Red Apple Media\u2019s talk WABC (770) is moving to extend its reach beyond the core of the New York City market. The station, which has operated an FM simulcast on Long Island since 2020, will expand its coverage area with the addition of an FM translator that will help it cover a two-county market that stretches 86 miles from side-to-side.<\/p>\n
The latest deal for the John Catsimatidis-led Red Apple is a pending $400,000 acquisition of the Medford, NY-licensed translator W243ES at 96.5 FM. Seller C\u00e1ntico Nuevo Ministries earlier spun-off WLID (1370) to Red Apple for $500,000 this spring<\/a>. WLID has carried WABC programming since, and the AM will now feed that format to the translator.<\/p>\n Red Apple has steadily been working to expand the WABC footprint into market No. 21. Six year ago it began leasing WLIR-FM (107.1) and then quickly reached an agreement to buy the signal outright for $900,000<\/a>. The 4,000-watt Class A signal that originates from Hampton Bays, NY mostly covers the eastern side of Suffolk County, NY. The new translator now fills-in the FM coverage with a signal that sits over a portion of the western side of the county.<\/p>\n The Long Island market is a key piece of WABC\u2019s reach, with a large Republican audience drawn to the station\u2019s lineup of conservative talk hosts. Nielsen says the station ranked No. 5 in the June ratings. The AM station had a 5.2 share (6+) even though its cume was just 103,400\u2014roughly a third of what other top 10 stations in the market had in June. And with a limited reach for WLIR-FM, the talk station added another 0.5 in its share total, along with 21,900 listeners to the FM signal.<\/p>\n Red Apple Media has also been working to extend WABC coverage into New York\u2019s Hudson Valley. Last year, the company struck a $600,000 deal<\/a> to buy WRCR (1700) in Ramapo, NY from Alexander Broadcasting. Despite securing government approval, the deal has not yet closed, however. FCC filings<\/a> says the two companies \u201cworking to resolve non-FCC related closing conditions.\u201d In the meantime, Red Apple is operating WRCR under a local marketing agreement.<\/p>\n Once the latest sale closes, Erick Salgado\u2019s Cantico Nuevo Ministry will still own stations in the Hudson Valley and New Jersey markets of Monmouth-Ocean and Morristown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Apple Media\u2019s talk WABC (770) is moving to extend its reach beyond the core of the New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,710,61,60,278,43],"class_list":["post-589322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-free","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}