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New Slogans for WBZ
- Thread starter spt87
- Start date
Thank you!
This was about the best thing I've read on this thread so far. It shows that WBZ still has some reach over-the-air, and that it IS worth preserving its heritage.
600 miles is theoretical, and I should have made that clear. What I was, poorly however, trying to say is that the old 1-A clears are only protected up to 600 miles and outside that area other stations can put signals... signals that will sometimes or even always interfere.
There could be a station that was violently directional right at the 600 mile limit, as long as it put no signal any closer than the protected contour. But other stations have to restrict their signals so that any close than 600 miles the signal will be minimal.
The point I should have made more clearly is that the old 1-A clears are not protected any further away than 600 miles. So other stations on the channel may live there, as long as they don't send any prohibited signal any close than that.
What that means is that no old 1-A clear channel can cover more than a handful of states, even in small-state New England and the Northeast. 600 miles barely gets into Ohio, pasts of WV, VA and NC plus PA, NY, MD, DE, NJ, NY and New England's 6 states for a total of about 16 states, not 33. And some are affected by the non-US stations on the channel from the Caribbean area as well...
But if AM listenership as a whole is declining with every passing year, that must mean the number of out-of-market skywave listeners -- be they hobbyists or just outliers who prefer programming from far away to what's available on the local dial -- is barely measurable these days. DXing as a hobby has been dying for decades; surely it is moribund by now, done by only a fortunate few not subjected to the modern-day noise floor full of hash from lighting, computers, leaky power lines and what have you. Why would iHeart care about them, especially when it may need to cut costs and payroll as deeply as its presumed suitor, Liberty, requires it to do in order to cut a deal?
That list is missing most Latin American countries.
It does not include stations on 1030 with power up to 100 kw in:
Haiti
Ecuador
Colombia
El Salvador
Chile
Peru
Bolivia
Yep.
WBZ shows up in several MSA areas besides Boston: Worcester, MA, Portsmouth, NH, Portland, ME, Manchester, NH, Cape Cod, MA, New Bedford-Fall River, MA and Concord, NH. Those are basically local adjacent markets, not distant skywave ones. And in several of those markets, WBZ does not always show in every book.
And THAT is EXACTLY why WBZ should keep their overnight live and local talk. There is NOTHING else on at night - not on TV or another radio station. They have a monopoly during those hours.
Sad that it has come to this - pretty much one radio station in America doing this but it has. The Tea Party and American revolution started in Boston. The final show down over the destruction of radio is going down here now.
If you think it is ok to run repeats of news all night that means you don't listen overnight.
Radio is about more than music or news - it for a lot of people it is about having some company during long night of working, getting up early to drive to work, caring for a family member or just being a night owl. Recorded content doesn't provide that. People listened to Bradly Jay. They won't listen to the current tape recorder format. Just because KYW did something means nothing - no one listened to that either.
The traffic is outsourced - those people are not in the WBZ studios. Just the computer.....
They probably have some news writers show up early to get ready for 5am, though, so I'll concede that - but they are not going to crack open the mic on a breaking story. That will wait until 5am.
Another person who didn't listen to WBZ at night. They get a lot of callers from other states and they are listening on the sky wave signal. WBZ is loud and clear out into Chicago, Buffalo, NYC, NJ, down the Atlantic seaboard. Yes some people are on the iheart app but most not.
There are no advertisers for radio at that hour. That's why no one does it. Even satellite radio where subscribers pay is taped.
That's not true. Traffic is done by Total Traffic which is owned by iHeart. It's their people in the same building.
The question I have is - if no one listens to late night radio - why do the stations bother even keeping the transmitter on? Concede no one is listening, tell the advertisers not to bother and shut it down to save power.
Instead I can do a band scan at night and find George Noory on 10 stations, Red Eye radio on a few more, reruns of various shows on others. People are loyal to BZ because the station has stayed true to giving people the programming they want. Once they get rid of that the people will be gone.
I'm just surprised their are people that advocate for more of that. We have a station here that has been doing local talk successfully overnight with the community supporting it but let's dump it cause some guy looking at a spreadsheet a few hundred miles from Boston thought a few more dollars could be shifted toward his own bonus.
Instead I can do a band scan at night and find George Noory on 10 stations, Red Eye radio on a few more, reruns of various shows on others. People are loyal to BZ because the station has stayed true to giving people the programming they want. Once they get rid of that the people will be gone.
I'm just surprised their are people that advocate for more of that. We have a station here that has been doing local talk successfully overnight with the community supporting it but let's dump it cause some guy looking at a spreadsheet a few hundred miles from Boston thought a few more dollars could be shifted toward his own bonus.
Starting and stopping causes more wear and tear than keeping something on. That's basic science.
Would you be willing to work the overnight shift for free?
Ok, so I guess the ads I heard during JayTalking were in my imagination. Yes I know everything else is taped - that is why BZ was such a gem until last week. It was the only place to go. Just because everything else is taped doesn't mean BZ should be. Again, why say on the air. All those cable channels, TV stations and radios stations can just go off the air and save power overnight. Why spend time making the recordings for no one to listen to?
I'm glad you are happy with the changes made last week. You like taped content - great. So they have a new loyal listener. When they shift evenings to recordings, then mid days - you will enjoy that too. Some of us don't. I'll be listening to something else.
That's great. Have fun.
Interesting....And thanks for clarifying your other post too....(600 miles)...
Wrong. The trucking channel is live, with phone calls. MLB and NHL channels have wrap-up highlights and talk shows after the last West Coast games end. They run from 1-3 a.m. Eastern, I believe, and include live talk. Not sure about NBA as I'm not enough of a fan of the league to listen.
And of course you don't mean "no advertisers" literally. All the commercial stations have ads on their overnight shows but they're usually bulk buys and response-based stuff. Obviously, the cost of these spots is rock-bottom, but "no advertisers" is untrue.
I went to the site of one of my FMs long ago when the transmitter would not turn on. I found that a rat had chewed its way into the transmitter overnight seeking heat from the transformers inside the rig.
When we turned the transmitter on, the rat shorted it out. The rat exploded, and bits of dead rat were all over the power supply and part of the rest of the circuits. It took me several hours to clean it, only after going to an all-night pharmacy for alcohol, rubber gloves, a face mask and the like.
The next day, I hired an operator to run the station overnight. It was cheaper, and far less disgusting. And generally any equipment issues could be anticipated rather than coming as 6 AM surprises.
Remember, that is 9 PM to Midnight, Pacific. Satellite and syndicated format have to take into account multiple time zones.
A lot of the ads on overnight are bonus spots, or they are based on inquiries / orders.
While a few stations have managed, in the past, to make a little money overnight, practically none do today. I've had 24 hour stations that I owned, managed or programmed for the last 55 years... over 100 of them in total... mostly in very large markets... and never even covered expenses in overnights and never competed with a station that did.
Stations like that purposely put those distant calls on the air. It's an ego thing.
WBZ does not show up in ratings... not even 0.1 percent of local listening... in the skywave areas.
When I was a kid in Ohio, I used to call XEB in Mexico City in overnight hours and request songs. They'd always put me on the air because it was different and fun to have a gringo asking for Mexican tropical music song from 2500 miles away. I was the exception, not the rule.
The same thing applies today.
In fact, one time when I was running KTNQ in LA, the overnight host was talking about the winner of a beauty pageant and he commented that he thought that the winner, from Hawai'i, was not as good as the contestant from CA. Within minutes he had several calls from Hawai'i telling him he was wrong!
There are exceptions. But stations can't stay alive on exceptions. So they focus on the local market, not distant ones.
I thought we're talking about radio....
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