Sunday, July 25, 2010
Classical Music in St. Louis
Late this Spring commercial classical station KFUO became Christian Contemporary. KFUO was the only full time classical music station in the market. KFUO promised to run classical music on their HD2 outlet after the format change. Since hardly anybody owns an HD set...hardly anybody is listening. Late last week KWMU announced they were adding a few hours of classical music to their programming on Saturday night. That's not enough to satisfy the classical music fan.
Classical music has proven to be popular enough on public radio stations in St. Paul, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and a few other places to be self-sustaining. These stations primarily broadcast classical music and the fan base in these markets is large enough to support these stations. Is the market large enough in St. Louis? Is there enough demand. I'm guessing the answers are yes.
According to Arbitron the St. Louis metro market has 2,308,100 listeners six and older. If a public radio station were to broadcast classical music on a full time basis, a conservative estimate of the cume rating could easily be 6% or about 139,000 cume listeners a week. If about 10% of the audience were to become members, the station might expect member revenue to be about $1.4 million. It would not be unreasonable to expect underwriting revenue to be around $300,000. Add in a community service grant and some foundation money, the station could easily expect total station revenue of about $2,000,000.
Of course, all of this hinges on the availability of an adequate FM signal in the St. Louis market. And a lot would depend on the debt load created by purchasing an existing signal, but the projected revenue could easily cover the expenses of a classical music station in St. Louis.
I should note that the Lutheran owners of KFUO got a reported $26 million when they sold their station to Joy FM. KFUO(Now KLJY) has a huge signal of 100,000 watts. The antenna is is over 1,000 feet above the terrain which makes for a broadcast radius of about 60 miles. It's an appealing signal for KLJY
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
$2,000,000 a year in revenue would be great. But if it cost $26,000,000 to get a signal, the debt service would eat up $1,600,000 of that. Wouldn't it?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJay's right. Debt service can't be ignored. Here in Cincinnati, a comparably sized market, classical WGUC (community licensed) purchased WVXU (NPR+) from Xavier University in 2005. The cost was $15 million. Even after selling assets such as network repeaters, the debt service is a major issue for them - I gather in the neighborhood of $1 million a year.
ReplyDeleteAnd I assume they're trying to raise it from the NPR side, not classical. I have no doubt they'll do it eventually, but they admit it's been difficult.
By focusing formats through some program shifts, each station is setting new records. The combined share of Cincinnati Public Radio is way ahead of many major markets. Listeners are better served.
I love the idea that the new KLJY's call would presumably be pronounced "Killjoy."
Joy FM bought a very large signal. $26 million also seems to be an inflated price in a down economy.
ReplyDeleteKQQX is for sale for $16.5 million
KFNS-AM/FM and KRFT-AM, St. Louis sold for $11.5 million.
Other options:
Another station could decide to change formats.
There are four non- religious public radio stations besides KWMU. They are KDHX, KCLC, WLCA,and KWUR.
One of the commercial stations with poor ratings could try the public radio model.
Buying the $26 million stick is not the only option.
The $2 million in revenue should be applied against operating expenses. The expense of acquiring a signal is a capital expense and the monies needed for this should come from other sources like a capital campaign. Cleve is right. The debt service is a major issue.
ReplyDeleteI want to point out that Joy-FM bought a classical station in St. Louis for $26million. WSMR sold for $1.3 million. St. Louis and Tampa are similar size markets. WSMR is 50k watts. Joy-FM is St.Louis is 100k watts. The debt load on $1.3 million is considerably less than $26 million.
ReplyDelete