It was 20 years ago Monday that now-defunct Susquehanna Broadcasting cut most of the remaining heart out of the old WPLP, and watched as most of the audience followed. Six people were fired, including Tampa Bay radio mainstays Don Richards and David Fowler, and the new owners tried to evade the blame by having the previous bosses do their dirty work for them.
Bob Lassiter had already jumped to WFLA by then, reportedly because he'd gotten vibes that the new owners didn't like his style -- or any style that could be called controversial. Fowler told the St. Pete Times that Susquehanna wanted shows that talked about "house plants and hemorrhoids."
Susquehanna, a company owned by priggish Pennsylvania Dutch whose real specialty was chinamaking, brought a 1960 KMOX-style approach to a market that had come to appreciate something more flavorful than the radio version of Busch Beer. (3.2 beer at that.) The Susquehanna folks believed -- against all evidence -- that the way to attract 25-54's and chase away the economically useless retiree audience was to present tightly targeted topics and interviews with lots of "news you can use." They brought the same "At Your Service" format that had underperformed at KLIF in Dallas to the Tampa market, and watched as ratings tanked under the tutelage of stars like Ed "Eeeeeehhh" Hartley and Art Snow.
It wasn't one bloodbath, but a succession of them, as more hosts were fired over the next few weeks -- one even quitting on the air in disgust over what the Pennsylvania platemakers had done to the station. Susquehanna apparently believed that its staid programming would go over better with advertisers than the take-no-prisoners approach of Jacor at WFLA. Their sales handouts for WTKN urged clients to "Choose Responsible Radio!" (The revival of the "ratings book full of friends" approach lampooned by Lassiter.) The advertisers instead went with the irresponsible kind of radio, the kind that got listeners.
Susquehanna tried to recover with more energetic hosts such as Jay Marvin, but by then the die was cast. The gap between 570 and 970 in the ratings, relatively narrow before the acquisition, would grow to Grand Canyon proportions. WFLA would dominate talk radio (with the exception of a close fight from WSUN in the early 90's) from then till now.
Two years later, after a lot of red ink and few listeners, WTKN had its own bloodbath, and the first talk station to survive infancy in the Tampa Bay market missed reaching adolescence.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes...st+David+Fowler+fired+with+6+others+from+WPLP
Bob Lassiter had already jumped to WFLA by then, reportedly because he'd gotten vibes that the new owners didn't like his style -- or any style that could be called controversial. Fowler told the St. Pete Times that Susquehanna wanted shows that talked about "house plants and hemorrhoids."
Susquehanna, a company owned by priggish Pennsylvania Dutch whose real specialty was chinamaking, brought a 1960 KMOX-style approach to a market that had come to appreciate something more flavorful than the radio version of Busch Beer. (3.2 beer at that.) The Susquehanna folks believed -- against all evidence -- that the way to attract 25-54's and chase away the economically useless retiree audience was to present tightly targeted topics and interviews with lots of "news you can use." They brought the same "At Your Service" format that had underperformed at KLIF in Dallas to the Tampa market, and watched as ratings tanked under the tutelage of stars like Ed "Eeeeeehhh" Hartley and Art Snow.
It wasn't one bloodbath, but a succession of them, as more hosts were fired over the next few weeks -- one even quitting on the air in disgust over what the Pennsylvania platemakers had done to the station. Susquehanna apparently believed that its staid programming would go over better with advertisers than the take-no-prisoners approach of Jacor at WFLA. Their sales handouts for WTKN urged clients to "Choose Responsible Radio!" (The revival of the "ratings book full of friends" approach lampooned by Lassiter.) The advertisers instead went with the irresponsible kind of radio, the kind that got listeners.
Susquehanna tried to recover with more energetic hosts such as Jay Marvin, but by then the die was cast. The gap between 570 and 970 in the ratings, relatively narrow before the acquisition, would grow to Grand Canyon proportions. WFLA would dominate talk radio (with the exception of a close fight from WSUN in the early 90's) from then till now.
Two years later, after a lot of red ink and few listeners, WTKN had its own bloodbath, and the first talk station to survive infancy in the Tampa Bay market missed reaching adolescence.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes...st+David+Fowler+fired+with+6+others+from+WPLP
