We know about KRON and its murky future based on the TV Spectrum Auction.I heard something astounding the other day from a broadcast industry official that blew me away.
The person, who asked that I don't use his/her name told me that the KRON frequency is worth a Billion dollars!
That's yuge.
Wait a minute; maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
Back to our story--the person went further. Could NBC reverse course and buy KRON to fortify its presence in the Bay Area and right a wrong that killed its Bay Area broadcast position?
Wait a minute, what then happens to KNTV? There's a million questions.
I'm still thinking about that BILLION --and considering KRON's new, complex corporate ownership, there's a lot to consider.
A former KRONvict told me all this news has hit the newsroom like a lead balloon --which might explain why the bottom dwellers at 900 Front are nervous as all hell.
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This one's easy; NBC buys channel 4 (and possibly the KRON call letters too) and they run NBC on both. IIRC, when NBC lost KRON back in the day and moved to KNTV channel 11, a lot of the North Bay, city and Peninsula couldn't get NBC programming for a long time unless they had cable. Not sure of the impact since the digital conversion, but having a signal in SF AND SJ will boost their coverage big-time...
ReplyDeleteexcept that the antenna was moved from Loma Prieta to Mt. San Bruno about 10 years ago.
DeleteThere is no station anywhere, not even a high-rated network O&O, that's worth a billion dollars. Even if there was a bid that high by a Google or an AT&T for their spectrum, the FCC isn't going to pay out anything remotely near that to Nexstar/MG.
ReplyDeleteSomebody at KRON is smoking something special.
I to find the number astounding though anything is possible since the spectrum such as this is gold beach front property. That said, I wonder if the $Billion dollar figure actually includes other stations in the package. Then the number becomes more reasonable to my mind. But stranger things have happened to KRON, like dumping the NBC affiliation in the first place.
DeleteRadnich said something funny for once, if true. He said it bothers him that Raj Matai at KNTV insists he be addressed as "Sports Director, Emeritus"
ReplyDeleteThat of course is funny sarcasm at Raddy insisting at his last contract that KRON call him "sports director".
Although Pam Moore calling him "My Lord Sports Director" is a bit much...
This station was for sale over 10 years ago, this never happened or no body wants to buy it. It is a good reliable news station, if no news, they should just sell it or shut it down. No good shows except promoting Dr Phil or MYKRON4. No movies at all. The sad part is seeing the news reporters holding a camera with a mic interviewing the folks, can they afford a camera man/driver and a reporter? My next question is if they cannot add on an extra cameraman or driver, forget about getting a bodyguard which Stanley Roberts must need pissing so many people off as seen on TV
ReplyDeleteKRON turns to Telemundo! It might happen! NBC Spanish, that's what Telemundo really is. I say Why Not?
ReplyDeleteI think the change might be that KNTV flips to Telemundo which might be a sweet and profitable demographic move, NBC picks up KRON as the new O&O, bay area signal coverage and revenue improves, and 48 (formerly Telemundo) the spectrum is sold or is converted one of the lesser known NBC platforms to carve out a revenue niche.
DeleteI hope they do pull that Rabbit out of the hat, pun intended. Telemundo on KNTV actually makes more sense, let alone increasing their reach in San Jose. Maybe if NBC permanently reacquires KRON, they can also bid adios to the Bentley, and tell him that Carson had the real Rickles at his peak and Radnich ain't no Rickles, get the ---- out!
DeleteAt first I was about to say anyone who'd may a billion dollars for KRON's frequency is an idiot, but then I remembered people pay more than that for companies that make apps that do nothing more than put a fancy frame or sepia-tone on your smart phone snapshot, so why not? I'm convinced today's VCs are about as intelligent as those morons on KTVU who talk like a pirate, arr...
ReplyDeleteDid you see Frank Somerville at Rambo last night on KTVU? Only a Fox station could pull off that shit. Imagine Dennis Richmond donning fatigues and charging through the brush with a gun.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a lot of people don't understand what the spectrum auction is. In short, the FCC wants to take back what are now commercial broadcasting frequencies and re-allocate them for broadband.
ReplyDeleteThey know they can't just do it through eminent domain, so they've set up a spectrum auction. If you're willing to move your signal to a different part of the spectrum, or abandon ship entirely, there's a payday.
Rich's source is optimistic, but maybe not by much. The FCC set opening bids (http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db1016/DA-15-1191A2.pdf) for all the frequencies that might have value in all the markets, and the opening bid for KRON's frequency would be:
$395,868,600.
Yes, Three hundred ninety-five million, eight hundred and sixty eight thousand, six hundred dollars.
And that's the OPENING bid.
The opening bids are significantly less for stations that plan to move instead of vacate.
The upside for KRON to cash out and never worry about the cost of doing business, declining viewership and declining revenue is pretty freaking huge.
Now----and pay attention 1:52, Nagin and all you "NBC belongs on 4" fanboys---THE FREQUENCY DISAPPEARS. NBC and KNTV have NOTHING to do with this.
Channel swaps are disruptive and destructive. NBC came out of the last one 15 years ago in pretty good shape. Any problems they have now have nothing to do with where they are on the dial. They have spent a metric crap-ton of money on KNTV, and there is no---repeat---NO upside to going back to KRON or KRON's dial position under any circumstances.
Media General should just take the money and run. And I'm betting they will.
Thank you for bringing you grounding information and view. It's just fun to wish for an old friend like Channel 4 back but friends move on and like all of us at some point, disappear. So the starting number is for vacate is closer to $1B or not? While I follow some of the spectrum sales news, it just seems awfully high.
DeleteRabbit: The opening bid (as I noted in my post) is just shy of $400 million. Could it hit a billion? Yeah. Do I think that might be optimistic? Yeah. But only by a little. It's still insane bucks and MG would be crazy not to take it and bail.
DeleteGrowing up loving KRON, I would love NBC buying them and somehow resurrecting KRON and returning it to its glory days once again.
ReplyDeleteIn the immortal words of Oakland's own, Jimmy McCracklin, " Yesterday is gone."
Deletedc222: NBC doesn't even run WNBC or KNBC like it did in the "glory days". What makes you think they'd treat KRON differently?
DeleteWhy do I have the feeling that the Indians, the ones with dots on their foreheads, will buy this frequency and turn it into TV Bombay? Before you start pulling out the race card, just look around you. Look at the population of the Bay Area, especially in the South Bay. Think about it while you eat your Curry Chicken that you love so much.
ReplyDeleteOh no, first the Qwiki Mart, now this!!
DeleteThat would be fabulous -- KRON as the rightful NBC affiliate again. That's the way I remember it too -- for a while after the affiliate switch KNTV's puny Santa Cruz Mountains signal barely made it past the Mission District. Remember when they branded it "NBC 3" in favor of its cable-remote position? Talk about an identity crisis. And then there was Teriyn Joe. I could be very much wrong, but I think KNTV once belonged to a much smaller market, when Salinas-Monterey also included San Jose, which boasted 11 and "The Perfect 36," which was built around guys hawking used cars and Steve Dini promos.
ReplyDeleterightful? Clearly you live in San Francisco, the second largest city in the Bay Area. No, San Jose has always been a part of the SF Bay Area market.
Delete"for a while...KNTV's puny...signal....barely made it."
DeleteAnd then a whole decade went by, the tower got moved, KNTV got seen by the entire market and KRON (with the signal it already had) fell off a cliff.
Carol Doda was a sensation in 1964. She's dead now. Kinda like KRON.
How do I get some KRON ball caps? I'll give them away at the holidays.
ReplyDeleteKRON ball caps made me think of Darya for some reason.
DeleteNBC buying KRON doesn't make sense, KNTV is a VHF signal(CH. 12) on Mt. San Bruno, KRON is a UHF signal on Sutro(CH. 38). As for the Telemundo idea, currently NBC uses the Telemundo 48 signal to broadcast NBC Bay Area in the south Bay as CH. 11.3 from Monument Peak while KNTV rebroadcasts Telemundo 48 from Mt. San Bruno as Ch. 48.3.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, selling off KRON's spectrum is all but a done deal. The only questions are 1) whether MG joins the upcoming auction or waits for the next one (which would likely enhance the value even more), and 2) talent & service contracts which have "no cut" clauses in them and require "balance payouts" if they are terminated. Unions will just receive an official notice of an end date, everyone else is just cut loose with no financial assistance. MG is going to leverage every single penny they can from the sale.
ReplyDeleteOne more thing for the NBC/KRON freaks:
ReplyDeleteIf---and they won't, but IF---NBC bought KRON, do you know what you'd see? WHAT YOU SEE NOW ON KNTV. It would be called "NBC Bay Area". The people would be the same. The set would be the same. The graphics would be the same...except once an hour, in very small print at the bottom of the screen, there would be the letters "KRON" instead of "KNTV". If that's your video Viagra, that's really fucking sad.
A billion dollars? Someone has been hitting the whacky tobaccy too hard. $400 million is the real number. Meanwhile I am going to go sell buckets of ice to Eskimos in the dead of winter with that "tipster"
ReplyDeleteJust 15 years ago, one CDMA transmitter occupied one frequency only, and it served almost 300 users at once when at peak. The bandwidth was not all that wide, so many more CDMA transmitter could be constructed on nearby frequencies, all well within the bandwidth limitations of a TV channel, and each one of these adjacent towers could serve another 255 users. Multiply this by the number of users, and you serve lots of people, the main limitation being saturation of number of users interested in the product. But thanks in part to Steve Jobs, user interest was quite high. Each subscriber was separately billed each month, so it's easy to see even then how astronomical profits could be. Now with LTE and LTE-A, higher-speed content, such as streaming, can be accommodated. I don't know if a billion in revenue could be raised over a couple of years, but I submit that net profit is most likely far above what a TV station produces.
ReplyDelete