Good Karma To Lease 880; WCBS News Programming To End

[Schroedingers Cat]

Way back in the early 1960s, Bob Crane (Colonel Hogan) was taking ratings from WCBS to his show on WICC 600 Bridgeport. It's just 1000 watts Day, and it's the minor lobe in the DA that goes toward Long Island, with a maximum IDF of the equivalent of about 1000 watts. So they offered Crane a job at KNX 1070 to get him out of the market, which soon landed him TV roles on CBS TV, including Hogan's Heroes. WICC also has a better signal on much of Long Island than WCBS.

Amazing what the Ocean does vs. Geological Rock.

 

[OldiesMaven]

The story was likely based on the interview Catsimatidis had on the "Sid and Friends" program dated Monday 8/26/2024.

Podcast link to that interview below - go to the "4:00" minute mark to hear the discussion about WABC,
the demise of WCBS 880 and John's attempt to purchase 880 to turn it in to "a B-station to WABC".
He claims the sale was thwarted when "the Soros situation came out".

John Catsimatidis | Red Apple Media Owner & Operator | 08-26-24

Red Apple Media owner & operator John Catsimatidis joins Sid live in-studio to talk about how ridiculous it is the amount of criminals that are roaming free in our streets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

wabcradio.com

So Soros would rather swap out an all-sports format on 880 for a news or liberal-slanted news and talk mix? Makes no sense. If the new lead investor in Audacy wants to advance a political agenda (in a market with three established news/talkers), he would have nixed the local NY management from leasing the signal to 880 for ESPN and some local sports shows.

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

Soros is just a convenient boogeyman for the right.

 

[davideduardo]

So Soros would rather swap out an all-sports format on 880 for a news or liberal-slanted news and talk mix?

Soros does not run the company. His investment companies have bought outstanding debt and the whole thing is working through the bankruptcy proceeding and FCC license transfer process.

And even if Soros and his son owned the company, it is very unlikely they are involved in day to day programming decisions on individual stations. There are management people at each of his investments running things.

Makes no sense. If the new lead investor in Audacy wants to advance a political agenda (in a market with three established news/talkers), he would have nixed the local NY management from leasing the signal to 880 for ESPN and some local sports shows.

WCBS was an all news station. WINS AM and its FM are all news stations.

WOR and WABC are the dominant talk stations, sometimes called "news talk". There are others, but with limited or no ratings in both English and Spanish, and there are several sports talk stations.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Did anyone record the format change?

 

[Marcos_C]

Did anyone record the format change?

Yes, it has been posted in the No Sale Looming thread.

TJ 98.7 New York Debuts (Format Change Archive)

 

[Marcos_C]

Here is another recording in which you hear more of what happens before the format change. At 1:16, you will hear a pause in the transmission. For 10 seconds, the station switched from mono to stereo/HD. The transmission resumed sounding better than before.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Did anyone record the format change?

As everyone falls all over each other to repost links to the 98.7 switch, I am going to presume you meant on 880.

There was no need, as 880 had been simulcasting 98.7 for the previous week, and that was accomplished by a simple cutover of programming at the WHSQ transmitter after WCBS signed off. Audio of that sign-off is available all over the place.

 

[vchimpanzee]

As everyone falls all over each other to repost links to the 98.7 switch, I am going to presume you meant on 880.

Well, this thread is about 880.

There was no need, as 880 had been simulcasting 98.7 for the previous week, and that was accomplished by a simple cutover of programming at the WHSQ transmitter after WCBS signed off. Audio of that sign-off is available all over the place.

And the sign-on?

 

[Marcos_C]

Well, this thread is about 880.

And the sign-on?

Below is a recording of the final minutes of WCBS and the first half minute of WHSQ. The sign-on of WHSQ can be heard at 19:15.

I apologize for the earlier misunderstanding about what you're looking for. August 26 seems so long ago for me already.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Below is a recording of the final minutes of WCBS and the first half minute of WHSQ. The sign-on of WHSQ can be heard at 19:15.

I apologize for the earlier misunderstanding about what you're looking for. August 26 seems so long ago for me already.

I got sent here after the 98.7 format change. I was wondering why they were telling me about the change in 880 and then I realized sometimes when a video stops, I get sent to another one without doing anything.

 

[TheBigA]

Interesting article in Radio World about WCBS:

The Newsroom May Be Dark, but the Light of WCBS Lives On - Radio World

"At its best – WCBS was probably the healthiest and strongest culture of any organization I’ve ever been a part of," writes Rob Bertrand.

www.radioworld.com

 

[Theater of My Mind]

Interesting article in Radio World about WCBS:

Thank you for posting this. Finally, a point of view on this site worthy of what WCBS represented. There should be more of it on this site.

As CBS prepared for radio’s divestiture, and in the years since, the resources the station once had were slowly peeled away (I was among them).

This speaks to the point I made in the ratings thread. Validated here. Thank you.

It was a high-class station for a smart audience, represented by educated, classy people.

Maybe there is no place in commercial radio for a station like this anymore, then. Big Radio is all about shooting for the lowest common denominator, isn't it? Quantity always trumps quality. WINS attracts it with its tabloid headlines and dopey delivery by anchors like Scott Stanford, for instance.

The WCBS tragedy really says so much about the sad state of radio today, and the depressing decline in quality and creativity it used to stand for that I have loved for my whole life.

 

[Weiserguy]

Interesting article in Radio World about WCBS:

The Newsroom May Be Dark, but the Light of WCBS Lives On - Radio World

"At its best – WCBS was probably the healthiest and strongest culture of any organization I’ve ever been a part of," writes Rob Bertrand.

www.radioworld.com

That was an interesting take. My take is that the spirit of WCBS lives on, at least for now, in the other CBS-legacy news stations around the country: KCBS, KNX, WBBM. And in the stations that may not have originally been CBS all-news operations but took their cues from them: WTOP, KMOX, WBZ, KRLD, etc. And, believe it or not, in the NPR newsroom and a lot of news-heavy public stations like WNYC, WAMU, KQED, WBUR, WBEZ, etc. WCBS's style and attention to excellence lives on in a number of places.

It's been written that WINS is like the old Daily News and WCBS like the NY Times. I think that's a little off. WCBS was more like the old Herald Tribune, or the Alicia Patterson-original Newsday (as opposed to today's Dolan-fied pale imitation). Those were newspapers with style, wit and brevity, in their own ways a dedication to excellence. In this country, there's only so much market share for excellence, and papers like Newsday or the HT have a hard time succeeding long term, but otoh not very many remember with fondness such media after-thoughts as the Journal American, the Sun, the Mirror or the Long Island Press (which I home-delivered in my callow youth).

 

[Theater of My Mind]

It's been written that WINS is like the old Daily News and WCBS like the NY Times. I think that's a little off.

Me too. I don't know who wrote that but to me, WNYC would be more like the station that compares to the NY Times with its lengthy reporting, in-depth analysis and highly intellectual presentation. WCBS occupied a space somewhere in between those extremes,

 

[TheBigA]

Maybe there is no place in commercial radio for a station like this anymore, then.

You're missing the big picture: Public radio stations are also laying off staff. TV news operations are cutting back. The problem is people don't want to pay for news. They've been spoiled by getting free traffic, free weather, and free information online delivered directly to their phones. It's quick and personalized. Traditional media can't complete.

The WCBS tragedy really says so much about the sad state of radio today, and the depressing decline in quality and creativity it used to stand for that I have loved for my whole life.

The business model for everything has been destroyed by the internet. You used to buy music in record stores too. They're all gone. You used to do banking directly with a banker, who has been replaced by an ATM. You used to buy food from a grocer, and it's all been replaced by self checkout lines. This is a much bigger story. The only reason this didn't happen sooner is because NYC is the biggest city. It was going to happen sooner or later, and this was the year.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

You're missing the big picture: Public radio stations are also laying off staff. TV news operations are cutting back. The problem is people don't want to pay for news. They've been spoiled by getting free traffic, free weather, and free information online delivered directly to their phones. It's quick and personalized. Traditional media can't complete.

You can't blame everything on phones. To begin with, phones don't fabricate content on their own. It has to come from somewhere. I don't look at something called iPhone News, I look at CNN or CBS *on* the iPhone. Sadly, Audacy's radio websites weren't worth looking at for news and they weren't in my phone rotation. That's Audacy's fault.

Next, people don't wake up by staring at their phone. They wake up to sound. And they're not supposed to be scrolling their phones while driving. Those are the places where radio is supposed to excel if companies would stop giving people reasons not to listen.

Anyway, the real problem is that the advertising pie is being sliced up into too many pieces. For starters, all those video streaming platforms like Prime Video and Max that we were paying to see commercial-free shows on are now double dipping by pushing ads too. Everyone has jumped on the ad bandwagon. There are so many ads everywhere, we're tripping over them. So radio needs to do a better job of positioning itself as a premium service near the top of the advertising hierarchy, but with every cut I see the opposite. Radio keeps devaluing itself and heading toward the ditch.

 

[TheBigA]

You can't blame everything on phones.

I am WAY past the point of blaming anything. It's a reality we live with, and there's nothing we can do about it. People are not changing their ways. There is nothing we can do to make them go back to radio. I have read a lot of comments about WCBS, and it was obvious a lot of people haven't listened in a long time. They were talking mostly about their childhood, not about last week.

In my opinion, the people who stopped listening to WCBS are to blame. Because once they stopped listening, they don't get counted by Nielsen, and they don't contribute to revenue. They're just former listeners who are seeing another part of their youth disappear. WCBS is that once-popular restaurant that people don't go to anymore. One day they drive by and see it's boarded up, and they can't understand why. The reason is because they stopped going there.

As I said, all the things you listed in your post are living on borrowed time. There will be a day when the cable news channels go the way of print newspapers. It's not because of corporations. It's because people stopped using them. WCBS stuck to its standards, did news the way they always did it, and stayed that way until they signed off. Nobody is saying their quality was to blame. It's just that people moved on, and used different ways to get their news and information. That isn't going to change, and is only getting worse.

 

[DrJerry]

My phone is the first thing I look at when I wake up. And while I'm having my morning coffee. I haven't had a clock radio for decades. It's not phones, though. It's the internet overall. Today, there are SO many options for news (and music). And especially for younger people, radio is not a preferred option. Over time as audiences continue to age (and die), it's only going to get tougher for radio. I'm in my 50s and have loved radio all of my life. But even I don't listen nearly as much as I used to. It's not the future.

 

[TheBigA]

My phone is the first thing I look at when I wake up.

I don't even have to look at my phone. It tells me to wake up. It tells me when I have an appointment. It tells me why the there's traffic on the road I'm on. It tells me everything I need to know, and it does it for free with no commercials. How does a news radio station compete with that?