WTOP Radio Tops Revenue Heap

All-news WTOP-FM was the top billing radio station in the nation last year, raking in $57.225 million in revenue, an increase of more than 12 percent from 2009, according to a story by Jeff Clabaugh at the Washington Business Journal.

KIIS-FM, the Los Angeles station that’s home to Ryan Seacrest, slipped to No. 2, with 2010 revenue of $54 million, a 2 percent decline over 2009 revenue, according to figures calculated by BIA/Kelsey Advisory Services.

WTOP is the only one of the top 10 billing stations not in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.

New York al-news station WCBS remained the third highest billing station in 2010, with $49 million in sales, which, like WTOP, represented an increase of more than 12 percent.

WTOP, which is being acquired by Minneapolis-based Hubbard Broadcasting Inc. as part of a $505 million, multistation sale by current owner Bonneville International Corp., first cracked the top 10 for revenue in 2008.

Top 10 billing stations in 2010, according to BIA/Kelsey:

  1. WTOP, Washington $57.225 million
  2. KIIS, Los Angeles $54 million
  3. WCBS, New York $49 million
  4. KFI, Los Angeles $46 million
  5. WLTW, New York $44.3 million
  6. WHTZ, New York $43 million
  7. WBBM, Chicago $42.5 million
  8. WINS, New York $41 million
  9. WFAN, New York $40.5 million
10. KROQ, Los Angeles $39 million

Read more here.

Dayton's WKSW Flips To ‘Modern Hit Music’

In Dayton, OH, Main Line Broadcasting’s WKSW-FM has dropped its country music format in favor of a new frequency and “modern hit music” performers such as Kings of Leon, Maroon 5 and Daughtry.

Click 101.5 launched at 1 p.m. Friday, replacing Kiss Country 101.7, according to Dave Larsen at The Dayton Daily News.

One Kiss Country on-air personality was let go because of the switch. The new station plans to add on-air personalities soon, said Andrea Scott, vice president and marketing manager for Main Line Broadcasting.
The Federal Communications Commission granted Main Line permission to move WKSW’s license to a new community and frequency that could reach the entire Dayton market, Scott said. The station is broadcasting from Main Line’s studios in Kettering.

Click 101.5 has a “Hot AC” format, which features more uptempo, contemporary hit music, with no hard rock or rap, according to Berk Marketing’s radio format guide.

Scott said its target audience is men and women ages 18-49.

The station will feature songs by new artists such as the Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, and Florence and the Machine, as well as established acts such as Dave Matthews Band and Train.

Read more here.

ESPN Moves Planned For Denver

Sports radio giant ESPN will switch stations from KKFN 104.3 FM and 1600 AM KEPM over to dial positions owned by the fledgling Front Range Sports Network, beginning Jan. 1.

According to Penny Parker at The Denver Post, Lincoln Financial Media, owner of KKFN, known as The Fan, and what's now called ESPN Radio 1600, opted not to renew its contract with the ESPN Network.

"We realized that with our position and ratings strength, we have an opportunity to put our own local morning show on and continue with the growth The Fan has had," said KKFN/KEPN program director Nate Lundy.

The Fan likely will replace the weekday ESPN morning drive show Mike and Mike with local talent, Lundy said. On the AM side, radio station 1600's nearly all-ESPN programming will completely change.

Starting Jan. 1, Mike and Mike, along with ESPN Network's The Herd with Colin Cowherd will air on Front Range Sports stations The Ticket, which moves from 87.7 FM to 102.3 FM March 31.

ESPN Deportes, the Spanish sports station on 102.3 FM, will move to 87.7 FM.

Read more here.

Tom's Take: Denver is top heavy  with sports stations with at least four all slicing up a 2.4 share.

eMarketer.com: Most Discussed Media Content Types

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After 5-Years, Cards Return To KMOX

Changes galore are in store for those watching and listening to Cardinals broadcasts this season.

In a move considered fan-friendly, the Cards are back on KMOX (1120 AM) after an unpopular five-year stay at KTRS (550 AM). On the other side, the team has eliminated over-the-air, or so-called "free TV' from the equation as its local package is exclusively on Fox Sports Midwest.

According to a story by Dan Caesar at stltoday.com, the reason for both moves are simple — money.

The Cards' switch to KTRS, of which they purchased a 50 percent interest, wasn't as lucrative as they thought it would become in part because of the country's economic downturn as well as media, including radio, being hit especially hard. And while the new deal with KMOX is believed to include a comparatively small rights fee to what the team used to receive, the team this time around is selling its own advertising and figures to make more with KMOX's wider reach.

And on the TV front, cable/satellite outlets such as FSM have an additional big revenue stream — subscriber fees — that over-the-air stations can't match.

To look deeper at both broadcasting moves, click here.

News Budgets Busted By Cost of Covering Disasters

From Brent Lang & Dylan Stableford, The Wrap

From Japan to Libya, disasters and political upheavel around the globe are wreaking havoc on the already-skeletal budgets of cable and broadcast news organizations.

“We've already had a year's worth of breaking news coverage, and it's not even the end of March,” David Verdi, NBC News VP of worldwide newsgathering, told TheWrap.

News organizations may have already spent their annual budgets for covering foreign events and still have nine months to go, one veteran cable news executive told TheWrap.

"If Saudi Arabia goes up in flames, all bets are off," the executive said.

That's because each far-flung top story comes with an astronomical price tag.

NBC spent $1.5 million on its first day covering the Japanese tsunami, according to one knowledgeable individual. That’s roughly the total amount it spent reporting on earthquake ravaged Haiti over a period of several months.

But that’s hardly the only international disaster crying out for coverage.

In the Middle East, networks are spending on the level of $2 million to cover each fresh political upheaval, according to an individual with knowledge of those budgets.

“The first day of a catastrophe the costs spike -- you have to fly your crew and your anchors in, and broadcasting equipment. That's a million-dollar hit right there,” Verdi told TheWrap.

Cable news organizations, which are dedicating many more hours to coverage of the earthquake in Japan and Middle East uprisings than their broadcast counterparts, are racking up bills that are significantly higher.

Broadcasters are mum about the numbers of reporters and crew members they are deploying to the far flung locales, but former ABC News producer Stuart Schwartz estimates that at least 20 people from each network have been sent to cover the various foreign catastrophes.

To fly, house and feed each crew member and reporter costs roughly $35,000 for about two weeks, according to the cable news executive.

Read more here.

Tom's Take: Another example of why radio companies don't like news operations. 

Obama Rewarding Local TV In Battleground States

Locals each get seven minutes with President

WSOC anchor Natalie Pasquarella interviews President Obama in the White House Map Room. “We had to make every second count,” said Kim Holt, a senior executive producer at the Charlotte television station.

Ever since he quit smoking, President Obama has been staving off nicotine cravings by reaching for celery sticks.

He thinks Americans who help Mexican drug cartels should be “thrown in jail.”

And he has an open invitation to enjoy lemon martinis in Miami.

Peter Wallsten in a story at The Washington Post writes these are just a few of the exclusive news nuggets to emerge from the White House in recent days.

The new details were not disclosed by the army of White House reporters employed by the country’s biggest news media organizations to track Obama’s every move and word.

Instead, as Obama keeps the White House press corps at a distance, he has sat for more than a dozen interviews with their colleagues from local TV stations — with unpredictable and sometimes illuminating results.

One Miami reporter Obama recently invited to the White House was still so nervous when the interview was over that she stood to leave before removing the wired microphone from her lapel. Obama called out to stop her. “We don’t want a wardrobe malfunction,” he said.

An anchor from the ABC affiliate in Cincinnati swiped paper towels embossed with the presidential seal from a White House bathroom, “just to prove that I really was there.” Of course, she had additional proof of her visit: an interview with the president that aired on television. Nonetheless, she held up the towels for the camera in a live shot from the White House lawn.

Obama has made such encounters with local news stations a staple of his communications strategy. Since December, White House aides have handpicked 13 stations, all in key cities in presidential battleground states, to reward with the biggest “get” in the TV news business: a one-on-one White House interview with the president. An additional interview was granted to Hearst Television’s Washington bureau, which serves more than two dozen local stations across the country.

Each reporter is granted seven minutes with the commander in chief.

In March alone, Obama has welcomed interviewers from Charlotte, Miami, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Albuquerque and Norfolk. Before that, invitees came from Richmond, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Tampa, Denver, Des Moines and Columbus. And aides say more are coming soon.

Read more here.

Opinion: Stern Suit Could Put Sirius XM in Jeopardy

Howard Stern is suing Sirius over a dispute involving unpaid stock bonuses based upon subscriber numbers.

Talkers legal editor Steven J.J. Weisman says the crux of the issue is simple: His first contract with Sirius provided for substantial bonuses based upon the number of subscribers to Sirius. If after its merger with XM, the former XM subscribers are to be considered Sirius subscribers, Stern will be owed huge stock bonuses.

But the story doesn't end there. This case has the potential to be the basis for a possible class action against Sirius by its stockholders for the company's possible failure to disclose this issue.

The entire future of Sirius as a viable company is in jeopardy due to this lawsuit and a big loser could be Howard Stern, who owns much Sirius stock.

Read Steven J.J. Weisman’s entire piece here.

Nets, Advertisers Call Plays Amid NFL Strife

Since the National Football League locked out its players about two weeks ago, some cable and broadcast networks have been preparing contingency plans to air alternative programming in case games are canceled this fall.

According to a story by Lauren A. E. Schuker at wsj.com, advertisers, who spend roughly $3 billion a year on commercials that run during NFL games, also are forging new plans and considering buying commercial time on other marquee programming should the work stoppage continue into the football season. Some advertisers already have bought commercials on Viacom Inc. television networks as a backup.

"Football is so important to networks and buyers that they can't afford not to plan ahead," says Sam Armando, who heads television research at SMGx, an ad-buying consultancy arm of Publicis Groupe SA. "Both networks and advertisers are definitely working on a Plan B.

"It's not like you can replace football overnight with other sports or prime-time shows," he continues. "There are contracts and schedules and a lot that has be worked out."

Adds Michael Nathanson, a media analyst for Nomura Securities: "The lockout may be resolved over the summer, but these networks and agencies have to plan now for their fourth quarter. And if football is off the air, guess what? You've got a problem."

The standoff between the NFL owners and the league's players over compensation has become particularly threatening to the league's television partners as record numbers of viewers tune in to watch the NFL.

For the second year in a row, the Super Bowl in February smashed records to become the most-watched telecast in U.S. history. About 111 million people watched the game on Fox Broadcasting, according to Nielsen Co. News Corp.

Now, the potential cancellation of games would deprive networks of a crucial way to attract large numbers of viewers and advertisers.

While advertisers haven't yet changed their usual May schedule for buying NFL ads, executives say the uncertainty has heated up the advertising market for other programming that draws large audiences. Golf, college football and prime-time dramas are among the areas attracting extra interest.

Read more here. 

Media Matters' War Against Fox

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.

According to Ben Smith's piece at politico.com, the group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.

The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”

In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters — which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor.

Read more here.