A look back to 1991

[Scott Fybush]

At 09:47 PM 7/13/2004 -0500, Kevin Vahey wrote:
>It is amazing to see how this has played out. Could anybody have predicted 
>WEEI would overtake WRKO? Talk96 certainly hurt WRKO and I believe part of 
>the problem stems from Howie Carr doing a regional show instead of pure local.
>
>Scott might know how Entercom's similar situation is doing in Buffalo with 
>WGR and WBEN.

It's only similar on the surface, really. Unlike Boston, Entercom quite 
literally owns the AM audience in Buffalo. There's no WBZ to compete with - 
WGR and WBEN are it as far as mass-audience AM signals go, and the only 
other full-market-coverage signal that could conceivably compete (1520) is 
also owned by Entercom. Entercom also just spent $10.5 million to buy out 
the FM signal that was competing with WGR on sports.

On top of that, Buffalo's proximity to the border and the happenstance that 
two of the biggest commercial-band FM signals in town are operated as 
noncomms (classical WNED-FM 94.5 and religious WDCX 99.5), and you have a 
market that's so under-FM-ed that nobody will try to go after WBEN and WGR 
from that end of the dial.

So Entercom effectively bought itself a monopoly there, and WBEN and WGR do 
well almost by default.

s