Posts Tagged ‘WQHZ’

California dreamings

August 13th, 2011 joel

Just got back from a whirlwind week in mostly southern California with my family. We put on 1100 miles on the rental, visited 6 media markets, read the USA Today and Orange County Register…and are glad to be home. Let me share some media randomness with you based on the trip:

    •  Add KFI/Los Angeles to my Top 10 radio stations in America. They have captured how to make talk radio move quickly and sound current for young audiences. Local bumpers all sounded like we were listening to Z102.3 instead of a sleepy talk station. Breaks were heavily caffeinated: fast news, weather, traffic, getting back into a syndicated show like Rush right at the last second, maximizing local sales opportunities. Exciting to hear, and right on the money with what Randy Michaels is trying to pull off with the new Merlin stations in NY and Chicago
    • Why doesn’t PennDOT offer traffic cams in our District 1? Having those CalTrans cameras all over the local news lead-in to the TODAY show and throughout really help commuters
    • Erie holds it’s own when it comes to smaller market TV news. Fresno news was pretty unfortunate.
    • Not to be mean, but some of the news personalities on LA TV are starting to look like that Bill Hader character on SNL, Herb Welsh, the old news reporter. Got to be tough for a young person to break into mega-market TV these days.

  • Love how the Orange County Register’s website has breakouts by local towns. I was able to find out crime info, latest news, features based on the individual towns were were visiting in the OC. Given the Erie Times-News heritage with the Brown-Thompson community papers of old, I’m surprised that localism hasn’t been built into GoErie since the beginning.
  • Time for Yosemite National Park to get cellular service. My GPS is on my smartphone and only works if it can ping both to the GPS satellites and to the wireless network. No wireless…no GPS, so I was nearly clueless during my 70+ mile trip in the dark leaving the park on terribly-winding roads toward Merced. No radio available either. Considering there are 3 million visitors a year to that beautiful wilderness, certainly they can hide the towers among the Sequoias.
  • When it comes to a comprehensive branding experience, no one holds a candle to Disney.

When I visit large markets anymore, I don’t drool and say “We should totally do this in Erie,” but I look for aspects of excellence that are scalable and sell-able and wonder, “What if?”

Posted in From The Editor Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , No Comments »

Lew Dickey keeps Erie

April 13th, 2011 joel

According to RadioInk Magazine, the shakeout from the big Cumulus/Citadel radio merger leaves the four stations in Erie, WXKC, WXTA, WQHZ, and WRIE in the hands of Cumulus Media. Because of FCC rules, Cumulus can’t keep 14 of the stations from the resulting massive broadcast group. From their report:

The paperwork has been filed for the Cumulus-Citadel merger, including an application to assign 14 stations to a divestiture trust since, with the deal, Cumulus will lose grandfathered status in some markets and go over ownership limits in others…The stations will be assigned to Volt Radio, a divestiture trust with Scott Knoblauch as trustee.

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Cumulus buys Citadel, includes four stations in Erie

February 17th, 2011 joel
Classy 100/WXKC

WXKC/Classy 100's parent is sold to Cumulus Media

Nearly half of Erie’s radio stations are about to answer to a new boss. According to a flash report Thursday afternoon on RadioInk.com:

Radio Ink has confirmed that a deal to purchase Citadel, which includes the radio network and the former ABC-Disney properties and Citadel properties with 550 stations in 120 cities and eight of the top 10 markets has been agreed to. The offer, which was accepted is due to be announced at $37 a share ($30 cash).

The transaction valued at 2.4 billion and 1.5 billion in market equity totaling a $4 billion enterprise value.

The magazine was unable to get comment from the major players, but internal communication confirmed the sale.

This puts the nation’s second largest radio owner in charge of four stations licensed in Erie County, including WXKC/Erie (Classy 100), WXTA/Edinboro (Country 98), WQHZ/Erie (Z102.3), and WRIE/Erie (ESPN 1260 The Score). Citadel Broadcasting prided itself as the largest “pure-play” radio operator in America, and recently emerged from bankruptcy protection last summer. As we have reported over several months, Cumulus has had its eye on the group for a takeover, hostile or otherwise.

As of this afternoon, there is no official word of the sale from either party.

Posted in Radio Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments »

New heights for Star 104 in Fall radio ratings

January 25th, 2011 joel

Tuesday evening’s release of the latest ratings for Erie radio stations only tells half the story, but it is the greater half.

The ratings company, Arbitron, decided to make public only the ratings of those stations who subscribe to their service. That means for now, we can only see what happened this Fall to the stations of Connoisseur Media, including perennial powerhouse WRTS/Star 104. We have no official access to the performance of the stations of Citadel Broadcasting or any of the independent local stations.

Hits by artists like Katy Perry fuel WRTS's domination of the Erie Fall 2010 radio ratings

Star continues to ride the wave of the resurgence of pop music, but their domination of Erie indicates a total acceptance across all demographics. The 35% increase in 12+ share year over year brings WRTS’s numbers to level’s we haven’t seen in decades.

The flagship of the Connoisseur group is the biggest of many positive stories for the occupants of the those big display windows at the Boston Store. WRKT turned around their recent ratings slide to their best book in two years. In fact the only big disappointment of the six stations was at WTWF, where they lost nearly half of their average share of audience from last year. Of course we can’t compare 93.9 The Wolf with their WXTA and WGYY country competitors, since they didn’t buy the book.

Finally, will the strength of Star and Rocket finally push crosstown Citadel Broadcasting to flip their weakest property, WQHZ to go after a slice of the larger Top 40 pie that Star owns, or a flanking move to oldies or FM talk.

Keep watching this space for further ratings fallout and punditry.

Posted in Radio Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments »

Cumulus spurned as it tries to buy Classy 100 parent

December 6th, 2010 joel
Citadel Broadcasting

Citadel Broadcasting Corporation

The troubled parent company of Classy 100 and Country 98 has rejected two offers for merger with radio heavyweight Cumulus Media, according to a report this morning on the New York Times DealBook blog.

The board of Citadel Broadcasting, America’s number three radio operator and corporate owner of WXKC/WXTA/WQHZ/WRIE in Erie, rejected the offers as bad for the shareholders of the privately-held company:

In a Dec. 6 filing, Citadel revealed it was a takeover target of an unnamed third party. DealBook has learned that the third party was Cumulus Media, according to two people familiar with the offer who were not authorized to talk. In early November, Citadel received “an unsolicited letter from a third party proposing a merger transaction,” the company said in the filing. The board quickly rejected the offer.

A few weeks later on Nov. 29, Cumulus Media, whose chief executive is Lewis W. Dickey Jr., raised the offer. The board rejected the revised bid, saying it was not in the best interest of shareholders, according the filing.

The offers come just months after Citadel worked its way out of bankruptcy protection in June, complete with an attempted massive $110 million stock payout to top executives and board members. Management has since dropped the stock awards.

Posted in Radio Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment »

Star 104 goes super nova in Erie Spring radio ratings

August 25th, 2010 joel

WRTS/Star 104

It’s got to be one of the biggest Top 40 stations in the country.

According to the recently released Spring 2010 Arbitron ratings for Erie, the nearly 18 percent share of the Erie radio audience that WRTS/Star 104 enjoys at any given part of the day means that if you were to pile all those people into one place it would be the equivalent of the population of a decent sized city all jumping up and down to The Black Eyed Peas. Star definitely benefited from the sheer depth of great Top 40 songs currently in rotation. Erie has gone GaGa for the Lady, the glam of Adam Lambert, and the Gurls of California.

In fact, market watchers tell me that Star 104 has reached audience Nirvana with its “skew graph.” Connoisseur Media’s WRTS scored nearly the same percentage of adult listeners in each demographic slice, meaning that it’s the station that Grandma, Mom, and Sissy can agree on. Most Erieites listen to Star and another station; from Bob to Z.

(more…)

Posted in Radio Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments »

Fall ratings: Connoisseur strengthens Erie radio domination

January 30th, 2010 joel

The twice yearly ratings horse race between Star 104 and Classy 100 has turned into a yawner.

The Fall 2009 Arbitron ratings released Friday afternoon confirms the amazingly strong hold that the Connoisseur Media cluster has over Erie radio listeners. Although it’s lead 12+ has softened, WRTS/Star 104 continues as Erie’s most listened to broadcast radio station. Meanwhile the flagship station for the Citadel group in Erie, WXKC/Classy 100 has continued its slide in share of audience over at least five books to be ranked fourth.

The big winner of the Fall was WTWF/93.9 The Wolf who garnered their best book ever, good for second place. Rounding out Connie Media’s top stations was WXBB/Bob FM, who scored their best book since they debuted in 2007.

Been a long time since we rock and rolled the ratings. WRKT/Rocket 101 and WQHZ/Z-102.3 have taken what was 17 shares of listenership two years ago and grinded it down to 11. It looks like Rocket especially hasn’t put the jets onto expanding its base.

As far as AM goes…simply, nothing to see here. While AM stations crush their competition in the markets surrounding us in ratings and billing, our offerings have received no investment from their owner companies and so they got what they paid for.

Finally, the third biggest jump up came from my alma mater WCTL, who scored their best book in memory and is knocking on the door of once-prominent WXTA/Country 98.

You can see all the hard numbers at AllAccess.com (registration required).

Posted in Radio Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 13 Comments »
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