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Bob McMahon
- Thread starter dhoule
- Start date
dhoule said:
Dan Mason wants to carve out as much cost out of CBS all-news formats as possible. They're looking to do away with midday news on weekdays and scale down on weekends by inserting a mix of syndicated and local talk shows in unprofitable dayparts. WBZ will soon have talk from 10am to 2pm.....
dhoule said:
He did not retire. He was, unfortunately, "let go" in mid-November.
Gotta love how they got Gary LaPierre to voice the intros for the traffic reports now that no one is home in the newsroom. Guess they figure his voice will make everyone think he is working overnight.
The new WBZ program line up:
5am to 10am - WBZ morning news (59 minutes of commercials, 1 minute of news, weather, traffic and sports)
10am to 2pm - The "Best Of" the BZ morning news (no calls please)
2pm to 8pm - WBZ afternoon news (59 minutes and 30 seconds of spots, 30 seconds of news)
8pm to 12am - Dan Rea (live on Monday nights, best of Dan Rea Tues. thru Friday)
12am to 1pm - Best of the Best of Dan Rea
1pm to 5am - Good Morning St. Louis (heck, at this hour no one can remember what city they are in anyway)
Weekends - IBOC hash played on the main carrier 24x7 brought to you by "spackle and paste".
The new WBZ program line up:
5am to 10am - WBZ morning news (59 minutes of commercials, 1 minute of news, weather, traffic and sports)
10am to 2pm - The "Best Of" the BZ morning news (no calls please)
2pm to 8pm - WBZ afternoon news (59 minutes and 30 seconds of spots, 30 seconds of news)
8pm to 12am - Dan Rea (live on Monday nights, best of Dan Rea Tues. thru Friday)
12am to 1pm - Best of the Best of Dan Rea
1pm to 5am - Good Morning St. Louis (heck, at this hour no one can remember what city they are in anyway)
Weekends - IBOC hash played on the main carrier 24x7 brought to you by "spackle and paste".
N
NewsAddict
Guest
spt87 said:
No offense to Mr. LaPierre, but I'm hearing him more now than ever before. Tongue in cheek, of course, but geez...between his commercials for the Commonwealth Advisory Group, his intro at the top of the hour, and now his intros for Traffic on the 3's at night, you'd never know he retired two years ago.
Bob has been hired by WBUR, and has been announcing some evening breaks over this past week.
I don't know what shifts he will get, maybe evening fill-ins to start.
I don't know what shifts he will get, maybe evening fill-ins to start.
Actually Bob is freelancing at WBUR and I'm glad to hear him back on the radio.
As for LaPierre's increasing presence on WBZ it seems to me that management
thinks that if they bring him back they'll magically return to a time when WBZ
was profitable. Those days are gone and the more personnel cuts they make the
more irrelevant the station will become. Their content is horrible. When House
Speaker Sal DiMasi resigned they had three reporters on the story and it sounded
as if none of them understood his reasons for stepping down. Or if they did they
kept it to themselves. We're seeing the death of one of America's "heritage"
stations.
As for LaPierre's increasing presence on WBZ it seems to me that management
thinks that if they bring him back they'll magically return to a time when WBZ
was profitable. Those days are gone and the more personnel cuts they make the
more irrelevant the station will become. Their content is horrible. When House
Speaker Sal DiMasi resigned they had three reporters on the story and it sounded
as if none of them understood his reasons for stepping down. Or if they did they
kept it to themselves. We're seeing the death of one of America's "heritage"
stations.
the scribe said:
Couldn't agree more. Time was, a three-letter station ID and 50,000 watts was a sign of prestige. But WBZ has completely wasted that heritage, and with each passing day people will wonder whether they ever really had it. If you can't start the news until one minute past the hour because you're too busy cramming in as many commercials as you can before the top of the hour, then you deserve the stones and arrows coming your way. We've all got a list of reasons why WBZ has fallen by the wayside, and it's a pretty sad commentary on how CBS has run the business on both sides of WBZ's business.
In the same way that the NYT is trying to jettison the Boston Globe, I wish CBS were willing to divest itself of WBZ (both sides) and let it be taken over by local ownership. The things we once loved about WBZ--programming & the people who brought it to us--might well be inclined to return. Pipe dream? Perhaps. But I'd like to think that there are some deep-pocketed local investors who 'remember' WBZ as fondly as I do.
ChrisNH said:
And the reason you believe that WBZ (radio, anyhow) would improve under local ownership is...? ? ? ?
IMO there is only one locally owned radio station in this market that sounds as if it is (and probably actually is) run in a professional manner, and it's not a commercial station. I'm referring to WBUR, which is obviously a special case. Of course, WBUR sounded equally professional when it was under the thum..., err, management of Jane Christo. And when I read about all of the games she played, I realized that most of what was professional was in the on-air sound. Kind of like those movie sets at Universal City--no buildings behind the facades.
I caught him on one of WBUR's breaks late this afternoon (today, Sunday, 2/15). Sounded very good! Would you believe, he has shed his problem with pronouncing the letter W, which always seemed to plague him at WBZ! Good thing too, because I think WBUR's breaks have more Ws per minute than any content on WBZ--and given the incessant repetition of the call letters on WBZ, that takes some doing.
DanStrassberg said:
Easy. I firmly believe that ownership from afar is damaging to 'local' media interests. Do we need to delve into the NYT/Boston Globe fiasco?
Simply put, media outlets here 'suffer' when non-local owners are involved. Is network ownership helping or hurting? I say 'hurts' and you might say 'helps,' but can you prove it? WHDH is owned by 'Miami people.' Are you convinced that the recipe works? I'm not. WBZ-AM is a borderline JOKE now; I blame the big suits at CBS for that in part because their ceaseless push for $$$ pushes aside a need to win back listener respect and trust. 'Big Deal' if the news starts at 5:01pm...we have commercials to run!!!
Boston is a financially 'rich' city with money parked off to the side in this economy. Is finding the right mix of local ownership going to be easy? Of course not. Who wants to invest in anything involved with media? It's a joke. The NYT said 'no' to $300m for the Globe a few years ago, and now that bastion of media haughtiness is worth $20m by some accounts. Current owners will balk at low-ball offers, but they really ought to entertain them. The good old days ain't walkin' through that door, folks (apologies to Rick Pitino).
Actually Westinghouse was headquartered (and still is) in Pittsburgh.
Per the Internets, the parent company, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, was headquartered in Pittsburgh but Westinghouse Broadcasting (Group W) was always headquartered in NYC. Westinghouse Electric Corporation was renamed CBS Corporation in 1997 and was then purchased by Viacom in 1999. All the other divisions of Westinghouse were sold off in the 80's and 90's. My LCD monitor and HDTV with the famous W logo are made Westinghouse Digital Electronics LLC who use the name & logo under license from CBS Corporation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_W
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_W
Radio68 said:
Speaking of Pittsburgh, I was listening last week to KDKA (also owned by CBS) around 9:30 p.m. and they were running a live local newscast during the local evening talk show. If KDKA can have local news in the evening, why does WBZ shut down their newsroom at 8 p.m. in what is a much larger media market?
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