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RKO scraps AM Drive newscasts at top and bottom of the hour.

nowradioguy said:
IIRC, the only network that RKO-General owned/operated, at least in the New England states, was the venerable Yankee Network, whose flagship station was the old WNAC 680 Boston, but that ceased operation in 1967 when WNAC passed on and became The Big 68 WRKO. RKO-General may also have had some holdings in the now-defunct Mutual Broadcasting System, whose flagship was WOR 710 New York. How times have changed.
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General Tire bought the Yankee net in 1947, and the Don Lee net in 1950 including their large share of Mutual Stock. They started buying the individual stations in 1951, starting with WOR.

Mutual was a major affiliate owned operation, and by buying Don Lee, Yankee and WOR, they became a majority owner of Mutual. They later bought out the WGN shares, along with those of the WHK parent (the Plain Dealer) and CKLW to completely own it. They also bought CKLW and WNAC in the process of this multi-year consolidation, which also added Don Lee affiliates KFRC and KHJ.
 
MRBIboredop said:
Hey @Motown , Jeff, Grace, and Howie are the reason?

WTF else do they have? 2 hours of PAID time financial show, that takes no calls and does not fit the format in the 10 to Noon slot that is listened to by exactly whom?

The delayed shows they run at night that are sometimes (mostly) stale by the time they run?

the re-runs of Jeff on Saturday morning in the slots they thought they were going to be able to monetize after they booted Moe Lauzier?

All the Dolla a Holla paid time shows on the weekend?

The Episcopal Hour on Sundays must really get that PPM spinning!

All they have is Jeff, Grace and Howie, and out of those 3 only one of them is one they have any control over.

If anything happened to Jeff, they have Sandy to plug in for the short term, but she is too intelligent to carry the typical WRKO listener for any length of time.

They have no farm team.

yep, they have Jeff, and Grace, and Howie.... and not a lot of anything else, just filler
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Not to be picky but it is The Lutheran HOUR and for some unknown reason The Lutheran. Hour airs from 2 30p to 3 00pm. 20 years ago when I was at a low rated AM at the end of the dial the Lutheran Church bought the hour for 250 each week
 
TheBigA said:
I believe General Tire also bought the Don Lee Network at one time as well. Before it bought RKO.

It was radio consolidation in the 1950s!
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They bought the Yankee Network in about 1947, then Don Lee in 1950 and thus got the majority share of Mutual, a station-owned group. They added, the next year, WOR and started buying out the remaining Mutual affiliate shares while buying CKLW, KHJ, KFRC, WRKO, WOR. It was a multi-year process dealing with owners in New England, California, New York and elsewhere in an era when transactions were done by letter and personal meetings and little use of the phone and took a lot longer.
 
DavidEduardo said:
It was a multi-year process dealing with owners in New England, California, New York and elsewhere in an era when transactions were done by letter and personal meetings and little use of the phone and took a lot longer.
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Exactly. They were Clear Channel 40 years before Clear Channel. They were the first consolidator. And once they became RKO-General, and hired Bill Drake, they became national syndicators.
 
TheBigA said:
Exactly. They were Clear Channel 40 years before Clear Channel. They were the first consolidator. And once they became RKO-General, and hired Bill Drake, they became national syndicators.
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Actually, they were not syndicators. Drake and Chenault had a service contract with RKO, and after the initial Boston, Detroit, Memphis, LA and SF successes they began consulting other stations. One of the first was in Tulsa with KAKC and PD Scooter Seagraves.

They built the Drake Chenault HQ out in the valley, and did both consulting and syndicated formats. The first was the gold laden Hit Parade format intended for smaller market FMs, but they even did Beautiful Music.

Here is a promotional brochure:


I would not say they were the first colsolidator, as there were many companies not associated with CBS, ABC and NBC that were built out to the maximum number of stations such as Storer, Taft, Nationwide. And a number of others started building in that era, such as McLendon and Storz, but they did not get into networking and TV like the others I mentioned did. There were even regional groups that accumulated stations, like Belk, Rollins and Rounsaville mostly in the Southeast. And there were ethnic station operators with the 7 station max, such as Richard Eaton and "the other" MacLendon out of Mississippi.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Actually, they were not syndicators. Drake and Chenault had a service contract with RKO, and after the initial Boston, Detroit, Memphis, LA and SF successes they began consulting other stations.
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But they did create some programming on reel that they syndicated to radio stations before satellite.

Then in the 70s RKO General started the RKO Radio Network, and started syndicating shows by satellite, competing against other syndicators, including Mutual (that had a deal with Dick Clark) and the other networks that started syndication divisions.
 
vmorrison99 said:
I am amazed that you felt mislead by my thread title considering the RKO Radio Network went out of existence in 1985. I did not believe it was necessary to title the thread WRKO AM 680 scraps top and bottom of the hour am drive newscasts. United Stations owned by Dick Clark bought the assets of the RKO Network.. In addition to news and sportscasts, The network produced what I consider to be one of the best national overnight talk shows. America Overnight was hosted for the first three hours by Ed Busch in Dallas the last three hours by Eric Tracey in LA.

In addition to the motion picture studio, RKO also owned movie theaters before studios were prohibited from owning theaters. The law passed in 1938 and overturned by a federal judge last August clearing the way for the studios to get back into the exhibitor business.
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It isn't your fault or mine! It's just what came to mind. I don't live in an area that had an RKO station. I read about it in the trades. I had no idea that they existed at all, beyond the late '70s.
 
Entercom owned RKO then traded it to iHeart,
and the company rebranded as Audacy.Now comes news that Audacy together with Radio America is launching the Dana Loesch show,
another effort to compete in the noon to 3 slot
post Limbaugh.Cumulus has Bongino, iHeart will have Sexton and Travis.
Philly and Hartford are among the 11 markets
to carry Loesch. Audacy has no talk or news-talk
station in Boston at the moment.
Bongino is on in Prov on 790 I believe while
the iHeart stations like 1200 will carry Sexton
and Travis.
iHeart is able to keep one station mostly local focused, WRKO and has 1200 for the syndie stuff.iHeart locally only produces Kuhner--Carr's network does both Howie and Grace.

I can't picture Audacy trying news-talk or talk here though of course they have EEI for sports talk.
 
Zooz said:
Will he still be on WRKO 7-9 pm? I hope not; I find him boring.
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Hmmmm, interesting! Sexton was prerecorded from 6p to 9 on Talk1200. Kelly will be live from 6p to 9. Who can be a replacement for him on RKO? Kelly came out of nowhere, so is there some unknown, obscure talkshow host out there that broadcasts live at 8a or 9a that RKO can put on at 7pm? SMH. Stale news seems to be their thing for evenings. I say put Pags back on from 7p to 10, at least he was live from 7p to 9 and his first hour repeated from 9p to 10.
 
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Zooz said:
Will he still be on WRKO 7-9 pm? I hope not; I find him boring.
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Doubt it...1200 will carry.Whether either station may choose to run Dan Bongino (Cumulus/ Westwood One) it would be on tape delay as RKO has Curley at noon and XKS would indeed take
Premiere's Sexton/Travis at noon
 
Tired Of It All said:
Sexton was prerecorded from 6p to 9 on Talk1200.
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Sure about that? His show's time slot is/was predominantly 6-9 Eastern, nationally. They've been running the standard "portions of this program are prerecorded" disclaimer everybody else is using even on 100% live shows. I guess that's the radio equivalent of the ubiquitous "this site uses cookies" message.
 
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