Re: Mega Sells WAMG Boston

[Dan.Strassberg@att.net]

You can bet that if Salem runs it, the new network will be even more 
exceedingly so. Denver I can understand. Colorado Springs might even have been 
a better choice. But Boston? Though far from as liberal as its reputation 
suggests, Boston doesn't strike me as the bastion of conservatism that one 
would want for launching yet another conservative talk network.

Salem's history of ownership in this market is also sort of bizarre. The 
company is not known for shuffling stations. Yet is bought and sold 1260 and 
then bought 950, on which it has been running a fair amount of conservative 
talk. On WZZD Philadelphia (990 kHz 50 kW-D/10 kW-N DA-2), Salem is running 
Contemporary Christian Music in late night hours that it hasn't been able to 
broker. CCM can't be nearly as profitable as brokered religion, so I assume CCM 
is Salem's last resort. Maybe when the network gets going, Salem will replace 
the CCM on WZZD with talk from the network.

Then there is the question of why Mega sold WAMG rather than WBPS. Mega paid 
less for WBPS than for WAMG, so presumably it would have wanted a bit less for 
the station than it's getting for WAMG. Maybe the reason has to do with the 
transmitter sites. WAMG's Lexington site is owned by American Tower Systems, so 
the rent increases the cost of running the station. Mega may actually own the 
WBPS site in Ashland.

On the other hand, before Mega bought WBPS, the previous owner had agreed to 
sell it to Salem. Then Mega came along with a better offer and Salem bowed out. 
Salem reportedly wanted to move WBPS to the WEZE site in Medford, where it 
proposed adding three towers between WEZE's existing pair. Salem hadn't done 
its homework on the technical details; that move would never have worked. So 
maybe this time around Salem figured that it knew all it had to know about 890 
and wasn't interested.

But Mega LMAs WBPS to a Chicago outfit, Air-Time Media, that brokers the 
station to outfits that run conservative talk--some of which is arguably to the 
right of what even Salem would air.

Probably the best news in this whole deal is that Salem has something of a 
history of flipping its acquired stations to their historic calls--when those 
calls are available. For example, it did so in Philadelphia when it restored 
the WFIL calls to 560 AM. Are the WCOP calls available? Could 1150 become WCOP 
once again?

And might Salem have interesting plans for WROL and the WAMG site? The WAMG 
site might make a good night site for WROL. I suspect that it would be possible 
for WROL to be licensed to, say, Belmont, and operate nights from the WAMG site 
with a power of 1 kW or more. Such a move would actually deliver a reasonably 
good night signal to more of the market than WROL can do with its current 90W 
night signal. One problem with that idea is that a COL change is considered a 
major change and no applications for major changes can be filed until the FCC 
opens one of its once-in-a-blue-moon filing windows for major AM changes.
--
dan.strassberg@att.net
617-558-4205
eFax 707-215-6367

> Wow, we certainly don't have enough of those on the air, do we???????  I 
> can only dream that one day liberals and moderates will awaken from their 
> slumber.  Just about every major talk show on the air today seems to be 
> conservative, sometimes exceedingly so.