Jason 330 asked, “Is the business really that hand to mouth, or is this crisis a handy pretext?”
Broadcast radio has the same problem newspapers do — it’s a bygone medium. It hasn’t lost listeners as fast as newspapers lost their readers, but its advertising base has shrunk for the same basic reason: Local businesses have been replaced by national chains. For instance, WDEL/WSTW revenue took a six-figure hit when Happy Harry’s sold out to Walgreen’s, which doesn’t advertise on radio. The coronavirus recession is expected to bankrupt a lot of small businesses. That will only speed up the existing trend.
Forever Media, which bought WDEL parent company Delmarva Broadcasting last year, had been shedding employees quietly even before this — WDEL Saturday morning host Frank Gregory got the ax last fall, for example, and the downstate talk station cut everyone but Dan Gaffney.
Because a news operation requires a large staff, WDEL’s expenses are relatively high. The former owners, the Steinman family of Lancaster, Pa., were committed to a news station as a public service, even though its operating margin is far lower than WSTW’s. The new owners have no such commitment, so any protracted recession will bite deep, and could end the news/talk format completely.
Unless and until that happens, local radio will do what local newspapers have done — farm out more content to national providers to cut payroll costs. At WDEL this might well mean a nationally syndicated talk show takes the place of locally produced news and talk.
And that’s a best-case scenario. The owners could decide to make it a Spanish-language station or, in a worst-case situation, shutter it entirely.