Today is the Big Day.
Randy Michaels (aka Benjamin Homel) is moving at lightning speed. With backing from a Chicago Private Equity firm, He has scooped up 3 major market FM stations and in about a month is ready to put 2 of them on the air as All News FM stations – a very bold move.
WWWN-FM is on the air in Chicago (the former WKQX) and WEMP-FM is on the air in New York.
In response, CBS in Chicago has taken down its “Fresh” FM music station and converted it to a simulcast of the WBBM-AM. This is a an evil plan for Michaels 🙂 WBBM-AM is a very profitable station for CBS. When people in Chicago get used to listening to All News on FM (even if not to WWWN), those car radios are not going to ever go back to the AM dial. Who stands to lose from that? WGN-AM owned by Tribune who recently fired him. Tribune owns no FM stations and is prohibited by cross ownership rules from buying one. The only reason they have WGN is it is a very old station and is grandfathered in (like WTMJ in Milkaukee and WSB in Atlanta)
WLS-AM is also going to be hurt a lot by this – Ciitadel (soon to be Cumulus) does have a WLS-FM that could become an AM simulcast, but they are not likely to do that.
“What the world needs now is news, more news… it’s the one thing there’s just too little of… it’s not just for some, it’s for everyone….”
The third station in the deal was WLUP-FM in Chicago – it’s still under the radar what it will become. Maybe he’s put together Steve Dahl and Garry Meier and Mancow and relive the 1990s.
http://www.fmnewschicago.com/
This is their web site – they want to know:
1) What do worry about on your way to work?
2) Things you look forward to on your way home from work?
3) Will you listen to a news station managed by an attractive woman?
Speak with your heart.
“They” said it was going to be news targeted at women… looks like “they” were right
I don’t know, maybe its just me. But it seems whenever Cumulus buys a station, they seem to run it into the ground. Good programming goes away. They bought 4 stations here in the new river valley. The talk station got rid of Bill Bennett, but still have Rush limbaugh and crazy Shaun Hennity. Got rid of John Gibson in the evening.
Now its Dave Ramsey, Rush, Sean Hennity and Dennis miller. Dave Ramsey all weekend. Boring.
The sport station got rid of Sporting News Radio and went 70’s mellow music. Don’t know what was up with that.
The FM talk station went sports, Fox sports and that has to be the biggest load of crap there ever was on your radio. You can’t get sport scores at all. You don’t really know what they are ever talking about on Fox sports radio! It sounds like one big commercial for steroids or something..
The country music station use to have live announcers up until midnight. Now its Rowdy Yates something satellite from Nashville . It sux, just commercials.
Even cumulus stations in other cities play too many wierd info-mercial commercials.
They are like the ‘Big-Lots’ of radio or something. They just don’t sound right. You can always tell a cumulus radio station as soon as you hear advertising for ‘Sales associates’ and their ‘Big-Time’ careers. I can handle WSBA York PA in small amounts, they are not too bad.
If you are getting a cumulus station in your town, you are not getting much, just my opinion.
I don’t know the name of the movie, but in it Danny DeVito comes to the small town and tells the people of a factory that they’re going to all take a pay cut or the factory is shutting down.
“Foreign money” is not allowed to own U.S. Radio Stations – so they funnel the money through Private Equity firms to hide the ownership – instead of buying the stations, they “lend” the money to “American” owners with the understanding that the PE firms are running the show, but for FCC purposes the “Americans” are running it, if anyone asks.
Then the PE firms strip out all the costs (that’s the theme of all the things in your list), make the company appear profitable, then resell the company to someone else (probably going public again).
Being “Private” also hides their business dealings from the FCC and exempts them from Sarbaines/Oxley’s requirements for accurate accounting and the owners not plundering the company for their own personal benefit.
Mitt Romney was one of the earliest players in the Private Equity game – he founded Bain Capital in the 1980s, which controls half of Clear Channel. My guess is at the time, it was charged with investing money for the Harvard Endowment, which had grown so large that it was running out of things it could buy in the stock market. But don’t ask Harvard to lower tuition!
Other People’s Money
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c