Good News: Tony Venturoli will be joining WEBR Radio on 8/30. He will do Noon-3p M-F. Tony has worked at many stations in Buffalo including WNIA, WBUF, WGR, WNYS and has spent the last 17 years at WHTT. We welcome Tony to our team! You will recognize him for his upbeat personality and positive energy are infectious! Welcome Tony. It's great to have you on our team!
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Tony Venturoli To Join WEBR Radio 1440 am
- Thread starter Bill Yuhnke
- Start date
Congrats, Bill! Tony is a GREAT guy and a very good DJ!
Good luck to Tony. A Monday through Friday gig is a nice bonus for him!
Can't wait to hear Tony - the guy is Mr. Enthusiasm! Should make for some fun listening online.
So Bill Yunke, where's Tony? I've listened in several time this week and I haven't heard him 12 noon - 3 as you suggested in the post above. What I do hear doesn't do the trick. Just one listener's opinion. And what was it I heard the other evening? Sounded like a bunch of teenagers playing radio and rating breakfast cereals? Did somebody's Daddy buy them an hour of air time so they could "play" radio?
Tony gave FM 104 2 weeks notice .And will be on WEBR Radio this Tues.The other show is a paid program but not teenagers.They have been on other stations in the past.That said its WEBR streaming platforms that they are killing it in numbers.I am a low power and still making money.Who is smarter here?Stay tune in Thursday .A Financial show goes live.WE are on 64 streaming platforms and its getting noticed.
Great, Bill. That's good news about Tony and of course, if you're making money, that's good news, too. What's the name of the show the youngsters were on and what night was it that they're on?
Thanks they are on Tues Night 8pm Hot Rocks
Bill, from one owner to another. Make the station local Niagara Falls talk and see the $ flow. The 64 platforms is great, but everyone is on 64 digital platforms. Those platforms are getting you nowhere in Buffalo. WEBR TALK RADIO FOR NIAGARA FALLS. Also, the financial show is something I passed up. They went to you, because I would not take the show. if you were talk, you could do these shows all the time.
Your going to have to be responsible for the results this client gets, and I think you and I know what will happen
Not trying to tell you how to run the station, but your a 1KW AM station in Niagara Falls
do local talk and make money
Please stop having a schizophrenic radio station. Pick a lane. Niagara Falls Talk makes sense. You’ll see really quick how you can make a ton of $.
Your going to have to be responsible for the results this client gets, and I think you and I know what will happen
Not trying to tell you how to run the station, but your a 1KW AM station in Niagara Falls
do local talk and make money
Please stop having a schizophrenic radio station. Pick a lane. Niagara Falls Talk makes sense. You’ll see really quick how you can make a ton of $.
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Your comments will seem self-centered or egotistical to many. But the truth is that what you say rings as the truth in every aspect and is sound advice.
Too many station owners look at the 0.5 and 1.0 mV/m coverage maps and think that they serve huge markets... but they don't. Today, it takes the 5 mV/m and often the 10 mV/m to be listenable if anyone does pick a high-band AM to sample. That means that station has to focus on the city of license, not Buffalo.
Unfortunately, common sense, as they say, is not all that common. Good advice, Buddy.
You just told him how he should run his station. It sounds like you don't like having another station play music aimed at the 65 plus crowd.
Maybe making money isn't his primary goal. It's a low watt AM signal in 2021. Not exactly a revenue gold mine. If he's financially secure, this could be a hobby station. Breaking even may be sufficient...
At one time 1440 WJJL was a good, responsible, local Niagara Falls radio station. The legacy WJJL call letters were well-recognized in the community. The WEBR call letters have little if any connectivity to Niagara Falls residents and potential listeners.
Buddy appeared to be offering genuine advice from one local owner to another. Local talk does have merit, as long as the same ten people don't show up on the phones every day, which unfortunately is often the case in small communities. It's often best not to take those repeat calls, and instead use a variety of different guests on a rotating basis. WBEN has the conservative talk market cornered. As such, a true local public service-type talk format would be advisable. Change the call letters back to WJJL and make a concerted effort to serve Niagara Falls and Niagara County exclusively, much like WBTA Batavia.
tbolt909 said:
Buddy appeared to be offering genuine advice from one local owner to another. Local talk does have merit, as long as the same ten people don't show up on the phones every day, which unfortunately is often the case in small communities. It's often best not to take those repeat calls, and instead use a variety of different guests on a rotating basis. WBEN has the conservative talk market cornered. As such, a true local public service-type talk format would be advisable. Change the call letters back to WJJL and make a concerted effort to serve Niagara Falls and Niagara County exclusively, much like WBTA Batavia.
The two AMs have rather separate coverage areas.
But Buddy's suggestion, still, is based on a reasonable assessment of the possible market and would produce far more listeners than the Hodge-podge of programs and features on the station today.
Is there anything a radio station does, any suggestion offered, that you don't find to be wrong, negative or unrealistic?
You don't know that a Talk Format would get more listeners. This signal isn't likely to get a 1 share no matter what the format is.
It's disingenuous for another owner to offer advice. Especially when the other station is currently playing music that may steal some of his audience. If Buddy is sincere, why not suggest a partnership with the WEBR owner? They could share expenses.
Should WHTT tell WECK to stop playing Oldies and try All Talk? Oh, that's right--the previous owner tried Talk on WECK and it failed. Audacy has the ill conceived Wolf format on 107.7. Maybe they should tell Townsquare to dump Country on WYRK since there's no need for 2 Country formats...
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And here David notes the crux of the issue. The station's format is inconsistent. Ironically, the inconsistency has been consistent going back to the years of the previous owner.
The present owner is due credit for buying the station and investing in infrastructure. But the hard, cold truth of the matter is the station/frequency is challenged. It's a daytimer with night power barely that of a soft light.
The likelihood of this station and format producing sustainable revenue to offset the investment and pay the personnel is minimal. Buddy, in earlier posts on this board, noted the station's handicaps and predicted an early demise. Streaming may offer benefits, but realistically, anything offered by this station's stream is readily available OTA and on-line. The addition of a translator may help. But every translator "parking space" appears to be filled, so the best avenue to obtaining a translator would be purchasing one (at no small price) from an existing licensee, perhaps one of the many a pray-for-pay operators.
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Many years ago, when the station was hard on the rocks, a successful local financial analyst who came up through the ranks in radio offered this assessment: Broker the station (or dayparts) to the Media-Communications studies departments of Niagara University and Niagara County Community College. (Neither of these schools have OTA broadcast facilities.) Shape it as a practical instructional conduit for students in Journalism and Media, under the direction of faculty professors and instructors at those colleges. The facility could provide practical experience in programming news, music, commercial production and public relations targeting Niagara Falls, Niagara County as well as the needs of those educational institutions. Such an approach might generate revenue and re-kindle the interest of young people in broadcasting, communications and media.
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It does not have to be ratings driven if it is highly local and gets results. Most of the stations in America don't sell by ratings.
The two owners serve rather different geographies with limited signals. And making a suggestion that will improve the overall industry in the area is a good way to run a business.
On quite a few occasions I told an advertiser that a competitive station suited them better. I felt that, in the long run, being honest and decent would pay off. And it did.
There is a difference in doing talk for Buffalo against established stations and doing a local format in a separate city where there is a chance to be a local voice.
Definition of curmudgeon
1 : a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old manThat's exactly right. Maybe the owner is satisfied with his current format. Since the ratings won't be significant enough to matter, he does not need to take a conventional format approach. I don't recall him asking for advice anyway. He simply used this forum to promote his station (as others have done)...
While a station does not need ratings in many situations, it does need an audience; more than that, it needs to get results for advertisers.
The kind of disjointed programming described here will do neither.
It amuses me when I see out-of-towners weigh in on issues that they’re not fully informed on. An example is Big A’s woefully uninformed comments about the Buffalo Bills in another thread. DavidEduardo, I agree with you that the disjointed programming will not increase the audience or ratings for WEBR. I would argue, though, that the owner has no other choice. Bill Yuhnke owns an AM radio station licensed to Niagara Falls, NY that has a daytime power of 1000 watts. Without an FM repeater, Bill is facing an uphill challenge. I don’t know if there’s a format out there that would make a big difference. Bill needs the revenue from Tom Darro’s Niagara Falls-centric morning talk show, plus the 6pm shows to generate at least some revenue. Thus, the disjointed programming.
Bill and his program director Dave Gillen are trying to attract an audience with a musical format that personally works for me. I enjoy the soft rock hits from the 60s and 70s, combined with some popular standards. I especially enjoy Ralph Irene and John Farley on weekends. Now, at age 66, I’ll concede there may not be enough potential listeners like me that will lead to success. But concentrating on a Niagara Falls-centric audience as suggested by the all-knowing Buddy Shula wouldn’t make any difference. The station would lose me as a listener. And I doubt, given the audience numbers generated by Darro’s show currently, that WEBR would see any significant increase in audience numbers by focusing solely on the Niagara Falls market.
I find it hugely presumptuous of Shula to weigh in on what another station owner is doing. Mind your own business and run your own station! I’m no Shula fan after what he did to market legend Danny Neaverth. That said, I do wonder what Bill Yuhnke was thinking when he bought WJJL. Maybe it is a hobby. If so, good for him. I enjoy hearing personalities like Dave, Ralph, John and Bob Stilson. I don’t like the fact he allows his airwaves to be used by a local group Monday evenings that sympathizes with the Capitol insurrectionists. But I just turn off Alexa at 6pm, knowing that it’s a necessary evil to generate at least some revenue. And there’s plenty of other hours of programming I do enjoy. And I’ll enjoy it, however long it lasts!
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