Another WHAMer is Gone

[Mark_Giardina]

Mark,
I'm sorry if this hurts your feelings, but as the old saying goes...sometimes the truth hurts.
So here it is:

I worked in that newsroom for 10 years...and not all that long ago.
In that entire time I NEVER witnessed anyone monitoring WXXI....NOT ONCE
You may find that hard to believe, but it's the god's honest truth.
Sorry to say, but we just didn't care about what you guys were reporting and didn't really think anyone else did either considering we had like, what....13 times the number of listeners?
Again, not to put you down or anything,..or sully the efforts of the WXXI news staff (who i thought were a nice bunch of people)...but, truthfully, the feeling regarding WXXI in the WHAM newsroom could be summed up in one word.
Irrelevant.

Feelings not hurt and I know that both news departments had different ideas when it came to what should and should not be covered (news stories) But I was honest when I said that friends of mine at WHAM did listen because they complimented me numerous times. And my friends were not just people who worked in radio news.
Besides this is a moot point anyways since I haven't worked at WXXI in three years and never plan to go back there. And to be honest, I don't listen to them anymore either. Instead I tune into the BBC and WYSL for radio and watch R-News for TV.
If you are whom I think you are it's been a while since we talked. I hope everything is going well for you at your job. (if you are not that person, still accept my best wishes)
And thanks for correcting me about the comet versus King of Egypt.

 

[fybush]

What was that old line that one of the big New York department stores was said to have used when one of the tabloid papers asked their ad buyer why the store never advertised with them, seeing how big their circulation was and all?

"Your readers, sir, are our shoplifters."

It's not just how many people are reading - or listening. It's also who those readers or listeners are...and while it may not have as many listeners as the big blowtorch down the dial, and based on nothing more than the anecdotal feedback I've been getting in several years of on-and-off news anchoring for WXXI, it's an audience I'm happy to be reaching. There's nothing wrong with being Tom Golisano's in-car listening on his way home each afternoon. (OK, I'm just speculating on that last point.)

But isn't that a great thing about radio? WXXI has its listeners, WHAM has its listeners, WYSL has its listeners, and we all go home happy at the end of the day. There's probably a lot more difference between all our newscasts on the radio dial than there is between the story lineups on 8, 10, 13 and R News on any given evening...and I don't miss my assignment-editor days at R News, watching anxiously at 5 and 6 to make sure we hadn't missed anything that the Big 3 had that night.

No animosity from this end, in any event...while I don't spend much time listening to WHAM of late, I respect what the staff there does (and consider many of them friends). And I've considered the folks down at WYSL friends ever since I first set foot in the place 20 years ago this month, before Bob had even signed the station on for real.

(As always...I speak only for myself, not for WXXI or anyone else.)

 

[The Voice of Reason]

But isn't that a great thing about radio? WXXI has its listeners, WHAM has its listeners, WYSL has its listeners, and we all go home happy at the end of the day. There's probably a lot more difference between all our newscasts on the radio dial than there is between the story lineups on 8, 10, 13 and R News on any given evening

I must agree that TV news lately seems to carry the same stories. That is because instead of doing more investigative reporting, it's easier to cover news conferences along with homicides and re-writes from the local newspaper and wire service.
As for radio news coverage WXXI does have more in-depth local stories, while the other two stations (WHAM and WYSL) appear to be more in tune with the quick 30 second story that includes a ten second sound byte. But as you said those stations have their listeners. As for everyone going home happy at the end of the day, that might depend on whom you are talking to. After last year's "decapitation" of one radio news department's staff, I don't think those who survived are very happy with the outcome. It certainly didn't improve morale one would think.

 

[fybush]

Point well taken about not all of us going home happy - sometimes those layoffs hurt the people who stay almost as much as they hurt the ones who go.

As for the length of the soundbites, it's still something of a shock for this former WBZ newswriter to sit down and write a story with individual cuts that are longer than an entire wrap was back at Newsradio 1030. I had a 33-second cut in one of my newscasts on Friday. Argue all you want about whether that makes for good radio (I can take both sides of that debate), but it's at least different from what the other guys are doing down the dial.