Station Ownership

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Station Ownership

Postby jon » Fri Apr 06, 2018 12:48 pm

From another thread:
tuned wrote:Sinclair has always been a lousy television station owner. The original 7 - 7 -7 FCC rule to restrict ownership to 7 am's, 7 fm's and 7 TV stations should never have been changed. When Reagan changed it to 21 - 21 -21 it was bad enough but Bill Clinton completely deregulated ownership and democracy got flushed down the drain.

Over time, I've bought into the CRTC concept of "number of media voices", which has made my personal preference a rule of one media outlet per owner per Province or State. Even though it would mean a lot less stations on the air, which could actually be an improvement from what we have now, especially in the U.S.

Yes, I'm actually saying that it would nice to see an Owner only allowed to own one AM, FM, TV or newspaper in a given Province or State.

But it would be political suicide to even suggest the concept now that media companies are stuck with all these stations with huge Book Values (how much they paid to buy them). There really has been no turning back since the price of radio or TV stations skyrocketed back in the 1990s and perhaps a bit earlier.

There is a similar thread on one of the Facebook radio groups right now, asking if locally-owned independent stations are possible today. In fact, we are starting to see some. The former KCPX-1320 in Salt Lake City has been off the air for at least a year, but is now back at low power as the new small owner is waiting for his FM Translator license from the FCC. As soon as he gets it, he'll fire up the 5KW transmitter that always got out so well. Before the previous owners turned them off, I even heard them here in Edmonton as the only thing besides CHMB on 1320 at night. I even once heard them during a CHQM pattern change when I worked at the station and was driving home in Burnaby at sunset: CHQM day pattern goes off the air, "KCPX Salt Lake City" female sung jingle, CHQM night pattern into the News intro.

Point here is that owners are letting some stations go dark. After a year or so, they get desperate enough to sell the station for peanuts.
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