Re: Another Talker in Boston....?

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Sun, 18 Jul 1999 20:32:03 -0400, SteveOrdinetz <steveord@xtdl.com> said:

> Probably the week after Ross Perot is sworn in as president.  AAA's 15
> minutes of fame are over, rare is the station that gets any numbers doing
> it.

Of course, that means that the stations doing it are ones which don't
care about the numbers.  I'd love to know how the listener support
compares for, e.g., WHYY and WXPN.  I suspect that, if you take out
WHYY-TV/WDPB from the totals, you'd find the radio stations probably
earning a similar amount in listener contributions.  You could do a
similar comparison between WFAE/WFHE+WCQS/WFQS and WNCW....  On the
commercial side, in every case that I personally have knowledge of,
the format exists on stations which have a high level of personal
support from the ownership and/or management.

Remember, for stations owned by individuals, the corporate ``grab as
much cash as we can as quickly as we can'' mentality need not apply.
I suspect Silberberg will be happy so long as his FMs are making
money.  Particularly with a signal like 92.5 or 104.7 which doesn't
conveniently fit into the pre-determined radio market definitions,
it's probably a necessity to run a unique, audience-loyalty-driven
format -- a small but steady audience is still better than none at
all.  (Did anybody here actually listen to the last days of ``Lite
92.5''?)

The same is almost certainly true for small markets where one bears
the additional burden of having to compete against satellite stations
which can still make money selling spots at a dollar a minute.  (Think
about it: a class-A FM running 3 kW with 50% efficiency has energy
costs of $21 a day.  If the owner also doubles as sales staff, there
aren't even personnel expenses or payroll taxes to pay.)

- -GAWollman

- --
Garrett A. Wollman   | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | O Siem / The fires of freedom 
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA|                     - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick

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