Are any smaller, local stations covering the storm this weekend?

[TheBigA]

Well, this year, Saturday February 9th, the iconic WABC 770 in New York is running infomercials and other syndication today. To its east, Long Island and a lot of those people in that WABC coverage area are buried. But hey .... ka-ching/ka-ching.
What a disgrace.

By the same token, what are WCBS and WINS doing? I mean NOW?

People have choices. Most radios allow you to tune in other stations besides WABC. For me, I have The Weather Channel on right now. I notice most of the features are actually pre-recorded, and repeat quite often, assuming that most people just watch for 15-20 minutes, the switch to Bravo or something else. Sure they switch to a live shot every now and then, but there's a lot of video VT.

 

[frnkp2000]

Not to even mention it's a gold mine for local sponsors such as hardware stores, convenience stores and the like.

I don't know about where you live, but in my town, most of the hardware stores are owned by national chains, and don't do local buys. The one "local" hardware store is part of the Ace buying collective, and they have a national agency. Same with convenience and grocery stores. Emergency storm coverage usually ends up being unsponsored.

Ace and True Value offer co-op dollars to their franchisees who wish to place local ad buys, as do Shaws, Tedeschi's and 7-11. Market Basket and Stop and Shop prefer the "home office red tape" style of doing things.

 

[TheBigA]

Ace and True Value offer co-op dollars to their franchisees who wish to place local ad buys, as do Shaws, Tedeschi's and 7-11. Market Basket and Stop and Shop prefer the "home office red tape" style of doing things.

In my town, everything is national. No local hardware money.

 

[frnkp2000]

Ace and True Value offer co-op dollars to their franchisees who wish to place local ad buys, as do Shaws, Tedeschi's and 7-11. Market Basket and Stop and Shop prefer the "home office red tape" style of doing things.

In my town, everything is national. No local hardware money.

That's unfortunate. No local storm coverage in your town then!

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

@ The Big A : My point was that a complaint was made, the effect of which a station jumped the gun in its coverage.

I feel it is irresponsible for a station that has the staff not to get its listeners prepared.

And on the matter of dials, recent books have WABC swirling down toward Ed Norton in the ratings. So quite a few people evidently are finding those other dial spots. The station not only hurt itself via this modern-frugality route, but it had to've helped its main competitor -- which was far more local. There were plenty of snowbound people (including some radio folks) who are going to remember WOR, rather than WABC, as representing the signal of choice during the weekends.

I don't feel as though WCBS-WINS is an accurate point of comparison inasmuch as those two stations are expected to be on the ball 24/7 anyway, and a certain percentage of the market is going to flip to them anyway if the power is out. But saying that 'there's an all-news station, so why should we do news?' is like saying 'There's an all-sports station, so why should we give ball scores?' or 'There's a country station, so why are we wasting four minutes playing a crossover song?'.
Be all that as it may, argumentative or not, it's for certain that WABC was not the only NYC-grade signal to look the other way. So to some extent it's unfair to single them out. The PPMs during the power-outage book will say who was doing the job.

Anyway, there are different degrees of natural disaster, of course, especially within the coverage areas of stations with huge signals. There are apt to be extremes and priorities to balance. Hence, other, smaller signals in the region or market have to work as best they can with what they have. If they are staffed, then I don't accept the 'premature' criticism at all. Heck, there was a post on another board about the Pennsylvania coverage of Sandy being unnecessary. And this was a post made after the fact! It was posted after the state capital announced emergency conditions and two people in the state had lost their lives.

 

[TheBigA]

And on the matter of dials, recent books have WABC swirling down toward Ed Norton in the ratings.

As I said on the NYC board, no station sells the 6+ Monday-Sunday numbers, and those are the only public numbers we see. So if they're going down, who cares? Advertisers buy Imus, Rush, and Hannity. The rest of the station doesn't matter. It's a clearance for Cumulus Media national ads in market #1.

But saying that 'there's an all-news station, so why should we do news?' is like saying 'There's an all-sports station, so why should we give ball scores?'

That's not the question. The question is: The infomercial client has paid for this time, why should we pre-empt it and refund their money? No one is tuning in and expecting WABC to do news. The listeners have several years of experience knowing there won't be any.

If they are staffed, then I don't accept the 'premature' criticism at all.

But today is Saturday, so they're not staffed. Had this snowstorm happened on a weekday, everything would have been different, and I predict that WABC would have done more than it did.