• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Buffalo 92.9 WBUF Question

SirRoxalot said:
At this point, how about turning over WBUF to a bunch of young turks who have a programming idea aimed at a younger audience? OK, so Townsquare doesn't get to clear Bad Beer and Fake Wings in the morning, but maybe they get to develop a new radio format. That's pretty much what happened several decades ago when FM was just an afterthought, and a bunch of hippies turned it into AOR and a new music delivery vehicle. Are there any young innovators out there looking for an opportunity to move a successful podcast or online station over to the airwaves? Maybe it's time for radio to innovate, not just do more of the same.
Click to expand...

It's a decent idea in theory, the problem is, stations are loathe to try anything new to risk whatever revenues they currently do have.

New ideas take time, resources, and risk to see through. I credit Cumulus (my former employer) for sticking with a brand new morning show, replacing literal BBHOFers, with relatively unknown talents. Not an easy thing to build a new audience from scratch.

Would sports talk work? While plenty of fans on Twitter complain about lack of options to call besides WGR, an all-sports station would take a big lift.

Pat McMahon is the ONLY person working at WBUF, at least full time.

You need, minimum, 6 full time hires to run a successful sports talk station with 2 pro teams. (1 AM drive host/1 producer, 1 PM drive host/producer, 1 FT Bills reporter, 1 FT Sabres reporter =6.

You'd also like at least a couple PT board eager college kid types to cut tape, fill in duty, run best ofs/weekends, etc.

That's probably ~$500,000 in salaries/benefits and that's on the cheap side. If you had a sales department that REALLY hustled you could sell a lot of remotes for post game shows or pre game shows downtown for Sabres games. Stuff like that. But then you need promotional help. All of this adds up.

That doesn't include the engineering lift to upfit a talk studio properly. 1270 The Fan didn't have a control room. Screening calls with live mics is not ideal. It works, but you'd want a control room / talk studio build to help with producers editing and screening while talent is hosting separately.

So why do all of that when you can play the same 90 songs with voicetracked "talent" from wherever?

My guess is the market research shows whatever they're doing at WBUF is worth the squeeze and not worth changing.
 
Would Bills and Sabres talk be enough to sustain a full-time sports station in Buffalo? What gets discussed from the time the Sabres fall out of contention (February or March, usually) to the start of Bills training camp (July)?
 
SirRoxalot said:
Are there any young innovators out there looking for an opportunity to move a successful podcast or online station over to the airwaves? Maybe it's time for radio to innovate, not just do more of the same.
Click to expand...

Isn't that what just happened in NYC with 98.7? A small radio show called The TJ Show just made a deal for a full signal FM station in Market #1 for what appears to be an audition. It happens, but the person with that podcast has to make the right deal. There are lots of people willing to make deals right now if the price is right. Beasley just turned over their rock station to Bloomberg. Audacy turned over their heritage news station in NY to Good Karma for a sports station. Deals are happening, but it takes two to tango. The great ideas with a business plan may not exist in Buffalo. You have an idea? Just make an offer.

radioinsight.com

Emmis Launches TJ 98.7 “The Pop Up Radio Station” New York

Emmis Corporation resumed operating 98.7 WEPN-FM New York following the expiration of their 12+ year LMA of the station to
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
 
CTListener said:
Would Bills and Sabres talk be enough to sustain a full-time sports station in Buffalo? What gets discussed from the time the Sabres fall out of contention (February or March, usually) to the start of Bills training camp (July)?
Click to expand...

Here's what we know about sports stations: I can't think of any market that can sustain two highly rated sports stations. That's the catch. You come in as a second sports station, you better have a solid business plan that goes beyond getting ratings with play by play. Especially if you want live talent. Look at NY, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas. All big sports towns, and only one highly rated sports station. But they other one still has a full local staff. That's expensive. You need to have a plan. iHeart has a plan, and they prove it with their low rated sports station in Seattle, where they're getting killed by Bonneville, who has the rights to the Seahawks. That's not the business Townsquare is in. They don't put all their eggs in broadcast. So any idea you have for Townsquare HAS to be based on other platforms besides broadcast radio.
 
A second sports station in Buffalo would be a very heavy lift and a big risk. You would need to have P-B-P rights to at least one team to have any realistic chance of success. Success defined as making a profit, not just getting an audience. With both the Sabres and the Bills (at least for now) under the same ownership, that may not be an easy task.
Buffalo had a relatively successful second sports station, but that was when Adelphia owned both the Sabres and 107.7 many years ago.
 
SirRoxalot said:
The only way Buffalo could support another sport station is if Terry Pegula bought it and put the Bills and Sabres on it.
Click to expand...
And use TV audio of his daughter's tennis matches to fill the hours when there are no live Bills or Sabres games to air? (Just kidding here.) And again, what airs during the long gap between NHL and NFL seasons, if the Sabres don't go deep into the playoffs? Bisons baseball?
 
SirRoxalot said:
The only way Buffalo could support another sport station is if Terry Pegula bought it and put the Bills and Sabres on it.
Click to expand...
Unlikely that Pegula has any interest in buying a Radio station. The money from owning an NFL team dwarfs anything that a station would generate. Unless he wanted to quell any criticism of his ownership, I suppose he could get himself a station as a toy.

WGR only remains viable because of interest in the Bills. Without access to players, they would see ratings tank. So, no Buffalo cannot support 2 Sports formats. KB is already irrelevant doing that...
 
CTListener said:
And use TV audio of his daughter's tennis matches to fill the hours when there are no live Bills or Sabres games to air? (Just kidding here.) And again, what airs during the long gap between NHL and NFL seasons, if the Sabres don't go deep into the playoffs? Bisons baseball?
Click to expand...
The NFL has done a pretty good job of becoming a nearly year-round enterprise. Between the longer season, the longer playoff, the lead-up to the draft, the draft itself, the post-draft drama, mini-camps, training camp, and the pre-season there isn't much of the year that isn't covered. Add in the NHL and the Buffalo Bandits and you've got more than 10 months of the year filled. The little unfilled time puts 2nd teamers in to fill with fantasy league and betting blather.
 
I was thinking just today on my trips to Buffalo how much I enjoyed listening to Shane on GR-55. He was fun, and at times serious even deep. I don't know where you could find someone like that or if that style of radio could grab todays listener. All I know is today's hard drive full of tunes lacks creativity and excitement. Buffalo was always known for personality driven radio. Could it, with the right people work? Are there people around who still know how to play the hits while creating word pictures that make listeners sit up and take notice? I miss Shane and wish I had been able to hear more.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
Buffalo was always known for personality driven radio. Could it, with the right people work? Are there people around who still know how to play the hits while creating word pictures that make listeners sit up and take notice?
Click to expand...

Which "hits" would you like them to play? Today's pop hits? Or some other format? It was easier 50 years ago when Top 40 was a single consensus format that everyone listened to for current music. Today it's very hard to define what today's hits are.
 
TheBigA said:
Which "hits" would you like them to play? Today's pop hits? Or some other format? It was easier 50 years ago when Top 40 was a single consensus format that everyone listened to for current music. Today it's very hard to define what today's hits are.
Click to expand...
50 years ago was just 1974. By then, formats had subdivided and none had anything approaching "consensus" stations; that was for the later 50's and 60's.

By the 70's we had markets that only had 5 or 6 good or adequate AM signals now registering good ratings for twice as many FM operations with a much wider variety of formats. The early 70's showed the development of today's AC, AOR, modern country, the first oldies stations, today's R&B and even the first Spanish language hit stations in markets like LA, Miami and San Antonio. And we had the king of all formats in that era, Beautiful Music, whose only element of consensus with Top 40 was having a lot of cover versions of Top 40 hits.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
I was thinking just today on my trips to Buffalo how much I enjoyed listening to Shane on GR-55. He was fun, and at times serious even deep. I don't know where you could find someone like that or if that style of radio could grab todays listener. All I know is today's hard drive full of tunes lacks creativity and excitement. Buffalo was always known for personality driven radio. Could it, with the right people work? Are there people around who still know how to play the hits while creating word pictures that make listeners sit up and take notice? I miss Shane and wish I had been able to hear more.
Click to expand...
If I want to chat, I will text friends or go to Facebook or some other online social media site. I don't want a DJ talking at me... I want someone talking with me. Like here!
 
SirRoxalot said:
They should have left WJYE alone in the first place.
Click to expand...
I thought they couldn't leave JOY(Now WTSS) alone because the station was stale and the demos were too old. That's the problem Radio faces. You can have old listeners or you can have NO listeners like WLKK and WBUF.

When EMF acquired STAR 102.5, Town Square thought taking the old call letters and name would be a winning formula. All they really have is the 2 months of Xmas tunes to keep them shambling on...
 
Last edited:
DavidEduardo said:
50 years ago was just 1974. By then, formats had subdivided and none had anything approaching "consensus" stations; that was for the later 50's and 60's.
Click to expand...

Very true, and yet in Buffalo, AM music radio lasted longer. Shane Gibson stayed at WGR until the 80s, when it flipped to talk. Listening to old tapes, he reminds me more of the progressive rock hosts of the 60s and 70s, such as Thom O'Hair, or the jive-talkers like Wolfman Jack. Maybe it was his time on the west coast.

The poster asked if it would work today, and from what I can see, it does mostly as a talk-based show on rock stations such as WMMS or KISW. Playing music becomes difficult because audiences today aren't as patient as they were with music in the 60s and 70s. Back then, music was part of the culture, and certain DJs were seen to be connected to that music & culture. Not so much today. The great schism of music & radio happened in the 90s. Today, people can communicate directly with their favorite musicians, and don't need a DJ to act as a medium.

When a DJ somehow connects listeners with their favorite artists, perhaps by providing rare insight into an artist who avoids the spotlight, they might achieve that same status. It takes a lot of work and requires the DJ to be embedded in the culture with the artists. Today that mainly happens in country music or sports. Otherwise, artists are themselves very active in social media, so their fans get their connection that way. Taylor Swift was the pioneer in that area. She started on MySpace when she was a teenager, and now has one of the biggest social media accounts.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom