What's Next for 50,000 Watt 1200 WXKS?

How many formats has iHeart tried on this station? Progressive Talk, Tropical, Conservative Talk, All Comedy (Matty's Funnies) and since 2013, it's been Bloomberg Radio's Business Format. But not for long.

I wonder who pulled the plug? Did Bloomberg believe 1330 + the 106.1 translator would make a better Boston location for its format? Or did iHeart tell Bloomberg, find another Boston affiliate, because we have other plans for 1200? iHeart still provides a home for Bloomberg in the San Francisco market on 960 KNEW.

The Boston market has six fulltime 50,000 watt stations: 680, 830, 850, 1030, 1200 and 1510, second only to NYC, which has seven. Only 1030 and 680 are doing well. I thought Bloomberg is a great format since, even with so-so ratings, you can market a small but affluent audience to blue-chip advertisers.

So what's left for 1200 to try? All infomercials, around the clock?

For the time being at least 1510 has 0 watts.

1510, and I would opine 1200 too, may have 50kw authorizations, but once you get that high up in the band, the wattage is needed to get the equivalent coverage of say 5KW on 590

IMHO it is WBZ AM and WRKO that are the dominant stations on the band, and the rest are a waste of electricity.

MRBIboredop said:

1510, and I would opine 1200 too, may have 50kw authorizations, but once you get that high up in the band, the wattage is needed to get the equivalent coverage of say 5KW on 590

IMHO it is WBZ AM and WRKO that are the dominant stations on the band, and the rest are a waste of electricity.

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WJIB isn't a waste of electricity. Their following may be small (and generally older than desired commercial demos), but they love and support it.

Well, it turns out Bloomberg was leasing the 1200 frequency from iHeart, according to Tom Taylor's newsletter. So Bloomberg saw a better opportunity to have a real FM frequency, 106.1, for its business news programming, even if it's only 99 watts on a 837 foot HAAT tower. In today's radio landscape, 99 watts on FM beats 50,000 watts on AM. Bloomberg also exchanges an HD channel on 94.5 (iHeart's WJMN) for one on 92.9 (Beasley's WBOS).

I guess Bloomberg leases those other stations in SF and DC, 960 in the Bay Area, leased from iHeart, and 99.1 in DC, leased from CBS. To have outlets in these cities with sizable financial headquarters, Bloomberg pays a local operator for a signal. Perhaps Bloomberg pays SiriusXM for its channel on that service too?

At one time, Bloomberg was aggressively trying to get local stations around the country to become affiliates. A boss of mine left to become Bloomberg's head of affiliate relations some years ago. I know of a few AM stations that were running Bloomberg's 5am hour as a lead-in to their local morning show. I believe Salem uses a few hours of Bloomberg in slots it can't sell on its "Business" AM stations (but are really brokered stations with a "money and business" theme). For a brief time, while KGO San Francisco was trying to be an All-News station, it was running Bloomberg overnight. And for a while, there was one fulltime affiliate in the Burlington VT-Plattsburgh NY market. (Fulltime but on a day-only station.) Those are the only affiliates I know of that Bloomberg doesn't pay for a 24/7 outlet.

I-Heart's WPOP 1410 in Hartford (eventually 100.9 FM) airs Bloomberg 15 hours/week. I don't know what it consists of, but it's on Noon-3PM Monday-Friday. That "train wreck" of a station is a mix of talk, business talk, and Sports talk/Play by Play.

6AM-10AM The Vinnie Penn Project (from WELI in New Haven. The 9AM hour is exclusively on WPOP).
10AM-Noon The Financial Exchange
Noon-3PM Bloomberg
3PM-6PM Howie Carr (I don't understand why a Hartford station would carry this show)
6PM-9PM Mark Levin
9PM-Midnight America Tonight Buck Sexton
Midnight-6AM Fox Sports Radio

Play-by-Play: AHL Wolfpack Hockey, AA Minor League Baseball Hartford Yard Goats, College Sports: CCSU Blue Devils

Howie is pretty much a New England phenomenon even if parts of CT seem like an extension of NY (as in sports fandom).Burlington VT to Cape Cod, Hartford to Bangor... NH, Worc, etc. Howie does a lot of Boston/MA talk in final hour (6-7p) but POP is gone by then

Eli is correct, I should have included WJIB as a great station, they are not dominant, but they are important and I owe Bob Bittner an apology.

MRBIboredop said:

1510, and I would opine 1200 too, may have 50kw authorizations, but once you get that high up in the band, the wattage is needed to get the equivalent coverage of say 5KW on 590

IMHO it is WBZ AM and WRKO that are the dominant stations on the band, and the rest are a waste of electricity.

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They could put some national format on KOX and bring the talk format back to 1200. Gives Rush/Beck/Hanity/ etc ... a more competitive home in Boston.

I forget how much money Iheart spent on upgrading 1200, and I wonder if they've even recouped their costs.

Eli Polonsky said:

WJIB isn't a waste of electricity. Their following may be small (and generally older than desired commercial demos), but they love and support it.

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Same goes for WEZE, WROL and WUNR -- the demos may not be commercially desirable, but the programming on all three is valued by those listeners.

The IDs etc are mentioning the Beasley and iHR stations running Bloomberg but in 90 days or so there should be something new on 1200 and 94.5 HD2

I think they'll go syndicated conservative talk with WTAGs Jim Polito in AM drive. He already is simulcast on WHYN in Springfield and is known to Boston audiences through his time at Fox 25.

CTListener said:

Same goes for WEZE, WROL and WUNR -- the demos may not be commercially desirable, but the programming on all three is valued by those listeners.

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I consider these stations the equivalent of a function hall.

They don't create the programming, they are just providing the facility to someone else who is.

Like a function hall that does a wedding, a quincenera. a graduation. and a mercy meal.

All they do is provide the facility to whoever wants to use it.

So, in radio these stations are basically running infomercials, and simply provide the facility, they don't program it, and it doesn't matter if anyone/no one is listening.

So, they operate outside of the realm I consider "broadcasting".

DavidEduardo said:

So the affiliates of CBS and the Red and Blue webs of the 30's were not "broadcasting" since most of the programming came from"someone else"?

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A game of semantics...but I'll play along.

They weren't selling blocks of time to the highest bidder....they were, as you say "affiliates" programs aired through an affiliation which were programmed for the most audience.

And while they were airing over the local facility, the local facility more than likely sold spots and had an interest in getting the most audience, so they could charge the most for spots, etc.

In the leased time scenario, no one has to even be listening.

However, in the leased time environment....voices can get on the air that wouldn't normally be able to.....so I suppose that's a plus in some ways.

But that also white-supremacists to get a platform:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Turner#Early_career

"Harold Charles "Hal" Turner (born March 15, 1962) is an American white nationalist, Holocaust denier,[1] and blogger from North Bergen, New Jersey. In August 2010, he was convicted for making threats against three federal judges with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals"

"Turner became a solo host, purchasing a time slot on shortwave radio station WBCQ, over which he broadcast for approximately four years. "