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All News 106.7 is Here…Finally [last song, audio, first impressions]

I agree. Break the clock if there is significant severe weather, just as you would for a huge news story. And take all the time you need for traffic especially if there are big problems.

One thing I like is that they don't do a lot of promos, instead relying on the lead-in VOs to do their promo. Maybe once they get established they could back off on some of the length of the VOs--like say "From the 680 The Fan Sports Desk" instead of "sports blah, blah, blah...powered by 680 The Fan, Home of the Atlanta Braves..."

One thing I don't like is the number of PSAs in the off hours. Are the off hours just not selling (yet)? PSAs make the station sound weak.

With all the talk the music beds don't need to be so loud. With the good segues they are doing you don't need them as dead-air insurance, either.

Rattle off the temps at all the local airports--Hartsfield, Mableton [Charlie Brown], Chamblee [PDK], Kennesaw [McCollum], Lawrenceville [Briscoe], etc. and other weather stations (Ptree City). If you don't have time for all of them, just do ATL and one or two other per break.
 
jabba17 said:
One thing I don't like is the number of PSAs in the off hours. Are the off hours just not selling (yet)? PSAs make the station sound weak.
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The station breaks are part of the format clock. If they eliminate the breaks that don't sell, that means they must come up with more content on the fly. Also, I think they want the listener used to hearing so many spots during a half hour so when the spot load is high, the listener does not feel there are too many commercials.

My suggestion is to stop all of the PSAs as we have heard the same ones over and over. I am so damn tired of hearing the baby cry about the damn junk in his damn trunk (can you tell I have strong feelings on this?). Why not give free spots to good advertisers. I know you cannot do to many freebies or those advertisers will not buy if they are getting free... but, run some bonus spots. Give the advertisers on the other Cumulus stations a free taste of AN106.7. Fill the spot load. Make the station sound like it is already a success.

CBS had the spot load full on WNEW on day one with lots of local small business commercials. They even had a mattress store sponsoring the traffic for the first week. I forget the name, but as an example: ... and now we go to the The Original Mattress Store traffic desk. CBS has WNEW full and client exposure all over the place. I do not know how much of that is free or almost free, but it really makes a difference in the sound of the station. WNEW sounds successful. It sounds like I would like to advertise there with all of the other advertisers.
 
Give the advertisers on the other Cumulus stations a free taste of AN106.7. Fill the spot load. Make the station sound like it is already a success.
Click to expand...
2 more ideas about filling time:
1. Promote the other ATL Cumulus stations.
2. Sell classifieds (think newspaper want ads). For a few bucks, advertise job openings & seekers, buy/sell items, announcements, etc. ("For details, go to AN1067 website.") This can be done in one-minute blocks run of schedule, have the "personal touch" with people and bring a little more money to the station.)
 
trusty said:
Give the advertisers on the other Cumulus stations a free taste of AN106.7. Fill the spot load. Make the station sound like it is already a success.
Click to expand...
2 more ideas about filling time:
1. Promote the other ATL Cumulus stations.
2. Sell classifieds (think newspaper want ads). For a few bucks, advertise job openings & seekers, buy/sell items, announcements, etc. ("For details, go to AN1067 website.") This can be done in one-minute blocks run of schedule, have the "personal touch" with people and bring a little more money to the station.)
Click to expand...
I heard my first SweetJack ad this morning.
 
Traffic at 3:57 had a total of 48 seconds. As I have said, the signature product is traffic but there is no way to cover the metro in 48 seconds. The first few days the reports were longer and the announcers talked a little slower. That was the big difference between WSB and WYAY.

Overall, the format clock is controlling content too tightly. This is an all news station. Let it take as long as it takes. The main reason for many to listen is just for the traffic. If you are only going to cover certain parts of the metro every 20 or 30 minutes, well, the traffic is worthless. That kind of traffic is available on News/Talk AM 750 and 95.5 FM WSB.
 
During the 3:00 PM hour today the music beds were played low and were tolerable.

During the 4:00 PM hour they must have changed the person running the board. The beds were LOUD. I had to listen carefully to hear the traffic details and weather over the loud music bed. At the bottom of the hour the headlines were just totally lost.

Please fix this. This is drive time. I try to call the station on the news line to alert them. I dialed 14 times getting a busy signal before I got through. Remember, some people under 30 do not know what a busy signal is. That is a chunk of the target audience. Luckily I have a auto redial function.
 
At the height of rush hour/drive time:

5:26 PM Traffic had 54 seconds of content. Major swaths of the metro not even mentioned. Again, that format clock is more important than the content. It reminds me of CNN Headline News back in the day when they were very automated and were slaves to the format clock. This is radio, not television. Be flexible. Do the traffic. There is about 5 minutes of traffic content per hour (the ten seconds of VO at the beginning and the phone number at the end do not count as content). WSB manages to squeeze in five minutes of traffic content during drive time and they are working around a syndicated talk program.
 
5:36 PM traffic: 55 seconds of content.

By the way... we are not French. It is Ponce Dee Lee-on (yes, three separate words). I don't know why, but that is the way it is.
 
Last post on AN106.7 today.

The shooting at the funeral was covered timely as breaking news, but not frequently or detailed enough. ABC News covered the story at the top of the hour. AN106.7 went into detail for a total of 35 seconds. If the story makes national news, it should be HUGE for local news. 35 seconds is not wall to wall coverage of a story.

The interview with the cousin of the person that died was awful. It was right up there with Neal Bootz's Boo Got Shot and without resident black guy Royal Marshal (may he rest in peace) there to interpret for us.

For those at AN106.7 who are not familiar, here is the original Boo Got Shot... you must listen to the whole thing to get the translation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SK6_Di_3O0
 
John Lisk's voice always sounds like it has more bass. His voice does not sound like that is natural. Maybe different way he uses the mic?
 
I have found my new favorite anchor at AN106.7. Mark Woolsey came on at 5:00 PM today. He is comfortable running the board while on the air. The levels are good and there are no mistakes. Mark can ad lib really well. Also, at 5:06 PM he gave the absolute best weather forecast I have heard since AN106.7 started. He gave the temps for three communities, summarized what was happening on the radar, and told us what to expect from what he saw on the radar.

Matt Hoffberg (sp?) was doing the traffic during the 5:00 hour. He was fantastic. There were problems, he associated a couple of backups together. He was conversational. He communicated a sense of what part of the metro he was talking about. He was not just reading a list of problems.

Mark and Matt could do weekdays together and I would be very happy with the product they are putting out there.

On the flip side, the first two anchors on Saturday did not give any temps of any sort during the day (at least when I was listening). Mostly after the weather they would go straight to commercial or give the time and go straight to commercial. The female was running all of the music beds at full volume so it was difficult to hear the weather, traffic, sports, or business. I called the station and they fixed the problem immediately.

I am ready to start a Mark Woolsey fan club! :)
 
Another update: On the hour ID now says "WYAY-FM, Gainesville-Atlanta" instead of "WYAY-FM and WYAY-HD, Gainesville-Atlanta, a Cumulus station". Maybe now that lag with go away and ABC News will on exactly on the hour and the half hour instead of 17 seconds past (45 on the half).
 
The May ratings are in: WYAY: 2.9 6+, April they had 2.4. That's a big jump! I do not think they jumped .5 May 29th to May 31st on news alone. But if it was the news format they will be a top 5 station 6+ next ratings release. If they do "score" a top 5 in 6+ somebody at CBS is going to have to explain why CBS let CBS Radio News go to WSB when they could have used it at 92.9
 
BarryATL said:
I have found my new favorite anchor at AN106.7. Mark Woolsey came on at 5:00 PM today. He is comfortable running the board while on the air. The levels are good and there are no mistakes. Mark can ad lib really well. Also, at 5:06 PM he gave the absolute best weather forecast I have heard since AN106.7 started. He gave the temps for three communities, summarized what was happening on the radar, and told us what to expect from what he saw on the radar.
Click to expand...

You're surprised? Mark was at the Weather Channel Radio Network before 106.7. It comes naturally to him. ;)

Since he fed a few stations around here, the first time I heard him talk about weather on WYAY, my brain expected him to lock out "I'm Mark Woolsey from the Weather Channel."
 
The more I have listened to Mark Woolsey, the more he has become my preferred anchor.

On a different topic... I timed the music beds and there is a full 9+ minutes of music beds per 30 minute cycle. Can someone who understand imaging explain what the thinking is to have more than half of the content (not counting commercials) with a music bed behind it?
 
I think there is way too much imaging leading into the different segments -- traffic, weather, sports, and business news. The music beds under the content remind me of the old CNN Headline News. I think it would sound better if they removed the music beds from the weather and sports reports. Each distinct segment doesn't require imaging. The anchor could handle it.
 
Welcome to the site "sagebasics":

It was an old "radio rule" or belief that a proper music bed under anything but news seems to make the info "flow smoother and seem to "moving faster". After a while regular listeners will mentally associate to music with segment. (branding) Kind of like the theme Paul Anka / Johnny Carson wrote for the intro to The Tonight Show, when you hear the start of the song you think Johnny and Ed. WINS had (may still has, I have not been in NYC for years) the teletype back round. Ask just about any NYC resident when they hear the teletype sounder 1010 automatically come to mind. I personally think a quick (5 seconds or less) Jingle into would work but very few radio stations use jingles anymore.
 
Well, lets start with the music/news sounders. It is funny that sagebasics mentioned CNN Headline news. The sounders that AN106.7 are using remind me of the sounders that were used when WCNN was carrying CNN Headline news. They have that steel guitar grinding sound. It is annoying. Because of that sound, all of the sounders appear to be the same. Most news stations have very distinct sounders for different segments. The only sounder they are using that I find not-revolting is the one that is used every 15 minutes to intro the news headlines. It has a more musical sound without so much distorted guitar.

Of course, we are back to NINE+ minutes every 30 minutes has this annoying music bed.

Something just occurred to me... ARN (America's Radio News) has music behind almost everything. Somebody please tell me AN106.7 does not want to sound like ARN.
 
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