(And when you go to their website it doesn’t say they’re off air but when you click lineup it gives you a “not authorized to view” message)
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/business/story/501912.html
Talk radio station goes off the air
Advertising downturn doomed Danny Fontana’s 3-year-old effort, WDYT-AM.
By Mark Washburn
TV/Radio Writer
Posted: Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009
Struggling talk radio station WDYT-AM (1220) has gone off the air, the latest victim of an advertising market in free fall.
“Revenues fell below the expense levels,” said Danny Fontana, a Charlotte investment adviser who used to be on rival WBT-AM (1110) and launched WDYT three years ago. “I couldn’t see running in the red.”
Fontana assembled investors to buy the station for $950,000 in 2006 from former N.C. lottery commissioner Kevin Geddings, who was later convicted of mail fraud. Its transmitter was moved from Kings Mountain to Gaston County to improve signal strength in Charlotte, but it was still difficult to receive in parts of the core market.
Even with the addition of key syndicated talents like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, WDYT found it hard to crack the market amid the advertising downturn and went through a series of layoffs.
In the most recent Arbitron ratings period, for the fall quarter, the station ranked No. 21 in audience share. That put WDYT on the lower end of the spectrum among major stations in the region.
On Monday, WDYT notified the Federal Communications Commission it had ceased transmitting.
Fontana said his group, CRN Communications, does not intend to give back the station’s license. CRN continues to hold it under a 30-day agreement with the FCC, which can be amended for an additional year.
Fontana said CRN was looking at options ranging from selling the station to coming back with a different format.
“I think our format was the right one, but the economic conditions right now are the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said.
He said the group will continue to look for new financing.
Advertising sales have plummeted for all traditional media, print and broadcast, for more than a year. That’s led to cost-cutting moves, including layoffs. Some analysts predict broadcast revenues will decline more than 10 percent this year, led by cuts in the key automotive ad sector.
The real fun is going to start when the big talk radio guys start getting told they either take massive pay cuts of they get replaced.
Ad rates pay for everything. Ad rates are sinking into the toilet, and it dosent matter how popular a host is; The amount of money they get paid per listener is based on the listener spending at retail. That’s what the advertiser is paying for, the access to the listeners wallet.
The wallet gets lighter, the pay scale goes into atrophy.
>>>I could see a talk station shutting down if it was Air America but they had conservative talk,
Just goes to show that the pull back in advertising by car dealers and real estate agents is indscriminate. It follows in the footsteps of the local conservative weekly which ended its print version last fall, opting for an online production. Although nothing has posted since before Christmas. Another thing hurt this station was that did not have a very strong signal and could not be picked up in much of Charlotte. The 50,000 watt WBT broadcasts Rush here in CLT and appears to be at no threat of disappearing.
I was a conservative talk show host at a 50,000 watt with Clear Channel until 2003. Got canned because the new PD wanted his friend in. Almost went to San Antonio but took a friend up on his offer to go into Real Estate. No regrets. Clear Channel just canned 1800 employees.
Talk radio isn’t dying because of the content. It’s dying(for now)because radio advertising is intangible. Most advertisers would rather cut radio from budgets before the internet or billboards etc. They’d rather see and touch it and it’s less $$.
TV is suffering the same plight. My best friend is a TV news anchor and is moving to Texas at about a 30% pay decrease from Florida.