Will Clear Channel Sell Delaware Stations?

[fred flintstone]

See this thread on the business board: Clear Channel Radio Reality Check Coming

Exceprts:

If they sell off hundreds of small markets, that is several years late in coming. In fact, they should have spun them off immediately after the AMFM purchase. There never were any advantages to having stations coast-to-coast. The advantage is in bulking up inside the big markets. If they do announce that they're shedding a lot of small markets, it may signal that they expect ownership caps to be raised and want to free up some cash to make the purchases.

Selling off the smaller markets makes a great deal of sense. I started in radio at KXXL in Bozeman, Montana. A 1Kw AM in a very small unrated college town. CC now owns that radio station. It has different calls and runs out of a closet, but why would they want a station like that to begin with? If CC and a few others divested of these smaller stations, new owners could come along and make better use of the stations for local audiences. Large corporations typically do not do well when working with small operations. This could be a very good move not only for CC for for radio in general.

 

[WTUX]

If CC does not sell the entire package, I would think that selling off WILM would be a good choice. Even though they just bought it, it was a mistake. Taking Rush from WDEL did not help the station. WDEL's live and local promotion carried the day in the first ratings contest.

Since they carry UD football on The River, it makes sense to keep The Ticket in order to keep the UD basketball part of the package. And WWTX gives them an outlet for Penn State football, which has a large following in this area. WDOV, although void of listeners, still allows them an outlet for the Wilmington Blue Rocks in Kent county.

Of course, the bottom line is, duh, the bottom line. Is the sports package bringing in enough revenue and potential new listeners to justify the expense? I seriously doubt it. Finding a buyer for either WILM or WDOV would be problematic if an FM is not thrown into the package. So selling either WDSD or WRDX would have to be considered.

 

[fred flintstone]

Good points.

Question is: To whom would they sell? Or put another way, who would buy?

The Wilmington market is an under-performer in ad revenue. Most radios are tuned to Philly stations and national advertisers get Wilmington when they buy Philly. Delmarva gets most of what revenue there is (including local ad sales).

Clear Channel grossly over-paid for WILM. The standard station selling price is 10 to 14 times annual revenue. $4 million bucks for a station that never broke $100 thousand?

The rest of the Wilmington cluster are former AMFM properties. Another bad Clear Channel move which saddled them with a bunch of small and medium market properties.

Could anybody make money with Clear Channel's Wilmington stations.
A regional operator like Route 81 or Dame?
An operator specializing in medium markets like Saga or Cumulus?

 

[fred flintstone]

Update: Clear Channel Sell-Off Underway

Clear Channel has sold its clusters of stations in...

Idaho
Chattanooga
Roanoke/Lynchburg
Aberdeen
Fargo

Several Wall Street firms have downgraded their investment ratings and the company is spending $1-billion to buy back its own stock.

When do they get around to Wilmington? Or maybe they are having trouble finding a buyer (even if they are willing to sell stations for far less than they paid).

More to come...

 

[BRUSSTAR]

Agreed. I've never understood what purpose Clear Channel has in Wilmington. The cluster hasn't a single signal that covers the entire market properly. (Even 50,000-watt WRDX, with its tower 40-50 miles from the studio, rarely "stopped on my seek" while driving right past the station's own studio in Claymont.)

 

[odomski]

Why is that George? Why doesn't WRDX stop when seeking or scanning through the FM dial on the car radio? If you manually tune into the station, it seems to be very clear. However, it won't come up during the seek or scan function. What does you think? Why or why not? (Yes, I am asking for your analysis seriously too).

 

[DERadio]

94.7 was originally a Dover station. When the River first came on the air in the mid-90s, I know for a fact their transmitter was still in Dover. In fact, their legal ID said, "Dover-Wilmington." I'm not sure if they ever moved the transmitter, but if not, that could be why the station won't stop on a scan. Just a guess.

 

[fred flintstone]

Next Santa Fe on the block

Technically, the legal ID says Dover. They added the Wilmington part.

All Access says this morning to add Santa Fe to the list of places where Clear Channel is unloading radio properties. Local paper says CC is in dealing with a religious broadcaster. Religious broadcasters are in a different position than others and will often buy what no one else will and/or pay more for it. Example close to home: WFIL 560 AM sat on the block for several years with no takers until Salem came along. Now it's paid preachers - better than canned traffic reports, but not much better.

Now we have the possibility of a religious broadcaster taking over CC's AM stations in Delaware. Other likely shoppers would be foreign lanaguage broadcasters (like Multi-Cultural) or operators specializing in brokered stations (i.e., infomercials).

 

[PaulBWalkerJr]

The only difference between Multicultural and an informercial station is that the informercial station speaks a language we can understand

 

[WTUX]

A bit of history on WRDX. It is the old WDOV-FM. Low powered job on part-time until they were allowed 50,000 watts and became a full time station in the late 60's-early 70's. Got to hear them the day they made the switch. Big country outlet, of course, for years as WDSD. They could not make enough money in the Dover market to pay the bills, so opened a sales office on Main Street in Newark and started billing themself as a Dover-Wilmington station.

When Delmarva bought 103.7 and made it NCC's country station, WDSD had a problem. So they put their country music on the lower powered Smyrna station (Smyrna was given an allocation back in the day when the FCC was adding a lot of small powered FMs to encourage "minorities" to own stations - funny that they mostly went to non-minority concerns like Greater Media and CC) and decided to try rock on the Dover outlet. Trouble is, you can't hear it in parts of northern NCC. They should give it up and focus on Middletown and downstate. They are a Dover station. Never was - never will be - a Wilmington station.

 

[fred flintstone]

Re: Update: Clear Channel Sell-Off Underway

Clear Channel has sold its clusters of stations in...

Idaho
Chattanooga
Roanoke/Lynchburg
Aberdeen
Fargo

Add:
Ann Arbor, MI