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All News radio in a small market

mightynine said:
It's more than just the newscast now - they use the other daily features from 24/7 News (health, politics, sports, etc.) to fill out the time. It's not 15 minutes giving you the world, but it's close - and if you were to add some commercial breaks and room for the market's traffic and weather, you could get there.
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That's exactly how it works. All of those features come from iHeart/NBC News radio. They are unlabeled, but have the familiar iHeart staff anchoring and reporting, Mark Mayfield, Tammy Trujillo, etc. Here's the link to listen to this station:

 
ted chittenden said:
In Phoenix, NIS was carried on KRUX, which was one of the city's two long-running AM top-40 stations. (While KUPD (1060 kHz) did top 40, it didn't begin its involvement in the format until late 1971 or early 1972.) I was a 12- and 13-year-old kid when I heard it and I loved listening to it.y
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Phoenix had three long-running Top 40 stations, with KRIZ being the most successful in the earlier 70's until KUPD enhanced its FM and simulcast. I was OM at KRUX in 1974 for my friend Larry Mazursky and we went with a Burkhart-consulted gold based pseudo AC in that period as we could see the effect of KUPD being on FM.

Further, we got a separate FM top 40 with KBBC, "Better Boogie Company" in the 1974 period.
 
What is most significant about the NBC all news syndication is the fact that most of the affiliates were low budget and did not invest in a local news department. So those stations did not fill all the "local" breaks, and what they did do was weak local news. So listeners got an hour filled with nearly all national and international news and no local and state news... which is what drives all news.

For example, when I converted WUNO in San Juan to all news in the very early 80's we did about 80% local news with the rest being national (mainland US) and international. Unless there was major breaking non-local news, we remained that way until the station became news/talk about 20 years later.
 
davideduardo said:
So listeners got an hour filled with nearly all national and international news and no local and state news... which is what drives all news.
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It depends. Some NPR stations just run the network. But about one third of NPR news shows is feature & lifestyle stories. That kind of thing is better than local news when done well. ABC News Radio provides a lot of that, perhaps more than iHeart.
 
TheBigA said:
It depends. Some NPR stations just run the network. y
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NPR is not an all news operation. And you are comparing the mid 70's with today.
TheBigA said:
But about one third of NPR news shows is feature & lifestyle stories. That kind of thing is better than local news when done well.
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However, all news, the subject of this discussion of the mid 70's, was based on local news, weather, sports and traffic. National and international was covered, but in relatively lesser percentages.
 
davideduardo said:
What is most significant about the NBC all news syndication is the fact that most of the affiliates were low budget and did not invest in a local news department. So those stations did not fill all the "local" breaks, and what they did do was weak local news. So listeners got an hour filled with nearly all national and international news and no local and state news... which is what drives all news.
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I had to pull my old copy of the NIS clock to refresh my memory of how KAAP (that's the station I programmed after NBC pulled the plug) ran the format.

:00-:05 ABC Information Network newscast
:05-:09 Local/California news
:09-:11 Stopset
:11-:15 NIS (optional segment)
:15-:21 NIS
:21-:23 Stopset
:23-:30 NIS
:30-:36:30 Local/California news
:36:30-:39 NIS (optional segment)
:39-:41 Stopset
:41-:45 NIS (optional segment)
:45-:51 NIS
:51-:53 Stopset
:53-:59 NIS
:59-:00 Local headlines/weather

All the stopsets were in NIS-designated windows which had news content as a filler, so if the spot load was low they could just read the station imaging liner over the gate and let the network run. I'm pretty sure that at night, they rejoined at :06:30 or :09:00.

I also remember some of the optional segments being covered by locally produced news features (I think those ran most hours at :36:30).

So it was a hybrid there as well, but for a smaller market station it sounded okay. They did have a five-man local news department, but they had to double as anchors. Most of them moved on fairly quickly, although they did still keep the automation fed for the now-simulcasting FM with the news and weather.

One stayed on longer than he should have and had to be eased out the door not long after he inserted himself into a conversation I was having with the mom-and-pop owners by saying "music is just what we play to fill between newscasts."

"All news, all day, every day ... this is your News and Information Service ..."
 


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