The unwinding of the AM Radio Disney empire continues. Salem Broadcasting ended up buying the stations that were not “red hot” – for about 1/3 to 1/4th of what Disney paid 15 years ago.
Salem got the keys today for WWMI-AM 1380 in Saint Petersburg (Tampa), a retirement haven full of seniors ready to fleece of their savings. Salem is going with their “Biz” lineup
What’s really curious is they have Mr “No funny Biz” on from 6-9 Monday-Friday – Chris Markowski. He does a syndicated weekend show called Watchdog on Wall Street where he reams Wall Street for being crooks. Most of what he says is absolutely true. He is no apologist like Bob Brinker.
Except for the 5am hour, the station is not carrying Bloomberg. Beasley has a competing station it acquired from CBS that carries mostly Dave Ramsey and Ray Lucia.
Radio and Biz can be a toxic stew. More than a few local hosts ended up being fraudsters or ponzi scheme organizers. Radio stations like to disavow responsibility when their hosts wind up in jail. Running a “biz” station requires close supervision. Keep your powder dry!
Their schedule seems to be off by an hour. Only the panhandle is on Central time 😉
Dave Ramsey and Clark Howard – Ponzi schemes? Say it isn’t so 🙂
It’s the local guys that tend to be the sketchy ones.
Dave Ramsey’s business model is straight forward. Get people to dump all their debt by eating beans and rice for years – then once they are debt free, sign them up for massive amounts of life insurance they don’t need and the insurance agent sponsors the show on the local radio station.
Clark Howard is consumer advice, not investment advice. His show was cut down from 3 hours to 2 hours. If you want to find out which days have the lowest airplane fares, he’s your guy, but he doesn’t sell the tickets.
Markowski was on live for all three hours. Shockingly, he didn’t get a single phone call. It’s a safe bet you could count on one hand the number of listeners to a brand new over the air AM station that has been droning with teeny bopper Disney music for a decade
Salem’s Wall Street Business Network, not to be confused with the Wall Street Journal Business Network
http://salemmedia.com/stationcat/business-talk-the-wall-street-radio-network/
Ray Lucia used to do 3 hours (noon to 3 PM ET) on the BizTalk Radio Network. Now he does only 2 hours, and Salem carries only the first hour. His shows are available on podcast!
http://biztalkradio.com/Schedule