Details pf the sales from the FCC website:
https://licensing.fcc.gov/cdbs/CDBS...?appn=101761430&qnum=5040©num=1&exhcnum=1
Kerrville now has 24 local signals. 16 of those are not translators. When looking at the size of the market and number of stations seeking revenue locally, I feel Kerrville is incredibly over-radioed. Kerr County is only 52,000. Including Gillespie County (Fredericksburg) adds another 26,000. I consider both Kerrville and Fredericksburg as the local market as they're 16 miles from each other.
Retail sales for both Kerr and Gillespie Counties combined is only about $675,000,000. From what I have seen, in many small markets, radio can grab about $2.50 in advertising dollars from every $1,000 in retail sales. That would be about $6,000 a month per station if the share was distributed equally. Obviously there is no equal share and there are some stations that struggle.
With the number of signals, formats are certainly duplicated slicing a format's universe of listeners by number of options the listener has for a format.
KAXA is country, computer driven, and a very light spot load. At least it was when I listened, although that was early on.
You might be amazed at the price tag, thinking that is really cheap for such a busy town in a region that is growing like crazy. It's likely a pretty fair price.
The issue with radio in a market like radio is not comparing radio to radio but radio to all other advertising forms. When you look to what else a business can buy and the reach (or number of warm bodies) they can get, the random radio station doesn't really look that attractive unless you are pretty long established, have a good sales department and successful in your format. If you're not that long established station that is successful, it is a tough road: all local sales and more than often the smaller business that cannot afford the market leaders with a meaningful campaign. Even so, there's more than one station going after this finite number of businesses.
My point, $112,500 is cheap for any FM in any small market, really cheap. But getting that revenue is going to be a tougher fight than usual. I'd venture to say it would be easier to generate the same billing as an FM in, say, Junction or Mason than in Kerrville, and maybe with less work to do so. Let's hope the new owner has a great game plan and ample dollars to float the station for a while. In fact, I'm just guessing here, but I'd be shooting for $10,000-$12,000 a month for the station at this point. That's just a blind guess, having never seen their billing. They might be doing more or less than that, I don't know. Judging by the equipment inventory, I'm guessing they're not turning a profit or if they are, not much.
I base all of this on having worked for a Kerrville station where after the morning show I went out and sold all day. That was almost a quarter of a century ago, so Kerrville was very different then as was Fredericksburg. It wasn't a cakewalk then with 5 stations and about 40% of the population but very easy compared to today.
I was looking at buying a station a couple of years back. I looked at a station in a market almost the size of Kerr County. The market was just over $700,000,000 in retail sales. The market generates $1,680,000 in radio revenue split among 10 stations (7 full power and 3 translators). In that market, the heritage AM & FM got $1,000,000. The other long established stations billed $240,000 and $220,000 respectively. The remaining three fought over the remaining $220,000 and the station I was looking at nabbed $130,000 of that. In fact, that $130,000 station. In my analysis of the station's potential, I determined how much revenue was generated in the market per listener. This $130,000 station was doing almost 1.5 times per listener in billing, so they had little room for growth in the short term with their format, a format not duplicated in the market.
