Other than the NAB and station owners pushing for AM inclusion, there is not much in the US either. Politicians see no downside, and would love to punish big business auto makers, so there is an upside for them and no negatives.
The real issue in in the US is that many public companies have not made adjustments in asset valuations that are adequate for the loss on any closure or sale. The true impairment charge would affect current P&L's when they least need that.
Zimmer is pretty old, so I don't see expansion for him... I don't know whether he has family or associates to keep up the effort, which is not improving with age.
It's not just that, but if he did not get the 96.7 FM repeater for Toronto, he too also threatened to shut down his AM station.
He reminds me a lot of Saul Levine in the present day, someone who has already accomplished a lot with nothing more to prove, and can run his two radio stations and two TV channels for the heck of it.
It's not just the land value, it's also the ever increasing cost of maintaining old antiquated towers.
The article that Theater linked says it all. Advertising going to Google and the like. Local media having less and less revenue.
But Bell Media has over 100 stations in 58 markets in Canada., which is large for a Canadian radio operation.
It is a reflection of the continued decline of AM to the point that there are few opportunities for profit on such stations. We knew the end was near for several of the Bell stations when they put an all-comedy format on them, an obvious placeholder while they figured out what to do with them.
Don't forget that right into the early 90's AM radio in Canada was protected. There was a rule that FM had to play 49% non hits on top of (back then) 30% Canadian content music. (now 35-40%)
The comedy and business AM stations I can understand. But we keep being told here on RD that sports talkers on AM do well even with no ratings. Because they have a lock on potential male listeners. And Edmonton is a fairly big sports town. CFRN was the only sports station in the market, at least as far as I can ascertain.
That is the way media buying in the US takes place in the US, a very large nation with lots of segmentation in ad buys. I suspect that there is a lot less "Sports Marketing" budget assignment in Canada and all sports, available in just a handful of markets, is not given a specific budget there.
But name the Canadian markets with all-sports stations. Very few, and compared to the US with well over 100 and there is just not a well defined segment worthy of separate budget assignments.
Just based on the number of stations makes me think so... and they also have a francophone province, further fragmenting the sports audience.
Vancouver has one, CISL 650, and Calgary has CFAC 960, I know that much. Not so sure about other Canadian cities. Vancouver and Calgary each have a CFL and NHL team, and they probably follow the Blue Jays, as I believe the Blue Jays are considered a national team in Canada.
One would think that if they were doing decently enough they could have diplexed with another AM station? is that done in Canada like it is here in the US?
At one point one could argue it's 2 1/2 sports stations in Toronto back when AM 640 had the hockey rights.
