Another example of the sorry state of NEPA radio. WILK was the only station providing election coverage. It was awful. Sue Henry and Corey O'Brien had it all wrong. The asked cake questions of the guests and difficult questions of Joe Thomas and Rob Neyhard. The guests/candidates had the easy answers while Rob and Joe were continually stumped. It wasn't much better the next morning. What happened to this market?
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Election Night
- Thread starter NigelWick
- Start date
Mark Cour, in Wilkes-Barre Online, has this to say:
I've heard good words about Sue's ability to get it right and do it right.As far as coverage goes, yeah: NEPA radio news is down the toilet and there aren't hardly any hands to flush it. WILK is the only game in town since WARM cut and run. When you're off the bird or automated, you probably don't have anyone doing news, so that eliminates a lot of stations. Oddly enough, when WRKC had the AP wire and a functioning news department, it did a credible job at covering elections, sometimes beating even WARM with the Luzerne County results.However, and it's a big however, since the invention of the Squeezoom, we can have all the races covered in seqential fashion while we are watching the programs of choice. Then, on the 11:00, we get the smiling faces, the balloons, the "on to the general election" stuff. Do we need more than one radio station doing complete coverage?WILK’s Sue Henry and her new favorite sidekick did an awesome job of providing the latest numbers and suchlike from the field late last night. As early as 10:15, both Rob Neyhard and Sue had reported that an unconfirmed rumor was circling that O’Donnell had already conceded the race to Pashinski. Turns out, the rumor was accurate.
You've got more than one. WILK, 16 and 50; I don't think the medium makes a difference anymore, as they are all competing. As far as unconfirmed rumors are, I would dismiss them unless the source was very good and reliable enough so that I could take to air without confirmation. That info, in this case, I don't have so I can't comment on Sue's choice.
Nigel, and anyone else...Since you gave your opinions on WILK's coverage, specifically Sue Henry and Corey O'Brien, here is her side of the story.Sue's remarks:Here's what you should know from someone who was there for four hours of wall to wall election coverage offered by WILK. I would say this was probably our best coverage night in several years.1. WILK had the most breaking coverage of any news outlet that night. We went live from 8 to midnight. Some stations didn't put up their crawls until after nine ... one stuck theirs up at 9:58.2. Frank Andrews Shimkus declared victory on our station before nine, when only about 30 percent of the vote had been reported at The Times/Tribune. This was done because he and his campaign had done the math and figured out they had won. Nigel Wick was probably reading "Archie" comics in his bunny slippers while this was happening. We also had a correspondent at Andrews' headquarters who reported to us that it looked very likely he would win. We also had Matthew Burke, his Republican challenger in the fall, on the air.3. Ken Smith appeared live with us and talked about his apparent win over incumbent Fred Belardi, the biggest upset in the area. BTW, Belardi's weak appearance on WILK's Nancy and Kevin show last Friday most certainly cost him votes. 4. We had a correspondent who went back and forth from Madiera and Baker headquarters. We had an interview live with retiring Sen. Charles Lemmond. We had Lisa Baker right after she received concession calls from Haggerty and Madiera and delivered her victory speech at the Irem Temple Country Club.5. I had two independent confirmations that Dr. O'Donnell had conceded and that Reilly had also. Pashinski was clearly the last man standing. No question. We had this well before the count at the courthouse was completed.6. WILK had correspondents stationed at The Scranton Times Tribune and The Luzerne County Courthouse, Joe Thomas and Rob Neyhard. That's about four decades of experience, if not more.7. Corey O'Brien, who co-hosted the coverage with me, was a veteran on the Clinton Gore campaign and has worked with several local candidates. He is no slouch and very connected. Before airtime (and off air), he correctly predicted four out of four key races using polling data. He was also ill with a stomach virus for most of the day and managed to rally to make it to the station.8. Tara Curtis Mead, former news director of WILK and now a member of the Radio Pennsylvania Network, gave us a live report from Bob Casey Jr.'s porch in Scranton after his folksy evening press conference.9. We had great sound of a humble Don Sherwood from the Ramada in Clarks Summit which we used Wednesday.10. On Wednesday morning, Bob Casey Jr., the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate seat in the state, was live in our studios. We also had an interview with Chris Carney, who will challenge Don Sherwood. We had follow ups with Frank Andrews and Eddie Day Pashinski as well.11. We will wrap up the election on Saturday at noon with a special featuring these interviews. BTW, WILK was the media outlet that spent the most time banging the drum for the repeal of the pay raise in Harrisburg and giving the guys from PA Clean Sweep, Rock the Captial and The Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania a great forum to explain why change was needed. Dr. Terry Madonna, a well known political analyst in the state, said there was no question talk radio helped bring about a political sea change in state politics.
Sorry. WILK was the only station I could get in my car. My cable isn't long enough to get the television stations.Putting "unconfirmed rumors" on the air is shameful behavior. You should know better.Lots of interviews, and not one good hard question in any one of them. You gave your buddies a free ride.I hope Mr. O'Brien is feeling better.Now, where are my bunny slippers?
Don't worry about your slippers; get your column in.
The medium doesn't matter anymore. While it's probably a sad commentary on our society, most people DON'T care about what's going on election night, and don't want their programming interrupted for election coverage. Think how many people scream bloody murder, if the president asks for prime time to address the nation. Most people simply don't want to be bothered, and can't bear to have their American Idol, Law & Order or Classic Hits interrupted for anything that might actually be important. In the long run, the stations are givng their audiences what they want, by not interrupting their regular programming. It's not right, but it's most likely true.ThomasCarten said:You've got more than one. WILK, 16 and 50; I don't think the medium makes a difference anymore, as they are all competing. As far as unconfirmed rumors are, I would dismiss them unless the source was very good and reliable enough so that I could take to air without confirmation. That info, in this case, I don't have so I can't comment on Sue's choice.
I replied, but it's gone.
- Status
- This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.