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WABC's Return to Ratings Top Ten

I would assume the $12.5M purchase price on the internet is a fairly accurate fact. David, did you quote (or know) an approximate recent billing amount? I tell you guys, I forgot about this until you brought it up here. Is there anyone on here that lives in the city proper and listens? Regardless of content/politics, and I have not listened, does it at least reflect the vibe/sound and realness of NYC? I can imagine that it is hard to listen if you have never spent time there. And I don’t mean a week of “vacation?” Is it possible that Catsimatidis knows what his “customers” want? Or basically doesn’t give a damn who doesn’t shop with him? This is really interesting. Great and lively comments. When is the last time this conversation was had about another station on this board? Wow.
 
Tibbs4 said:
I would assume the $12.5M purchase price on the internet is a fairly accurate fact. David, did you quote (or know) an approximate recent billing amount? I tell you guys, I forgot about this until you brought it up here. Is there anyone on here that lives in the city proper and listens? Regardless of content/politics, and I have not listened, does it at least reflect the vibe/sound and realness of NYC? I can imagine that it is hard to listen if you have never spent time there. And I don’t mean a week of “vacation?” Is it possible that Catsimatidis knows what his “customers” want? Or basically doesn’t give a damn who doesn’t shop with him? This is really interesting. Great and lively comments. When is the last time this conversation was had about another station on this board? Wow.
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Remember that "sounding like New York" is very difficult to define as the market is a huge hunk of NE New Jersey, the counties up the Hudson north of Manhattan and the Boroughs, a chunk of CT and all of Long Island. Less than half the market is "The City".

So a station can't appeal to "New York" but to a specific segment of the market.
 
HippieGuy said:
WABC is celebrating its 100th year this year.....Oct 01, 1921 it went on air
Growing up in NYC in the 50's and 60's, I remember it as an early Rock Roll station
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Early top 40 stations were in the mid 50's. WABC did not become Top 40 until the 60's. WABC came late to Top 40, in fact.
 
Appreciate that David. I know there is not one (or even 100 exacts.) I am intrigued by all of this. You have a top 200 most wealthy American doing a radio show in 2022. Who else in the top 500 other than BigA would do that? I remember talking about all this back in 2019 when Cumulus sold WABC. But, I quickly forgot how unique and “small town” it felt in just a giant city. I just looked at the schedule online. I think I will have to listen in just to see how wild this is. Maybe!! I guess I won’t win any friends at Salem. Great comments on all the Inside happenings there. Man, see how boring VT radio is? Ya had to bring up Long Island, David. :)
 
DavidEduardo said:
Early top 40 stations were in the mid 50's. WABC did not become Top 40 until the 60's. WABC came late to Top 40, in fact.
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And they couldn’t run the format full-time until ABC split into four networks in 1968.

WMCA, WMGM and WINS had been successful much earlier with the format beforehand (Rick Sklar himself was at WINS prior to WABC).
 
WABC's ratings continue to trend upward, to a 4.3 in August. Even if they have mostly older demos, this still seems to be an impressive feat for an AM station.
InsideRadio mentions that WABC will be taking a break from politics tomorrow afternoon. Cousin Brucie will be playing the 60 year old album, Meet The Beatles. It helped popularize the band in the U.S.
 
Barry said:
InsideRadio mentions that WABC will be taking a break from politics tomorrow afternoon. Cousin Brucie will be playing the 60 year old album, Meet The Beatles. It helped popularize the band in the U.S.
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Here's the article in RadioInk. The article has some factual mistakes. It says: "About50 years ago, Cousin Brucie was one of the first DJs in the country to air The Beatles." About 50 years ago was 1972, and by then, The Beatles had broken up. The fact is that WABC was NOT one of the first stations to play the Beatles. There were several stations that played their music before they came to the US. That would have been almost 60 years ago. But here's the article anyway:

 
Barry said:
WABC's ratings continue to trend upward, to a 4.3 in August. Even if they have mostly older demos, this still seems to be an impressive feat for an AM station.
InsideRadio mentions that WABC will be taking a break from politics tomorrow afternoon. Cousin Brucie will be playing the 60 year old album, Meet The Beatles. It helped popularize the band in the U.S.
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If you had told me several years ago that WABC would be above a 4 share, even 6+, I would have laughed that ever being possible off. The demographics may not be the most desirable or desirable at all, it’s on a dying band, but they’ve clearly taken some listeners from other stations or brought some to the station that weren’t listening before. I can’t imagine the station is billing any less than it did under Cumulus.
 
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