Air America's night signal

[Dan Strassberg]

All true--except that, in the meantime, CCU discovered that progressive talk
was an untapped market that might appeal to nearly half of talk-radio
listeners. Instead of having to share the right-wing-talk market with as
many as three competitors, the progressive-talk strategy puts CCU in total
control of a potentially almost equally large market. (OK, in several
markets, including Boston, NPR competes in progressive talk--except that,
politically, NPR is moving rapidly to the right in an attempt to keep from
having the Republican congress eliminate the ever-diminishing portion of NPR
funding that comes from the government and to keep from antagonizing the
predominaantly right-wing companies that underwrite NPR programming.) It's
true that in most markets, including Boston, progressive talk appears on
severely signal-challenged AMs. In several markets, however, CCU has put
progressive talk on solid AM signals, the most successful of which is in
Portland OR on AM 620, which I believe runs 20 kW-D/10 kW-N at a prime dial
position. Other markets in which progressive talk is on prime full-market AM
signals are Miami (940 50 kW-D/10 kW-N), Denver (760 50 kW-D/1 kW-N), San
Francisco (960 5 kW-U), and Seattle (1090 50 kW-U). CCU owns an ideal
candiate for progrssive talk in LA (570 5 kW-U), but AFAIK has not flipped
it so far. In New York, the Air America affiliate is ICBC's WLIB (1190 10
kW-D/30 kW-N), which is not setting the world on fire but is holding its own
against the killer signals of WABC and WOR.

--

Dan Strassberg
dan.strassberg@att.net
Fax: 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eli Polonsky" <elipolo@earthlink.net>
To: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>;
<boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 2:02 PM
Subject: Re: Air America's night signal


>
> So, in the above scenario, it's possible that if CC had been able to
> build the 50kw site in Newton, WKOX might not be programming Air
> America at all. It may have ended up being the political antithesis,
> a powerful conservative right-wing talker running Rush Limbaugh and
> competing with WRKO.
>
> Eli Polonsky
>