For the most part, nothing was working well during the storm for me. I turned on one of my radios and all I heard on AM was loud crackles and other noise. Although I didn't listen, WTAM may have been the only AM station that could be understood. I have indoor rabbit ear antennas for my TVs. Channel 19's MeTV was cutting out with digital break up happening so much that it was impossible to watch. I quickly put on WOIO-19 (1) and it seemed to be in the same boat, but I didn't hang around to see more. I wasn't even getting the WJW stations. The on-screen "weak signal" notification was the order of the night.
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Effects on broadcasting from the storm of 08/23/2023
- Thread starter johnbasalla
- Start date
One of the old timer's way of determining how close a tornado or major storm was is to turn on the AM radio. When static obliterates all signals across the whole band, the storm or twister is on top of you.
Radio is useless in a weather emergency except for those robotic announcements. I cannot find a battery operated DTV so I can see the tv reports when the power is out. TV apps are not the same and don't work if the internet or wireless phone is down.
Radio is useless in a weather emergency except for those robotic announcements. I cannot find a battery operated DTV so I can see the tv reports when the power is out. TV apps are not the same and don't work if the internet or wireless phone is down.
Agreed, and I came here to complain about this.
When the severe weather came through Thursday night just before 12 AM, the wind knocked my power out while I was watching the coverage, and this was especially important as I was under a tornado warning and the sirens outside were going off. Since I was too concerned to pick up my phone and look up the radar, I manage to grab a portable radio hoping that there would be some kind of weather coverage. Nope! All the FMs were playing music and WTAM was in the middle of non-stop commercials. I didn't hear any weather coverage whatsoever, not even an automated EAS alert.
It's a shame that there's hardly any local operations left in the radio business nowadays that they can't even provide emergency information, especially since terrestrial radio is the easiest to receive. A requirement for holding a broadcast license is to alert the public with emergency information. I'd say at the most, stations with a news format, especially WTAM, should be fined for not providing coverage of the storms. If they can't hire or maintain a local department to do that, at least sign an agreement with a TV station to simulcast the audio feed of their coverage. Shame on these major broadcast corporations and their outsourced, piped in content to stations that once provided local entertainment and emergency coverage. Might as well toss my radio in the dumpster at this point.
Oh, and I'm sure that most kids today are told to have a smart phone handy during an emergency situation, but what good is it if the battery is low or dead, or they don't have access to the internet (WiFi or data) for various reasons, or the nearby cell phone tower is down due to bad weather and no service is available in the area?
Not here.. our cell network is 2g, no mobile data.. and when things go to shit, people do listen to the radio
2G!?! Isn't that like one step below semaphore flags and smoke signals?
Yup, something like that!
I am in total agreement with you! What has happened to Public Service, taking care of your community. Not only is it the fault of the FCC, which has changed over the years about stations serving the community, but also the EAS system. When the power goes out, how do you know what is happening with the weather. I remember during the Blizzard in Ohio in 1978 being on the air, 24 hours a day when folks in the county lost power, below freezing temperatures, and our AM got permission to broadcast 24 hours during this emergency. Now days, that would not happen. Lack of weather coverage during any storm is not acceptable, but what can be done about it?
I was working at WBKC AM1560 in Chardon, Ohio during the Blizzard of 1978. I'm driving to the station from Berea! As a daytime-only station, I was tasked to sign it on. I left at around 4:30 a.m. to make sure I got there on time. As it turned out, luckily for me, it was no big deal. I ran into no major troubles. Although driving slowly, I got to the station with an hour and a half to spare.
Those of you who are old enough will remember the freak late April snowstorm (April 24-25) in 2005 which dumped 8+ inches on snow on NE Ohio. My power went out. I found my little battery operated radio and tuned in to WTAM to find out what was happening. Being Sunday morning, the station was on autopilot and airing some kind of syndicated programs. For the entire morning, they kept airing the same pre-recorded weather report by AJ Colby that must have been recorded on Saturday night before the snow arrived. His report was something like "cloudy today with a chance of snow flurries". I called the station several times, but no answer. I checked a few other stations, but they too were on autopilot. What a joke.
While it would be nice if we could return to the days when radio was required to be a relevant public service, that ship sailed in the 1990's and has since run aground. There is no way Wall Street will allow re-regulation of this industry they are so desperately trying to eke out mega profits from. Given the political climate today, it could never even be brought up with any kind of priority.
As with so much else in in this vaunted 21st century, we are on our own to survive the best way we can.
As with so much else in in this vaunted 21st century, we are on our own to survive the best way we can.
Remember, turn to AM radio for emergency information
They are no longer seeking mega profits. That ship long sailed. They are seeking a prophet to help them make book for the next installment.
While I have no doubt the wishes of re-regulation of the industry are genuine, it omits multiple key points that many, including @DavidEduardo, have long brought up and are impossible to rectify:
- There are too many radio stations and those that existed were barely profitable. Blame Docket 80–90, one of the worst policy moves the FCC ever enacted.
- Radio stations have been operating in the economy of scale mindset for over 20 years. It was single-handedly the reason why Lee Zapis and Embrescia-Wilson-Pollock cashed out at the same time in August 1998 and Cablevision sold off WKNR the year before; they just couldn’t compete with the cluster strategy. Even WCLV, long the lone local wolf of Cleveland radio, is part of the Ideastream cluster of stations.
- For all this talk and bluster about how AM radio is this vaunted “indispensable resource” during a weather event or natural disaster, actual listenership of AM radio is nonexistent under age 40. The radio stations that are left, WTAM included, have talk formats with embarrassingly old demos and naturally are catering to old people and no one else. What part of re-regulation is going to change that? How are you going to get a young person to tune into an AM radio?
That is not a correct timeline.
As music radio developed after the demise of network radio as the 50's progressed, stations looked at FCC regulations to see how they could minimize the required talk content or move it into less important times of the day and week.
By the 60's, we'd figured out that most of the Public Affairs, Educational and Other content could be run starting at 5 AM on Sunday morning. We could also run longer newscasts in overnights, freeing up many daytime and evening hours for short newscasts or none at all
FM stations were not required to have as high a percentage of news and public affairs and such, so requirements could almost be made invisible by running in off hours the required material.
All the 90's deregulation did was reduce the amount of worthless community ascertainment required for license renewal.
Wall Street has never become involved in regulation of radio, jand both "then" and "now" investors don't pay attention to community programming needs or requirements. And no radio owner is making "mega profits" today; radio revenue, adjusted for inflation, is off over 60% since 2000.
It has not been a priority since I first worked in radio 64 years ago.
Unless Cleveland expects an average of 3-5+ hurricanes and/or tropical storms, don't expect the bigwigs to spend any money on having people "on-call" to switch to priority weather coverage when a couple of hours of tornadic weather passes through the area.
You better believe it's a whole different ballgame right now in the states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, at least at a better percentage of radio stations vis-a-vis the Cleveland/Akron Market.
It's kinda like: "How bad does the weather have to be for The Weather Channel nowadays to pre-empt the 133rd rerunning of 'Accidents On The 401 in CANADA' in the evening hours?", or whatever the hell that show is called.
You better believe it's a whole different ballgame right now in the states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, at least at a better percentage of radio stations vis-a-vis the Cleveland/Akron Market.
It's kinda like: "How bad does the weather have to be for The Weather Channel nowadays to pre-empt the 133rd rerunning of 'Accidents On The 401 in CANADA' in the evening hours?", or whatever the hell that show is called.
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Move Kiss FM to WTAM?
I used to listen to Radio Disney as a kid, which at the time (2000) the network was mainly carried on AM stations, with only 2 or so FM stations. Prior to that, I never had any real purpose to flip the band switch on my radio to AM. I'm sure anyone over the age of 18 nowadays would listen to a talk format on AM, only to then get turned off by the quality and reception.
They do sell portable TVs with ATSC tuners built in. However, most of them are made by less known or unknown brand names, so quality is not always the best. Then you have the problem of receiving or maintaining the signal with the rod antenna, especially during a storm.
That’s not going to help when talk radio consists of nothing but old white males complaining about old white male problems (this includes Greg Brinda and Dennis Manoloff, who are themselves old white males). It’d be devastating to 96.5’s existing demos and render 1100 practically worthless.
Talk radio is fundamentally broken and the end result of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Who cares if they are white or not. It is not a crime to be white People of all colors predominantly don't even listen to the radio anymore. It is podcasts,youtube and whatever they pull up on their phones. I can't remember the last time I've listened to anything on terrestrial radio. For me it is all memories at this point to talk about. Even if I listen to a baseball game it is from my app on my phone. Very few if any people are listening to the radio now for weather alerts, Some might still have a weather radio (big maybe) but most of the weather stuff is easily accesible on your phone now. The medium is dead.
This is part of the discussion that the state of radio today is the inevitable evolution of choices made over the years by the listeners, the owners and the regulators. And that is the crux of the ongoing discussion of the changes in the industry since the 1990s, which is a type of chicken-and-egg scenario. Is it the choices made by the owners that forced listeners to make the choices they have, or is it the choices the listeners were already making and foreseen to make that forced the owners to make those choices?
Since we can't press the "reset" button and go back and change history or technology, we will never know what could have been. It is what it is right now. And that is a realistic and practical outlook for survival in any business. However, we certainly can speculate as to where audience and ownership and regulatory choices are taking the entire realm of modern communications and suggest how that may be tailored to best serve our needs going forward. "We will always have Paris."
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