WWKB Cutting Back To 10,000 Watts?

[MarcB]

How about moving WWWS's Urban Oldies Format to 1520? Then take 1400 dark. 1400 doesn't even broadcast with 1 Gallon of power.

[SirRoxalot]

It does seem a little incongruous that the teapot on 1400 consistently outperforms the blowtorch on 1520...

[JIBGUY]

If KB is going to do this (go 10kw), it certainly won't be the first.  Fifteen years ago, station ZBVI (780) on Tortola, British Virgin Islands, running and licensed for 10,000 watts for decades, reduced its power down to 4,000 watts weekdays and 1,000 watts on weekends. The move was to save electricity costs. The reason for weekend 1kw power was that the ownership felt it was unnecessary to use 4kw needed on weekdays because businesses (with interfering computers, flourescent lights etc) were not open on weekends.  This is probably the only station that reduces power according to the day of the week as opposed to nighttime. - I don't know if that's still the case.... reduced power, but the big money machine of the 1970's (ZBVI) is likely not seeing the same kind of cash now, with several FM's that have popped up on Tortola, and even many more on other surrounding islands (St Thomas, St John, St Croix).

[MsMusicRadio]

Turn out the lights --------the party is really over. Good night to WKBW , Dick Biondi, Quinn, Shane, Joey Reynolds and everything that AM radio meant to old fools like me.

[Bob1370]

Someone who calls himself the Big A says of the local owners who sold out to the big boys in the 90s, "If they truely cared about their listeners and their markets, they would not have been so quick to take the money. Today, many of those same stations are available at a fraction of their sale price, and you don't see any of them rushing back from retirement to buy their old stations back."

Big A has a short memory. In the 90s, the local owners were under tremendous pressure from the expanding groups who, back then, had tremendous credit lines from equally bloated banks looking for fast profit and happy to lend money hand over fist (and then selling the notes at a steep profit as part of those infamous securitized debt packages that damn near melted the whole economy down two years ago). They either had to borrow themselves in order to buy additional stations to block out the big boys, or sell out to protect the value of their past investments from attack. That all just grew in intensity during the 90s with successive waves of deregulation, each of which allowed clusters in each market to get bigger and bigger; two station combos became four, then six, then as many as eight. We all know what happened...the big boys borrowed, and borrowed, and borrowed until the business is in its current sorry, bloated, debt-laden state. No local owner could have battled that.

Do any of the local guys who sold out under pressure in the 90s now make a comeback? It would be nice. But a lot of them have either retired and are now n their 70s or 80s (Larry Levite's 70 now, and WBEN and Star 102 are among the properties Entercom is LEAST likely to sell in their entire portfolio anyway), or have passed away. They're not going to start over again. The capital market's as over-tight now as it was overly loose then, so a lot of the stations the big boys overpaid for are now going begging for lack of buyers with strong credit lines. Eventually new locally based owners willing to try to put out a quality product will emerge in some markets, when the price is right and the financial markets finally normalize. But don't beat up on the Larry Levites of the world for not wanting to fight a combination of big combines and big banks who clearly had far more money than brains. The deck was stacked against the local guys in the 90s and while the time for good local owners to re-emerge is coming, it's still not quite here yet. Give it two to four more years...

[Savage]

Scottso and aaron, better hope WCKY doesn't decide to crank up Hiss-O-Rama IBOC again.  WEEI 1520 would be toast east of Batavia.  After all, "you don't have any right to listen to out-of-market signals," "skywave is irrelevant," "HD Uber Alles," etc., etc.

Remember?  The IBOC cabal has declared skywave listening an artifact appreciated only by vilified "DXers" and "Naysayers."   

[JustPastBuffalo]

I can imagine the brass at Entercom Buffalo reading this thread and chuckling for a number of reasons. Cutting back to 10kw? Why not just sign off from midnight to 5 a.m? If Joey's going to disappear, why not sell the all night show to the pray for pay preachers or the other hucksters and make a few bucks with that 50 gallon signal? The Colon Blow All Night Cafe. Cha-ching. 

[chas108]

To me, the web has taken the place of DXing. I grew up DX'ing 'KB from tiny Brattleboro, VT. Also CKLW, WCFL, WABC etc...so I've been

No the web's not yet perfect...there are still issues to be resolved (continuous reception, local stopsets dumped for PSA's etc.) but I really like the ability to pick-up my current station anywhere across the country with my wife's Nobex app.

[TheBigA]

Big A has a short memory.

No, I have a great memory, and if I forget, I have reams and reams of documents to help me remember.

YOU exaggerate.  You make it sound like radio caused the financial crisis, when it really was home mortgages.  The amount of money involved in ALL media deals, including Tribune, comes to less than $50 billion.  That's a fraction of the nearly trillion dollars that actually caused the meltdown.  And the radio deals were a drop in the bucket compared to some of the bigger mergers and buyouts that happened during the same time.  So you're wrong, radio did NOT cause the economic crisis, but it in fact caused the problem radio is having right now.

The guys who sold were greedy and bidded the prices on their sorry properties up to record high prices.  When the new owners moved in, they invested millions of dollars in new equipment, because the previous owners had run their places into the ground.  The real deregulation happened in the 80s.  That's when the greedy race to cash out began, with dozens of longtime owners willingly selling their stations to new companies.  Radio companies were going bankrupt before 1996.  In Buffalo, Price Communications went belly up, making it possible for Entercom to buy KB.  So don't lecture me about history.

"No local owner could have battled that?"  Take a look in Dallas, where Service Broadcasting owns the #1 radio station in town.  Somehow, they are beating Clear Channel and CBS.  But they have a commitment to their community that most local owners didn't have.  And there are lots of examples of that, where small local owners refused to sell, and are still alive.  Saul Levine in LA is another.

"New locally based owners willing to put out quality product?"  Don't make me laugh.  The history of broadcasting, going back to the 1920s, is filled with two-bit morons who looked for ways to squeeze money out of their employees and their stations.  The new generation of locally-based owners are already showing their cards in markets across the country.  Ask the folks at WSEN Syracuse if they notice a difference between Buckley and their new local owner. Larry Wilson is one former owner who is buying back into radio.  The first thing Larry did when he bought the CBS Portland cluster was fire talent.  Even non-commercial public radio stations are firing talent and replacing local programming with network shows from Washington.  For someone who considers himself knowledgeable, you really have a vivid imagination. 

[FreddyE1977]

They were coming in loud and clear last night, and again for about an hour after sunrise today,
down here in SW PA.  Are they perhaps back up to 50kW?