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WBRU's Sale Coming Soon

J

Jacko

Here's an interesting article posted 7/19/17 on Providence Online's website: http://providenceonline.com/stories/radio-silence,24147

As a long time listener to 95.5 WBRU, I'm sad to see them go and hope they don't get scooped up by one of the corporate giants. I suppose the best we can hope for is for another independent/small company to buy them and keep them nearly the same, or for RIPR to buy them.

Jacko
 
From what I've seen, online replacements for on-air college stations have not been successful. First of all, playing music online is more expensive than on-air, because of different royalty structures. Second of all, online radio competes against a lot more stations. Once they go online, they'll find the only people who will listen are the people who work there.

There are lots of ways to handle this. Yale still owns its radio station but leases it to a commercial operation. Princeton's WPRB is perhaps one of the best examples of how an Ivy League college has been able to keep its commercial station student run. But it takes a commitment from alumni to make it happen. I'm told Harvard is also very successful.
 
Maybe Full Power Radio can buy it. They own the Modern Rock station in Hartford (104.1). Along with 5 stations in New London (3 Regular stations, 2 that are translators of HD signals). Plus the Oldies station in Hartford (990 and its 96.1 Translator), the Spanish Station in Hartford (which is on 104.1 HD2 and translators in Bolton, Waterbury, Bridgeport, and New London), the Oldies Station and its translator in Westerly (1180/104.3), the Spanish Station in Providence (100.3), and The Oldies Station and Spanish Station with their translators in Springfield (1270/100.1 and 1490/104.5)
 
Marginal signal? It booms in loud and clear all the way up to Worcester even stopping when I use the scan button in my car.
 
CTListener said:
What are the chances that EMF winds up being the mystery buyer and takes the station remote-fed CCM?
Click to expand...

If they did buy it, the could sell or shut down 88.1 in Westerly. Westerly is within the purple circle on the coverage map on Radio-Locator. They might be able to get away with it being a marginal Boston-area affiliate as Brookline is within the purple circle.

https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=WBRU-FM
 
95.5 as K-Love would get at least a fringe CCM signal into parts of the Boston market for the first time. Boston, at this point, is more or less the only market I can think of with no CCM signal at all. That said, the 95s in Boston are crowded with WHRB, WBRU, WZID, and WATD, but 95.5 is a solid enough signal for dedicated listeners to find to the south and west of the city.

As for 88.1/104.7... there's always Air 1.

I don't like it. But it would make a lot of sense for EMF.
 
Radio Insight is reporting that KLOVE will be coming to the signal very soon and that Brown has applied for the WLVO call letters for 95.5fm
 
I'm saddened that WBRU is going away. I am also very upset that K-Love will take up an otherwise good signal. It's too bad that Hall didn't buy the station. A sad day in Rhode Island radio history.
 
MarcB said:
WBRU is not going away. It's moving to an LPFM at 101.1 FM.
Click to expand...

The benefits to the university are that an LPFM is still accessible on the standard FM radio dial. It's not an online station, which many other universities have done. It's non-commercial. It's signal is limited to the area around the university. And it will be much cheaper to run and maintain. I'd expect to see more colleges do this moving forward.
 
ScottBurns said:
No one will be able to hear the LP station outside of a few neighborhoods in Providence
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Which is fine for the students and faculty, who are paying for it.

The station currently streams online, so anyone outside the immediate area can listen to the online stream.

What most other colleges have done is shut down broadcast completely. This is better than that.
 
ScottBurns said:
I'm saddened that WBRU is going away. I am also very upset that K-Love will take up an otherwise good signal. It's too bad that Hall didn't buy the station. A sad day in Rhode Island radio history.
Click to expand...

The marketplace... meaning the listeners... seem to have determined that the WBRU format was no longer viable. On the other hand, the K-Love one is.
 
K-Love is funded by donations. It doesn't use the free market model that other commercial stations use. If it did, there's not even a remote possibility that it would survive in the Providence market.
 
ScottBurns said:
K-Love is funded by donations. It doesn't use the free market model that other commercial stations use. If it did, there's not even a remote possibility that it would survive in the Providence market.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the alternative format doesn't sell well. Even in markets where it gets great ratings, the format underperforms other genres. This is obviously why the WBRU board voted to sell the station. I expect that had it sold to another commercial broadcaster, they'd have made some changes in the format.
 
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