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Influential area stations.

M

MsMusicRadio

Guest
1)Other than KDKA, what AM stations still have any real influence. From what I read here, none. True?

2) Given the loss of music on 98.3 and 106.7, which FM stations are the most significant?
 
Define influential and significant.

I'm pretty sure the staff at 106.7 find their station both influential and significant.
 
I guess I mean :

1) attracts enough advertising, bills high, and has a large audience.
2) views expressed on air are taken seriously
3) considered the market leader in music (for whatever music). Such as "Is WDSY or the Frogs taken more seriously for breaking music in Pgh?".
4) There would be a sense of loss to the community of service if station flipped or went dark
 
MsMusicRadio said:
I guess I mean :

1) attracts enough advertising, bills high, and has a large audience.
2) views expressed on air are taken seriously
3) considered the market leader in music (for whatever music). Such as "Is WDSY or the Frogs taken more seriously for breaking music in Pgh?".
4) There would be a sense of loss to the community of service if station flipped or went dark
Click to expand...

By criteria 2 and 3, none.
 
MsMusicRadio said:
1)Other than KDKA, what AM stations still have any real influence. From what I read here, none. True?

2) Given the loss of music on 98.3 and 106.7, which FM stations are the most significant?
Click to expand...

1) None.

2) Maybe DVE, not because of the music, but because it is essentially the Boomers' KDKA.
 
From an AM standpoint, I would have to say that WTAE/WEAE has been through the years.

If it weren't for WTAE, Phil Musick would have been a disgraced sportswriter, Doug Hoerth would have been a host that passed through KDKA, and Lynn Cullen would not be so revered by the liberals in town throughout her career.

This is before my time, but I wonder how much influence Myron Cope had in changing Pittsburgh from a Pirates to a Steelers town. Obviously the team's success would have made the change happen eventually, but if my sense of history was correct he was getting people to put up banners at Three Rivers Stadium, waving The Terrible Towel, and really getting the community into the team the way Bob Prince did with his Green Weenie.

More contemporarily, perhaps we could say that without Mark Madden, Mario Lemieux still would have been interested in buying the team out of bankruptcy to recoup his earnings.

But like him or not, can you deny Madden's influence had some bearing in keeping the arena issue alive when it appeared to be dead?

Or at the very least, other talk show hosts trying to copy his style? I remember when Thor Tolo tried to be a bit more confrontational to his callers- let alone in the Steelers press conferences- almost in responce to the guy.

And would hockey talk be so important for Pittsburgh sports talk show hosts if it wasn't for him? Maybe Stan and Guy's hockey show on Saturday mornings on WDVE and Sportbeat helped establish it first, let alone Tom McMillian during his time on WTAE in the '90s, but certainly Madden was the final link in making it so mainstream.

Later, when Paul Alexander hosted his sports talk show on KDKA, his promos had an announcer say something along the lines of "Sexism? Cutting you off? Not our style!"

Today, I still get the sense that "Stan and Guy" is THE sports talk show in town. No disrespect to any of the other sports stations, but all of the iconic sports talk shows in town have been on WTAE/WEAE at some point.
 
Parttimer said:
MsMusicRadio said:
1)Other than KDKA, what AM stations still have any real influence. From what I read here, none. True?

2) Given the loss of music on 98.3 and 106.7, which FM stations are the most significant?
Click to expand...

1) None.

2) Maybe DVE, not because of the music, but because it is essentially the Boomers' KDKA.
Click to expand...

Part- Baby Boomers are now 65. That's KDKA demographic, not WDVE (yet).
 
Pratte4Life said:
Parttimer said:
MsMusicRadio said:
1)Other than KDKA, what AM stations still have any real influence. From what I read here, none. True?

2) Given the loss of music on 98.3 and 106.7, which FM stations are the most significant?
Click to expand...

1) None.

2) Maybe DVE, not because of the music, but because it is essentially the Boomers' KDKA.
Click to expand...

Part- Baby Boomers are now 65. That's KDKA demographic, not WDVE (yet).
Click to expand...

Baby Boomers are born between 1945 and 1960.
 
I was born in '58. Many, if not most of DVE's listeners are around my age.

So include whatever they call the kids of the 60's and the analogy still holds.
 
I got this from Wikipedia-

"The United States Census Bureau considers a baby boomer to be someone born during the demographic birth boom between 1946 and 1964. The Census Bureau is not involved in defining cultural generations."

Classic second sentence!

Part- I don't want to pick a fight, but your definition of a Boomer is a bit broader in terms of time than what I'm used to.

And the Census definition is absurd. By 1964 it's conceivable the Baby Boomers would be conceiving themselves!

Soldier comes home from WWII- I can certainly understand why he and his wife would be in the mood to make a baby or two.

Fifteen years later? Not so much. I mean, how many newly married couples have babies within five years of their marriage and how many have them 15 years after their vows?
 
That being said, I most certainly would agree with you that the WDVE playlist is its friendliest to those born between the years 1960-62 or so.
 
Pratte4Life said:
Part- I don't want to pick a fight, but your definition of a Boomer is a bit broader in terms of time than what I'm used to.

And the Census definition is absurd. By 1964 it's conceivable the Baby Boomers would be conceiving themselves!
Click to expand...

I personally do it by Presidents. Baby boomers are Truman through Eisenhower and Generation X is Kennedy through Nixon.

I've also been told by a friend born in 1961 that how old you were at the dawning of MTV figures into it also.
 
I was born in 1945 and I think Frankie Day is the most important radio guy in Pittsburgh ;D
 
Pratte4Life said:
From an AM standpoint, I would have to say that WTAE/WEAE has been through the years.

This is before my time, but I wonder how much influence Myron Cope had in changing Pittsburgh from a Pirates to a Steelers town. Obviously the team's success would have made the change happen eventually, but if my sense of history was correct he was getting people to put up banners at Three Rivers Stadium, waving The Terrible Towel, and really getting the community into the team the way Bob Prince did with his Green Weenie.
Click to expand...

Interesting theory! The timing would certainly seem to work out as Myron seemed to hit his ascendancy as The Gunner
was being shown the door. (and Pittsburghers, unlike Sheldon Leonard in "It's a Wonderful Life", really DO seem to want "colorful characters hanging around to give the joint atmosphere.") And the Terrible Towel was the logical successor to The Gunner's "babushka power" (which many have forgotten came years after The Green Weenie). I would say there is at least something to where you are going with this.

That being said, winning probably has more to do with who's on top in sports than any other factor. Take it from an ol' Pens fan who was regularly part of a very lonely 5000 people watching the Boys in Blue drop 60 games a season at the Civic Arena.

In other words, don't expect Tim Neverett to replace Mike Lange as the guy who gives the joint atmosphere anytime soon!
 
Myron's talk show didn't hit the air until 1973, so there wasn't much ramp up time.

The Steelers would have been the hottest thing in town if the games had been on WIXZwith Terry Lee and Jack Seckel as the announcers. They were winning championships and knocking people down, two things that Pittsburgh loves. Remember, the Pirates won their division five times in six years from 1970-75, but only won the playoffs once. They didn't close the deal and the Steelers did.

I'm sure there was synergy among Cope/Steelers/WTAE, but when it's all said and done, I'll bet the Steelers helped Cope and WTAE more than the other way around.
 
I agree, Boss, winning is the ultimate thing.

But let me ask you this-

The Pittsburgh Pipers win the ABA championship in 1967. Admittedly, the ABA was an upstart league but it seemed to have created a bond- some of their franchises still exist.

Where I'm going with this is let's say the Pipers are on a KDKA or WTAE type station back then.

Now let's say that at this time there is a talk show host on that station in 1967 that is loud, humorous, charismatic and undeniably local.

He's the only host in town and he calls color commentary for the team and is always reporting on them with enthuasm and a strong sense of importance.

Do you see where a lot more people would have started backing the Pipers? Who knows? They might have made it if they had a Myron Cope on their side.

There are a lot of reasons why the Steelers passed the Pirates in popularity during the '70s- though it should be mentioned that I remember as a kid in the latter part of that era how the Pirates were still very big- if not so much in attendance certainly in public awareness.

But I think one can safely say that Bob Prince (so affiliated with the Bucs) being fired in 1975 and being replaced by Myron Cope (so affiliated with the Steelers) as Pittsburgh's premier sportscaster had some sort of influence.

It had to be a huge factor in WTAE becoming the premier sports radio station in the market. And while many stations are jockeying for that today, 1250 certainly would have to be recognized as the traditional leader.
 
Aside from having the Steelers on radio, remember that Channel 4, with whom they were co-owned at the time, had the strongest TV sports image in the market with Cope, Hillgrove, Steigerwald and Steve Zabriskie (Cope chirping "Love it, Big Z, Love it!!" in their "Front 4" promos). The Terrible Towel was created largely by Myron on TV (and who can forget "Deck the Broncos They're Just Yonkos"?).

And sorry, NOTHING could have made the ABA popular here. FYI the games were on WJAS.
 
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