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Thank you, WBEN!

D

dand5780

Guest
Special thanks to WBEN newsroom as they covered the story of the police search in Allegany County on Saturday the 20th and Sunday the 21st. If I waited for the paper to come the next morning, I could have been stuck in traffic.

Also thanks to WBEN fill in talk hosts David Bellavia on Friday night and Larry Hunter Sunday night as criminals were shot and captured. As much as I wanted to hear about Greece's financial situation this evening from Mr. Brinker, it was nice to hear a live, local voice giving us breaking news.

And they didn't ask me for any extra money.
 
First word actually came from a NEWSPAPER, which texted the capture of David Sweat and followed up with continuous reporting from the scene. Social media immediately erupted, with a picture of the captured escapee from the site, taken by a person who witnessed the first responders tending to Sweat. NEWSPAPER web sites were all over this breaking news event with constant, accurate updates and plenty of pictures. WBEN? Sure, for those eight listeners who may not be connected.
 
"Special" thanks? For doing their job? Maybe you should direct your praise to their website, not a discussion board targeted at radio professionals who are largely unimpressed with people doing what they're supposed to do. This ain't a fan site, Dand. You'd be better off spreading your ideas on Facebook or Twitter, where you might get a few people to add to WBEN's cumes. After all, you can fool some of the people all of the time...
 
SirRoxalot said:
"Special" thanks? For doing their job? Maybe you should direct your praise to their website, not a discussion board targeted at radio professionals who are largely unimpressed with people doing what they're supposed to do. This ain't a fan site, Dand. You'd be better off spreading your ideas on Facebook or Twitter, where you might get a few people to add to WBEN's cumes. After all, you can fool some of the people all of the time...
Click to expand...

Dand seems like WBEN's version of the gimp in "Pulp Fiction"...the guy tethered from the ceiling with the leather mask and the zipper mouth.
 
SirRoxalot said:
"Special" thanks? For doing their job? Maybe you should direct your praise to their website, not a discussion board targeted at radio professionals who are largely unimpressed with people doing what they're supposed to do. This ain't a fan site, Dand. You'd be better off spreading your ideas on Facebook or Twitter, where you might get a few people to add to WBEN's cumes. After all, you can fool some of the people all of the time...
Click to expand...

Don't worry about where I direct it. The special thanks is for them doing their job (if it is the job of the voice of Buffalo to travel to another county, I don't know), while other "news" outlets weren't or couldn't. Maybe the blues were more important on a news station, I don't know, I didn't check. Didn't need to.

Maybe if I was a subscriber, I'd see it in the paper the next day, if the driver could manage delivering it.
 
Rusty Bridges said:
First word actually came from a NEWSPAPER, which texted the capture of David Sweat and followed up with continuous reporting from the scene.
Click to expand...

Wait, what? The rag texted his capture? I'm supposed to know that how, while I'm driving around New York state which banned texting while driving?

I don't have text alerts from any news outlet. And just wondering, does a station or newspaper profit from a text alert? I mean directly?

Rusty Bridges said:
Social media immediately erupted
Click to expand...

Yes it did, Larry Hunter was in studio taking phone calls. And I'm sure some people sent some snail mail to make it into the paper within a week.
 
Maybe you ought to check out the newspaper website. They actually have people that comment after stories.

WBEN brought in a couple of part-timers on a Friday night and Sunday night to pre-empt canned programming because a big story broke. It was already on TV by then, let alone on-line. BFD (and I don't mean "Buffalo Fire Department"). WBFO carried the Governor's news conference Sunday evening. The capture of both suspects made the hourly news on WBFO both day, and they did extended coverage on both. They didn't have talk show hosts blather on with a handful of callers, repeating the same handful of actual facts along with endless vapid speculation by hosts with no more information than anybody with a Twitter account. Oooh, I'll bet that bumped the ratings.

Bottom line is that you're campaigning for WBEN in the wrong place. The handful of visitors here won't help their ratings sag. Your antipathy to WBFO won't convince anybody here of your opinion of their worth. I guess that your only function here is to spark some discussion, which might be a benefit to the web site owners. If that's your aim, you might want to broaden your range of topics.
 
dand5780 said:
Wait, what? The rag texted his capture? I'm supposed to know that how, while I'm driving around New York state which banned texting while driving?
Click to expand...

Um, RECEIVING texts is not illegal.


Larry Hunter was in studio taking phone calls. And I'm sure some people sent some snail mail to make it into the paper within a week.
Click to expand...

The people who would listen to that bore Larry Hunter are the ones most likely to send snail mail.

You are trying to put across this absurd notion that WBEN is somehow THE news source, which is LAUGHABLE.

They have a skeleton staff and only go about a millimeter deep on any story. Anyone who actually wants NEWS, will go to the Buff News website. It's comprehensive and in depth. WBEN's website is a token site, common in many markets, where the "newstalk" station tries to give the impression that it is THE news source, when in reality, like with WBEN, the local newspaper typically do a much better job.

By the way, you would crap if you knew how often newstalk stations actually rely on the newsgathering of the local paper reporters to get their stories.
 
Reason & logic don't work for many. They just drink the Kool Aid when
told to like the folks at Jonestown. One guy constantly shilling for WBEN must be
their new marketing plan.
FULL OF SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING...
 
It doesn't take much to realize there is a big difference between a news/talk station and a news station. In news/talk the news is secondary and not staffed as well as a news station.

Flybynight said: "By the way, you would crap if you knew how often newstalk stations actually rely on the newsgathering of the local paper reporters to get their stories."

Anyone who has been in the biz knows that's been going on for a very long time, nothing new!
 
Had a "sports reporter" in my area that never even bothered to show up for games but you'd see his story in the weekly paper as if he was there. He was ripping off the reporters from the daily papers. One of the reporters from the daily paper he was ripping off wrote a false line of an event [with his editors approval] that didn't happen during the game.....and he repeated it verbatim in his story. That was the straw that finally got him fired. So what's he doing now? A talk show host on a low rated radio station...and he's STILL stealing stuff from other stations and papers and passing it off as his own.
 
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Maybe we should go back to the days when newspapers owned radio stations. WBEN was a classy operation back in the Buffalo Evening News days. Ah but that ship has sailed and you can't go back.
 
TheBigA said:
Newspapers don't have the money to own radio stations any more.
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Most don't. A few do. The Buffalo News is owned by Warren Buffet-Berkshire Hathaway. It makes money. And Buffett, as we know, has cash. The Buffalo News website is active and has a paywall, but this doesn't stop most TV and radio stations from "referencing" it. WBEN was co-owned by The Buffalo Evening News
("B-E-N"). Divestiture didn't stop the station from using the paper's stories. Old habits and down-sized radio news rooms die hard.
 
Rusty Bridges said:
Old habits and down-sized radio news rooms die hard.
Click to expand...

I doubt it has anything to do with "old habits." How many WBEN employees go back to 1974?

The Huffington Post has no reporters. Yet a lot of people get their news there. The rules for journalism have changed in the digital age. People want content for free, and it's accessible. So people use it. I'm not defending the practice, nor am I saying I agree with it. But it's the way things are.
 
Copyright laws say that you have to acknowledge the sources, and that you have to pay royalties if you charge for that content. Agregators may skirt those laws, but they do so at their peril. More than one radio newsroom has been the victim of a planted story that was purely the invention of a newspaper, and designed to catch them. Most of the time a C&D is the result, but cases have gone to court and damages have been awarded.
 
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