Reply #27: Is This 500k For Brokering Time? Real Vague Info

[KharmaTrain]

I was just in Arizona and was sad to pop on 1010 in Phoenix to hear a holy roller and then found out about what happened. Sadly, radio is a business that forces sales like these to happen. This station was a "stand-alone"...a small AM operation in a market dominated by large, corporate-owned operations that suck up almost all the advertising revenues in town and the few locals have to fight for the remaining crumbs. It's even more difficult these days when the economic hard times and growth of IPODs and Internet and Satellite radio have eroded local revenues even further. Religious broadcasters have the cash and look for stations in distress like this and pick them up for pennies on the dollar.

The question the site doesn't mention is what the group intends to do to get their station back on the air. Are they looking for a new station to purchase? If so...$500k is really not a lot of money when even dumpy AM stations in that market can still go for $4 million...and that doesn't count the cost of maintenance and payroll. A "full-market signal" will cost $10 million or more.

The 500k could go to brokering airtime from another station...or not owning the station, but just "renting" the airtime. The pitfalls here are that station can also be sold and there's no guarantee the format will survive and usually stations that are willing to sell so much airtime have some major signal problem...especially if it's AM.

Hopefully the "big boys" will come to the rescue for AAR listeners. While I destest Cheap Channel, they have been AAR's largest supporter and have found a lot of success with their stations...and rumor has it that they will be adding more affiliates in additional markets as the year moves along.

If there's someone affiliated with this group, could you please clarify what you'd like to do so the good people here can know what they're investing in and what results to expect.

Cheers...