Smerconish To Unseat Limbaugh On WPHT?

[Robbien]

What about the Salem conservative talk station? Where do they fit in all of this?

[imhomerjay]

Essentially nowhere.

[Robbien]

Is that because they have no local presence? All syndication? 50,000 watt signal, seems like a waste.

[musichead1029]

What about the Salem conservative talk station? Where do they fit in all of this?

Salem concentrates on clearing their syndicated secular talk programs on the stations they own, rather than achieving top ratings. WNTP is running ads for local salespeople and seems intent on selling the quality of its local audience over quantity.

Phil Boyce, former WABC program director and the new Vice President, Director of Spoken Word Format for Salem, has discussed improving Salem's New York City secular talk outlet without really having to compete with the other talkers, so Salem's approach to the format is a bit different from CBS and Merlin.

I know NTP has a high quality audience, as I'm a regular listener to Hugh Hewitt. 

[TimeIsTight]

Salem is, apparently, using a very different business model than most competitive major market radio stations.

It, apparently, doesn't subscribe to Arbitron ratings and with the new rules, the public will not see any ratings reports on Salem stations again.

WNTP is a 50-kw station that was once a leader in a market of 4.5-million, and in February it managed to draw an average of 141,000 different listeners a week.

Salem's New York station, WNYM, is also 50-kw and in a market of 15-million and in February it had a weekly audience of 148,000.

And that same kind of "bottom of the barrel ratings" is repeated in markets around the country where Salem has secular talk stations. The audience size of its religious stations is even smaller, WFIL had a total of 41,000 listeners "a week" in February, and WMCA in NYC had 105,000.

Somehow, Salem, as a company, is profitable. It earned $450,000 in the latest quarter.  Its stations are essentially relays, that don't generate much programming.  The staff is, probably, minimal.  And it is squeaking out a profit by keeping costs low.

Since it doesn't have ratings figures to sell commercial time with, and its publicly available figures are very low, you have to wonder what Salem's advertisers are buying?   Possibly if you put all its secular talk stations together you might have a national audience the size of one highly rated major market station.  The stock market currently values the entire company (market cap) at about $50-million, or a few million more than twice what Merlin recently paid Family Radio just for WKDN.   

[DToTheJ]

...no local presence? All syndication? 50,000 watt signal, seems like a waste.

Obviously, WPHT didn't get the memo about New York's "50,000 watt beacon of freedom [and little local content]", WABC. 

[badjef]

...no local presence? All syndication? 50,000 watt signal, seems like a waste.

Obviously, WPHT didn't get the memo about New York's "50,000 watt beacon of freedom [and little local content]", WABC. 

I got "goose bumps" the first time I heard that.

I still do...

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!