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How long before WROW bites the dust?

J

Johnny_45

Infighting. Backbiting. Egos. Power Trips. Attacks on Alice Green. Personell issues. Not to mention John Grainey moving over to Vandenburgh 1300. By the way, Paul V has two cards left to play. One more person to bring over and one last favor to call in. Scotto goes bye-bye and who will take the reigns of chaos at the once mighty 590?

Anyone?
(Happy July 4!)
 
They should be performing much better than they are. The second best daytime AM signal in the market (after WGY), against the very mediocre 1300. I don't get it. By now, I would have assumed that 1300 would be as pointless as 1460...
 
1300 has an application to boost power considerably, which will make them the 2nd best AM in the market and by far. Right now WGDJ is licensed for 5.0 kw Day, 5.0 kw Night and has to change pattern instead of powering down at night. They have applied for 10.0 kw Day, 8.0 kw Night. From 5000 watts to 10,000 watts daytime? 8000 at night? I'd say that upgrade puts them in the 2nd best spot.

WROW is 5.0 kw Day, 1.0 kw Night and is only superior to 1300 because the 590 nighttime pattern isn't as narrow as 1300 but after the power upgrade on 1300 they will have an excellent nighttime signal. I'd say calling 1300 mediocre is not the right adjective.

Johnny_45: What two cards does Paul V have left to play? What person to bring over at this point would be a "card to play"? What's the one last favor to call in?

Infighting? Backbiting? Personnel Issues? What exactly is going on over there? Could you elaborate a little for us instead of being so vague?

If all continues to go to hell at 590 they could always flip it to Go Kooky for 590 and have it be a never-ending loop of the Morrell kids and their dog telling Capital District listeners that they should in fact go kooky. It might even be more interesting to listen to than 1300 on weekends!
 
Can't tip my hand, but there is one left at Albany Broadcasting awaiting Paul's call, and one programming coup the V-man ALREADY HAS SEWED UP but the poor saps st 590 will never see it coming! New ratings out this week should be interesting.

Aside: I think it would be very nice if the Morrell kids had their own Spooky Kooky show, which would surely be more fun than that Dave Cupcake financial guru.
 
bad_segue said:
1300 has an application to boost power considerably, which will make them the 2nd best AM in the market and by far. Right now WGDJ is licensed for 5.0 kw Day, 5.0 kw Night and has to change pattern instead of powering down at night. They have applied for 10.0 kw Day, 8.0 kw Night. From 5000 watts to 10,000 watts daytime? 8000 at night? I'd say that upgrade puts them in the 2nd best spot.
Click to expand...

Power is only one part of the signal equation, and a relatively small one at that. Directional pattern, NIF signal level, ground conductivity and antenna efficiency matter just as much, if not more. So does dial position - WROW's 1 kW on 590 is more potent than WGDJ's 5 kW on 1330 at night. If I have the math right, WGDJ would need something like 25 kW on 1330 to match WROW's kilowatt on 590.

Believe it or not, doubling power on a station, all other factors held equal, will barely produce a noticeable increase in coverage. And the other factors in this case are pretty daunting - WGDJ has to protect third-adjacent WHAZ, first-adjacent WTLB in Utica, co-channel WAVZ in New Haven, and the list goes on.

By the standards that my friends who buy and sell stations use - population within the NIF (nighttime interference-free) contour - WGDJ's new signal will keep it pretty much exactly where it is, sixth on the list of Albany-market AMs, behind WGY, WROW, WOFX, WDCD and WDDY. Even if you discount WDCD because so much of its nighttime reach is outside the market, and because its deep DA notch misses a big chunk of the market, that still puts WGDJ in fifth place at best. Second? By far? Not hardly.
 
Although the overall sound of 590 improved under Scotto's leadership, they never stood a chance. Vandenburgh, as quirky as he can be, has an extremely loyal audience built over many many years. Dan Lynch is no slouch either and a welcome voice on a dial otherwise saturated with neo-con spinsters like Limbaugh and Hannity. Looking back, both Mark Williams and Scotto didn't make much of dent when they were on the big gun (WGY), so how in the world did they expect to do any better on 590, long after they'd been forgotten? Heck, I'm waiting for the Ex-WGY Talker Trifecta as Gach would be the next natural candidate for resurrection on 590.

As far as power goes, 1300 has signal where it needs it, in the cities. Think anybody in Clifton Park is listening to talk radio after dark? Not a chance. Suburbanites in this area commute home from work, lock themselves in their houses and click on the TV. While a daytime power increase certainly wouldn't hurt for listeners in Saratoga or Schenectady counties, I'd side with Mr. Fybush and agree it's the frequency the kills them the most at night since it's not a lack of signal per se, but more-so the co-channel interference that just buries 1300 anywhere north of the Mohawk. Even with 50kw, they'd still have that handicap when the sun goes down. If anything, the best thing PV could do is get some sort of improved STL and audio processing on that rig to make it louder, as 1300's audio quality is as muddy as the field the transmitter sits in.
 
Not long - they couldn't hold on to their pathetic rating! Talk1300 remains steady with cap'n V at the helm. Has Mark Williams, who does his "local" show from California, been photoshopping and otherwise injecting himself into issues he barely has connections with? Rumor has it that a woman named BETH is being groomed as Williams' replacement in case he books! :p
 
A turnaround of events: BETH will NOT be the backup for Mark Williams. I suspect a twist of some ironic sort coming, could involve Talk1300. And the Morrell kids WILL be getting their own radio show-----on FLY92!
 
In the first place, it is amazing that a market that small can support 3 commercial talkers plus the whole WAMC "empire", which if rated by Arbitron would probably demolish all 3 combined. Even while there are some in this thread with personal axes to grind the fact of the matter is that personalities and signals have almost nothing to do with it. To think otherwise is to fight over how the Titanic's deck chairs are lined up and what a pr*ck the purser is, the boat is going down regardless. Besides, as this thread indicates, there are people who hang on every word said by PV, Miller and Williams.

PV has a loyal but small following earned through hard work and longivity (PV has never had a dream of "making it big" so he has put it all into the local market). He is a solid 2 share, maybe 2.5, but skews ungodly old. The real value to PV and his station is that it is basically a station run by governement buffs for government people. They are pretty hard-core inside baseball, even with WGY's signal they would have a rough time dealing with that one. After all, only so many Vermonters care about the latest spat between two Colonie politicans over a fence line or barking dog.

WGY is running on reputation and it is only a matter of time before the Grimm Reaper visits upon them again as he has befpre there, and throughout the business, especially Clear Channel. Worse for WGY is that the investment group picking them up is not buying what's left of CC to rebuild, they are buying to break apart and sell. Look for the last live and local show there to be axed after the sale closes and as soon as the bean counters get around to it, if not before the sale (to boost the book value). We are not far from all Chuck Custer radio.

WROW is a little more interesting given that they still believe in actual radio - the pre-New Media kind of radio and are even making a surprising effort to expand. The question for them is whether or not the market still believes in radio. Sadly, most evidence national and industry wide is that they do not. To be honest, given the national profiles of both Miller and Williams (in Williams' case, multi-media) I am surprised that they (WROW) was able to get them in the first place. Epecially when you take into account that the general rule of thumb is that it takes 2 years minimum, more likely 5, before significant ratings results are achieved when a radio station is blown up and rebuilt, as in WROW's case. That would seem that there is a larger commitment in place, which clearly failed with Miller but, rumors aside, Williams appears to be staying put, even if he is doing much of the work from California. Heck, if I lived there I wouldn't move here either!
 
On reflection, the most interesting part of this is that Paul (and his investors) believe enough in old fashioned radio (and Paul's dedication) that they bought a stand-alone AM with a crappy signal.

Pamal (WROW's parent) believes enough in old fashioned radio that they are investing in major market talent and creating the market's only actual radio news organization outside of WGY.

Sitting on a jury in a court of law faced with the question of whether or not to commit such a people to an institution for the insane, I would have to cast my vote "yeah". Even WAMC, where people cannot count the money fast enough, is laying people off. That to me is the riviting part of the saga and one that may prove radio still viable, or pound the final nail into its coffin.
 
I hate it when people who don't have a clue act like they do.

In the case of "Pamal (WROW's parent) believes enough in old fashioned radio that they are investing in major market talent and creating the market's only actual radio news organization outside of WGY."

Earth to YOU! WROW's news organizations was BUILT FROM THE GROUND UP by PAUL V. The present WROW hasn't created anything.

-----and------

The poster mentioned WAMC but failed to mention it has a news organization as well, which it has had for YEARS. Of all the microphones I see on TV news programs, WGY and WAMC are the only RADIO mike flags usually present.
 
My apologies for not lavishing sufficent praise upon Lord Chartock's partially tax supported empire. I kinda thought that mentioning that "if Arbitron rated public radio that WAMC would probably demolish all three [talkers] in the market" should pretty much cover it.

As for the WROW news organization; I would disagree that Paul had any sort of credible news organizational support either at the old WQBK or later at WROW. If he did then the qualitive research would reflect that. On the contrary, all the qualitive research I have seen indicate that WGY owns the News identification with WAMC a distant second followed by a smattering of other stations. It will hearten you to know that I have not seen every single piece of data over the years, although I would wager than when something happens locally that the traditional media of choice for information would be WGY, at least during the week, and probably the Internet owning the weekends and probably a healthy chunck of the audience during the week too. I would also add that Paul has not needed to have a strong news organization, he generates the material, all he needs is somebody to rip and read the rest. On the other hand he IS going to need more than a single AM stick to survive the long term.

WROW's investment in their news operation will take, like their programming, 2 -5 years to be to be reflected in the ratings. That assumes however that broadcast radio reverses its free fall and even at that will require them to invest a good deal more in a credible Web presence and promotion. In the end though it boils down to dollars. As the audience shrinks and the numbers skew older it is only going to get more difficult for traditional media to attract advertising dollars.

Old School radio is dead, the business is again evolving to adapt just as it did with the advent of television and the rise of FM later. If and when WROW "bites the dust" as you put it the cause of death listed on the death certificate will be "evolution".
 
MT1 said:
I would also add that Paul has not needed to have a strong news organization, he generates the material, all he needs is somebody to rip and read the rest. On the other hand he IS going to need more than a single AM stick to survive the long term.
Click to expand...

Actually he has six....Another part of his problem....
 
Actually, WROW's news department was already established when Paul became PD. Pat Brogan and Steve Janack built it for the "All News 590" format with Marc Kestecher (sic), who's now at ESPN Radio, and Mary Rozak, who's news director at Capital News 9, as the morning team. When it became apparent that the market wouldn't sustain an all news radio format, the station evolved into news/talk with Ric Mitchell briefly taking over mornings and Mary as news director/morning news anchor. But Ric felt uncomfortable in the role of talk host so
he accepted Fred Horton's offer to do mornings at WTRY-FM. That's when Paul was hired and inherited the already established news department.
 
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