Now we know why KESN was not part of the ESPN deal with Good Karma. The price is the most surprising thing: 9.2 million!
I wonder where ESPN programming will land.
I wonder where ESPN programming will land.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
VCY Acquires KESN
- Thread starter Ryan Williams
- Start date
I guess this is what we can expect on 103.3: https://www.vcyamerica.org/
VCY appears to be an extreme right wing mix of religion and politics. We'll have to see if they aggressively go after other basket case stations in Texas.
This sale removes a future option for EMF in the market, should the K-Love branding issue ever get resolved. Also takes away a landing spot for Classical if that format gets the boot from 101.1.
This sale removes a future option for EMF in the market, should the K-Love branding issue ever get resolved. Also takes away a landing spot for Classical if that format gets the boot from 101.1.
They also bought the Ed Stolz stations in a receivership deal that hasn't closed.
VCY will run this station as a satellite repeater with no local presence.
Another former entertainment outlet becomes a noxious rightwing mouthpiece. Repulsive. Radio's decline is in full swing.
This is one of the rather terrible move-ins that the rather terrible Docket 80-90 produced around 1990. It only covers about 60% of the Dallas-Ft Worth market and was originally intended to serve the area outside the metro towards the Oklahoma border.
There is no loss here... this never should have been allowed to move into the peripheral area to the north of the market.
If you want to point fingers at radio's "decline", Docket 80-90 is a root cause. Many markets got loads of new allocations while revenue stayed the same, resulting in the loss of local programming and services. And many rural stations moved to the outskirts of larger markets, dividing further the revenue. The end result was deregulation in the mid-90's when it was shown that half of all US radio stations did not make money.
Seems the Mouse got top dollar for this stick. 9.2 Mil to go non commericial. VCY must have REALLY wanted into the DFW market.
It seems pretty rich to me. And is nearly twice as much as I expected. DFW is the market #1 in terms of evangelical population.
WVCY-FM, their flagship station is one of my locals.
They have a TV station in Milwaukee. They got 79 Million for the bandwidth about 4 years ago and went into a transmitter sharing setup with WITI. They’ve been adding a lot of radio stations since then. Used to only be handful, however they have syndicated some of their programming for a long time.
Most of their programming is old out of print hymns, a lot of it was played in the 1960s. They also have a lot of soft instrumentals. Heavy on the piano. Some preaching. Some old dramas from WMBI Chicago. Their most controversial show is Crosstalk which runs for about an hour a day during the week. That’s where the political stuff comes from. Crosstalk can get kind of extreme politically but aside from that, the programming is similar to your BBN, Family Radio type networks.
Should do fine in Texas. It tends to be popular among an older audience.
They have a TV station in Milwaukee. They got 79 Million for the bandwidth about 4 years ago and went into a transmitter sharing setup with WITI. They’ve been adding a lot of radio stations since then. Used to only be handful, however they have syndicated some of their programming for a long time.
Most of their programming is old out of print hymns, a lot of it was played in the 1960s. They also have a lot of soft instrumentals. Heavy on the piano. Some preaching. Some old dramas from WMBI Chicago. Their most controversial show is Crosstalk which runs for about an hour a day during the week. That’s where the political stuff comes from. Crosstalk can get kind of extreme politically but aside from that, the programming is similar to your BBN, Family Radio type networks.
Should do fine in Texas. It tends to be popular among an older audience.
That's a very reasonable price. There are about 7 million people covered by the 60 dBu contour of 103.3, and one of the standard benchmarks for "stick value" (buying a radio signal purely for the signal and not for any ongoing business associated with it) is $1 to $1.25 per person in the 60 dBu contour. $1.25 x 7 million is $8.75 million, plus whatever value the transmitter equipment has.
Double edged sword. While Docket 80-90 was bad for station owners, who saw revenue divided into smaller slices, it was good for small and medium market radio listeners, who actually got some real format variety on FM.
Without Docket 80-90 I've wondered if a more limited choice of radio stations would have actually accelerated the migration to other distribution platforms, assuming other technological changes happened the same way?
I also think that stations would have eventually slashed staff anyway, even without increased competition. Just the way business is done these days...if you are making money, think of ways to make more money...
while 103.3's flip to non-profit Christian/right wing talk is imminent, so is the reality that either a DFW station flips to sports talk or DFW will for the first time in a while will have only 2 sports talkers in town.
and for the remaining ESPN radio listeners of this market, you might want to start listening to ESPN Radio on the internet or Sirius XM cause i don't see ESPN Radio coming back to this market unless they make a sweetheart deal with iHeart or Cumulus to take the ESPN Radio afflation, i don't see Audacy wanting it since they have CBS Sports Radio and IHeart does have Fox Sports, i think i could be a perfect ideal for it to be on a HD Radio subchannel in the market, i think everyone at KEGL 97.1 The Eagle (except Ben & Skin and Mavs Basketball) should panic if ratings continue to dip, cause i could see iHeart blowing it up for a new 3rd sports talker and could give The Fan a run for it's money as The Ticket has signal issues with both 1310 AM and 96.7 FM.
and for the remaining ESPN radio listeners of this market, you might want to start listening to ESPN Radio on the internet or Sirius XM cause i don't see ESPN Radio coming back to this market unless they make a sweetheart deal with iHeart or Cumulus to take the ESPN Radio afflation, i don't see Audacy wanting it since they have CBS Sports Radio and IHeart does have Fox Sports, i think i could be a perfect ideal for it to be on a HD Radio subchannel in the market, i think everyone at KEGL 97.1 The Eagle (except Ben & Skin and Mavs Basketball) should panic if ratings continue to dip, cause i could see iHeart blowing it up for a new 3rd sports talker and could give The Fan a run for it's money as The Ticket has signal issues with both 1310 AM and 96.7 FM.
Cindy Scull has exited The Eagle as morning hosts
A
AnyHuman
Guest
VCY is also similar to Bott Radio, which is based in my city. Bott has more talk though and only a bit of music.
bottradionetwork.com
Bott does air at least one political show... I heard Janet Mefferd once going on and on about how the COVID vaccine is a joke.
Bott Radio Network - Quality Bible Teaching, Christian News & Information
Bott Radio Network exists is to serve the Lord’s people and to help strengthen each Christian family in our listening audience 24 hours a day!
bottradionetwork.com
Bott does air at least one political show... I heard Janet Mefferd once going on and on about how the COVID vaccine is a joke.
While I've certainly been wrong before, I don’t see a third FM sports talker coming to DFW anytime soon. Remember, the main reason we're seeing KESN go from a localized sports talker during the daytime to full time ESPN Radio to a religious outlet is because three sports talkers was more than the market could support. Cumulus decided it didn’t need another sports talker to flank The Ticket, and Good Karma would seem to have turned down the opportunity to run it for Disney/ESPN, too. That wouldn’t have happened if either thought KESN would've been a good investment.
Bott airs many of the same programs Salem airs on its various religious talk stations, including KWRD-FM 100.7 in DFW. While not all of them do, a good portion of your religious talk shows venture into politics, at least on the issues side if not endorsing specific candidates.
I didn’t realize Bott aired music at all. It tried continuing the all music format of KNTL 104.9 in OKC when it bought it (I believe from Pat Robertson) around 1995. That only lasted a year or two. Bott did a poor job with “The Light” and cut much of the local staff to run satellite CCM but still seemed to conclude it wasn't a core venture.
VCY is very conservative. I would say it is somewhat like American Family Radio. I recall hearing VCY programs claiming rock was satanic and other such claims that only very conservative groups espouse. At one point they offered a network news service and it was actually pretty good (not similar to their own programming). In my opinion they need to reach a sizable population to get enough listeners to their brand of Christianity.
Is ESPN Radio still doing alright nationwide? Some affiliates are rebranding away from the ESPN name. It's been tried in nearby smaller markets like Tyler/Longview and Bryan/College Station and didn't work. However, I figured an ESPN Radio affiliate in a large metro area like Dallas/Fort Worth would still be profitable.
One would think, as it's such a great sports town. A few years ago, ESPN built a bunch of local web sites that focused on particular sports cities, and Dallas was one. They were going to integrate the site and the local station:
Sports in Dallas - Scores and News covering all Dallas teams
Get the full coverage of all Dallas sports teams on ESPN, including the Texas Rangers, the Cowboys, the Stars, the Mavericks and FC Dallas.
That idea may have fallen by the wayside. More money to be made with ESPN+
- Status