Kudos to WOKV

[John FL]

It's rare for the WOKV local team to receive positive comments on this board and I thought it was time to do so. I certainly hope Cox Radio doesn't go the cheap route and slash personnel. At any rate, their Jacksonville morning news broadcast is really good. The writing and reporting I believe is worthy of a Top 10 market. Eons ago I did some journalism work and I know just how much effort is put forth for them to deliver quality every day. Certainly, not an easy task and they keep it very interesting too. It seems no matter what the story, even international, they draw impacts to the average listener. Pure and simple, people want to know what will affect them.

The local team really brings a lot of professionalism to radio. For some of us who dream of a return of personality and local market-driven radio, at least we do have WOKV. The WOKV team is among the best around and believe me, I listen to a lot of radio outside this market. Bob Schuman, Roxy Tyler (Love your booming voice), Sam Jordan and Julie Morgan are among my favorites.

Thanks for all you do every day. And to all the readers and contributors to this board, have a Happy and safe 4th of July!

 

[alcapone]

It's easy to pat a radio station on the back for sounding great and being #1 when there's no other game in town. Let's wait and see the fallout "personality" wise once the election is over and Obama steps in it as the leader of this country. Listeners that call into Neal, Hannity and Rush have been so brainwashed i'st sickening to hear them always agreeing with what they say. Does anyone ever read a newspaper or get their information from others than radio & TV ? If your going to vote in this election. READ. and find out whats really going on, not what some guy that's making $5M a year is blowing up your sleeve.

 

[John FL]

Maybe it's the nature of people but more often than not, the threads that get the most responses are the ones revolving around complaining about something. Yes, there are lots of things that aren't right about radio but we can say that about a lot of things. But there's also a lot of good things going on. But good news isn't always newsworthy.

VT, I acknowledge that you can say whatever you like on this board. But I don't think you ever have anything positive to say about anything. All I wanted to do when I initiated the post is to give credit where it is due. The fact that WOKV is the only game in town as you say only stengthens my argument that they are really good at what they do. They could take their unique position and not put as much effort in what they do. But they don't operate that way and I'm happy to see they go the quality route.

And please, I can recognize biased reporting when I see and hear it. Talk show hosts have biases and opinions. That's what they are all about - the opinion of the hosts and callers.

We're all entitled to our opinions but as far as WOKV writing and reporting go, they leave a lot for the listener to decide and that's the way it should be and why I think professionalism rules at WOKV. Lighten up.

 

[Bernard]

I agree that WOKV's local team does a great job...

I also agree that vtdude should change his name to bitterdude. what does the competition (or lack there of) have to do with WOKV's talent pool in local reporting.

on WOKV I love:
-Bob Schuman: so personable on the air, really warm presentation
-Jeremy Ratcliff: great voice for a young anchor, knows his stuff when it comes to the presidential race
-Sam Jordan: lots of range, can report on serious topics and light hearted stuff also
-Cole Pepper: call me biased but I just don't think this guy can do any wrong

on WOKV I hate:
-Jared Halpburn: is it me or does this guy come off as smug and uninformed?
-Roxy Tyler: for almost a decade now I've been listening to her completely butcher the english language, enough already!
-Night Anchor: I'm sorry I can't remember his name, but his newscasts are pretty awful

 

[Brother Bear]

Huzzah to WOKV's news coverage and for being the 900 pound gorilla in the room. The reason they don't have competition is because they would slaughter it. There are two reasons Air America and it's pathetic Liberal talk cousin that just withered on 1460 aren't around ... 1) No audience, and 2) Zero commercial viability. They are a hand-in-hand walk to failure.
As far as getting your "news" from the print media ... may God have mercy on your blinder-wearing soul. Newspapers are as outmoded a means of getting information as sticking a broom in your fanny is for flying to the moon. They are dinosaurs that lost relevance two weeks after Nixon resigned, and just wont go away. Their left-leaning bias has doomed them, just as it has broadcast network news.
If the print media were the only source of news and information in theis country (and I'm including outdated and irrelevant fishwraps like 'Time' & 'Newsweek' as well) it would be no different than the Soviet era/PRAVDA driven socialist haven of the U.S.S.R.
But judging from his posts, I think vtdude likes that prospect.

Again, props to everyone who works hard to make WOKV an exceptional source of information I'm proud to have them as radio brothers.

PEPPER IN '08 ... BEER FOR EVERYONE!

 

[smedge2006]

The reason they don't have competition is because they would slaughter it.

I think it has more to do with Jacksonville never having had much "local" talk radio. Miami got its first talk station in 1970, Tampa in 1978 and both markets had plenty of talk shows before then. Orlando had two stations evolving toward talk in the late 70's. When WOKV launched in 1982, Jacksonville had never had a local talk radio station. Thus expectations were low and OKV was able to get away with a mostly syndicated lineup from NBC Talknet and ABC Talkradio.

WOKV's news has good sizzle but does less well in the steak department. The writing is good and the sounders and handoffs are tight, but I never hear a reporter on the scene of anything outside morning drive, it's almost always some audio they lifted from Channel 4.

Since you insisted on a gratuitous shot at liberal talk radio, may I point out that 1460's format was on for six months, and no one in the business would call that an appopriate time to gauge a format's success. There is also the question of whether it was really liberal (it carried Lou Dobbs, for Pete's sake). 1460 is just another illustration of the Jacksonville AM conundrum since the days of Jay Solomon: it is always easier to go back to brokering time than trying to be competitive. In this case, a Catholic group is buying the station out from under Andy Johnson and company, who didn't own 1460, and wouldn't care whether it had listeners or not. It's going to do its thing regardless of whether it could make more money doing something else. An illustration of the shortcoming of the "it's the marketplace" argument.

 

[Brother Bear]

It was not a "gratuitous shot" at Liberal talk radio, simply a statement of fact. Johnson has had his program in many different incarnations in town at different places for many years. Were there a market for Liberal talk, there would be success for Liberal talk, and since it's already funded by the taxpayer in the form of NPR and supported by businesses via tax-exempt "grants", it's more difficult than ever for Liberal talk radio to flourish.
Obviously your not a Free Market guy, smedge, or you'd agree with my position that if you have a great product and smart marketing the world WILL beat a path to your door ... but you have to offer a product that suits a majority of proseptive customers, and J'ville is a very Conservative town.
In any kind of business, it IS the marketplace.

 

[smedge2006]

It was gratuitous because this thread was about WOKV, for which the most direct competitor for audience would not be a liberal talker but another conservative talker. If you're going to crow about 1460 "failing" against WOKV, at least have the intellectual honesty to crow that Salem's conservative format on 1320 was also a failure, as was two or three other attempts to take on WOKV (which 1460 clearly was not -- they were trying for a different audience). So there's no more room for conservative talk in Jacksonville, by your reasoning.

Really, what it comes down to is that below the level of WOKV, no one is willing or able to operate AM radio professionally in Jax. Sports radio grew out of time brokering, thus the personalities there are the ones who can sell the most airtime or find the most backers. That's how Andy Johnson survived from station to station. Being the best salesperson is not the same as being the best talent, otherwise, a radio station would have no jocks or hosts, only salespeople doubling up on the air. The "Jack-of-all-trades" approach has really given Jacksonville some bad talk radio over the years of all stripes. If the station had been bought (not leased) by owners who then brought in a professional talent to do a local full time show, and perhaps hired Andy to be the sales manager, maybe things would have been different.

Andy Johnson also sent a letter to the Times-Union explaining his station in what was perhaps its only off-air promotion:

The newspaper says my new 1460 AM is "liberal," which is only partly true. The new 1460 AM is also conservative.

We think the better word to describe us is "progressive," although, sometimes, we are liberal and, sometimes, we are conservative.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/013008/opl_241733849.shtml

With that kind of confused message, and the picking of non-liberal hosts like Lou Dobbs, clearly this station was more confused and chaotic than liberal.

But the station could have outgrown those issues -- notice I say could have -- had it not been uprooted by the purchase by Queen of Peace Radio. QOP doesn't care if anyone listens, as long as people send in money to allow it to buy radio stations. Thus it can make more with a 0.0 than a fledgling format can with a 0.8. The truth is, the environment for any radio start up today is considerably more difficult than it was in 1990 -- and in Jacksonville, it wasn't good then either. This market is poison for good AM radio. Stations like WROS and WAYR more embody what the town is all about. WOKV has an anti-competitive moat protected by poisonous snakes and piranhas, and behind it it can operate with little desire to advance the medium.

There's a direct analog to Andy Johnson. In Orlando, there's a conservative-libertarian guy named Doug Guetzloe who's been buying time for years to do his little conservative show. And guess what? He has no ratings. Nobody listens. So conservative talk is a failure because Guetzloe can't get listeners.....?

And if you believe radio IS a free marketplace, get yourself a transmitter, start your own radio station and count the days until the men from the FCC show up to tell you how "free" it really is... when you're ready to open the airwaves to anyone who can afford a transmitter, then we'll talk about a "free market"...

 

[radiosaur]

Let's wait and see the fallout "personality" wise once the election is over and Obama steps in it as the leader of this country. Listeners that call into Neal, Hannity and Rush have been so brainwashed i'st sickening to hear them always agreeing with what they say.

So I, a conservative for most of my life, am going to abandon my conservative principles and views and stop listening to Hannity simply because Obama gets elected? No…liberals sell out their values to the highest bidder, not us.

BTW AAR in Memphis was on a 10KW station at 680 with a huge nighttime signal and a local afternoon drive liberal show. Not a single conservative voice on the station...it still bombed and is no more.