Nashville tornado coverage

[gr8oldies]

Who did well and who didn't with the tornadoes that devestated Nashville and Cookeville?
I heard some "next morning" coverage on WWTN and WLAC. I tuned in WSIX (online) and it was a big commercial set and Bobby Bones, with no local coverage that I heard.

Whie listening to WWTN, the hosts had someone from WHUB, Cookeville, which had been busy covering its area, where 22 died and there are as many missing as of Tuesday night.

 

[crainbebo]

WTVF-TV, but that wasn't radio. Honestly, radio SUCKED at about 2AM CT this morning. Tornado had just left destruction and 4 and 5 were wall-to-wall TV coverage. Not one music FM had broken in with TV coverage. I tried streams for WKDF, WSIX, 92.9, 105.9, 107.5, etc.
Sickening. I don't care what time of the night it is.

 

[TheBigA]

WTVF-TV, but that wasn't radio. Honestly, radio SUCKED at about 2AM CT this morning.

Then again, this kind of weather works best on TV. That way you can SEE the coverage. If it's 2AM, most people are at home, and they can choose.

If you're in the car and you want news, you're not listening to FM music stations. Doesn't matter what's going on. They will stay with music.

 

[CTListener]

Then again, this kind of weather works best on TV. That way you can SEE the coverage. If it's 2AM, most people are at home, and they can choose.

If you're in the car and you want news, you're not listening to FM music stations. Doesn't matter what's going on. They will stay with music.

On 9/11/2001 here in Connecticut, most if not all of the music stations broke format even if they had no news department. Some, like WDRC-FM, simulcast co-owned stations in New York (WOR in DRC's case), while WPLR, which had no news department and no agreement with any other station to obtain news, broadcast almost stream-of-consciousness-style commentary from disc jockeys who were watching TV in the studio and gasping and "oh my God"-ing at what they were seeing -- live, on air. Of course, the events of 9/11 began in mid-morning here in the East. Did music stations in the Pacific time zone break format then or just do what the Nashville music stations did last night? It was 5:40 a.m. there, so maybe some of their morning shows were already underway, but what of the stations that had no news resources to turn to?

 

[gr8oldies]

I would venture to guess the EAS alerts went out. What about coverage the rest of the day?
There have been occasions where music stations broke format, including the tornadoes and mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio and the after the Pulse Nightclub shootings.

 

[firepoint525]

The Cromwell stations (classic hits 93.3 and The Ville) simulcast Fox 17 TV news coverage for a while there. Bill Cody had some coverage on WSM, including apparently showing photos over Circle TV.

 

[b-turner]

The Emergency Alert System was never activated for 9-11. I recall a claim EAS was antiquated and how it was not activated for 9-11 before everyone went wall to wall on coverage, and therefore not needed. I think the FCC's response was 9-11 was outside the scope of EAS. Back to the town where I was born, Nashville, it would not surprise me if nothing more than the EAS of the Tornado Warnings aired. People can complain about the stations but the reality was most everyone was asleep and would not have heard of the tornado via radio...hand held device, yes.

 

[anotherguyTN]

Smart phones are supposed to be able to go off for EAS alerts if they are set up correctly, but it seems inconsistent in how they work. I'll get amber alerts from all across the state and even surrounding states. But Monday night the tornadoes started near Camden just West of the TN river and in range of what I would normally get warnings for, but I didn't hear anything.

 

[TheBigA]

Smart phones are supposed to be able to go off for EAS alerts if they are set up correctly,

I can tell you that I personally disabled that function in my phone.

 

[davideduardo]

The Emergency Alert System was never activated for 9-11. I recall a claim EAS was antiquated and how it was not activated for 9-11 before everyone went wall to wall on coverage, and therefore not needed. I think the FCC's response was 9-11 was outside the scope of EAS. Back to the town where I was born, Nashville, it would not surprise me if nothing more than the EAS of the Tornado Warnings aired. People can complain about the stations but the reality was most everyone was asleep and would not have heard of the tornado via radio...hand held device, yes.

As being responsible for programming on two NYC stations when 9-11 occurred, I was involved with later discussions in-house and in the industry about 9-11.

The conclusion was that EAS is intended to give advance warning of future events, not to report news on past events. The idea is to tell people that a tornado or hurricane or forest fire is coming or to advise about a chemical spill or imminent factory or refinery explosion. EAS is not a newscasting service.

After the 9-11 event, there was no purpose in activating EAS. The event was over.

Some folks involved in the process thought that advising that no further events were predicted should have been stated on the EAS, but that was thought to be outside the scope of an activation.

Your point about "everyone was asleep" is a core issue in the Minot incidence which also occurred in overnight hours; the system failure there was caused by the local civil authorities, not the stations... but the fact is that at 2 AM in the Dakotas, next to nobody is listening anyway.

 

[davideduardo]

I can tell you that I personally disabled that function in my phone.

I have been tempted to do that as well. I live in Riverside County, CA, which is 30% larger than Connecticut... and I get alerts about possible flooding or dust storms in towns that are a 3 hour drive away from my home. In fact, I have never gotten an alert that was relevant to my area.

I think that two things happen in these cases: first, people ignore the messages after hearing many that are irrelevant. And second, many turn the alerting off.

 

[TheBigA]

I tuned in WSIX (online) and it was a big commercial set and Bobby Bones, with no local coverage that I heard.

Country Aircheck reported this about WSIX:

iHeartMedia EVP/Country Programming Strategy Rod Phillips tells Country Aircheck WSIX/Nashville went "full scale...with short term plans now. Bobby [Bones] even loaded up his truck and headed to East Nashville to scout it out personally. [We are] also in assessment mode and working with all iHeartMedia/Nashville stations on next steps." Additionally, The Bobby Bones Show has dedicated the sale of #PimpinJoy merchandise here to benefit tornado victims.

Not everything a station does for its community is on the air. Aircheck also reported that crosstown rival WKDF will host a benefit concert this Friday.

 

[TheBigA]

Here's another radio story from the folks at Country Aircheck:

Silverfish Media Pres. Patrick Thomas and nationally syndicated Big D & Bubba have taken a multi-pronged approach to relief efforts. Bubba, who is a Williamson County firefighter, is assisting that team with coordinating rescue and relief efforts. Big D made his way to his hometown of Cookeville, TN yesterday, which was also significantly impacted by the tornado, to pitch in with cleanup. The team then assembled at affiliate Zimmer WGSQ/Cookeville, TN this morning to produce two shows simultaneously. "We aired our regular syndicated show nationwide, which of course talked about the situation in Middle Tennessee and ways to help, but we also worked with the Zimmer team as part of their efforts to broadcast one show across all of their stations in order to offer the people of Cookeville the best possible coverage during a time of need in the community," Thomas says.

 

[Kent]

I listened yesterday at work and thought the iHeart stations sans WLAC did fine covering the aftermath. WLAC may have done fine during the storm and in morning drive, but it was just running syndicated programming late morning and in the afternoon.

It sounded like the Cumulus music stations were directing interested listeners to 99.7 WTN, which was in wall-to-wall mode the entire time I was listening. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that and think it gets out the message well enough.

Midwest was covering fundraising events.

While I didn’t get a chance to listen, I was told Lightning 100 did well, especially for what it is and the limited resources it has.

And, yes, cellphones have their own EAS alerts built in. I disabled mine in '13 or '14 after an aerial flood warning issued at 2:00 AM woke me up. I installed a weather radio app on my phone instead and can tell it which alerts to sound.

 

[RFCCRadioAudio]

WTVF-TV, but that wasn't radio. Honestly, radio SUCKED at about 2AM CT this morning. Tornado had just left destruction and 4 and 5 were wall-to-wall TV coverage. Not one music FM had broken in with TV coverage. I tried streams for WKDF, WSIX, 92.9, 105.9, 107.5, etc.
Sickening. I don't care what time of the night it is.

WWTN DID get enough people to the studio around 2:00 or 2:30 and went wall-to-wall pretty much all day. Dan Mandis led coverage with a handful of people overnight and Michael DelGiorno took over around the time his morning show starts. They had the best coverage in Nashville. As already mentioned, Cookeville stations (especially those owned by Stonecom) went above and beyond their call of duty.

WGFX had a few people associated with their station impacted in some way by the tornadoes, so it was good and important that we got to hear their first person accounts throughout the morning and afternoon.

WLAC was still running their normal schedule...I guess that was iDon'tHaveAHeart's fault for laying off important people.

Nashville's music stations did their job...entertain while providing occasional updates. Can't really fault them.

 

[gr8oldies]

Interestingly enough, while listening to WLAC online, they were running ads recruiting web developers and content creators for their new Nashville digital hub.

WWTN DID get enough people to the studio around 2:00 or 2:30 and went wall-to-wall pretty much all day. Dan Mandis led coverage with a handful of people overnight and Michael DelGiorno took over around the time his morning show starts. They had the best coverage in Nashville. As already mentioned, Cookeville stations (especially those owned by Stonecom) went above and beyond their call of duty.

WGFX had a few people associated with their station impacted in some way by the tornadoes, so it was good and important that we got to hear their first person accounts throughout the morning and afternoon.

WLAC was still running their normal schedule...I guess that was iDon'tHaveAHeart's fault for laying off important people.

Nashville's music stations did their job...entertain while providing occasional updates. Can't really fault them.

 

[TheBigA]

Here's another story detailing radio coverage:

https://radioink.com/2020/03/05/radio-shines-in-nashville/

 

[firepoint525]

Here's another story detailing radio coverage:

https://radioink.com/2020/03/05/radio-shines-in-nashville/

I'm glad that Dennis Gwiazdon remembered the "great" flood of 2010. (It was not so "great" for those of us who suffered through it!)

Here is his statement, pulled from that article:

Dennis: I couldn’t be more proud of what our entire team, across all of our stations, accomplished over the last 36 hours. And it’s not over. We are committed to staying on top of this recovery process which could take weeks, months or longer to complete. But we’ve been here before (think of the Great Flood of 2010) and, without question, Nashville is an amazingly resilient city. The untold numbers of volunteers, neighbors helping neighbors, who are showing up to help is evidence enough of our spirit.