-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
WNBM 103.9 Flipping to Conservative Talk
- Thread starter Barry
- Start date
Wow, a few really nasty comments. I'm thinking from the sales end. You pitch a client and show clearance in the biggest market in the country that accounts for about 5% of this nation's population is really significant. You can have a .1 and they don't care. They're thinking if it clears in the biggest population centers in the USA it's a good deal.
So, if I had a station that was perhaps marginal in income, this 'clearing' of the syndicated national shows not only helps the parent company but also offers a very low cost operation that needs less billing to turn the same profit it did under the old format.
I could care less what the format is, if it can do what I just described, I think it's a win-win.
Also, for the Family Radio sale, I am sure some negative responses will result as usual. Pool your money. If they can buy it, so can you. So, as they say, some people do and others just gripe about those who do. Be a doer. It will be more interesting radio!
So, if I had a station that was perhaps marginal in income, this 'clearing' of the syndicated national shows not only helps the parent company but also offers a very low cost operation that needs less billing to turn the same profit it did under the old format.
I could care less what the format is, if it can do what I just described, I think it's a win-win.
Also, for the Family Radio sale, I am sure some negative responses will result as usual. Pool your money. If they can buy it, so can you. So, as they say, some people do and others just gripe about those who do. Be a doer. It will be more interesting radio!
Unless they're of the same opinions as their parents, I doubt it.
My thought is that if a young person who was interested in such programing wasn't inclined to find it on either band, they would stream the program. Just as others said, digital only AM has a tiny "install base" at best, even in the #1 market. To ensure that people can be reached in New York, it needed to either reverse course and make the AM signal available on analog again, or do what they are doing with flipping a FM signal to simulcast the station.
They clear the DL Hugley show as urban ac and all other day and night parts are from some syndicated canned urban format somewhere in the universe. Cumulus hasn't spent a dime on WNBM in years. Fewer will be listening as conservative talk than as urban ac because the demos of its coverage area are heavily African American/Hispanic and few in NYC lean conservative.
They're not spending money because they're not making money. They don't have an NYC sales office aimed at local sales.
The station clears the national spots from the nationally syndicated shows.
There are many past and present cases of NYC stations not having a Manhattan office. Among those at present are the Univision stations, which left the old CBS building on Madison several years ago for New Jersey.
I think the pandemic, however, has heightened the awareness of the lessening need for offices in The City as so much agency business now is done by phone, video conferencing and the like because many agency people are working from home offices, too. I don't think the "old normal" will return any time soon.
You misread my post. Cumulus DOES have a Manhattan office. That's where the company CEO works.
103.9 made the change to conservative talk on Sunday night, a few hours earlier than expected. The RDS shows the callsign as WFAS (FM).
I don't understand why WFAS 1230 AM, in Hartsdale is simulcasting this, and still in digital only AM. Does the AM's modest signal significantly extend the range of the FM broadcast? While the AM was carrying much of this Cumulus talk programming before the FM flipped to talk a few days ago, it seems to make sense at this point to return to an analog signal, and broadcast something else.
I don't understand why WFAS 1230 AM, in Hartsdale is simulcasting this, and still in digital only AM. Does the AM's modest signal significantly extend the range of the FM broadcast? While the AM was carrying much of this Cumulus talk programming before the FM flipped to talk a few days ago, it seems to make sense at this point to return to an analog signal, and broadcast something else.
Based on my experience of having been unable to pick up analog WFAS (AM) in Lower Manhattan, I would say no. However, I am able to pick up WFAS-FM, provided that I extend my antenna to its full length and put my radio at a certain angle.
I agree this is a waste of signal. No one will listen in the area they cover.
The FCC should have never allowed the move. There are not enough stations covering the large population centers in Rockland, Northern Bergen County and Westchester. These areas could have used a community radio station.
The city has enough powerful signals that can penetrate tall buildings where no one is going to bother listening to that lower power crap signal on 103.9.
Too bad someone did not buy it and put the tower up on a mountain near Nyack. It would have provided soild coverage for those areas mentioned above.
W232AL should have never left Rockland County, for Westchester nor the plan to move it to Manhattan. FCC is useless and caters to monopolies. So much for there being public airwaves.
The city has enough powerful signals that can penetrate tall buildings where no one is going to bother listening to that lower power crap signal on 103.9.
Too bad someone did not buy it and put the tower up on a mountain near Nyack. It would have provided soild coverage for those areas mentioned above.
W232AL should have never left Rockland County, for Westchester nor the plan to move it to Manhattan. FCC is useless and caters to monopolies. So much for there being public airwaves.
The FCC caters to monopolies, but there are no monopolies in radio. The monopolies are in the telecom world. There are far more radio companies than telecom companies.
True about Telecom. It all depends your perspective on where you draw the line on number of stations a company can own.
Company/Rank/Stations
| HeartMedia, Inc. | 1 | 858 |
| Cumulus Media, Inc. | 2 | 429 |
| Townsquare Media | 3 | 321 |
| Audacity | 4 | 235 |
Can you imagine what it would be like if ownership was capped to 1 station per market and/or 20 stations nationally and the FCC not allowing these moves out of the suburbs. We would be back to the old days of local radio serving their communities.
There would be no more radio because they'd all go broke. The only way we go back to the old days is if the internet shuts down, and people are required to throw away computers and cell phones. Because right now, radio competes against unregulated streaming and monopolistic telecom.
You add up all of the big radio companies, and they own about 10% of all radio stations. There are 16,000 radio stations in the USA, which is twice as many as there were 50 years ago.
As far back as the 60's, per FCC financial reports, half of all stations did not make money.
The biggest issue of the last 6 decades has been the gradual additions to the FM table of allocations, changes in protection of AM clear channel station and, then, finally Docket 80-90 that radically increased the number of FM allocations, allowed for extreme power increases and loads of relocations.
So, by the early 90's even more stations were not profitable. The only solution to avoid degradation of service and the closing of many stations was to increase ownership limits so companies could share overhead among many stations in each market.
Any move that meets the technical rules can be done. The FCC does not regulate formats or, even, the viability of stations.
If it could move to a better site it would. For a better signal, NYC Metro stations would pay the best engineers in the country a lot of money to find a way to do that.
The FCC regulates that sort of thing by the laws of physics, not by ownership.
And you have already been shown that there is no company in the US with more than 5% of all radio stations so there are no monopolies. And in today's Internet world where you have thousands of streams, podcasts and online music and talk alternatives, there is no such thing as a monopoly.
According to that table, iHeartMedia has the most stations in major markets with 160, followed by Audacy with 118. For that reason, one would be forgiven if they thought of iHeartMedia and Audacy as the big two radio corporations, when infact, they are number one and number four overall, respectively.
There is a major difference between a radio group having a dominant revenue position in a given media market and a monopoly.
And even then, the DOJ usually induces divestments in the event of a radio M&A so the newly combined entity meets a revenue limit, in order for the other operators in a media market to remain competitive. It’s why Entercom was forced to sell both WBZ and WBZ-FM when they bought CBS Radio, because WBZ-FM billed a ton as did WEEI-FM. Entercom could only retain one of the three.
And of course "major markets" are where people actually live. Townsquare is largely a small and medium market broadcaster. Although they possess more licenses than Audacy, it's clear Audacy is a bigger broadcaster by listenership than TSQ.
I think TSQ's largest market is Buffalo, #59, which has about 1/16th the population of the New York City market.
- Status