News that the Pohlad family, son Jim in particular, was paying $28 million for B96, the hip-hop station with a transmission tower out on the fringes of the western suburbs fired the following synapses in my alleged brain …
$28 million!? Holy shit! If B96 is worth $28 million, the karaoke machine I picked up at Best Buy for that birthday party, (where everyone sang the drum solo to “In a Gadda da Vida”), has got be worth a half million. Twenty eight VERY LARGE strikes me as a serious over-payment for a signal that doesn’t quite make it to West St. Paul. (Someone will write and say they get it loud and clear in River Falls, just wait).
I think Judd Zulgad, who does a terrific job covering sports media and the Green Bay Puckers for the Strib, has his antennae aimed in the right direction when he asks aloud what many of us suspect. Namely, is the beginning of a move to take everything Twins-related in-a-Pohlad-house?
Obviously B96, as powered and located, can not act as the flagship for an entirely Pohlad/Twins-owned network. But as Zulgad notes, three years is an eternity in the radio biz. Everything can and will change. Some kind of simulcast shtick might be made practical. After all, long before 2010 the new owners of KQRS, 93X, etc. — Citadel — may very be looking to unload a few of their lower-powered properties (most likely the “Love 105” trio of low-power FMs). Hell, they won’t have to “look” to unload if there is a drunken sailor in town throwing $28 million at B96.
As we all remember, WCCO-AM’s parent company, CBS Radio, pretty much bailed on fat contracts for major league baseball in St. Louis, Pittsburgh and here in the Twin Cities. With CBs putting up a weak fight, the Hubbards agreed to the deal the Pohlads/Twins wanted, which has them forking over something like $1 million a year for four years plus giving up almost all the advertising inventory for the games, the production and upper midwest network of which is entirely controlled by the Twins. In other words, the only thing the Twins don’t currently own or control is the the team’s flagship station.
The Hubbards hope to reestablish AM 1500 (post-Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Jason Lewis) with help from the Twins games, (while the Twins’ absence diminishes WCCO). There may also be some, shall we say, “programming” issues to deal with there before AM 1500 is restored to the halcyon days of wall-to-wall Clinton-bashing. But the presence of the Twins is not going to hurt, other than that $1 million a year and loss of ad inventory to sell.)
More to the point, after four years of fat pay-outs, from the Hubbards to the Pohlads, (is that trickling down or up?), the Hubbards may very well decide the Twins have worked their magic and decline the opportunity to re-up. Don’t expect anyone involved to breathe such a notion today. But my real point is that nothing anyone says on the record today about this deal is worth any more than what you are paying to read this blog. And we both know that ain’t much.
After so many years of filing “official responses” from company executives on matters like this for a daily newspaper, I had to laugh at this quote, from Steve Woodbury, CEO of Northern Lights , (the Pohlad-owned radio company). Zulgad asks about an eventual Twins presence on B96.
Woodbury, who is not a bad guy, responds:
“The station doesn’t fit that, and it was never discussed or brought up,” Woodbury said of B-96 having baseball on its airwaves. “They [meaning the Pohlads] bought the station based on the format, the management team and the opportunity in the market.”
“The format and the management team … ” Riiight. The latter would of course be Woodbury and a couple others.
As for the format, I’m assured B-96 actually makes some dough, but the sellers weren’t shy about saying they were willing to give it up because the Twin Cities have a pretty small African-American audience.
Obviously, the main reason they were willing to give it up is because the Pohlads flashed $28 friggin’ million in their faces. Your average radio executive would give up their mother for a tenth of that.
But having spent sometime inside the sausage factory that is Clear Channel Twin Cities, I agree with those who say KOOL 108 could disappear tomorrow and be replaced instantly by the “active-urban-hip-hop-rollin’-homies” format or whatever you want to call it. It definitely is not brain surgery.
So if I were Woodbury and the Pohlads I’d keep a handy list of alternate formats. How about Doug Mientkiewicz in morning drive?
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