Big Shake Up At WFBL 1390

[Media_Man]

Former AM drive host Bill Colley is out... Savage is now on the AM drive. Dr. Joy Browne is evenings 6- 9 and WTVH is providing news and weather. Any one have any details? Why was Colley bounced?

 

[Lame_Listener]

Yeah, who knows what they are thinking over there. It makes no sense getting rid of your only local talk show and then putting on the most irritating loud mouth in radio first thing in the morning. I can't imagine waking up to Savage screaming about this and that. I've always said that he belongs in a mental institute, not on the radio.

 

[Media_Man]

From the Post Standard:Last week's sacking of WFBL-AM (1390) morning talk host Bill Colley drew about 15 protesters Monday outside the Baldwinsville station.Although Colley is calling his departure a "pleasant parting," the organizer of the protest, Jon Alvarez, said he and other radio listeners wanted WFBL to know they were upset Colley was gone. Alvarez was a frequent guest on the program."The only local outlet for (local) conservative talk was basically shut down," said Alvarez, president of the Patriot League of Central New York, an advocacy group. WFBL has replaced Colley's call-in show 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays with a taped, delayed broadcast of nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage. General manager Judy Kelly said Monday the change was based solely on the news-talk station's desire for better ratings in the morning.In the fall, WFBL's morning show ranked No. 14 in the Arbitron ratings with a 1.8 percent share of Syracuse listeners tuning to radio in that time period.Colley, 43, who describes his political views as "right-of-center," said he's hoping to find another talk-radio job, perhaps outside of Syracuse. Before he went to work at WFBL in January 2004, he was a radio reporter at news-talk station WSYR-AM (570).******If WFBL just wanted better ratings in the AM drive, why didn't they move his show to another time period?

 

[Bob1370]

This is obviously a purely budget driven move, and may have as much to do with the struggles of another Buckley station with an aging audience, slowly sinking WOR in New York, as it does with WFBL's inability to cut deeply into WSYR's core.But WFBL's problem is that while it has a signal with good market coverage (arguably better in some suburban areas than WSYR's, especially pre-sunrise and post-sunset) it hasn't used that coverage to superserve the target audience with good local talk. That's the only way to cut into WSYR. Savage hasn't generated the kind of demos that sell well either in NYC or in Rochester, his other two main markets in the state. I see no way it'll do any better in Syracuse than it has for WHAM. They will have to go back to the drawing board and try again, this time by recruiting a few personality hosts with a history in the market, maybe even recruited from other formats.

 

[W2JUV_AL]

WFBL-1390 with better signal coverage than WSYR-570 ? I don't really think so. At night WSYR easily covers 50mi to the West, North and East, maybe not quite as good to the South so as to protect 570 in NYC. WFBL doesn't do that. I'm 35mi east of Syracuse and WFBL is iffy here in the early AM.