Leslie Marshall gone...again

[gasman]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Leslie Marshall's disappearance from KB. Well, then again, maybe not too surprised since the ratings are so anemic. I sent her an email via her website which is still linked through www.kb1520.com and she said Entercom let her go 2 weeks ago due to budget cuts. She says she is working on a syndication deal and hopes to be back on here soon....where? who knows?

 

[Steven21]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Leslie Marshall's disappearance from KB. Well, then again, maybe not too surprised since the ratings are so anemic. I sent her an email via her website which is still linked through www.kb1520.com and she said Entercom let her go 2 weeks ago due to budget cuts. She says she is working on a syndication deal and hopes to be back on here soon....where? who knows?

Has the syndication talent pool become so pathetic that someone who apparently cannot get a radio job has syndication as an option?

 

[Yeziknoradio]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Leslie Marshall's disappearance from KB. Well, then again, maybe not too surprised since the ratings are so anemic. I sent her an email via her website which is still linked through www.kb1520.com and she said Entercom let her go 2 weeks ago due to budget cuts. She says she is working on a syndication deal and hopes to be back on here soon....where? who knows?

Has the syndication talent pool become so pathetic that someone who apparently cannot get a radio job has syndication as an option?

Yes.
If the topics were not really Buffalo related to begin with, there may be other markets that could use her talent.
Buffalo could then pick her up, since it would be at a far lower cost than a local in house arrangement.

*However* If it was intended that her content was all Buffalo, this would mean a change in what is discussed, rather than a total elimination of her.

(You can tell I don't listen to that lousy excuse for electricity known as KB, but hopefully I've made some sense here...)

 

[Steven21]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Leslie Marshall's disappearance from KB. Well, then again, maybe not too surprised since the ratings are so anemic. I sent her an email via her website which is still linked through www.kb1520.com and she said Entercom let her go 2 weeks ago due to budget cuts. She says she is working on a syndication deal and hopes to be back on here soon....where? who knows?

Has the syndication talent pool become so pathetic that someone who apparently cannot get a radio job has syndication as an option?

Yes.
If the topics were not really Buffalo related to begin with, there may be other markets that could use her talent.
Buffalo could then pick her up, since it would be at a far lower cost than a local in house arrangement.

*However* If it was intended that her content was all Buffalo, this would mean a change in what is discussed, rather than a total elimination of her.

(You can tell I don't listen to that lousy excuse for electricity known as KB, but hopefully I've made some sense here...)

You really missed the point.

 

[NeedMoreCowbell]

The elimination of the Leslie Marshall show has greatly improved the lineup of KB, for the few who do tune-in. I don't know about the rest of you, but I found her to be strident, and basically unlistenable. I'd be amazed if she found a syndication deal, unless there was a serious overhaul of her on-air approach.

I am still amazed that KB doesn't at least TRY to get some local news on the air. Would it be that hard to put a minute of WBEN news after CNN on the hour? And adding local weather and traffic in Drive Time would be a cinch. As it stands now, the minute anything happens in this town, no one on AM is going to stay with KB - they're all moving to 930, and good luck getting them back until the story is played out, Fall Book case in point.

Turning on the satellite and just leaving it really is a sad waste.

 

[Yeziknoradio]

You mean they're not even doing a vt WBEN news repeater for those who might have missed the news?

DUH!

 

[Element9]

In the truest sense of the phrase, WWKB is on "life support." There's no way Entercom is going to put any local news on that station, fearing it might cut into the mothership at 930. The Entercom suits WANT the 27 listeners who listen to KB to tune to WBEN when something big happens. Furthermore, the Entercom brasswholes don't want to give WBEN listeners any reason to wander up the AM dial to 1520.

As to the woman who most recently worked early afternoon on KB, she was, to quote Casey Casem, "ponderous." From the very beginning, she was a fraud. At first, she attempted to make listeners believe she was in Buffalo, thinking all she'd have to do was read the Buffalo News on line or have somebody from the station email her the Buffalo "top ten" list of local news. This worked for all of ten minutes.

As to this woman getting a syndication gig... anything's possible. There's a lot of mediocre talent being syndicated these days and she'd very nicely fit into that vanguard of mediocrity.

-9-

 

[raymond_shaw]

As to this woman getting a syndication gig... anything's possible. There's a lot of mediocre talent being syndicated these days and she'd very nicely fit into that vanguard of mediocrity.

This is the same Leslie Marshall who worked at WGR briefly in the early 90 and then replaced Tom Snyder on the ABC Satellite Radio Network in 1992?

 

[Yeziknoradio]

Well then thank god Entercom doesn't run City TV in Toronto.
It's alot like saying that CP24 should go off the air because it takes too much away from watching CityNews@6.
(Citynews repeats @7 on CP24)

On the radio side of things, Vancouver is a better example.
AM 730 there found their sports format to be a failure, so they swithed to an all "Drive time" traffic station, and a "Best of" format for the rest of the time.

Why not run "best of WBEN" programming on 1520 to let people catch programming they may have missed earlier in the day?

Plus, it costs nothing to repeat WBEN news on 1520 while they're at it.
"If you missed it, catch it again..."

 

[SirRoxalot]

Numbers Game

I believe that we have now heard from more posters than KB has listeners...

 

[Radknowski]

As to this woman getting a syndication gig... anything's possible. There's a lot of mediocre talent being syndicated these days and she'd very nicely fit into that vanguard of mediocrity.

This is the same Leslie Marshall who worked at WGR briefly in the early 90 and then replaced Tom Snyder on the ABC Satellite Radio Network in 1992?

Yes. And you're making an interesting point.

But please keep in mind that Tom Snyder, at the time, was bailing because the ABC network had turned its back on that experiment. Clearances were beginning to wane and Ms. Marshall was the stop-gap low cost provider. In essence, she was sold a bill of goods and allowed to make the best of it. Hard to fault her for taking the opportunity, attempting to parlay it into bigger and better things once the jig was up.

Marshall wasn't that good on WGR, where she received a lot of attention being a female talk show host in a fairly high profile daypart. After a few listens, you could tell she was mostly smoke and mirrors. John Otto, she wasn't. (Who is?) Subtlety, knowledge and nuance were not her strong points.

She wasn't bad on ABC TalkNet but sounded shrill and combative on KB. She wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, yet believed she could fence with a samurai. She relied more on style than substance, often sounding like a converted CHR jock attempting to do talk radio, dropping every cliche in the book, including crutches like "hump day," (Wednesday) "how ya' doin' everybody?" and the ever popular "with ya'."

 

[Steven21]

As to this woman getting a syndication gig... anything's possible. There's a lot of mediocre talent being syndicated these days and she'd very nicely fit into that vanguard of mediocrity.

This is the same Leslie Marshall who worked at WGR briefly in the early 90 and then replaced Tom Snyder on the ABC Satellite Radio Network in 1992?

Just goes to show you how far an extremely average to below average female "talent" can go in the biz, due to a general lack of female talent.

I too, found her show to be so full of crutches and cliches, that it almost sounded as if she was doing a spoof of a bad talk show. Her resume is more an indication of a narrow pool of females than of great talent.

 

[audioconnell Voice Talent]

Am I the only one who, upon reflection, finds it so disheartening that the state of WNY radio is such that Leslie Marshall merits her own thread cause really there IS nothing else to discuss?

**sigh**

What about that wacky morning show stunt? Oh, nothing that creative?

The interesting talks shop topic? Oh, nothing that engaging?

Will the last person to leave Buffalo turn the radio off?

Maybe its just cause its February...

 

[Yeziknoradio]

Because it's February?
What?
No Valentine threads?
Nothing about who played the most valentine music?
Was it WJYE?
If so, I guess that explains why...
(no surprise)

 

[FightingIrish]

KB has finally added a new show to the roster. They're airing Randi Rhodes from Air America live. Stephanie Miller gets a replay in the evening.

And in typical KB fashion, Rhodes' three hour show will be fit into a four hour slot.

KB could succeed with liberal talk if it wanted to. They're just doing a really half-assed job of it. Perhaps they should talk to their Rochester cluster. At least WROC is trying and getting somewhat decent ratings.

 

[Steven21]

KB has finally added a new show to the roster. They're airing Randi Rhodes from Air America live. Stephanie Miller gets a replay in the evening.

And in typical KB fashion, Rhodes' three hour show will be fit into a four hour slot.

KB could succeed with liberal talk if it wanted to. They're just doing a really half-assed job of it. Perhaps they should talk to their Rochester cluster. At least WROC is trying and getting somewhat decent ratings.

Some people will never understand that a company is much better off sales-wise having one station do EXTREMELY well and another in the toilet, vs. one doing pretty good and the other doing...not so bad.

 

[Yeziknoradio]

KB has finally added a new show to the roster. They're airing Randi Rhodes from Air America live. Stephanie Miller gets a replay in the evening.

And in typical KB fashion, Rhodes' three hour show will be fit into a four hour slot.

KB could succeed with liberal talk if it wanted to. They're just doing a really half-assed job of it. Perhaps they should talk to their Rochester cluster. At least WROC is trying and getting somewhat decent ratings.

Some people will never understand that a company is much better off sales-wise having one station do EXTREMELY well and another in the toilet, vs. one doing pretty good and the other doing...not so bad.

"extremely well" secures the best revenue? Yes, if the other station keeps taxes down...

 

[Element9]

On WWKB

Some people will never understand that a company is much better off sales-wise having one station do EXTREMELY well and another in the toilet, vs. one doing pretty good and the other doing...not so bad.

It's not that some people don't "understand" the concept as much as they don't buy into the "half a loaf better than none at all" theory. FM operators don't subscribe to that business strategy, so why should AM operators?

The Entercom AM cluster has two "strong AM's" with WBEN and WGR. They also have a graveyard AM that generates revenue on a shoestring, with WWWS.

WWKB could be a much better radio station with its "progressive" line-up, but even though it has anemic ratings, it's probably making money, considering the overhead.

So while we prattle on about KB (and we do enjoy prattling), it's lousy ratings and it's POS format past and present, it's probably not a burden to the Entercom AM cluster. Could WWKB be better? Absolutely. Will Greg Reid and Tim Wenger invest in a few good live, LOCAL bodies to make it better? Probably not. They've made improvements by solidifying the "progressive" stance of the station bringing in Randi Rhodes, who's every bit as shrill and even more of a harpy that Leslie Marshall. The difference is, Rhodes knows how to do talk radio, has a national platform, has heritage within the format having thrashed Rush in Miami-Ft. Lauderdale and she has more knowledge in her pinky than Marshall has in her skull.

Entercom did a strategic job forcing WHLD out of the progressive talk radio game. Of course, it helped that WHLD didn't have a blessed clue as to HOW to do successful talk radio, but that's not Entercom's fault. Now, it may be time for the rimshot AM's in Springville, Lockport and Niagara Falls to do "pothole" talk and keep it LOCAL rather than mess with Entercom, which has a hammer-lock on Sports, News, Right Wing and Progressive talk.

Ain't corporate hegemony grand! Gordon Gekko would be so proud.

-9-

 

[smedge2006]

Does this point to (yet another) format change at KB? What's left after you've gone Left?

 

[Element9]

Does this point to (yet another) format change at KB? What's left after you've gone Left?

I doubt Entercom will change the KB format any time soon. One could argue it's the most balanced AM cluster in the market. Sports dipticks on WGR, right wing droolers on WBEN and left wing pinkos on WWKB. In fact, you could say the Entercom AM & FM Buffalo cluster is the most effective performer in Buffalo. Their AM stations deliver Men 25-54 and the Kiss-Star combo on FM delivers Women 25-54. Not hard to sell that.

The Lake... hmmm... well... "It's different at the lake..."