Its lower, but i dont remember what it is.. i had to pay music licensing on a talk station when the network was using real songs as bumper music and i did 4 hours once a week of a music show
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Is WABC profitable?
- Thread starter Martin Gilbert
- Start date
Its lower, but i dont remember what it is.. i had to pay music licensing on a talk station when the network was using real songs as bumper music and i did 4 hours once a week of a music show
And there are many commercials that use the music of past (passed?) hits for their jingles. There are composer rights attached, also.
Even assuming you're right about WABC being his "toy", that he doesn't need to do any better than break even, "break even" has to include *all* the operating costs of running his station. Salaries, benefits, lease costs*, electricity and other utilities, furniture, telephony/internet/communications, transmitter ops and maintenance, studio and I.T. equipment, music licensing (whatever schedule they get to use), etc., etc. Those costs are anything but insignificant, and Mr. Cats's combined costs need to be tallied before he can know whether he's achieving "break even". Otherwise he could be hemorrhaging money and not know how bad it is.
*WABC's offices are in the same building as his Red Apple Corp., 800 Third between 49th and 50th. I used to work in that building. It's not cheap. Whatever space he's allocated to WABC's studios and back offices, it alone is costing him a bunch of bucks.
While I can not discuss confidential data, I'm familiar with the costs of a 50 kw AM, real estate, staffing, and all the expenses from insurance to utilities. Based on billing estimates, the station is between a break-even (with the "market value" in fixed income investments in the amount of the purchase price) and a moderate profit.
This is not like Bloomberg's station, which has its value in image enhancement.
WBBR is also the originating station for the company's 24/7 business channel, which is syndicated nationally.
Affiliates | Bloomberg Radio
The Bloomberg Radio Network is the leading provider of radio business news in the United States. Bloomberg Radio delivers long-form programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Affiliates can air one-hour shows, multiple hours, or even our complete 24/7 line-up.
www.bloombergradio.com
So it's more than just a local AM station. Key Networks handles syndication, and they sell national advertising. Some element of Bloomberg is heard on 500 radio stations, including several O&Os.
WABC also syndicates some of their shows. But not to the degree of Bloomberg.
Red Apple Adds New Affiliates For WABC Programming.
News/talk WABC New York owner Red Apple Media's syndication arm, Red Apple Audio Networks, has announced the addition of 17 more affiliate stations carrying programming originated on WABC. Among the
We’ve had this discussion before. While rich people may have most of their wealth tied up in their businesses, they can nonetheless leverage those enterprises and investments to access large amounts of cash.
To be fair, such leverage has become increasingly expensive as interest rates have reverted to more normal levels in the last couple of years, after everyone got spoiled by rock bottom rates from 2008-22.
Taking it to the next step, there are usually better places to put that cash than in owning radio stations. Which is why Elon Musk spent his billions on Twitter and not iHeart.
In Cats' case, it's easy to understand. He got WABC at a good price. He gets to own something he listened to as a kid. It's more emotional than practical.
an engineer in PA sent his money on radio stations rather than just keeping it in the bank
Anyone who keeps their money in a bank is just making money for the bank. That doesn't mean people should buy radio stations.
But hey, George Soros just took $400 million and bought Audacy debt. We'll see how that works out.
Elon Musk tried to back out of buying Twitter. And he ruined it. He lost money.
WABC was a poor performer before Cats bought it. I’m sure if Cats didn’t care about revenue, he would bring back the oldies 24/7 along with live DJs. He wanted to at least break even
i asked the guy why he did it.. and he said the return on investment was slightly better.. so why not?
Which is also principally intended to enhance the Bloomberg name and keep people ordering Bloomberg terminal subscriptions.
But it's a national platform, not a local radio station.
And history has shown such nostalgia only lasts so long. Rich people didn't get rich by burning their money, and there will always be a breakpoint where a traditional media property burning through cash, or not pulling its weight will get old. This holds for even rich Saudi families who decided to get into the traditional media business, only to get sick of it and bail.
Actually, few paid ads appear on WABC, my original premise.
Agreed. There are some spots for injury attorneys, and Ramsey Mazda commercials that are peppered across the station. Commercials for Babel.com and Consumer Cellular are likely to be barters that come along with their NBC news radio affiliation.
John Cats owns both D’Agostino and Gristedes supermarket chains, so if there’s any $ coming from those ads, it just goes from one of his pockets into the other. On weekends, they run a flurry of help-wanted :30’s, read so rapidly that I can’t imagine anyone being able to respond to them.
Most breaks are filled with show-specific or generic promos for the station itself (“heard worldwide!”), and “WABC news extras”, which are dated featurettes read by the news voices that blur the line between news and promo (“as heard on THE GREG KELLY SHOW!”). To hear a host say, “we have to go to a break now”, only to be followed by 3 minutes of promos and imaging, is a giveaway that they’ve got lots unsold inventory.
For those of us on the outside, we don’t know what it costs to run WABC, nor the income derived from the commercials they run. But it seems unlikely they’re operating in the black.
The occasional Goya ads are likely based on a deal as Mr. Cats’ grocery stores sell the brand.
all the more power to Cats, the only reason the station exists in its current form is because of him...;.... if anyone else had bought it, guarendamnteeyou it would be more syndicated talk, paid programming, religion or foreign language.
This is a fun discussion. I have an associate that is friends with Cats and asked him what he knew. He is in the loop pretty well. He said the station made less than a million in profit in 2022. He hasn't heard a word since that. That PROFIT is with legit ad revenue and doesn't include "grocery store" mixing of fuzzy businesses accounting. Cats legit believes he is keeping old NY alive and seems to be having fun with this project. Seems like one of the few in the industry these days. This update actually happened on yesterday afternoon, so some of these comments since I cannot specifically speak. I had literally just glanced at this board a few hours before I got the call about from him on a totally unrelated topic.
WABC’s overhead is funded by Balance Of Nature ads, and with a profit?