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BREAK UP I-HEART!

Kelly A said:
Unfortunately that's a blanket statement which isn't true anymore. Small and medium market TV stations are being hit with very similar headwinds that radio is. Visit the Washington State TV section of this site, and witness how stations in smaller and mid markets are carrying newscasts from larger markets, or eliminating newscasts altogether.
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That is particularly true in less prosperous markets. Much of small market TV revenue comes from must-carry fees, and that is declining in cities where the recession has made many people cut their cable subscription.

In my market, Palm Spings, CA, which is rich and prosperous, the two main TV operators get more than half of their revenue from must-carry fees, as national and regional ad revenues are way off.
 
TheBigA said:
Keep in mind that the iHeart layoffs were made on a market-by-market basis. I studied the iHeart financials, and none of the savings from the layoffs went to pay off corporate debt. The $20 billion debt remained the same from 2008 until the bankruptcy. The layoffs were done locally because those markets didn't meet their sales targets. It's a similar situation happening now with Beasley. Some of their markets were unaffected by the layoffs.
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The iHeart bankruptcy was completed in the summer of 2019. The 1,500 person layoff I got blown out in was a few months AFTER the bankruptcy---January of 2020. And it was nationwide:

 
michael hagerty said:
The iHeart bankruptcy was completed in the summer of 2019. The 1,500 person layoff I got blown out in was a few months AFTER the bankruptcy---January of 2020. And it was nationwide:
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From what I can see, both iHeart and Cumulus continue to make staff adjustments following their bankruptcies. Now that they're each owned by creditors, they've been selling off assets and laying off staff based on terms of the bankruptcies. So even though their corporate bankruptcies were completed and approved, they're each continuing to make adjustments.
 
TheBigA said:
Keep in mind that iHeart owns Total News & Traffic, a locally based service that provides local news, traffic, and weather to radio stations in hundreds of cities.
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Ten years ago, my return to radio after my 30-year detour in TV news was doing traffic for Total Traffic from its hub in Phoenix.

The markets I did traffic for? Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso and Salt Lake City.

Local newscasts on smaller market stations in Oregon and Washington state and all the iHeart stations in Alaska were coming out of the KFBK, Sacramento newsroom when I first arrived nine years ago, and as of the spring of 2019, KFI and KFBK were the only iHeart stations in California doing their own newscasts. All the other iHeart market stations that did news got them from either the KFBK newsroom or iHeart's Total Traffic center in Long Beach.
 
michael hagerty said:
Ten years ago, my return to radio after my 30-year detour in TV news was doing traffic for Total Traffic from its hub in Phoenix.
The markets I did traffic for? Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso and Salt Lake City.
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I think the Phoenix part of Total was originally Metro Traffic that was somehow combined with CBS, and then sold off in the mid 2000s. At some point CBS regionalized it into the hub system they have now. So much of traffic reporting was being done with local DOT cameras and very little was being done with actual internal market surveillance.
 
TheBigA said:
I think the Phoenix part of Total was originally Metro Traffic that was somehow combined with CBS, and then sold off in the mid 2000s. At some point CBS regionalized it into the hub system they have now. So much of traffic reporting was being done with local DOT cameras and very little was being done with actual internal market surveillance.
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Yep. In fact, iHeart bought Metro in 2012 and built space for them in the iHeart building near Sky Harbor Airport (Metro had been out in Scottsdale). It was after their arrival that I moved 30 feet across the room from traffic to news.

I think the only traffic that wasn't being done via ADOT cameras was for television, and I think that was just KTVK using its helicopter.
 
Kelly A said:
Unfortunately that's a blanket statement which isn't true anymore. Small and medium market TV stations are being hit with very similar headwinds that radio is. Visit the Washington State TV section of this site, and witness how stations in smaller and mid markets are carrying newscasts from larger markets, or eliminating newscasts altogether.
Click to expand...
Well, I’d wager that every TV market in the top 100 has live and local news.
 
michael hagerty said:
Yeah, but market 100 is Boise and the metro population is more than half a million.

You really need to get to market 165 or below (Abilene, Texas; Yuma, Arizona) to get below a quarter million people.
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Wheeling, WV has under 30,000 people and has a local news station. Steubenville, OH has a population under 20,000 and they have a local news station too. I am surprised because the Pittsburgh PA news comes in fine at both cities.
 
mohawk82 said:
Wheeling, WV has under 30,000 people and has a local news station. Steubenville, OH has a population under 20,000 and they have a local news station too. I am surprised because the Pittsburgh PA news comes in fine at both cities.
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Yes, but how much West Virginia or Ohio news do the Pittsburgh stations cover? This becomes the issue when you have a TV station in one state and a town in another.

A classic example of that near me is South Lake Tahoe. It's 60 miles from Reno, Nevada and 105 miles from Sacramento. The over the air signals they can get come from Reno. But when the cable company tried to swap out the Sacramento TV stations for the Reno equivalents, the customers went ape---because they live in CALIFORNIA. Their state government is in Sacramento. Their county government is in Placerville (45 miles east of Sacramento). And Reno stations are too busy covering their own county and state government.

So the cable company relented. When you cross the street in South Lake Tahoe and cross the line into Nevada, then you see the Reno stations.
 
michael hagerty said:
Yes, but how much West Virginia or Ohio news do the Pittsburgh stations cover? This becomes the issue when you have a TV station in one state and a town in another.

A classic example of that near me is South Lake Tahoe. It's 60 miles from Reno, Nevada and 105 miles from Sacramento. The over the air signals they can get come from Reno. But when the cable company tried to swap out the Sacramento TV stations for the Reno equivalents, the customers went ape---because they live in CALIFORNIA. Their state government is in Sacramento. Their county government is in Placerville (45 miles east of Sacramento). And Reno stations are too busy covering their own county and state government.

So the cable company relented. When you cross the street in South Lake Tahoe and cross the line into Nevada, then you see the Reno stations.
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My parents and grandparents were Pirate fans, so they watched Pittsburgh news in WV for years.
 
mohawk82 said:
Wheeling, WV has under 30,000 people and has a local news station.
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Wheeling in television is an 11 county market with 313,000 people with parts in OH, WV and PA. It has 313,000 people.

Wheeling is a radio market of 140,000 consisting of three adjacent counties. Both radio and TV "markets" are single counties or multiple county groups, not cities.
mohawk82 said:
Steubenville, OH has a population under 20,000 and they have a local news station too. I am surprised because the Pittsburgh PA news comes in fine at both cities.
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Steubenville is part of the Wheeling TV market.
 
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