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WTTM 1680 adds Brother Stair Overcomer Ministry overnights
- Thread starter radiodx10
- Start date
Overcomer's been picking up AM airtime all over recently. AM is the new shortwave!
Yep.
I wish! Except shortwave is a wasteland compared to how it was in the 60's, even. Perhaps since we talk about AM being on "ife-support", perhaps some of us here would want to turn AM into an entirely experimental band for hams and whatnot. But I still hold out hope that broadcast AM will hang around.
Why? Stair's dead, I can't imagine the ministry's doing that well fundraising and recruiting new residents of the compound.
Despite Stair's proclamations, Jesus did not, in fact, come in his lifetime. Or Harold Camping's. Or Tim LaHaye's.
All I can guess is they’re spending all the rest of the money they have until they run out and call it quits.
Also in terms of shortwave, I listen to R. Romania Int’l and R. Havana Cuba daily but I’m the definition of an outlier lol. But I still think shortwave and AM have their place. Shortwave covers the globe and developing nations still rely heavily on shortwave/ AM communications for news and entertainment. Plus, it’s free and requires no internet for us to enjoy. I’d also wager that it uses less energy to transmit a signal that covers continents at a time than all those data farms use. But I cannot say for sure that’s true.
I hear the line that developing countries rely on shortwave a lot, but the reality in a lot of African countries in particular is that AM is dead and has been for decades. Most local and national broadcasters in Africa, and increasingly world broadcasters like BBC, VOA, CRI, RFI are on FM. BBC have been building out their FM networks in Africa and Asia for years - they don't want to be stuck on a band no one is listening to, they want to be on the FM dial next to the local stations. See this list of BBC FM stations around the world.
There are a few reasons why this is the case - for countries without a lot of financial resource, the maintenance and electricity costs for medium-high power AM are an unaffordable luxury. And most listeners are listening on cheap and simple FM radios, often built into cell phones. There are definitely a few people in remote villages out of reach of FM signals who still rely on the SW signals from the BBC and VOA etc, but Africa is undergoing rapid and spectacular urbanization and they are becoming fewer in number.
As for the 24/7 relays of Brother Stair from beyond the grave that have been cropping up on AM lately, I can only think that the old sex offender has left a sum of money from his estate to his ministry, and they're spending it. I have nothing against religious radio as such, but I can't imagine who is listening to this particular programming as it is so poor.
If I was an AM owner and my only solution for keeping the lights on was 24/7 Stair, I think I'd turn the stick off and find a new job.
If I was an AM owner and my only solution for keeping the lights on was 24/7 Stair, I think I'd turn the stick off and find a new job.
Definitely agreed. Any station that allows him on should just shut down if they can't do any better. It's bad enough that dollar a holler "Christian" stations allowed him on but are some secular stations becoming so desperate they have to stoop to carrying him?
Brother Stairs people pay bargain basement rates for unsold time.
I ran a country AM in south carolina over a decade ago and sold him some time on weekends. It paid the power bill every month
Sometimes you do what you gotta do even if you dont like it.
He has more listeners than you think. Not a ton, but more than you think.
I ran a country AM in south carolina over a decade ago and sold him some time on weekends. It paid the power bill every month
Sometimes you do what you gotta do even if you dont like it.
He has more listeners than you think. Not a ton, but more than you think.
If you look at very underdeveloped nations, you will see that most of them are overloaded with local FM stations in every city and town, and AM is almost entirely gone.
An example: Haiti. Port au Prince has more than 30 FMs, almost all commercial. There are still two or three AM stations operating, and no SW.
Another example: in the Capital of Burkina Faso, AM except for the government, is gone and there are dozens of FMs.
In more developed nations AMs are dying, SW is gone and FM is dominant. San Salvador, once home to over 25 AMs now only has about 10 and all but two are religious. There are 30 FMs. Or Quito, Ecuador which once had 32 AMs but now has about 15 and 7 or 8 are operated by religious groups, government agencies or cultural groups. But there are 34 FM stations, some with absolutely state of the art studios and offices; of more than 60 domestic commercial short wave stations in Ecuador I believe that none are currently active.
Let's say you spend $200,000 to buy an AM station and it costs you $15,000 to operate it each month. You are not reaching $15,000 a month is revenue. You are writing a check from your savings each month to make ends meet. You are rapidly depleting your savings and retirement savings. Do you turn in the license, making your $200,000 asset a total loss because you get nothing by signing off and turning in the license? Do you take a check each month from Overcomers Ministry and pay the bills (and maybe list your station with a broker in order to sell it)?
I think any person with any sense at all would take that Overcomers Ministry check versus the other option proposed, I would assume the commenter that suggests the route of taking a financial bloodbath has never been in that position. Running an AM radio station, especially in a big market is not always pretty and sometimes goes against all you would want to do but when you are bleeding money, you do whatever you need to stop it.
At least you stand a good chance of recovering most, if not all your investment if your station is either making money or at least breaking even. If not it's 'fire sale' pricing because the buyer knows you want to stop the losses each month. And it doesn't matter who is spending the money to be on your station or how much they pay. It is all about are you making money, breaking even or losing money that determines the outcome.
Now let's switch that to a home you purchased. Would your opinion change about just tearing down the home versus renting it to someone you really wish didn't want to rent the home. If you were facing that mortgage payment each month, the quality of the renter becomes secondary, especially when you need the cash.
I think any person with any sense at all would take that Overcomers Ministry check versus the other option proposed, I would assume the commenter that suggests the route of taking a financial bloodbath has never been in that position. Running an AM radio station, especially in a big market is not always pretty and sometimes goes against all you would want to do but when you are bleeding money, you do whatever you need to stop it.
At least you stand a good chance of recovering most, if not all your investment if your station is either making money or at least breaking even. If not it's 'fire sale' pricing because the buyer knows you want to stop the losses each month. And it doesn't matter who is spending the money to be on your station or how much they pay. It is all about are you making money, breaking even or losing money that determines the outcome.
Now let's switch that to a home you purchased. Would your opinion change about just tearing down the home versus renting it to someone you really wish didn't want to rent the home. If you were facing that mortgage payment each month, the quality of the renter becomes secondary, especially when you need the cash.
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If you are taking a bath on operating a station, you put it up for sale and take whatever you can get. Then you pick up the pieces and move on, all with the hard-earned knowledge that investing $200k in a basket case AM is a really stupid idea.
Once again, if you are having to rent out a house (and it is a house, not a home to you) having to deal with questionable tenants, you should probably sell the place for what you can get. Why anyone would throw money at houses in declining neighborhoods (unless you are doing teardowns/rebuilds) or radio stations in a dying AM band is beyond me. You might squeeze some modest amount of money out of them if you are lucky, but is that really the way you want to live your life? Investing in a well balanced and broadly diversified investment portfolio will probably make more money for you, without all the headaches. And you can sleep at night.
If Overcomer is buying more time on AM stations, I wonder if they will be cutting back on the shortwave time purchases? That could spell doom for some of the domestic U.S. shortwave broadcasters, particularly WRMI.
I'd love to see more US domestic shortwave broadcasters with music formats a la WTWW, like there were a plethora of in the 80s (which isn't saying much), maybe even in stereo (Motorola or ISB). But we all know that bus has long left the terminal and it ain't gonna happen nowadays in this universe.
Saying of WTWW, how did they fare last weekend, are they still on the air or did the tornados knock it out? I haven't been on an SDR in a couple weeks so I haven't been able to aircheck it.
Saying of WTWW, how did they fare last weekend, are they still on the air or did the tornados knock it out? I haven't been on an SDR in a couple weeks so I haven't been able to aircheck it.
Yes, I enjoy listening to music on WTWW, as well as that VORW (Voice of the Report of the Week) show on WRMI!
How do you expect them to pay for it? WTWW can only do it because they have paying clients on other signals. I'd wager the oldies format makes them little money.
Hear many commercials? no
VORW buys the time, its about $60 an hour .... most hobby shows with some exceptions, like Uncle Bills melting pot, dont stay long... eventually you run out of money or get bored.
I only broadcast on WRMI about once a quarter
Burkina Faso was last heard on AM in 2010 - it's another African country that has gone all-FM, partly out of necessity (limited resources to keep fixing tired AM transmission gear) and partly because that's where the listeners are.
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