Posted on 06/27/2019 9:06:01 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Continuing to sell off stations to reduce debt, Cumulus Media has inked a deal to hand over talk WABC New York (770) to Red Apple Media for $12.5 million in cash.
Red Apple is headed by chairman John Catsimatidis, who hosts the syndicated “Cats Roundtable Radio Show.” Calling the purchase the “next step in building a new broadcasting business,” Catsimatidis says he plans to “retain the excellent staff and talent working at the station now.”
The sale leaves Cumulus with only one station in the New York market—“Radio 103.9” WNBM, an urban AC licensed to Bronxville, NY. Cumulus earlier sold hot AC WPLJ to Educational Media Foundation and traded country WNSH to Entercom.
“We do expect to sell WNBM and exit the New York City market,” CEO Mary Berner said in a memo to employees about the WABC sale. “New York has been a market that has been tough for us, and through these deals we will be able to realize significant value for the company, over and above what we could have generated from continued operations.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at insideradio.com ...
Agreed. I started listening to streaming media in my car a year and a half ago and I haven't listened to a radio station since. Not once.
Strange. Looks like the story was taken down, possibly accidentally. Still shows up on web searches.
It has been a downward spiral ever since.
Agreed. I started listening to streaming media in my car a year and a half ago and I haven’t listened to a radio station since. Not once.
I may listen to a couple of minutes of “oldies” music a couple of times a week.
A small AM station here in Pittsburgh recently sold for the price of a gently used Toyota Corolla.
Former Top 40 powerhouse KQV sold for $55K. It’s getting hard to even find a crappy house around here for that price.
Rush and Hannity, or at least here in NY...
I always keep a few things on my thumb drive (mostly lectures, podcasts and sermons) just in case. So I never really have to resort to radio.
I never liked John Batchelor’s show.
Heh. Me too. I have the entire bible on mine. :)
$12.5 Million? not a whole lot of money!
I love radio. I have been an avid DXer since I was a teen and I still like the FM classic rock 104.3. It is just better when a fave comes up on the radio than putting it on from my playlist. That being said, the things that made DXing fun, hearing true regional stations with their ads, accents, and differencesare fading. Syndication has made it all vanilla. You can find Coast to Coast on ten stations from Cincy to Atlanta. I don’t know if radio is done but even with mt C Crane 2e it’s not really fun anymore.
That pretty much sums up my take on it. The days of Wolfman Jack, et al, are long gone. Those were the days.
Since it takes both a transmitter and receiver for radio to happen, I think it will pretty much just go away. At least, it will not be something done “for money”. It will be a thing used by an ever shrinking, and aging, class of collectors.
People here saying radio is dying, yet...
The local (Tampa) I-heart radio station advertises that, radio reaches more people than the whole internet and newspapers and TV combined.
I must’ve misheard.
"Reaches" means "can be received by their radios."
Doesn't mean the radio is on, or that they're listening.
I used to listen to the radio only in the car. Now I listen to streaming music on my phone when I'm in the car, and when I'm not in the car.
And there’s the real rub; going back over a decade, the two most recent owners of WABC, Citadel and Cumulus, did what other media companies tried. They went heavily into debt by going private, generating huge commissions for the investment bankers who put the deals together, and senior execs at the radio companies who went along for the ride. Others gained even more debt by going on a buying spree, snapping up hundreds of local stations, with the idea of combining local management and sales staffs for multiple jobs (eliminating hundreds of jobs), and using syndicated music programming on multiple stations in each cluster, reducing talent costs.
Then, along came the recession of 2008-2009, and the ad market cratered. The problem was compounded by the availability of content through streaming services and satellite radio, siphoning off listeners. Cumulus, faced with declining revenue, stock prices and listenership, was forced to sell many of the viable assets in its portfolio, including WPLJ in New York (longtime CHR outlet; WABC’s sister station) and WRQX-FM in Washington, DC.
Radio isn’t dead (yet). Well-run news/talk outlets like WSB in Atlanta and WLW in Cincinnati remain very profitable, as does KFI in Los Angeles. Even some Cumulus stations are doing well; WMAL in Washington is back in the top 5-6 in the local ratings, and there are a number of other news/talk stations that compete very successfully.
The key to survival is a) leadership that didn’t make foolish financial decisions that will take decades to unravel; b) ownership that remains committed to radio, like Cox and Entercom, and c) managers and talent at the station level that know how to produce original programming that compel people to tune in, in their car, or on their device
As several have said, many now listen to radio over the internet. But when we go to iheart.com, or tunein.com, we still pick a broadcast radio station. I’m listening to Rush now from iheart and a Birmingham radio station.
It’s probably a question of how long the broadcast stations will remain in that loop. Haven’t heard any stats about how many listen to broadcasts and how many listen via various internet apps.
Does the price include Cousin Brucie?
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.