theice said:
There's a group of AM stations in SW Florida that are technically challenged. They are off the air constantly or distorted, hard to hear poorly run etc. but they still sell a good number of commercials. I don't know how radio sales works but it would seem that people wouldn't buy from this mess yet they do. Why is that?
Do you know if they are all co-owned? If so does the cluster own FM stations also?
What happens in a lot of situations like this is that you sell the FM stations, the AM is just
an extra for the advertiser.
In other words if they sell a commercial to a business on their FM signals, they often use the
AM station as an added benefit to buy. They can usually squeeze an extra buck in on the sale, by
offering to run it on AM as well. So the advertiser may not care about the AM, their in it for the
FM, and anything that comes from the AM'S is a bonus.
If no FM is involved, it is most likely that their just selling the AM as a group.
Are most of the ads you are hearing national advertisers like Geico and Walmart, or for local
stores or services? If they are national commercials they might be selling these commercials
for multiple markets, and don't know or care much about the stations your listening too.
It is about the same theory as I mentioned with the FM signals. They may own stations in Tampa
and thats what the advertisers is concerned with, and your market may be an afterthought.
Since you said these are challenged signals, one of these two scenarios is probably the most
likely.