The Morning News du lieu suivant : Wilmington, Delaware • Page 51

media lllii3iyil The Morning News, Thursday, June 21, 1973 5' just Delaware oriented to have any shot at showing a profit- A group called Connor Broadcasting headed by Washington lawyer and Bethany Beach real estate broker J. Parker Connor, is quietly running a survey of the Bethany arealn preparation to applying to the FCC for an FM broadcast frequency available there. Also having what it terms "a slight interest" in that same allocation is Leisure Time Broadcasting. Paul Stokes, who is a principal in Leisure Time, says he isn't sure the market is there yet for an FM station. Leisure Time recently purchased Erny Tannen's WDMV in Pocomoke City, and is negotiating to buy WMID, Atlantic City, from television star Merv Griffin Tannen's WEEZ in Chester recently pulled its latest format switch, this time to an all-talk setup.

Among those doing the talking is John Dignan, who served a short stint as news director at WAMS. the Philadelphia channels pay more than passing attention to the area on their local news shows. Even with a substantial bankroll to keep the station on the air and buy decent programming, there has to be some hope of making a profit someday. Such a hope has kept the Philadelphia UHF stations going for years so that now two are running in the black and the third is almost there. Chances of Channel 61 getting national or regional advertising are marginal since these advertisers buy mainly on the basis of cost per thousand viewers and would put their money into time on the Philadelphia stations first.

Local advertising just can't carry the load alone because of competition for the same dollars from newspapers, radio, and now, cable television systems. The only chance of a broadcaster making a go with Channel 61 would be to run it as a black box station, a pay television operation offering first-run movies, sporting events and special programs on a fee basis to homeviewers. Such systems are still in the experimental stages, and even here, programming would have to be geared to the whole Philadelphia market not several hands before Storer Broadcasting took it off the air in 1958. Since then, competition in this region has been even fiercer. In addition to the three commercial VHF channels with their network affliations, there are now three independent UHF stations further splintering the audience and advertising dollar.

To battle this broadcasting lineup would take more than reruns of My Little Margie, though Margie is what Channel 61 would probably end up with. Like the advertisers and broadcasters, program syndicators consider Wilmington part of the Philadelphia market and charge syndication fees on the basis of that. Also a local channel would be bidding against the Philadelphia operations for the off-network shows, driving potential cost still higher. There would be no net affiliation to fall back on as a source of income because the nets are already tied up with the Philadelphia outlets. The only remaining way to get a significant local audience for even part of a broadcast day would be local newscasts.

But, Channel 12 already has a solid Delaware-oriented newscast and bill hayden Pemsys disposable diaper sale, Now and again, someone usually a politican will view with alarm the situation of Delaware as the only state without a commercial television station. Next that someone will shed tears over Channel 12 in the clutches of public television interests and wonder aloud if it now really serves the interests of Delaware or of Philadelphia. What is not mentioned and is little known is that there is a UHF channel assigned to Wilmington for commercial use. Channel 61 has been sitting quietly on the Federal Communications Commission allocation charts, up for grabs since Rollins, withdrew its application for it in 1971. Rollins since then has gone into the cable television business in northern New Castle County and now has no interest in putting a station on the air over that channel.

Nor apparently do other commercial broadcasters. The reasons would seem to be monetary ones. For example, say experts in the industry, putting a new UHF station on the air would cost about $1-75 million in equipment and installation costs alone. And that is for what basically would be a shoestring operation. It would cost about the same amount to run and program the station for a year, they say.

Carrying a nut like $3V4 million means you have to sell a lot of commercials, and to sell commercials, you have to have an audience. That audience happens to be part of what advertisers and broadcasters consider the Philadelphia televiison market, the fourth largest in the country with 2.2 million television homes. Such a situation puts any operator of Channel 61 in direct competition with the Philadelphia stations. Trying to grab a chunk of the Philadelphia audience is hard work as past commercial operators of Channel 12 found out. Channel 12 was a money-losing operation as it passed through that you'll have some money left for the non-disposables.

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