Another of the gems from the Harold Camping empire is being sold. Chicago based Merlin Media is buying WKDN-FM in Philadelpia.
http://www.radio-info.com/news/merlin-media-buys-philadelphia-market-wkdn-1069
Harold Camping is the man who spent his life building the Family Radio Network. This Spring, following his belief that Jesus was returning on a specific date based on his extensive research of the Bible and numerology – he loaded up on debt to plaster the country with billboards and handouts declaring the time to repent was now.
Surely the people who loaned the money knew Family Radio was sitting on very valuable commercial band FM licenses in a number of major markets – and should the world not end, those stations could be sold for a fraction of their real value.
So former Jacor and Clear Channel head Rsndy Michaels has won the bidding war and will add the Philadelphia station to the collection of major market FM stations – probably an all news station to challenge CBS owned KYW.
With the coming election, all news stations may be a popular place to spend campaign money.
If WBBM in Chicago is a precedent, CBS may feel a need to blow up one of its Philadelphia area music FM stations to create KYW-FM. AM radio is on life support and may start receiving hospice care soon.
Philadelphia is not quite the powerhouse market as New York or Chicago – and CBS’s options are limited. They own WIP-FM that is doing Sports Talk, and WOGL-FM which is an Oldies music station (currently playing “holiday” music). Christmas season is an ideal time to to change radio formats – people get used to hearing Burl Ives and Bing Crosby singing about the annual Snow Festival and by January people forget what used to be on that station and you fired the DJs a month ago.
Philadelphia is the #7 largest market according to Arbitron, and KWY-AM has long held the #1 position. WOGL-FM is #4, WPHT-AM (home station of Michael Smirconish) is #17 and WIP-FM is #18
http://www.radio-info.com/markets/philadelphia
All together, CBS controls about 20% of the radio audience in the Philadelphia area.
The station being sold is a Class B 38,000 watt station (Class B is the middle range of station size)
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WKDN&service=FM&status=L&hours=U
Its signal reaches from Philadelphia to the south end of New York City on 106.9 Mhz. I’ve got to think the idea of increasing power or migrating the station a few miles to the North has at least entered people’s minds.
The nearest station on 106.9 is in Scranton, Pennsyvania. Next is a class A (A=small in FM) 4,500 watt station in Ocean City MD carrying a simulcast of the NPR station in Maryland.
Stations have to also protect their neighbors on adjacent frequencies (the further away the frequency, the protection distance grows smaller.
106.7 has stations in Cape May, NJ to the South, a station in Hershey PA, and WLTW-FM – Clear Channel’s station in New York City
107.1 has stations in Long Branch and Belvidere NJ and Federalsburg MD (to the South). The two NJ stations are Class A – Class A stations only have a protected contour radius of about 15 miles.
http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/spacing/index.html
The FM transmitter is currently located on the tower of WTMR-AM in Camden, NJ
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If that AM station looks pretty quiet, it is. It’s owned by George Beasley of Florida (the guy behind Beasley Broadcasting) and is being LMAed to a Catholic lay group from Rosemont, PA. It’s carrying the EWTN satellite programming, and appears to do a local program about once a month.
But the world DID end. Right?
I can’t prove that it didn’t
“The end of the world” was not what Harold Camping was predicting. He was predicting the Rapture.