Re: WOWO Update (11/3/98)

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Shel Swartz wrote:
>>Next, some "minority" station on 1030 kHz will want a slice of WBZ's signal.
>>I just don't get it.  [...]
>
Shawn Mamros wrote:
>It's pretty clear that you don't...  The only color that mattered in this
>deal was green.  The WLIB folks bought WOWO fair and square, cut the power
>and sold it to someone else.  It's called free enterprise - remember that?
>It had nothing to do with "quotas", "reverse discrimination", or any of
>the other code words for the same-old racism.  If you want to find a
>scapegoat to blame, try the old owners of WOWO who sold to WLIB in the
>first place.
>
>Of course the same thing isn't going to happen to 'BZ (or WCBS or KDKA for
>that matter), because CBS isn't likely to sell their 50kW blowtorches anytime
>soon.  (But in this business, perhaps it's better to never say never...)
>
        I'm so glad to see Shawn's post. I agree 1000 percent, only this is
put much better than and shorter than I usually manage. And I would say
that the FCC would allow the same thing to happen to WCBS or any other
station if someone was willing to pay. Everytime the WOWO-WLIB case comes
up here or on AIRWAVES, it seems, the racial issue gets raised either
subtly or not so subtly. I really dislike these inferences that somehow
WLIB got special treatment so it could "get away" with wrecking WOWO. I
hate what happened to WOWO, but it's a case of a bunch of unusual
circumstances coming together. And it all has to do with money. WLIB got
"special treatment" because it had millions of dollars to throw around.
        Fort Wayne is just about the smallest market with a Class A station
(maybe Tulsa or Spokane or Bakersfield is smaller?). New York is the
biggest market in the world. It just turned out to be WOWO and Fort Wayne's
bad luck that these two stations are on the same frequency. If WLIB were
on, let's say, 1000 kHz, Inner City Broadcasting probably would not have
been willing to pay enough to take down the once WCFL. But WLIB was able to
buy WOWO for what, in New York dollars, was peanuts. WLIB is co-owned with
one of the most successful FM stations in NY. The price of WOWO was pushed
even lower because WOWO had faltered in recent years. I think it was around
$2 million. WLIB had been after Congress and the FCC for many years to try
to get some nighttime power. Look at it from the other point of view:
What's more ridiculous than a daytime-only station in the city that never
sleeps? It finally got its chance after all the rules changes of the 1980s
and early '90s, and more to the point, it saw that the FCC doesn't care at
all about Class A stations and wouldn't stop the deal. The money was spare
change.
        So, yes, if a station on 1030 kHz, daytime only, in a mythical
market about 15 or 20 times bigger than Boston, decided it wanted to spend
the enormous money it would take to buy WBZ so it could upgrade its signal,
and that this amount was really a good investment because it stood to make
a long-term gain, I 'd say the FCC would let this mythical buyer trash WBZ
the same way. Unless enough political pressure came from the Massachusetts
politicians, in which case the FCC would conveniently find a way to turn it
down.
        The FCC now routinely lets stations buy other stations and
permanently close them or reduce their signals (WINS put an Arkansas
station out of business to get its C.P.; WWRL in NY killed off three or
four stations to get its daytime signal upgrade). We may think WOWO or WBZ
are somehow special and should be exempt from that possibility.  But, at
the risk of sounding like a broken record: It's all the same to the FCC.
They don't care and the laws and regulations they work with encourage them,
or even require them, not to care.

Marty Waters

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Have you patronized an AM Class A skywave signal today?

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