Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

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Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby Tom Jeffries » Wed Aug 13, 2014 8:11 pm

Walt Disney Co, is selling 23 radio stations and laying off some employees, but is increasing investment in digital.

The Walt Disney Company is putting 23 radio stations up for sale on Sept. 26 as part of a plan to shift Radio Disney off over the air and onto digital and satellite platforms.

The move comes after Disney determined that the younger audience is now listening more on streaming services than to terrestrial radio.

In the U.S. there are currently an estimated 160 million digital radio listeners, and that is expected to increase to about 183 million by 2018.


http://tinyurl.com/o3s5338
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby pave » Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:11 pm

Evangelical station owners must be salivating over all those available AM xmitters.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby bigbry » Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:23 am

Oh I have to do this..."It was also stated, that Management was just "Goofy"" .... Sorry It had to be done...ha ha ha
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby jon » Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:27 pm

I got curious, so I went to Disney's site and found a list of the Disney Radio stations:
Radio Disney Atlanta – WDWD (AM) 590
Radio Disney Boston – WMKI (AM) 1260
Radio Disney Charlotte – WGFY (AM) 1480
Radio Disney Chicago – WRDZ (AM) 1300
Radio Disney Cleveland – WWMK (AM) 1260
Radio Disney Dallas – KMKI (AM) 620
Radio Disney Denver – KDDZ (AM) 1690
Radio Disney Detroit – WFDF (AM) 910
Radio Disney Houston – KMIC (AM) 1590
Radio Disney Indianapolis – WRDZ 98.3 (FM)
Radio Disney Los Angeles – KDIS (AM) 1110
Radio Disney Miami – WMYM (AM) 990
Radio Disney Minneapolis – KDIZ (AM) 1440
Radio Disney New York – WQEW (AM) 1560
Radio Disney Orlando - WDYZ (AM) 990
Radio Disney Philadelphia – WWJZ (AM) 640
Radio Disney Phoenix – KMIK (AM) 1580
Radio Disney Pittsburgh – WDDZ (AM) 1250
Radio Disney Portland – KDZR (AM) 1640
Radio Disney Sacramento - KIID (AM) 1470
Radio Disney Salt Lake City – KWDZ (AM) 910
Radio Disney San Francisco – KMKY (AM) 1310
Radio Disney Seattle – KKDZ (AM) 1250
Radio Disney St. Louis – WSDZ (AM) 1260
Radio Disney Tampa - WWMI (AM) 1380

Going solely on my knowledge from my DX days of the '60s, this seems to be a pretty sorry lot of bottom of the barrel properties. 1110 Pasadena (listed as Los Angeles) was once the famous KRLA of Casey Kasem fame but I also remember them getting slaughtered in L.A. ratings because their signal was non-existent in large parts of the L.A. Basin.

Yes, the list above is 25 stations and the talk is of Disney selling 23. Not sure if two were already sold or just affiliates owned by others.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby Aaron » Thu Aug 14, 2014 4:53 pm

They are keeping one: KDIS, Los Angeles. So that leaves one un-accounted for.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby pave » Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:09 am

The Mouse House has a number of areas where their expertise is unquestioned.
Developing and running radio stations are not on the list.
These properties may be worthwhile for The Faithful, or maybe for broadcasting unguarded spots along borders and coastlines - perhaps informing listeners of ideal routes for making those, otherwise risky, drug runs.
Otherwise, AM stations with lousy signals aren't worth the copper in the ground system out at the transmitter.
Maybe Disney can still pick up a few bucks from the gullible.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby retireddxer » Fri Aug 15, 2014 12:56 pm

Yeah, the FCC licensed a lot of nearly worthless AM licenses over the years. Maybe the BBG and CRTC really did have a better approach, insisting that the licensed market could actually support a station before licensing one.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby tuned » Fri Aug 15, 2014 11:35 pm

The "Radio Disney" AM sticks are as Jon correctly pointed out a bunch of rejects. I think some of them acquired in the old Cap City days. However Disney still owns some pretty big radio stations like KABC and KLOS in LA and WLS in Chicago to name just a few. They also own the ABC and ESPN radio networks.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby drmusic » Sat Aug 16, 2014 12:35 am

Disney sold off the ABC Radio stations to Citadel (now Cumulus) a few years ago. It still owns ESPN Radio.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby tuned » Sat Aug 16, 2014 10:17 am

I stand corrected. It looks like Disney doesn't have much faith in radio as a business. I have long said that once internet arrives in the car it's over for terrestrial radio. The stations that have a decent product will do fine but they will face "internet only" competitors that don't have a massive debt load to service.
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Re: Disney Ditching Terrestrial Radio Stations

Postby pave » Mon Aug 18, 2014 9:41 am

Disney will continue to produce content. Crap signals won't enhance their projects in any way.
Meanwhile, American broadcasters are treating this non-event as another sign of the Apocalypse -- a similar, but watered-down version which may be in radio's future anyway.
But, not because Mickey Inc. dumped a few crumb-bum stations.
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