Re: WQDY 1230 Calais ME goes dark for good

[Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com>]

>I think your analysis is solid.  As for anti-trust enforcement, the proper
>market definition would be advertising in that area.  Even when defining the
>market broadly, this deal could raise some concerns.

I don't think there's any way to define that market broadly enough to avoid 
raising some sort of antitrust concerns,
if anyone had bothered to pursue this one. Calais is so very isolated from 
everywhere else; you can't argue with
any honesty that Bangor media represent local advertising competition, and 
there's no daily newspaper, no TV,
no other US radio within 60 miles or so, and just the one Canuck FM across 
the water - and they don't sell ads
in the US. So it really is WQDY and its sisters, or nothing.

OTOH, it's not as though WCRQ was really actively competing for advertising 
up there, either, as best I could tell.

>The FCC requiring the company to shut down the AM is kind of silly.  I know
>the AM was 100% simulcast but that might not always been the case.

Indeed, it's my recollection that they were doing the Red Sox on AM only as 
recently as 1998. If McVicar is to have
100% of the daily advertising market in town, I don't think it matters 
whether that ends up spread among three stations
or four.

s