Re: [Fwd: WQEW make your move])

[Brian Vita <brian_vita@cssinc.com>]

At 02:11 PM 12/26/98 +0000, Rick Kelly wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Dec 1998 16:37:19 +0000 Dan Strassberg
><dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>
>>Despite a weekly cume of over 600,000 (as reported by M Street Journal),
>>WQEW was billing only about $4.5 million. Compare that with $40+ 
>>million for WFAN, $36.5 million for WINS, and $31 million for WCBS (AM).
>
>
>So how much could it cost to ooperate the station?  About a million a
>year?  Gee, only 3.5 mil profit for the New York times?  What a shame...
>
You are missing the point.  The management of the NYT has a fiduciary
responsibility to its shareholders to achieve the best return on their
investment.  If other stations in the market are easily obtaining a better
return, then they would be remiss in not attempting to do the same.  They
*have* to follow the dollar or they are not serving their stockholders.

If you want a particular format, buy the station outright and, as the sole
owner, you can program whatever you want.  When other people's money is
involved you have to follow their wishes.  In the absence of a specifically
worded "mission statement" or other such BS, you have to assume that they
want to get the best return of their dollar.

All of this hand ringing amazes me.  With rare exception, few of us on this
list have any money tied up in radio.  If you feel so strongly about a
particular format, or how a station should be run, raise the capital and
build/buy your own station.  As a business owner I am often amused by the
ramblings of armchair quarterbacks who pontificate as to how they would run
a particular business yet they have no clue as to the economic realities of
it.  On the rare occasion that one of these quarterbacks actually gets into
a given business, they very quickly end up doing what they said that they
wouldn't or going out of business.

Brian

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