citadel to find vast regions with no signals today. I don't think anyone is too happy about many of the moves of these (less large) corporations. But I think you have to understand they are moves of desperation. Its easy to blame corporate greed but corporate geed is a given! It's not going to get better it's going to get worse. And what your seeing now is these corporations trying to decide what they can do to either adapt to lower profits by slashing costs, dumping stations or a little of both. They will cash out at some point. They will be forced too. Radio One didn't want to loose Boston they had too to save the ship. The same is happening to all of them. The plug is out of the tub and the water is going down. But when they abandon ship I'm not so sure you will be happy with what remains. Don't get me wrong there is still some viable money making potential in radio for years to come for smaller operations. But I'm not sure our kids, kids will know what Radio was and that won't be the fault of deregulation or programing. Just another commercial product that superseded by something else. Remember the Newspaper???
 
cheapman said:
WAAF has been trying to be a Boston station for years and it just never works. I suspect in the long run this won't work either.
Click to expand...

I would tend to disagree with this opinion. In my opinion, it never worked as being a Boston station because you could never actually hear the station in Boston. Now with the addition of 97.7 WKAF, you can actually hear the station, and I believe the last ratings trend showed (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that WAAF/WKAF is the most listened to rock station in Boston. So in my opinion, the Entercom purchase of 97.7 appears to have worked, at least as it stands now.
 
Does anyone remember the record? Wasn't that supposed to go away with the advent of tapes, cds, mp3's, the computer, etc.? I go into a 'record' store (to this day I do not know a single person that calls it a 'cd store) and they are selling vinyl. Tons of vinyl. At CD prices. Now you cannot play a record in your car, you can't strap one onto your arm to exercise, you cannot record onto blank records (well, I don't know if Tweeter sells anything like that), and you certainly cannot turn a record player on and listen for hours.
People are so worried about radio disappearing. It may get smaller, less jobs, less money, etc. It will become a niche. Yes, radio in the past was staffed with hundreds of people, jobs were floating around like air, but now things are different. We all know what we are getting into. We have to bust out butts, work long hours, short pay, and no job security. Isn't that what you signed on for? You want a secure job that pays well? Work at an office cubicle pushing paper. I wish as much as the next guy that radio was what it used to be, but what is the point of living in the past? Let's reinvent the wheel.
Not everyone will be able to afford a brand new car w/some crazy internet radio in it. There are millions of high school kids buying $300 1990 Ford Tempo's that have tape decks in them. HD will probably go away, much like quadriphonics(sp), but basic radio will be around for a while. Unless you pair it up with Morse code, but you could never sell advertisment on that.
 
cheapman said:
Does anyone else remember a few years back when WAAF was simulcasting on 1150 AM? What a joke that was. I mean has there ever been a successful hard rocker on the AM dial?
Click to expand...

Wasn't the simulcast just to keep the station on the air? 1150 was a lot of useless things during the time after Kidstar fell apart to the time that "Mega 1150"... I seem to recall it being brokered, then simulcasted WKLB (on 96.9, if I recall correctly), then Greater sold it to ARS and it began simulcasting WAAF, before becoming satellite Urban AC as "The Touch".

And who could forget that incident where the cleaning crew, who were not fans of WKLB, unknowingly flipped 1150 to a simulcast of WJMN?
 
And who could forget that incident where the cleaning crew, who were not fans of WKLB, unknowingly flipped 1150 to a simulcast of WJMN? I forgot about that...Tell me more about this WJMN incident .
 
WILD's format - you CAN get it back...

At WAZN-AM 1470, we have air time available. Check our signal (both day and night)
in the areas that you want to cover. Get a group together to buy a block of airtime,
and present your own programs/format. Sell your own time/sponsorships. We could
have you back on the air in a matter of days...


Jeff Kline [email protected]
General Manager, WAZN-AM 1470
 
What is sad about this is that even when there is a slew of public input about a sale, it really doesn't make a difference I guess. We can all agree that here is no public outcry for a simulcast of WAAF in metro Boston. What there is an outcry for is original and local content, a little bit, at the very least.

WAAF has been trying for years to become a "Boston" station with programming that is suburban in scope, not urban. Having lived in Boston for almost 18 years, and being involved in radio and the music scene for most of that time, I can tell you that the interest in 'AAF's format was limited to Bezerklee students, a handful of sludge rockers and a few random 18 to 25 year old male head bangers with bad skin and too much time on their hands. Trying to go after the Boston market won't work for them. They would be better off doing what they do best - serving a niche market in middle Massachusetts - the same way WFNX and the college stations serve their niche markets.

Properties being what they are, radio stations, long term, would seem to be a good investment. But only under certain circumstances. There has been some discussions on other media boards about the newspaper business and how academia getting involved in the purchasing of newspapers could be the savior of the business model. The same could be said for some radio stations, especially those with adult audiences. But for $30M, will this one be a good investment, just to simulcast WAAF? Yikes, I think not.

In addition, as someone else said here, Internet radio is coming and coming quickly. The C. Crane Company has a few broadband and Wi-Fi radios for less than $300 where you just plug in your Internet connection into the radio and wah-lah, you can be listening to anything anywhere. There are some technology and sound issues with these radios - they will probably never have the sound of a good stereo. We see [hear] that with our computers now. But that is the future - whether we like it or not. It is going to be even harder to make ends meet with Internet radios become as easy to hook up as XM or Sirius.

The only way radio can survive is being relevant to the communities it serves, building quality relationships with advertisers and listeners, and serving the public with the best product you can create. The only way it can do that is by being original and local in content, and finding different business models which you can work with in order to survive.
 
This is pretty sad......

WILD was a good R&B station......... Now its that piece of trash WAAF .. (They suck compared to what they were 3 yrs ago)
 
Anthony Schinella said:
WAAF has been trying for years to become a "Boston" station with programming that is suburban in scope, not urban. Having lived in Boston for almost 18 years, and being involved in radio and the music scene for most of that time, I can tell you that the interest in 'AAF's format was limited to Bezerklee students, a handful of sludge rockers and a few random 18 to 25 year old male head bangers with bad skin and too much time on their hands. Trying to go after the Boston market won't work for them. They would be better off doing what they do best - serving a niche market in middle Massachusetts - the same way WFNX and the college stations serve their niche markets.
Click to expand...

As much as I agree that it was a damn shame to have lost our only Urban AC station to a rock simulcast, if what you are saying about WAAF's audience is true, then why is it beating heritage contemporary rocker WBCN in the Boston market ratings?
 
Thanks for that heads up. I just went and looked at the R&R Top 30 and I didn't know they were beating WBCN which they are.

It could be a few factors: WBCN having an identity crisis and moving to a foolish rock/talk format; the shift of the Boston market ratings which include more of the suburbs; heavy advertising in the market [does 'BCN do anything?]; the aging of the format audience ...
 
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