Re: [IRCA] small station owner in a small market

["Paul B. Walker, Jr." <walkerbroadcasting@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have two employees here, me, and my chief engineer. well, 3, if you cound
my beagle, George.

I focus almost exlcusively on Abbeville and Abbeville County in terms of
programming, which is a classic country as you said and goes al lthe way
back to the Mid 40s.

We don't do any localsports, as WZLA 92.9 has a pretty good lock on that
market of revenue around here.

WCZZ is all automated off the bird, WLMA 1350 is a joke and sounds like
crap.....I dont think anyone around here has a full time news person of any
kind.

I basically do everything here except sales and major engineering. I walk
the dog, fix the toilet and mow the lawn. Im in the process of hiring a
sales person or two.

Hellinger Broaqdcasting's committment to serve it's COl and County is as
deep as I make the committment, since Im in charge here. I don't want to
comment too much on the APPLICATION, but suffice to say it was filed by a
semi major engineering firm who ran this station for a short time.

I farm out my voiceover work, for stuff like station ids, liners and promos.
If the client has an already produced commercial, I run it as is. If they
need one done, I will do it myself or have a friend do it depending on what
the client is looking for.

Abbeville has a city population of about 5850 people, a county population of
about 24,000 or so and Greenwood, the city itself is a city of about 22,000

Paul


On 7/30/07, John Callarman <JohnCallarman@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I've just finished reading selected material from the 400-plus posts in my
> in-box after a three-day trip to Amarillo to visit my brother and his wife,
> including several on which I've already commented. I am a great fan of
> genuine local radio, as some will note on my comments earlier this evening
> regarding KSLM and other Willamette Valley operations.
>
> Clint Formby, owner of one 250-watt daytimer where I worked, and Warren
> Hasse, at KPDN-1340, a 250-watt fulltimer, in Pampa, TX, taught me a lot
> about local radio, and much of what I learned I put into practice at still
> another 250-watt daytimer, WCAS-740 in Cambridge, Mass., on which I was
> privileged to work with Pete Taylor, who has participated in this thread.
>
> After hearing Larry Stoller and his partners talk about their operation at
> WODI in Brookneal, Virginia, at the NRC convention in 2004, and, of course,
> after my own observations about how much more difficult it is to operate a
> truly local station today than it was during the time I was in the business,
> I had prepared some questions about WABV's operation even before the other
> Taylor suggested we could get a detailed picture of what's being done by a
> young, dedicated radio man to build a station that's relevant to his market.
>
> I did a little mapwork and webwork at the FCC website to get an idea of
> what the competition might be like in Paul's corner of South Carolina, close
> to the Georgia border, and confined myself to stations within about 40 to 50
> miles of Abbeville.
>
> At Hereford, in 1958 when I was there, the population was slightly larger,
> at 8,000, than Abbeville is now. Hereford has grown to 14,000+ but Deaf
> Smith County has only 18,000. At KPAN, our operation was live .. I worked
> from sign-on (6:15 or sunrise, whichever came later, to 1 p.m.) on the
> board and a fellow named A.C. Higgins worked from 1 to 5 p.m. Then Rose
> Garcia came in to do the Spanish music show until sign-off, which went quite
> late in the summer. Higgins sold ads in the morning, then participated in
> our news block from noon to 1 p.m., and I gathered news in the afternoon,
> covering night meetings, etc. I also, during football and basketball season,
> took a big old reel-to-reel tape recorder (it was in the days before
> portable cassette recorders came on the market) to the football stadia and
> the basketball gymnasia and taped the Hereford Whitefaces football and
> basketball play-by-play. (I was quick enough back then that I could actually
> keep statistics and broadcast a!
> t the same time.) Formby handled some sales also, and there was one other
> full-time salesman. For a time, it was Ralph Beistle, who later managed
> Formby's station at Tulia, KTUE-1260, where I worked part-time as the
> afternoon DJ while going to school at West Texas State. Betty Roberts
> answered the phone, typed the logs and wrote much of the advertising copy
> which, for the most part, was read live on the air by Higgins, myself and
> Formby during the morning news block. (Clint also, as I recall, taped some
> spots and, I think, during the time I was there, we installed our first
> cartridge tape machine and began to records some of the spots thereupon.) It
> was a small but efficient staff.
>
> The questions I'd posed for Paul are:
>
> In your city of license of approximately 6,000 population in a county with
> a little more than 27,000 population, do you have a newsman who goes to the
> police station, the fire station and the sheriff's office to gather news
> from those sources? Does he cover the Abbeville City Council, the School
> Board, the County Board meetings? Does he use the cellphone (or some other
> form of communication) to call in on-scene accident or fire reports? Does
> someone do local interview programs with community leaders involved in
> various events? Do you reach out to the southwest for news and information
> from Calhoun Falls, to the south to relatively unserved McCormick County, or
> due north to Due West?
>
> Does your sales staff produce its own local commercials or are they done
> by talent (presumably you). How much production is done on local
> commercials? Do you do live remotes from advertisers' stores? Abbeville
> County looks to be small enough you're probably not yet dominated by chain
> retail outlets, so there should be, still, some locally owned and operated
> retail outlets ... but some county residents and maybe even some in
> Abbeville itself likely to head north to Anderson or east to Greenwood. Dun
> and Bradstreet, via Melissa Data, shows there are 334 businesses in the
> Abbeville ZIP-code, where the population in 2000 was 13,506.
>
> Regarding classic country music, how large is your playlist? How far back
> does it go? Do you have any Carl Smith, Webb Pierce, Hank Snow, Faron Young,
> Jim Reeves, on the play list? Mel Tillis, Marty Robbins, Don Gibson, Kitty
> Wells, Jean Shepherd, Mickey Gilley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Pride, Sonny
> James, Tom T. Hall, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens? Does anyone on your staff
> know who wrote "I Can't Stop Loving You"? I note that the median age of
> Abbeville County residents in 2000 was 36.9, 68.3 percent of the
> population was white, and only 0.8 percent of the population (eight years
> ago) was Hispanic.
>
> Do you have a local sports show that talks about American Legion baseball,
> high school football, basketball, track, baseball and other sports in
> Abbeville County? Does WABV do sports play-by-play? What arrangements have
> been made with small-school coaches to call in their scores?
>
> Do you concentrate on Abbeville County alone or do you depend upon your
> music to compete for local sales with stations in nearby Greenwood
> (population 22,000) in Greenwood County (population 67,000), where
> 100000watts reports WCRS-1450 plays adult standards, WLMA-1350 does talk and
> sports, WCZZ-1090 does black gospel, WZSN-103.5 is adult contemporary, and
> the 36-watt LP, WHZZ-97.7, does variety and 100-watt WXOR-102.3 does
> religion. I note WZLA-92.9 Abbeville, not owned by Hellinger, does oldies.
> Or perhaps you're trying to hit the Anderson market. Or, perhaps, none of
> those stations has significant listenership in Abbeville city/county, other
> than WABV and WZLA and listeners go farther outside the market for your
> competition. What competition do you expect, if any, when the FM'er with a
> CP in Due West goes on the air ... or will their owners concentrate on
> Anderson rather than Abbeville County? Do any of the stations mentioned in
> this paragraph have a full-time local newsma!
> n on staff?
>
> Demographics for Greenwood County are similar to that of Abbeville County,
> at least in 2000. Median age slightly younger -- 35.2; a slightly higher
> percentage of whites -- 65.6; and a considerably higher percentage of
> Hispanics, 2.2 percent. In the four Greenwood ZIP codes, there are 1,824
> businesses, but one would consider
>
> How deep is Hellinger's commitment to its city of license and the county
> where you operate, considering that an application is on file with the FCC
> to move WABV from Abbeville to Whitney, Nevada, on 1370 kHz, to put a 14-kw
> signal from nine towers about five miles south of Las Vegas, daytime only,
> with virtually all of the signal going north-northwest?
>
> ------
>
> If I were 30 years younger, I'd be interested in seeing what could be done
> with a news-sports guy, a crackerjack salesman, a good woman personality,
> each sufficiently versatile to contribute to programming, and some office
> staff to skillfully program a fully-automated station in a market the size
> of Abbeville. Preferably a market in Oregon!!! Impossible dream, Janice
> wouldn't go with me so I wouldn't go!!!
>
> John Callarman, Krum TX (who often identifies only as Qal R. Mann, and/or
> The Krumudgeon, because my full name is in my e-mail address.)
>
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-- 
Sincerely,
Paul B. Walker, Jr.
www.walkerbroadcasting.com
www.myspace.com/walkerbroadcasting
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