More Boston-area brokered-time AMs

[Dan Strassberg]

In yesterday's post I mentioned 11 local AMs that currently boker a
substantial portion of their air time and a twelfth that is likely to start
doing so soon. I also said that I would be surprised if I had not omitted
some stations. Here are two more: WSRO and WBNW. So the market already has a
baker's dozen of brokered-time AMs with the stong possibility of soon having
14. I haven't tried to figure out what percentage that is of the AM signals
that reach at least a portion of the market, but it has to represent more
than 1/4 and my guess is that it's a lot more than 1/4.

As for Mr Glavin's suggestion (on another list) that 1330 is a good
candidate for a format flip from brokered time to something else, I think
the suggestion is absurd (though I would hesitate to say impossible). We
have a tendency to equate running bokered time with failing stations. In
fact, though, brokered time can be VERY lucrative; although brokered-time
stations rarely have revenues among the top tier of stations in a market,
the percentage of revenues they bring to the bottom line can be extremely
high because so many of the costs that "regular" stations incur are not paid
by brokered-time stations; those costs are incurred, instead, by the
independent producers who lease the time for their programs. I'm not sure of
this, but I believe that WRCA has only ONE full time employee on its
payroll--GM Stu Fink. The same is likely true of WNTN, where station owner
and GM Rob Rudnick is probably the only full-time employee.

BTW, today's Tom Taylor on Radio column says that Salem, heretofore an
agressive acquirer, especially of AMs, is now willing to discuss spinning
off properties to qualified buyers. I doubt that ultra-right-wing Salem
would knowingly sell any station to a group interested in flipping it to
Progressive talk, but WTTT appears to be to be a station that could do
pretty well with a Progressive talk format.

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367