Report: Delmarva selling AMs

WBUX was in Bucks County (Doylestown). WCOJ is in Chester County (Coatesville). Neither was in Delaware County.

I see a double standard in your comments. If a station active in its community goes down elsewhere, so what? Just business. If a station goes down here you live, oh no! That's a tragedy.

WDEL-TV was severely mismanaged by owners more concerned with their Lancaster, New Mexico and Arizona properties. Independent VHF stations thrived in other top ten TV markets in the 50s: New York, LA, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, San Francisco-Oakland, Dallas-Ft. Worth but not Philadelphia-Wilmington. In just a few years, independent UHF stations started to prosper in the region, even though most sets could not receive UHF at the time and their coverage areas were smaller.

Responsible companies provide a product or service of value to others and get a fair profit in return. WBUX was owned by the author James Michener who lived in Doylestown. His heirs decided to cash in. WCOJ's owner made a deal with a venture capital firm to buy a bunch of other stations. When the venture capitalists (or vulture capitalists) didn't see a big enough return soon enough, they dumped the guy and started selling for cash. It's the usual combination of greed, arrogance and incompetence with the various stakeholders (employees, listeners) losing out.

No double standard. I said, I don't know anything about WBUX and WCOJ. I suggested they were sold due to not making money. If that is not correct, then that is a sad thing. But many a mom and pop business have been sold by heirs who weren't interested in the family business, be it a sub shop, manufacturing company, or radio.

Unfortunately, as you've said, AM radio skews old, and advertisers don't generally advertise there now. So getting someone else to pick up the torch and continue those stations as they had been probably could have been done, but that younger generation just doesn't have that sort of patience, nor sees the value of bothering.

So if what you've described is correct then the folks of BucksCo/ChesterCo got the short end of the stick. Your only hope of regaining local news on radio in those places is to buy the station's yourself and do as you believe should be done. All it takes is money, lots of it [assuming the Catholic broadcaster is willing to sell]. So I realize that is not probably going to happen.

Your only other option would be to find others like you in DelCo, to put pressure on Media's 100.3 to cover local news for that area.

I'm not making light of your problem. Other than the Del County Times, newspaper [they still are in business, I'm assuming??] you may be correct that there are no other places to get local news in that county. I know nothing about Bucks Co, so I'm not even sure what cities are there, much less what print or radio is there. But I do get your point. That is why WDEL is so special. They somehow are still managing to bring Wilmington a full service spoken word radio station that offers local content including full local news coverage and manages to make money too.

As far as TV was concerned, it wasn't ONLY the Steinmann's who apparently couldn't make ends meet with the old channel 12, there was a Philly owner, and then Storer Broadcasting [WVUE] who also couldn't seem to do well enough. Apparently though WVUE gave Joe Pyne a local TV show here that did well, but it wasn't enough, based on what I've read. I'm not expert, I was a kid when all this happened, so I have to base my comments on what I've been able to dig up. Fact is if any of those owners could have made a Wilmington commercial TV station work, they apparently didn't know how to do that as those other owners in other cities did, for whatever reason.

WBUX was owned 51% (+ or -) by Michener. The GM owned a couple percent, and 40-some% was owned by a group of three or four local businessmen.
A couple of the local businessmen cared more about how the station was doing financially than Michener or his heirs who cared nothing at all about it. The big deal in the 80s for WBUX was going from being a daytimer to getting 500 watts directional at night ... a horrible night signal that didn't make it much out of Doylestown.
They went live and local 24/7, including employing a full-time overnight DJ.
As such, the station struggled to make money. I worked there full-time for 18 months in the mid to late 80s in news.
The first December I was there, I went to the office manager to get more typing paper. She said, "Collect news releases and type on the back of them." Her further explanation: Every December, the GM cut off buying any office supplies except those absolutely needed. Since the news was only for internal use, I was told to use any scrap paper I could get my hands on. When I asked why this was the case, the office manager explained that a couple of the local owners (but not Michener) expected the station to turn a profit. One way the GM made this happen was by not buying office supplies for the last month of the year. She said the "profit" the station made each year was measured in only three digits. So, essentially, the station was break even, at best.
(It might have made more sense in the long run to automate the station late evenings and overnights. WNPV at the same time was actually signing off the air at 10 pm rather than pay talent to keep the station on overnight.)
I was a one-person, full-time news department. At some point, WBUX hired a second person to work five days a week ... but only for five hours each day. We actually did pretty well for a 1.5 person news department, but let's face it: there's only so much you can do with local news with such a small staff.
Of course later, there was the all 70s music format which was fun but failed. Their method of automation: A series of long cassette tapes that were played from 7 pm to 5:30 a.m. the next morning. A timer interrupted whatever was on-air at the top of the hour to insert the local ID.
When "real" automation showed up, it was for the all-news format that was subsequently tried. Brad Seigel, now of KYW Newsradio, was the News Director, and Steve Potisk, heard sometimes with CBS Marketwatch on KYW, was an anchor.
I think there was one more music format after that ... hot AC I think ... and then it was sold to the current religious broadcaster.
I have mixed feelings about that: On the one hand, I was sad to see the station go to a niche format like religion. On the other hand, it was difficult in the late 80s and it's probably more difficult today to run a local community station and make it profitable.

radiophiler said:

On the other hand, it was difficult in the late 80s and it's probably more difficult today to run a local community station and make it profitable.

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And then there's WNPV in Lansdale, the Energizer Bunny of community radio around here.

Radiophiler: Thanks for the history on WBUX. So it was as I guessed, lack of profit.

Lack of profit gets stations flipped or sold - sooner or later. Everybody knows it but nobody wants to believe it can happen to them.

Well, a year and a quarter later, there's still no truth to the Delmarva rumor, but Great Scott did sell off today:

After 50 years in radio, Great Scott Broadcasting will exit the business with the sale of its 10 stations and two translators in the Salisbury-Ocean City, MD market. In separate deals, Great Scott is selling six stations and two translators to Adams Radio and four stations to The Voice Radio Network. Salisbury-Ocean City is the fourth market for Adams since reentering the radio business last July.
In the first deal, Adams will acquire “Classic Rock 98.5” WGBG and adult hits “Sue AM 1280” WJWK, licensed to Seaford, DE; Spanish CHR “Maxima 900” WJWL and rock “The Beach” WZBH (93.5), licensed to Georgetown, DE; “Hot Country 107.7” WKHI, licensed to Fruitland, MD; and rhythmic CHR “OC 104” WOCQ, licensed to Berlin, MD. The deal also includes FM translators W242AV and W262BF.
“This cluster is another rare opportunity to acquire a company that has been in the same family for almost 50 years,” Adams president & CEO Ron Stone said in a statement. “We are honored to be chosen by the Scott family to be the next stewards of these great stations.” Adams owns and operates clusters in Las Cruces, NM; Fort Wayne, IN; and the suburban Chicago area in Northwest Indiana. Kalil & Company served as broker for the Adams transaction.
Under the second deal, The Voice Radio Network will acquire the hot AC “B 95.3/101.7” simulcast of WKDB, licensed to Laurel, DE; and WZEB, licensed to Ocean View, DE; along with “Classic Rock 98.5” WJKI, licensed to Bethany Beach, DE; and Spanish CHR “Maxima 900” WXSH (106.1) licensed to Pocomoke, MD

for delmarva radio station

Heard appear may be some shake up with Delaware station notice few of them may be changing format just hope one station does lying like one of fortwayne station did i have a feeling there be some complan about how the station is run because of new owner be looking forward to all those complant like my fortwayne market did but i wishe new owner best of luck with it

Unregistered said:

Heard appear may be some shake up with Delaware station notice few of them may be changing format just hope one station does lying like one of fortwayne station did i have a feeling there be some complan about how the station is run because of new owner be looking forward to all those complant like my fortwayne market did but i wishe new owner best of luck with it

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Is this English?

to raven

Hi yes my message is engish i don't speak any other language hate when people mock my language on social media site even if it facebook and Twitter was also just saying have a feeling would be some complan about how those station is run because of new owners wishe them best of luck running those station and programming them too

amfm.com said:

Well, a year and a quarter later, there's still no truth to the Delmarva rumor, but Great Scott did sell off today:

After 50 years in radio, Great Scott Broadcasting will exit the business with the sale of its 10 stations and two translators in the Salisbury-Ocean City, MD market. In separate deals, Great Scott is selling six stations and two translators to Adams Radio and four stations to The Voice Radio Network. Salisbury-Ocean City is the fourth market for Adams since reentering the radio business last July.
In the first deal, Adams will acquire “Classic Rock 98.5” WGBG and adult hits “Sue AM 1280” WJWK, licensed to Seaford, DE; Spanish CHR “Maxima 900” WJWL and rock “The Beach” WZBH (93.5), licensed to Georgetown, DE; “Hot Country 107.7” WKHI, licensed to Fruitland, MD; and rhythmic CHR “OC 104” WOCQ, licensed to Berlin, MD. The deal also includes FM translators W242AV and W262BF.
“This cluster is another rare opportunity to acquire a company that has been in the same family for almost 50 years,” Adams president & CEO Ron Stone said in a statement. “We are honored to be chosen by the Scott family to be the next stewards of these great stations.” Adams owns and operates clusters in Las Cruces, NM; Fort Wayne, IN; and the suburban Chicago area in Northwest Indiana. Kalil & Company served as broker for the Adams transaction.
Under the second deal, The Voice Radio Network will acquire the hot AC “B 95.3/101.7” simulcast of WKDB, licensed to Laurel, DE; and WZEB, licensed to Ocean View, DE; along with “Classic Rock 98.5” WJKI, licensed to Bethany Beach, DE; and Spanish CHR “Maxima 900” WXSH (106.1) licensed to Pocomoke, MD

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So what will Adams and The Voice do with the formats of their new acquisitions?

ixnay

Adams is advertising for just about every position on All Access. Looks like everyone's getting canned.