Re[BC]: Goodbye Local Radio

[Dan Strassberg]

Donna bemoaned the loss to brokered religion of what in recent years has
passed for full-service programming on WJDA Quincy MA (Donna's home town). I
think the new owner has stated that he intends to run brokered religion in
languages other than English. Although Salem Communications' WEZE and WROL
have English-language brokered religion pretty well covered here, the market
for brokered religion in other languages in Boston seems to me to be quite
fragmented. Other leased-time broadcasters here (most notably Arthur Liu's
WLYN Lynn and WAZN Watertown carry quite a bit of brokered religion in other
languages as does Beasley's WRCA Waltham, but since Clear Channel's WKOX
dropped full-time brokered religion in Spanish in favor of progressive talk,
it does not seem that any single signal in this market can really be
identified with the format (if format is the correct word).

So WJDA and its sister, WESX Salem MA, which was sold to the same group as
WJDA, may become a mecca for such programming. However, it will be
interesting to see what happens--especially with WESX. The new owner has
apparently announced his intention to move WESX's transmitter from
Marblehead to Lynn. There would be two motivations for such a move: The main
one is that the WESX site is in an upscale residential community and can
probably be sold for as much as the new owner paid for the two stations.
Lynn is also much geographically closer to the populations that the new
owner wants to serve. However, the only obvious site in Lynn would be a
diplex with WLYN and a move to the WLYN site appears to put WESX too close
to at least three stations (a co-channel and first and third adjacents). I
suspect that the new owner's business plan is predicated on offsetting the
two stations' purchase price with the proceeds from the sale of the
Marblehead real estate. If the new owner is prevented from moving WESX--or
if he has to wait years to find out whether the FCC will let him move it--I
suspect that he will first try to sell the license, and if he can't get what
he considers a reasonable price, he will take it dark.

So if you have or can scrape together a couple of $million for a stand-alone
AM, wait awhile. I think offers will be solicited.

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