The AM Radio Die-Off: ‘It Makes Sense’ To Sutton

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RBR+TVBR this week has offered no less than three articles about licensees who have opted to turn in the license of their respective AM radio stations. By January 8, 2022, four stations — each of them at least 65 years old — will disappear forever.


A Georgia Association of Broadcasters 2018 Hall of Fame inductee shares that this news shouldn’t be that surprising. Speaking of the Friday final sign-off of KDKD-AM in Clinton, Mo.Art Sutton says, “If this station and the other AMs leaving the air were viable businesses, they wouldn’t be going dark.”

Sutton is the owner of Georgia-Carolina Broadcasting, and he has been involved in broadcasting since the age of 15. In 1982, while attending Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton, Ga., Sutton was already a full-time news director/part-time sales person at WTIF Radio. In 1986, he acquired 50% ownership interest of WMGA in Moultrie, Ga., and five years later became Station Manager of WJTH in Calhoun, Ga. Two years later he moved to Union, S.C., and bought 100% interest in the town’s only radio station, WBCU.

By 1994, Sutton had acquired two Greenwood, S.C., stations – WCRS-AM & FM – which he managed from 1997-1999. He relocated the pair to Greenville, S.C., and sold it them Clear Channel Communications in 2001. Sutton then bought WDXZ in Newberry, S.C., moved it to Greenville, and spun that facility Barnstable Broadcasting in 2002.

After that experience, Sutton formed Georgia-Carolina Radiocasting. Over the course of 12 months, purchased 14 radio stations in northeast Georgia, western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina. At the time of his GAB induction, the company had 60 employees and ownership of four small market radio stations in Georgia; two in North Carolina; and three in South Carolina. The company also leases three in Elberton, Ga., to a local operator.

Speaking in reference to Radford Media Group, which opted to not move the KDKD-AM transmitter to a new tower or shift programming to an HD multicast on KDKD-FM, Sutton says, “This owner chose to not spend the money to move the AM to another tower site so ultimately it is really their decision.”

In Radford’s view, the decision to decommission the KDKD-AM tower by its owner, Crown Castle, is the catalyst for the station’s demise.

No matter how one looks at the reasons behind it, the death of KDKD isn’t a crime for Sutton. “That’s ok,” he says. “Invest those funds in the FM signals.”

Sutton adds that his company successfully ran AM-only operations in the southeastern U.S. long after many gave up. Yet, there were also challenges. “I have since turned in three AM licenses,” he shares. In fact, by surrendering two of the AMs he was able to use a single FM translator to cover three times the area the AMs did in the daytime, “with an inferior quality signal.”

He continues, “Our market is much better served and 24/7.”

The third surrendered Sutton AM “hadn’t made a penny in 25 years and was displaced when a successful AM we owned raised power and the existing diplexer became obsolete,” he says. “The demise of one AM made it possible for another to be stronger.”

Lastly, Sutton says that the only people who noticed and criticized him “were other people in the radio business.” He concludes, “One thing nearly all shared in common was that none was an owner or responsible for making a payroll. A big part of this equation has little to do with radio. The revenue dynamic in every small town has changed dramatically the past 20 years. There are more small towns in rural America less viable today than they were 20, 15 or even 10 years ago. It makes sense there will be fewer radio stations.”

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