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Lake Effect Listening

J

JustPastBuffalo

For that last 36 hours, a narrow band of lake effect snow has slammed Buffalo's Southtowns. We're in the Fall book. As a former news-talk programmer, on-air music format person and now observer (and to some extent, critic) I've always been interested and intrigued by the effect "bad" weather has had on the ratings, especially in the Fall book which spans October, November and December.

Many of us recall the Blizzard of 77 when WKBW and Dan Neaverth stole WBEN's thunder. There have been subsequent weather events, the blizzard of '85 (although not as overwhelming as '77), the power outage of '05 and the October Surprise in 2008. Now we have the Lake Effect Storm of 2010. Admittedly, this eight mile wide, 30 mile long band of intense snow covered only a narrow swath of communities to the immediate south and east of Buffalo. But it brought the New York State Thruway to a dead stop between two of the busiest exchanges and stranded hundreds of cars and trucks for 12 to 18 hours and it made several national TV network news broadcasts.

News-talk stations seize these opportunities and the result of the ratings usually indicate massive cume and quarter hours. WBEN was all over it. WBFO and WNED-AM gave the event top billing. Although I wasn't glued to the radio (spending much of my time clearing the driveways of family and neighbors), I must admit to spending more time listening to WBEN today than I have in the last two weeks. Bauerle and Beach were on top of their games. To be truthful, the callers and their predicaments often were "the stars of the show." I sampled less of my favorite programs on WBFO and WNED, but found myself drawn to the drama being played out on 930.

This also was a good story for local TV news, although the pictures weren't as good as some might have hoped. NITEC cameras tend to get fuzzy and coated when snow flies.There also were the FM stations that maintained format, some voice tracked in various dayparts, some voice tracked from out of town; two FMs playing the Christmas hits "back to back and all in a row."

This board thrives on speculation and opinion, so the question is, who wins the diary war in the last 36-48 hours and how much of an impact will it present? Will WBEN score big numbers? Will people at work prefer to hear the hits with minimal talk, All Christmas or otherwise? Will there be a curiosity factor that drives listeners in unaffected areas around Buffalo to listen to the stations that feature the voices of people stuck on the Thruway and those who spent hours clearing their driveways and getting to work?

To be objective, this storm affected only a limited geographic area and handful of communities in Buffalo's Southtowns; Orchard Park, Hamburg, West Seneca, Elma, Depew, Lackawanna and Lakeview, but those communities deliver quite a number of in-tab diaries and thousands of commuters from other communities were stranded by this storm. The Northtowns went unscathed. We won't know how this weather event impacts ratings until around the third week of January, but it's always interesting to read the opinions of the pundits and prophets here.

Your thoughts?
 
I enjoyed listening to WBEN on line. The man in the evening was doing a great job. My daughter was impressed with his conversational style. I feel bad that I can't remember his name.

One of my friends from the old neighborhood in Blasdell was happy to see her son get home after being stuck on the Thruway for 23 hours. In the 13 years that I lived there that never happened to me or anyone I know.

It's a shame that big blowtorch KB had nothing but the usual network drivel on. This is the perfect chance for radio to connect with people.

Will the Thruway Authority have some explaining to do? Seems like they did too little too late, maybe in an effort to save money?
 
Misery loves company? Talk radio and WBEN deserve credit for informing listeners, but at what point do the school closings and cancellations (which are less important by the year), continuous calls from "Ken in his car" and endless whining about how tough life is become tedious? I suspect texting and cell phone use was at a peak. It probably jammed some of the cell channels and might have forced people to turn on the radio.
 
But the argument could also be made that as radio has become more irrelevant over the years-particularly to younger listeners-that many people probably weren't listening beforehand and found themselves on the Thruway even after it was already backed up. If they had been listening before getting on they would have known about the mess ahead and likely avoided it. But then again that means you have to have more then a couple of stations in the market live and not voice tracked and you also need compelling content to have them listening in the first place. Of course this isn't exclusive to Buffalo, it's an industry wide issue. Regardless of the reason at a given time, the younger generation just doesn't think of radio first as a source of information in a time of need.
 
First, I suspect that the storm won't have the same impact as something like the October Storm of a few years ago because most of the city and several of the larger suburbs were spared. The storm will help WBEN, which has been slipping of late. It won't help WGR, which grows increasingly annoying when it's not running Sabres hockey, and is annoying then because its nightime directional pattern makes listening on the move frustrating. But, that's a topic for another day.

Music stations that are manned by people who are aware of what's going on, and assuring listeners that they're keeping an eye on important developments, will do fine. Stations running VT and weather forecasts that are hours old, without referencing current weather conditions and movement of those all-important lake effect snow bands, or don't seem to be aware of the traffic nightmare on the Thruway, will suffer.

The nationwide numbers say that about a third of people have Internet access on their cell phones. My guess is that penetration is higher in urban areas - where telecoms have improved service - and lower in rural areas. Buffalo has pretty good coverage, but I suspect lags a bit behind the national average because of the economy. Put lots of people in a small area, hitting a limited number of cell towers, and I'll bet that service was spotty and slow. The radio becomes a go-to medium in cars. Not only that, but people who are driving damn well better not be on their cell browser.

Yesterday was the kind of event that drives home the relevancy of radio - IF radio makes it's programming relevant. Those stations with the personnel and resources to serve the public will do well. Those spewing out the "same-old, same-old" without acknowledging an emergency situation won't find much TSL.
 
WOW!! You guys/gals have hit on SO MANY MAJOR points here. Having been smack dab in the middle of the "White Christmas" experience (3 feet of snow ain't Xmas to me - thank you)...I will say this:

Everyone is right & wrong at the same time!! ;D

Pastrick provides an excellent starting point (as he usually does- and my heart goes out to your clean-up efforts- I drove into the "War Zone" today- West Seneca). I am deferring any comment. Why? Because this situation becomes so personal to the LISTENER...and NONE of us can determine what works best when you IN IT.
So..there's my 2 cents, for what it's worth. I will say..I think RADIO had a major part in the crisis - but I'm not saying the NEWS element or the ENTERTAINMENT(music) element played a "better" role.

Anyone want to snowblow my driveway? (just asking)

HDBG
 
According to the old DJ handbook it says "Talk about what the people are talking about". You can bet that lots of people were talking about the snow. Doesn't mean that you can't play some tunes for talk about some other things but people still look to the radio for information. I'm not a news hound but it's one of the things that attracted me to the biz, knowing what's going on.
 
There's an issue here that could be called the residual effect, especially as it applies to news-talk radio and the geographic areas most affected by the storm. PDs, producers and talk show hosts deal with this momentum when they continue to hear from listeners who want to talk about the topic because their lives have been directly and even indirectly affected.

The day after the 'big event,' the sun was shining and life was pretty good in 90% of the communities immediately surrounding Buffalo. But if you lived in South Buffalo, which was devastated, or the 'burbs where driving bans were in place, it wasn't a day at the beach. It was particularly tough for emergency service providers (firemen, cops, first aid, social services) and those who needed their services.

On the radio, it was day two (and a half) of talking about what had happened to people who were stuck on the Thruway, but why they got stuck in the first place. Residents of communities that had yet to see a plow go down their streets added another dimension to the discussion.

Adding to the issue of weather, there's the issue of politics, especially when South Buffalonians suggest that Brown, an African American, was ignoring South Buffalo because Councilman Mickey Kearns (Irish, South Buffalonian) is one of Brown's biggest critics. A friend of mine in South Buffalo asked, "If South Buffalo was the only part of this city affected by the storm and the rest of the city is without snow, why can't the city get all the *$%#! plows and manpower to South Buffalo?" This was not Mayor Byron Brown's finest hour.

When the Buffalo News features the story on the opening page of its website and/or above the fold on the front page of the newspaper, when Channels 2, 4 and 7 are leading with the story and when CNN, Fox, MSNBC and The Weather Channel keep the story in play, PDs, producers and talk show hosts know "this thing still has legs."

If you do the math, 4 quarter hours multiplied by x number of local talk show hours, multiplied by x of cume listeners, the numbers add up. I'm not saying this weather event will propel WBEN to an 'automatic #1," but it certainly isn't going to hurt.

Yes, the argument can be made that none of this makes any difference to the great number of listeners who live in communities not affected by the storm went about their lives wondering what all the fuss was about while they listened to Jack, Joy or Star, 97 or 106.5, maybe counting their blessings or saying "'sucks to live in the Southtowns.... Am I caller #9? Did I win?"

As it's said, "all politics is local," the same can be said of (talk) radio. Have I again opened up the "local wins" debate?
 
Hell if I know. I flew out of Buffalo, during the storm, to spend the weekend broadcasting the NCAA D3 Women's Soccer final four in unseasonably-warm (high 70's) San Antonio, TX. Where the locals are armed but friendly, the RiverWalk is gorgeous, the Alamo is not to be pissed on no matter how many bat heads you eat, and the steak is DELICIOUS.

And tonight I flew back into Buffalo and 3 inches of snow in my driveway. Bleh. :p
 
Larry Hunter was the evening guy on WBEN during the storm.
 
WBEN was live and local with the Rob Dobson show at the time of the October surprise storm. Larry was on a few nights. Both are WGR News Radio 55 alumni.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
It's a shame that big blowtorch KB had nothing but the usual network drivel on. This is the perfect chance for radio to connect with people.
Click to expand...

I DX on adjacent 1521 (where BSKSA Saudi Arabia makes the occasional visit) and subject myself to the 'drivel' you refer to. I'm very surprised at the production values exhibited by this 'blow torch'. Dead air, feeds cutting into each other, etc. It makes WKBW sound like an unprofessional, low buck operation. What a shame, for a station with such a great history and reach.

Touching on live, local radio for a amount. During the ice storm of 1998, here in eastern Ontario (and other areas), local radio proved invaluable, in providing the needed information, to help folks cope with the situation. In this day and age of cut backs, may radio's real purpose never be forgotten.

~BG
 
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