Which, if memory serves, they were back in the day when Roger Christian was the only live voice on WBEN-FM when it was known as Rock 102.
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November Ratings
- Thread starter Buddy Shula
- Start date
Which, if memory serves, they were back in the day when Roger Christian was the only live voice on WBEN-FM when it was known as Rock 102.
Perhaps, but they don't have Roger now. OTOH, automation has come a long ways since then.
WECK has Roger in middays. His show beat STAR. Not close, but BEAT. 10a to 12 noon 12 plus.
WECK has had live jocks 6a to atleast 9p since I bought it al ost 4 years ago.
WECK has had live jocks 6a to atleast 9p since I bought it al ost 4 years ago.
Not fair to make that judgement considering that inferior signal. All things being technically equal, live and local always tops generic/syndicated.
Forget the now-meaningless terms of "live" and "local".
In the past, we were "live" because we did not have the technology to let programming be created more efficiently.
And we were local due to the costs, quality issue and time zone differences in the US.
None of those are issues now. A talent can put together the content of a 4 hour show in less than an hour if they do adequate prep. The Internet and cable TV, among other things, have pretty much leveled regional differences in tastes within specific formats.
So it's better to do what TV discovered back when they put Steve Allen's creation, the Tonight Show, on the network in 1954. They knew that being in a media center where there were stars and characters available for easy access trumped being in Macon and having access to the local sheriff.
In a "world" which is defined by the Internet for nearly everyone, your criteria is out of date and has been for decades.
And yet, in market after market, the stations with the most live and local content dominate the ratings.
All things are hardly ever equal in radio.
As others have pointed out, there was a time when 107.7 got pretty good ratings despite its signal.
I see cases where this is true, but when you have Bones or Seacrest or The Breakfast Club or often night shows like Delilah, they can be just as dominant.
The industry has not developed enough "star" shows. But we now have them in quite a few formats for mornings and evenings at least, and I think more will follow.
It looks like WBUF stole HTZ-FM's old logo font so at least there's that.
Maybe in some markets, but even Stern didn't make an impact in Buffalo. Ditto Opie and Anthony when they were hot. If you invest in local TALENT, they win. Delilah and Tesh get more promo than most night jocks by contract. If they're up against overworked production people who VT as part of their job they may win. Up against a jock who does some production, not as much - especially if they get to talk more than 4 times an hour and aren't formatted to death.
Buddy said:
The WXRL polka and ethnic shows probably generate the bulk of the $tation's ca$h flow. Classic Country is just there "to fill time" between those brokered shows. (That's a joke, but it's probably not too far from the truth.) The station is long paid for, there's a few acres of valuable land under the towers and if radio ever goes belly-up, the developers will be standing in line to buy the Lancaster real estate at full value; scrappers will buy the towers and the copper. Ham ops will buy the transmitters. And the FM translator will go for premium. It's a nice Plan B.
WECK runs talk shows on Saturday morning and a polka show on Sunday morning. Like WXRL, the shows help pay the bills and yield a good return. Brokered shows may not have the AQH Persons the regular format delivers, but as somebody on these boards once posted, "It's not about ratings, it's about revenue."
I'm old enough to remember when HTZ's logo had a red paint swipe with 97.7 HTZ FM contrasting it in black. (If you do a search for images, you'll see what I mean.) Their current logo has a plus sign inside the number 9.
When it comes to the "Everything that rocks" part, I agree.
Ours is not a schizophrenic format. 95 percent of the time, you will hear oldies, the weekend talk programming stops at noon by nature. As a local station, we only run local paid programming, and also, most of it is not paid, it’s what I consider good local topic programming designed for our demo.
the polka show is a 25 year staple. It does fine in ratings, and I see no reason to move it. On weekends, you can take a few more chances.
you would never hear any of this on weck weekdays.
WECK is in the ratings horse race. It is a top ten in the market. You are comparing apples to oranges.
if I had a station that I said was classic country, polka would not be on drive time pm daily.
Do you believe the same is true for talkradio? I probably should've been more specific since that's really what I was thinking about when I made that comment. Live and local talk stations can be far more effective than syndicated/satellite/homogenized versions.
Local talk radio can't be done on the cheap. Good local talk talent that generate ratings deserve decent salaries and incentives. This requires money. The format, to be executed properly, requires producers and board-ops. Good talk talent doesn't just crack the mic and get a ten share all by him/herself. Talk radio also requires the type of sales person who can take the heat and knows how to effectively sell talk radio. It's not like selling ten-in-a-row AC, Country or Classic Rock.
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It depends how much effort is made. First of all, it's hard to be a "homogenized" talk show host, regardless of if you're local or not. If you're not unique in some way, if you have no ability to build a fan base, you're useless as a talk show host. If a station that carries syndicated hosts makes an effort to market and merchandise their station brand in some way with the local audience, they can be effective. If they don't do anything to market the station, it won't matter who or where the talent is. What we see are a lot of stations that carry a bunch of syndicated shows and don't do anything to promote the station. That doesn't work. Someone has to put what you do in front of listeners in some way.
That doesn't mean the signal isn't a major handicap. Whatever "pretty good" ratings they got at some point would've likely been even better had the signal not been inferior.
I was referring to the format, not any particular host.
Regardless, having live and local talent wasn't a factor.
Let me add that just having live & local talent who don't interact in some way with the local audience, who don't make regular personal appearances, who don't engage with the local audience on social media, and who don't market or merchandise themselves in their local markets is NO BETTER than a syndicated show.
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