This is a story with a few moving parts.
In the beginning was NBC’s Blue Network. FDR saw that David Sarnoff was bad and NBC Blue was expelled from the NBC Kingdom. The guy who made Lifesafers and ran Rexall Drugs entered the radio business and CBS’s WABC became WCBS – and ABC Radio was born. A few years later, ABC would start to dabble in the TV business, but would stay #3 in TV for a long long time.
Then an unexpected thing happened – Gordon Gekko invented the leveraged buyout and a tiny media company called Cap Cities swallowed ABC for $3.5 billion. [Add your CIA conspiracy here]
Turn forward to 1996 – the era of TV and Radio deregulation begins. Walt Disney’s company (who owned much of his fame to NBC and Sunday nights and helping RCA sell color TVs) decided it wanted to be a bigger fish, so paid $19 billion to buy Cap Cities/ABC (TV and Radio). Cable TV was becoming a big deal, and ABC saw lots of opportunity.
In 2005, Disney/ABC decided it was tired of the radio business as the prices of station licenses were plummeting. Citadel Broadcasting stepped up and bid $2.7 billion, a combination of borrowed money and Disney holding stock in their joint stepchild. Disney retained the stations airing its “Disney Channel” (stations targeted at children that play Disney’s artist music and promote all things Disney) and several stations carrying ESPN. Citadel failed in 2009 and was “restructured”. (ABC Radio News is still produced by Disney’s ABC TV News division)
So now, Disney is turning off the Disney Channel radio stations. Four Disney AM’s went dark Thursday. Disney has been indicating a willingness to sell these stations for a few years, but there are few buyers these days for expensive AM stations.
If you see a big future in AM radio and have lots of money to gamble, here is a list of Radio Disney stations – call them up and make an offer – who knows? “They” say the best time to buy is when everyone thinks you’re crazy if you buy.
It always got to me about these Disney radio stations all the one’s I ever saw were on AM. What kid listens to AM these days?
If I recall, the whole point of the Radio Disney thing was to get a cheap foothold on the radio listening audience, then try to catapult to FM. Unfortunately for them, the latter part never materialized. When I went to college, there was a station in central New York that used to broadcast the format on FM. They got virtually no reading in the Arbitrons, and they later got “MOViN;” they’ve now gone country. Also, consider the fact that AM radio still had a bit of credibility back in the mid-90s, even moreso than today. There weren’t that many FM-only radios back then, and there are now, especially in iPhones and the like. Now, could they go through the process of acquiring and/or applying for AM-to-FM translators? Sure, and they are with ESPN stations, but at this point, I don’t think that with the numerous other options for a national network (streaming, satellite) that they think that route is worth it for a niche network. Ten years ago, they probably would have done that.
Disney was somewhat fortunate that their business model didn’t call for having to sell advertising to outside sources– they just used their media to advertise their own products and wrote off the operating expenses as advertising expenses. That’s part of the reason why they’re still around and competitors such as Radio AAHS only lasted a few years.