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Last Of The Dinosaurs

N

normhill007

Guest
I spent 7 years at WARM and was the last to actually play music before the move to talk, which I said at the time was the biggest disaster in the history of radio. Warm had been musing about going talk for a long time but luckily never made the switch..Our last "Full Service AM" book was very good..Harry started with an 8 where it dropped to a 6.5 during 8-9am..I fell to a 6.0 and dropped slightly to a 5.0 by noon..Jim McNulty held the 5.0 and bumped slightly to 5.5 by the time Terry came on at 2..But if you read the book on the hourly's, My 5.0 was median age 35, almost 50/50 men to women. Then McNulty came on and my audience ran for the hills and Jim's numbers were median age 60..women to men ratio was heavily skewed toward women. Then Terry came on and McNulty's audience ran for the hills and Terry was left with NOBODY..His numbers plunged to, If I remember correctly, 2.1..So who's fault was it..Terry's..We had two months of Arbitrends before the switch to talk, and although we weren't privy to the actual numbers, Ron said we were a strong #3 25-64 and had a chance of knocking EZX out of number 2..Magic by the way, was still languishing at around a 4.5..The WARM/Magic combo was a sales tool that was tried and too quickly abandoned..The combo gave more listeners, better demographics, and less advertiser dollars than KRZ and WILK combined..We had two disasterous GM's after Phil Condron was escorted out the door. (About 3 months after being made Vice President..Or as Harry said when the promotion memo was posted.."He's Gone") The one Gm came from Buffalo and was sent back to Buffalo and left with the Company Car, which Bob Lenio had to fly to Buffalo to retrieve because the guy wasn't going to bring it back..Then there was Jeff Franks who was the one who brought us the exciting Frank Andrews show where he could bring religion into everything, even the proper way to wash your car..Then there were the many times he'd call in a half hour before airtime and say he couldn't make it so one of the newsgirls would spend two hours on her cause celeb..I got to be their "producer", had my hours cut to 35, which would usually be bumped to 40+ depending on the "needs of the statio"..I took it for about 2 months and then got another gig that was the dumbest move of my life, and gave my 2 weeks notice..Usually that gets you shown the door, but I was asked to work the whole 2 weeks, which I did professionally, not putting the station or our listeners in any sort of "IMUS" situation..
 
When did warm switch to talk?I noticed the numbers are up for this book.
 
Funny story-Rob Neyhardt had to beg for calls and on average would get 3 calls a day..Harry was brought back to fill in as a guest host without any fanfare and the phones rang off the hook and were still in que when he signed off..Management said that was great and they had to do it again real soon..Never did
 
When was that that Harry West did fill-in talk on WARM? Do you mean while he was still the morning show air talent?
 
There's something that always intrigued me and I never knew the answer. I saw the numbers once for "time" and "demo" for WARM; WRKC, as a noncom, was never listed. My show, the Radio Home Visitor, is on from 10:00 till Noon and is aimed at 55+ (the highest demo Arbitron measures -- actually, we aim for 65+).

The numbers I saw for WARM's specific time & demo (10:00-noon, 55+) were great until 10:00 and then they dropped noticeably until noon when they went back up. I found it hard to believe that I affected WARM's numbers, but I do draw from Pittston south, and it seemed like quite a coincidence. In another survey (not Arbitron, but one which did measure us), by time and demo we blew WVIA, WYZZ and WNAK out of the water.

It intrigues me. Coincidence? Was it really us? Or just programming on WARM that chased the old folks away for two hours? To quote the great Fats Waller: "One never knows, do one"?
 
On the Harry fill-in story, it was long after he left WILK..had to be somewhere in the late 90's
 
Hey Norm!!! I thought you fell off the face of the earth!!! Just wanted to say hi! I was also there at WARM the same time and you are 100 percent right. BTW! Rememeber the times at WQEQ!

Tony
 
Hey Tony, good to hear from you. As they say, Those was the days. Reading these posts seems to show a trend..Every place I worked has gone to the devil..Was it something I said???
 
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