wsbx am 1020

[martymtiger]

so wsbx has not been on the air over a year. Is the station for sale or what is going on with it. The fcc data base says it is still on the air if the data base is wrong guess they need to change its status. Someone needs to get this sation back on track and go a full 10,000 watts like it should be and program southern gospel and apply for nite time power. Lets get it back on the legal tarck again

 

[level42]

http://tallahassee.craigslist.org/bfs/2117428556.html

 

[Witchlover]

I wonder .... No, I guess I really don't want to get into this discussion after all. Good luck to them, though.

 

[Radio-X]

I wonder .... No, I guess I really don't want to get into this discussion after all. Good luck to them, though.

Shoot, I'll get into it!

$5,000 for a 1% ownership in the station? So it's worth $500k? I don't think so...

So, what's that extra money going to? Getting a better signal or a CP further south? Start-up money? Trips to Cabo? There are many questions I would ask before giving a person money to invest in an AM license.

The benefit would be the "untapped spanish market". In places that don't have a spanish station, at least AM beats nothing...and I would imagine 1/2 the hispanic demographic would be loyal listeners.

Lots of questions to get cleared up before this is a worthwhile investment IMO.

Radio-X

 

[radioboy]

Radio-X,

It's NOT worth it.

There was another Spanish station not far away, a 10,000 watt daytimer, that recently went silent.

One year it billed just over $9k...for an entire year.

This station has now been silent for the better part of three years.

The 7.9 acres of land has some value. The station..negligible. It is not, and never was, a Tallahassee station.

 

[Bengalsfan]

I'll second Alan. This isn't gonna work. It does not even put a city grade signal into Tallahassee. Thomasville has a Hispanic population of 1.2%. Cairo has a Hispanic population of 5%, but that's not enough to sustain the station.

$5k for 1% of the station? I don't think so. I'll give them $5k for 35-40% of the station.

 

[kenglish]

From the maps, I'd say it has a shot at being a decent receiving site for a DXer.
I wonder how little Doreen would take for the building, tower and property?

 

[Bengalsfan]

I wonder .... No, I guess I really don't want to get into this discussion after all. Good luck to them, though.

Shoot, I'll get into it!

$5,000 for a 1% ownership in the station? So it's worth $500k? I don't think so...

Just out of curiosity, I went back to see what Ms Blood paid for the station. The asset purchase agreement states $280,000. So I'm curious to see what they have done to double the value of the station in the past 2 years. All I see on the FCC's website are three STA apps to remain silent.

I'm afraid that Ms Blood is possibly listening to the wrong people when it comes to running WSBX. Does anyone know if Woody is still down there?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

It has been a long time since I read through an explanation of what is legal and what is NOT PERMITTED when it comes to offering an investment TO THE PUBLIC.

My memory is that you can privately go to maybe 14 to 18 investors privately and make an offer like the Craigs List Ad, but if you open up the offer to the public like this, it must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The post which said the owner may be getting bad advice may have understated the situation.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Some night when you are having trouble sleeping, read this. (It will put you to sleep!)

http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/qasbsec.htm#eod6

 

[Witchlover]

If I am any judge of the meaning of words in the English language, the Craigslist ad constiutes an interstate offering, which seems to require it to be registered with the SEC. It is below the $5-million dollar limit of Reg. A, but other parts of what I just read seem to make this thing fall outside of the exemptions.

I should hope there is a qualified securities attorney involved in this enterprise; if not, I foresee great trouble in its immediate future.

What would I need to spend to purchase the station outright if I were to buy it with the intention of actually returning it to the air and broadcasting with it? Not that I can do something like this ... let's just say this is my radio equivalent of Fantasy League Football or such.

 

[Poledo]

There was another Spanish station not far away, a 10,000 watt daytimer, that recently went silent.
One year it billed just over $9k...for an entire year.

That 10,000 watts didn't help WTCL very much. I moved to a place about 20 miles away from the station 10 years ago and couldn't pick it up... even though they plastered advertisements on the general store about 2 miles down the road from me (in Spanish, but luckily for me the "1580 AM" part was written in English). The studio's have been empty every time I've passed by for the last decade but someone mows the grass.

I think WWSD 1230 in Quincy would be a good place to try Spanish programming. Quincy seems to show the highest percentage of Hispanics in the area.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Well, let's see. You have a fantasy city of 20,000 people in a fantasy county of 45,000 people. My coaches playbook for fantasy radio says there is a fantasy pie of $1,000,000 in possible radio revenue to be harvested there with five players trying to get their share of that pie. (In my fantasy I am pretending that sitting under the umbrella of Tallahassee has absolutely no effect on all my fantasy formulas.

So if you are the new kid on the block trying bring back to life a troubled station, you may have to settle for annual revenues your first couple of years of maybe $90,000 per year.

So you tell us. Buy the station for $X, in getting the equipment and facility up to speed you need to spend $X, so you tell us: What could you afford to pay for the station and live to celebrate and laugh five years from now that your risk paid off.

 

[radioboy]

Poledo,

The only reason I know about WTCL is that a friend of mine once owned this station, and sold it in 1988. I've been there once, and apparently it was nice, once upon a time. I imagine the ground system is pretty much gone by now.

My friend bought it when it was WSBP, with a country format, in 1975. He later changed it to gospel WENO. He kept the country music, though, and donated it to my station recently. Lots of "WSBP - Chattahoochee" classic country tunes here in the music library now.

Back to WSBX...

The original owner, Lifeline Communications, started the 1020 facility in 1984. It was a nice, state of the art facility at the time. It aired Christian programming for most of its existence. I visited the station once, back in the mid 1990s, and it still looked good, and sounded good on the air.

They listed the station for $450k, and got $280k from Georgia Triangle. Lifeline's founder passed away just over three years ago, and Lifeline was struggling to keep the station together. It was hit by lightning in spring of 2007, which is the last time it was receivable in Tallahassee.

The property is just under 8 acres off Highway 84. The station needs a new transmitter, and probably other items at this point.

As far as formats in that area: Thomasville is served by WSTT-AM 730 (black gospel); WHGH -AM 840 (uran); WPAX-AM 1240 (standards) and WTUF-FM 106.3, Boston, GA (classic country.) Cairo has WGRA-AM 790, a talk station.

Because WSBX had aired Christian programming for many years, when the "rock music with vulgar words" hit the air..well, Thomasville, being the small conservative Southern town that it is, was
less than enthusiastic about supporting it. That barely lasted, with the transmitter being on its last leg to begin with.

It's been kind of fun to watch this fiasco play out. The real broadcasters all knew it was a big joke, albeit an expensive one, for Mrs. Blood.

If a real radio person was to buy it I'd be happy to help them in any way I could.

 

[Witchlover]

So you tell us. Buy the station for $X, in getting the equipment and facility up to speed you need to spend $X, so you tell us: What could you afford to pay for the station and live to celebrate and laugh five years from now that your risk paid off.

I have to tell you, GRC, I hope your coaches playbook has a misprint on the $1,000,000 ad revenue pool, but here goes:

I wouldn't pay Ms. Blood more than $120,000 for the station as is, where is. Taking all of the posts in this thread at face value, I think a bunch of good old boys saw a lady coming. In fact, her original payment of $285,000, with no revenue coming in and plenty of expenses, must be hurting big time. That is my maximum offer - my take it or leave it price; of course, I would start out a bit lower - the value of the land plus, say 15% - just to get a feel for how much pain she's in on this.

Assuming that I could get it for $120,000 in Fantasy money, I figure at least that much to build a station worth having. To my way of thinking, trucks and bulldozers would be how to start as the physical plant must be in pretty dismal condition at this point. That puts me at a fantasy quarter of a million just on the plant, and I expect to hear in excruciating detail how I have badly underestimated my costs just to get this far. ;D

At the five year mark, I would be happy to be making $125,000-$130,000 in revenues with all of the notes paid off. This is a Radio Fantasy after all.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I have to tell you, GRC, I hope your coaches playbook has a misprint on the $1,000,000 ad revenue pool, but here goes:

So what would be your estimate of the revenue of all the stations in town added together?

 

[level42]

Well, I would love to add a follow up comment to this thread, but today I have finally received my "cease" order from Woody Nelson...apparently I will be named in a "pending civil litigation"...so, better keep my mouth shut. Cheers.

 

[Witchlover]

So what would be your estimate of the revenue of all the stations in town added together?

Well, frankly a million may well be pushing it in this economy, probably, but I would have to actually see the numbers to know how it breaks down. Here's a question for you since you know the area and I don't: How bad are things in those parts - unemployment, the foreclosure rate, etc.? My radio fantasy might become a nightmare pretty quickly.

Is there a station (or group of them) which seems to be doing better than the rest, and if so, what do you think these folks are doing differently compared to their competitors?

 

[Witchlover]

Or let me ask my question this way, GRC: Looking at this fantasy city in this fantasy county, and assuming that your $1,000,000 ad revenue pie is an accurate estimate; at what point does it make more sense not to try being the new guy in town than it does to attempt to make a go of it? As I said when I asked the question originally, it is something I'll never be able to do, but I do wonder if such a thing can work and how to make it work. I'm just crazy enough to try it. I don't mind losing if I have at least a chance of winning. I guess what I need to know is whether, in this particular scenario, there is any real possibility of success.

 

[Poledo]

There's plenty of "old money" in Thomasville. That being said, many people with old money don't spend it. Wages for the proletariat in WSBX's grade-a coverage area would be on the low side, and those folks would have to be your target audience for an AM only signal with plenty of local competition. I'm not in any way qualified to put a value on a radio station, but it seems like one could make more money growing timber on 8 acres of land than continuing to "play radio" with no one listening.

Going back to another post that stated nearby station WTCL (a 10kw daytimer with similar facilities) only brought in $9,000 last year. If you subtract the incarcerated population from the potential audience around WTCL in Chattahoochee, they're probably left with less than 9000 people in the grade-a coverage area. With very little wealth and possibly the poorest county in Florida, it's obvious there isn't enough money in Gadsden county to support WTCL, no matter what format they put on it. If WTCL could get a 250 watt FM translator up on the very tall tower on the east side of Chattahoochee, I think Hip-Hop would bring the biggest audience, but again... no money. It could still be a fun station to "play radio" with... and should be very cheap to buy and run. After a few years I could see the right person breaking even.