What's the biggest expense that radio or TV stations face?

Asked by Nullo (22009

) July 7th, 2010

The local classical music station went off the air tonight; the station was sold because its parent entity couldn’t afford to keep it. And I wondered, “What’s so pickin’ expensive, anyway? Why do these operations take millions of dollars to run? Building expenses? Utilities? Broadcast licenses? What?”

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4 Answers

Staff expenses form a major monthly recurring expense for a typical radio station. This constitutes approximately 60–70% of the total monthly expenses.

Austinlad (16323

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Licensing, broadcast tower equipment, music licensing, staff, promotional costs.

Was it a public radio station, or did it have advertising? Our public radio station is actually 3 stations under one parent umbrella – classic, NPR news affiliate, and alternative. There are no real ads, just sponsorship messages by local business partners, and foundation donations. There rest is funded by listener donations. It would probably be more cost effective if they could only live stream, but then we couldn’t listen in the car.

PandoraBoxx (18031

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