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What to do with 1210 AM, if this CBS/Beasley broadcast group sale happens?

J

Jul

Guest
If this rumored thing involving the Beasley broadcast group and CBS radio happens, what should happen with 1210 WPHT-AM? Should it be sold to another buyer, should they keep it and change the format or should they shut the station down for good. I'm curious to get your thoughts on this?
 
Well, whatever happens, we should obviously start as many different threads as possible to cover the same topics.
 
Jul said:
1210 staying with crap and don't want to change because its the smart thing to do IMO, pathetic
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The only "crap" here is your incessant case of "drizzly posts" about WCAU.

If the station makes money... which at the current billing level it does... and the cost of the station is fully amortized, which it is (they bought it nearly 90 years ago) and it has no direct debt service, then why would they want to change? The options for an AM station today are news, sports and talk. They happen to have one of each. Optimum use of a declining band.
 
DavidEduardo said:


The only "crap" here is your incessant case of "drizzly posts" about WCAU.

If the station makes money... which at the current billing level it does... and the cost of the station is fully amortized, which it is (they bought it nearly 90 years ago) and it has no direct debt service, then why would they want to change? The options for an AM station today are news, sports and talk. They happen to have one of each. Optimum use of a declining band.
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Wrong, David. CBS purchased WCAU (AM, FM and TV) from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in 1958. That would be 56 years ago, not 90. In order to stay with then-current ownership limits, Bill Paley had to sell WTOP (AM, FM and TV) to the Washington Post, thereby losing what is now the top-billing station in the US. Of course, under Paley and his successors (instead of the Post, the Mormon Church and now Hubbard), WTOP would probably be in as big a mess as 1210. Meanwhile, without broadcast revenue to sustain it, the Bulletin ("In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin") is no more.

Julius: What "rumor" are you talking about now? Are you just making stuff up again? Besides, you have asked basically the same question dozens of times and people have answered it hundreds of times. Apparently, you post stuff and never bother to read the replies. Maybe it's time to start boycotting YOU.
 
FredLeonard said:
Wrong, David. CBS purchased WCAU (AM, FM and TV) from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in 1958. That would be 56 years ago, not 90.
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Sorry, I forgot about the roughly 12 years that WCAU radio was out of the CBS fold, between the time the Levys sold to the Record and when CBS essentially bought it back.

Still, I think the purchase has been pretty well amortized by now.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Sorry, I forgot about the roughly 12 years that WCAU radio was out of the CBS fold, between the time the Levys sold to the Record and when CBS essentially bought it back.

Still, I think the purchase has been pretty well amortized by now.
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As you point out, the Levy's owned WCAU. Not CBS.
 
FredLeonard said:
As you point out, the Levy's owned WCAU. Not CBS.
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But the ownership was interlocked with participation in the restructuring of what became CBS. Which is why I said "in the fold".
 
The Levy Brothers may have had an interlocking relationship with the Paley family but their station was not a CBS O&O. CBS did not participate in the sale or any proceeds from the sale. Maybe, as owners of a charter affiliate, one or both Levy brothers owned some CBS stock but that's about it.

A common mistake. Various articles claim WCAU was the first CBS owned station or the network's original flagship. WCAU was a United Independent Broadcasters/Columbia Phonograph affiliate before Paley bought in. Originally, the network did not have a "flagship" but had its programs placed on WOR and WABC (which it eventually bought and renamed WCBS later).
 
FredLeonard said:
The Levy Brothers may have had an interlocking relationship with the Paley family but their station was not a CBS O&O. CBS did not participate in the sale or any proceeds from the sale. Maybe, as owners of a charter affiliate, one or both Levy brothers owned some CBS stock but that's about it.
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The Levy brothers were significant initial shareholders of CBS, so there was indeed interlocking ownership.

A common mistake. Various articles claim WCAU was the first CBS owned station or the network's original flagship.
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Since the network concept was very new, the idea of a "flagship" was also new. It's hard to find any reference to the term until the early 30's, in fact.
 
I am speaking of articles on the history of CBS or WCAU written after the fact.

The fact that station owners hold some stock in the network does not qualify as interlocking ownership and more importantly does not make the station they own a network O&O. At no time did CBS operate the Levy Brothers' WCAU (as NBC operated GE and Westinghouse stations when those companies were major owners of RCA). Nor was CBS listed as licensee.
 
FredLeonard said:
The fact that station owners hold some stock in the network does not qualify as interlocking ownership and more importantly does not make the station they own a network O&O.
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I never said WCAU was a network O&O, which, again, is why I referred to "... the fold".

When ownership is co-mingled and one exerts influence over the other, that ownership is interlocked. For example, if I own a uniform supply company and also have a significant position in a hotel chain and use that position to get the hotels to use my uniforms, that is an example of and interlocked relationship.

Or do you think that the Levys never spoke to the Paley family?
 
FredLeonard said:
NBC operated GE and Westinghouse stations when those companies were major owners of RCA
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Hmmm....Westinghouse & GE owned and operated their stations quite separately from NBC, however stations from both companies were always NBC affiliates.

DavidEduardo said:
Or do you think that the Levys never spoke to the Paley family?
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I think we all know that Paley was from Philadelphia, and as you said, the Levy's were big investors when CBS went public, as well as related to Paley, so WCAU had a special place in Paley's heart.
 
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DavidEduardo said:


I never said WCAU was a network O&O, which, again, is why I referred to "... the fold".

When ownership is co-mingled and one exerts influence over the other, that ownership is interlocked. For example, if I own a uniform supply company and also have a significant position in a hotel chain and use that position to get the hotels to use my uniforms, that is an example of and interlocked relationship.

Or do you think that the Levys never spoke to the Paley family?
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Now you are really tap dancing. CBS did not own the station in any way, shape or form. Paley may have been buddies with the guys who did own it. But the corporation he controlled did not own it, and did not profit from its sale to the Record (which almost immediately folded and sold out to the Bulletin).
 
TheBigA said:
Hmmm....Westinghouse & GE owned and operated their stations quite separately from NBC, however stations from both companies were always NBC affiliates.
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Wrong! Once again, you don't know what you are talking about. There is a reason why the seemingly redundant phrase "owned and operated" is used. It's because when the rules were different, and networks operated some stations they did not own and even owned a few stations they did not operate. Prior to the break up of the RCA trust and the chain broadcasting report, NBC, a subsidiary of RCA, operated Westinghouse and GE owned stations, as well as RCA owned stations - plus some others.

Do your homework before you mouth off for a change.
 
FredLeonard said:
Do your homework before you mouth off for a change.
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Fine...show me. In my reading of Erik Barnouw's book on the history of radio, he talks about the relationship among GE, Westinghouse, and RCA, but never in his book "A Tower In Babel" does he say that NBC operated the GE or Westinghouse stations. In fact, he goes into great detail about specific GE and Westinghouse employees who were involved in daily station operations.
 
FredLeonard said:
Now you are really tap dancing. CBS did not own the station in any way, shape or form.
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I never said they owned WCAU. I said they had interlocking ownership and common interests and were, in certain areas, indistinguishable from one another. The Levys owned a signifcant part of CBS, as did the Paley family, father and son. What was good for one was beneficial to the other.

Paley may have been buddies with the guys who did own it.
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They pretty much ran the initial CBS out of there while hunting for NYC digs and more affiliates. And each family had investments in the other.

But the corporation he controlled did not own it,
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But it did own part of it for some time.

and did not profit from its sale to the Record (which almost immediately folded and sold out to the Bulletin).
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By that time, there was an FCC and it appears that the transfer to the Record was never closed on and the deal was just passed on to the Bulletin who then had to decide which FM and which TV to keep as well.
 
TheBigA said:
Fine...show me. In my reading of Erik Barnouw's book on the history of radio, he talks about the relationship among GE, Westinghouse, and RCA, but never in his book "A Tower In Babel" does he say that NBC operated the GE or Westinghouse stations. In fact, he goes into great detail about specific GE and Westinghouse employees who were involved in daily station operations.
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Keep in mind that Fred is the poster who argued that Scott Shannon should not be on CBS-FM as he had no AM Top 40 experience and was just an AOR jock from WPLJ.
 
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