Entercom announced that David Bellavia will host a new show 10 pm to 1 am on WBEN. Will they sell enough local ads to pay him? 10 to 1 seems like an awful shift to sell locally. Bellavia will also be hosting for Sandy Beach and Tom Bauerle when they are away, and subbing for Rush when he's away. That's different, they are pre-empting Rush's show for Bellavia. I guess as long as they run the network spots they can do it, but does it foretell a possible end to Rush on WBEN?
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Bellavia's New Show on WBEN
- Thread starter benson8620
- Start date
D
dand5780
Guest
Either that or put Rush on 10-1.
LOL.
At a time when the GOP/TP has historically low approval numbers, WBEN has decided to replace the ONLY show on the station that wasn't TP-centric....with someone who is a TP darling? Color me shocked! I guess accelerating towards the cliff is par for the course in the short-sighted minds of talkradio management these days.
Like I said, LOL.
That might explain the recent schedule flip-flop with middays and PM drive. But then again, that upheaval may have more to do with station "internals" reflecting trouble on the horizon ratings-wise.
Still, while Bellavia seems like a decent guy, he sometimes gets stuck on how to say/use certain words, has a bit of a speech impediment and tends to go down that survivalist rabbit hole too often.
When all is said and done, it's yet another conservative preacher hitting the air. The tea party crowd will like him, but is a continued doubling down on that type content really the smart move?
That is probably the most oft repeated, yet false analogy in radio.
The genre is "interesting conversation". If it wasn't, then conservatives would never listen to anything but conservatives and liberals would never listen to anything but liberals...and non-partisan listeners wouldn't listen to ANY of it.
We can argue all day long about what came first, the talk listener or the conservatism, but the fact remains: Interesting and entertaining people get audience. The complicating factor here is that many heritage sticks skewed right over the years because programmers hired Limbaugh clone after Limbaugh clone, providing a decided advantage in giving one impression of what works in talkradio. Those with short memories think that is all that can work.
If there is one demo that didn't need to be catered to over the years, it was the lunatic fringe. Now they have unnecessarily become talkradio's suicidal bread & butter.
Yes, that's why Air America was so successful.
I know that's the trite, lazy remark typically thrown out there by people who have little knowledge of the evolution of the format over the last 20+ years, but nice try.
The failure of the horribly boring Air America is hardly an endorsement of conserva-talk. Even if AA was good, it would've had a tough time surviving on all the inferior signals and dead frequencies it was put on---kind of like what happens to conservative talk when it's put on garbage stations with no heritage. Even Rush failed on a rimshot in Boston, while he did much better on a superior WRKO signal.
No, the genre is news talk. There are lots of other types of talk, but for WBEN, it's news talk, and this is the approach that works for them.
At one time it was possible to hear Johnny Cash, Louis Armstrong, and The Rolling Stones on the exact same station. Today, we call that a train wreck. For the last 40 years, we've programmed to specific target demos, and we do that with genres and formats. You can't be specific with music and general with talk. It simply doesn't work. And the talk audience is extremely polarized. The sports talk people absolutely won't sit through politics, regardless of how interesting it is.
The talk audience is more polarized than ever because talkradio is more one-sided and extreme than ever, not the other way around. Every issue has been turned into an us-vs.-them, ideological rant. The audiences became more and more skewed as stations tolerated more and more of that type behavior from their hosts. Stations have needlessly empowered the lunatic fringe and eventually that's all they'll be left with. It's bad for the future of talk and bad for the nation's discourse.
Worst of all, it's predictable and boring.
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This is a radio board. Our only interest on this board is to discuss what works for radio stations. For WBEN, this kind of talk is working, so that's what they do. We'll leave the hand-wringing for others on other boards.
Pandering to an ideological niche was unnecessary, particularly in a market where the talk station is unchallenged. Seems all stations like WBEN do these days is find more and more ways to blow off people who aren't ideologues. It's a fool's errand. Time will show that.
I have noted on several occasions, and will do so again, that there's an interesting commonality among the talk stations that have done well in recent years. Whether it's KFI or WSB or WHAM or WBEN, it's more than just conservative talk. It's a deep heritage of full service in the community.
Take the same hosts who succeed on those stations and put them on a station without that heritage, even with a decent signal, and the ratings don't follow. Rush and Hannity couldn't make WWIQ in Philadelphia a success, even with a decent class B FM signal. Nor could they pull WXKS in Boston up above a 1 share - and the signal there, while not fantastic, is actually quite comparable with WRKO, which does have a long service history in the market, a local newsroom, and so on.
Which is to say: there's an unanswered question here about whether WBEN succeeds because of the political bent of its talkers...or, just maybe, in spite of them?
Take the same hosts who succeed on those stations and put them on a station without that heritage, even with a decent signal, and the ratings don't follow. Rush and Hannity couldn't make WWIQ in Philadelphia a success, even with a decent class B FM signal. Nor could they pull WXKS in Boston up above a 1 share - and the signal there, while not fantastic, is actually quite comparable with WRKO, which does have a long service history in the market, a local newsroom, and so on.
Which is to say: there's an unanswered question here about whether WBEN succeeds because of the political bent of its talkers...or, just maybe, in spite of them?
I disagree that it's unchallenged. It's been pointed out many times there are lots of competing talk stations in the market. I consider WGR a competing talk station, as is WBFO and others. It's the market leader. There's a reason why. This station is succeeding with what it's doing, so there's absolutely no reason to change its formula.
The fact that, for a market this size, there is a large local staff of political talkers, so it's not just the national syndication. And those local talkers have established reputations. This new guy was a veteran and former political candidate, so he's well known in the community. It seems smart to try and establish him as a personality so that he's ready to step in when it's necessary.
What's interesting to me is they're replacing a heritage syndicated host with a local host from 10PM to 1 AM. How many other stations have done that lately?
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WGR is a sports station. They talk about nothing but sports. Saying that is a direct competitior to an issues-oriented talk station is disingenuous.
Yes, the reason is post-Telecom consolidation, which enabled Entercom to own and manipulate the 3 best AM signals in town. A little history for you: Before ETM decided how the AM band would look (sound), WGR was issues-oriented talk---a direct competitor of WBEN---and beat them in certain dayparts and demos. Let's read that again: BEAT them.
Winning because you're good and are serving the audience well is one thing. Winning by default because there is nowhere else to go on the dial is an entirely different thing.
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You can talk all you want about history. It doesn't change the reality. We who work in radio do so in the real world. As I said, there are lots of places to go if you look beyond the way things used to be. The fact is they ARE serving the audience well. Just not you.
Losing me as a listener is a bad sign. Like most people, I hold a variety of views, depending on an issue. It runs the full spectrum from liberal to very conservative, again depending on the issue. I have been a fan of talkradio since I was under 20. That's several decades of listening to talkradio.
I listen less now than ever before---and not because I'm finding it elsewhere. I'm just turned off by the predictable, trite, partisan garbage that is regurgitated daily---and if you don't think losing THIS listener says a lot about where the format continues to head, then you underestimate the damage that has been inflicted upon the format.
Those who enjoy having their opinions vomited back at them ad nauseum have always been there. What's killing the format is the needless alienation of everybody else.
When WBEN's "success" is brought up, it should be noted that it's concentrated in one area: old(er) demos. It's a 60+ powerhouse. 25-54? Not so much as you'd notice. Bellavia is a politician, a military veteran and a republican Tea party activist. He fits the mold of WBEN's core audience. It's likely WBEN is grooming him, but he has a long way to go. In many ways, he sounds like WGR's Chris Parker, not the smoothest guy on he air, not very articulate, but there's something "every man" about him. What's more telling, WBEN puts Bellavia on the air, but Ron Dobson, a far better talk show host and a seemingly true Libertarian, is nowhere to be found.
D
dand5780
Guest
Would you have put Rush Limbaugh on WWKB between Alan Colmes and Randi Rhodes? Why were there no local left leaning hosts on that station?
I'm an under 30 listener and know plenty of people in the 30-50 range that listen to WBEN. I don't doubt that over 60 is the majority, but apparently any age wasn't listening to WWKB enough.
I would think the competitor of WBEN isn't another radio station, but rather, the Buffalo "News."
I'm an under 30 listener and know plenty of people in the 30-50 range that listen to WBEN. I don't doubt that over 60 is the majority, but apparently any age wasn't listening to WWKB enough.
I would think the competitor of WBEN isn't another radio station, but rather, the Buffalo "News."
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