Salem is a for-profit publicly traded corporation that runs several networks of Owned and Operated radio stations – one is purely religious programming using third parties to make the contributions tax deductible even though Salem is not tax exempt. They also run the conservative talk lineup which airs onh their network of mostly AM radio stations, and a modest syndication effort. (Bennett, Gallagher, Medved, Prager, Hewitt…
But in the last few years, Salem started to make money from web sites and book publishing – most well known is Townhall.com
A day or two ago there was a news item that they were buying twitchy.com from Michelle Malkin and today’s news is they are acquiring RedState.com with a lot of PR spin that they are consolidating as many Conservative web sites under their brand as they can. Maybe once that happens, we’ll finall learn the truth about Barack Obmana’s birth certificate (the woman who certified his purported certificate just died in a plane crash!)
Tangentially related, Guardian Angels Founder and Salem radio host Curtis Sliwa was just in court trying to get his child support payments reduced. He claims that he is now making only a small fraction of his former WABC income – he says his income is now only $150k. 10 or 15 years ago, a major market personality would typically make a million dollars.
Interesting that they don’t have a Salem station in Charlotte? Its a pretty good size market, and in the Bible belt. They have one in Louisville but not Charlotte.
They have a weak station in DC cause it’s hard to hear out in Leesburg VA.
parrott
Back at the tail end of the merger orgy, Salem employed a guy who had worked for Clear Channel who knew how to wheel and deal and trade stations and make money from moving transmitter sites around, upgrading signals, etc. WIND in Chicago and WNYM in New York were his work. He was let go and their network expansion stopped. They came close to going under at one point, but they were able to renegotiate their debt.
Most of their talk stations have a 1% share or less. They realized they can make more money from selling Townhall.com subscriptions than running Smokey Bear PSAs.
Wasn’t it at one time Smokey The Bear?
Don’t make me pull out the Smokey Bear FAQ.
I think we have a lot of traditionalists on here who want “Smokey The Bear to prevent Forest Fires,” not Smokey Bear preventing Wild Fires….
LOL color me traditional,
parrott
Smokey The Bear died with “The Ukraine”. Now it is Smokey Bear and Ukraine. Don’t cry for me, Ukraine, we still have “The Bahamas”. I think that is the only country… and maybe The Grenadines. 😉
Since it is in the news, the place with the riots is “Ukraine”, not “The Ukraine”
I thought place was The Venezuela.
Curiously my friend from Skokie who married a woman from Ukraine calls it The Ukraine (we were talking about current events last night)
Curtis does morning AND afternoon drive for Salem’s WNYM in the New York market. Imagine how low the pay must be for off-air personnel!
From memory, I think he is on the hook for $22k a month in spousal and child support.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/curtis-sliwa-pay-13-000-month-article-1.1542705
When a gay marriage breaks up, is there alimony? And which man pays? Or only if they have children?
With the current direction of our country, my guess is that the taxpayers will subsidize their alimony (to make up for past discrimination, of course).
How much is he paying Kuby? 😉
The George Weber story is an item all by itself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksbvHmj6RH4
Kuby showed up on WOR for a while. I don’t know what he’s up to. Kuby represented the 9/11 bombers after their first attempt and gladly takes on cases defending organized crime.
I never have much cared for Sliwa, but that may just my dislike of New York in general.
GW story…
http://www.brooklyndaily.com/stories/2011/46/all_gaveltogavel_2011_11_18_bk.html
Salem is waking from its slumber.
All of this buying up right wing media properties, and putting a Premiere host on an O&O major market station are big signals.
The big news is they just created the new position of President. Salem is still run by the two co-founders – Ed Atsinger is 72 and Stu Epperson is 75.
The new guy who is surely being groomed to be the second generation is Dr. Frank Wright. He was the head of the National Religious Broadcasters and currently runs the Center for Christian Statesmanship. The Center is named after D. James Kennedy, a long time televangelist who died in 2007. Expect to here more about the United States being a “Christian Nation” with some confusion over whether the Constitution has 10 amendments or 10 Commandments.
The Salem talk lineup has been the “soft sell”. The hosts clearly all have strong religious faith, but the don’t generally whip out the Bible to justify their point of view and on’t ask you to send in money to ask God to heal you. That’s the role of their other religious teaching network.
I sense the Salem lineup is about to change. Phil Boyce, formerly of WABC and then TRN works now for Salem. He is the guy who got Hannity and Levin on the network.
Lew Dickey of Cumulus was in Chicago yesterday talking to the staff of WLS AM & FM. CEOs don’t visit in person just to be social. Hannity is leaving in two weeks, Don Wade and Jake Hartford are dead.
My guess is Cumulus is about to sell (or at least lease) WLS to Clear Channel. I’m way out on a limb with that prediction, but it makes sense. Chicago is too big of a market to ignore. A big part of the $2.2 billion in debt owed by Cumulus was to buy these heritage AM stations that Lew Dickey’s management is driving into the ground by irrational cost cutting that you might do in a failing small market, but not in the biggest markets in the country. Roll over you debt means you’re inviting the bankers to tell you even more bluntly what you are going to do.