Max Morgan: Gee what day is this?

[WTUX]

Enjoyed hearing Max on WILM saying "Its your Friday July 4th and here's your forecast:"

Trouble is, it was 1:29pm Thursday, July 3rd.

Oops. The joys of a "nobody's home" radio station.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

WILM isn't alone with its computer automated problems. I hear bloopers all the time on WDEL when the computer is in charge.

PD's may complain about "Weekenders", but may of us weekenders (in my case former weekender at WNNN-FM, WNRK, WAMS, and WILM) kept their stations on the air and functioning with a tightness and no dead air that the computer just can't seem to get right. When some local thing happened, with "Weekenders" there live, your station could actually inform the population of what's going on and even answer questions that folks would call to the station for help. So you get what you paid for. You want a tight formated air sound on the weekends or during the "off times during the week", use real people. Of course corporate radio doesn't really care about having a tight sound, especially on the weekends (as they never considered the weekend shows to be important, just filler until Monday morniing when they the PD would grace the radio airwaves with their presence), so the computer works just fine for them as it's cheaper and that's what really matters to the suits upstairs in this era of corporate radio.

Sure you can automate a station, but as many of us lament here, it's only mediocre at best. With all the local stations being on the bird or in autopilot mode, when a local thing happens, radio is no longer the place to go to find out what's happening. Local TV is now that place. The problem for Wilmington is, we don't have any local TV.......

 

[Derek Smalls]

After hearing some of the wacky things that Max has done, I wouldn't be surprised if she WAS in there live doing it when you heard that mistake...

 

[650AM]

Ever try to tune in a local station on the evening of July 4th to find out if there are weather-related cancellations of that evening's fireworks displays? I have, two years in a row now, and find nothing but syndicated schlock running on both WILM & WDEL.

Previously, with live weekend & holiday staff present, this info would have gotten priorty attention.

 

[WTUX]

Very true. There is no where to get that info. It wasn't too long ago that both WILM and WDEL had someone on duty to respond to changing circumstances.

 

[gohens]

Allan Loudell was on the air on WDEL with news from 4 until 7 on July 4th. He was later broadcasting live from Wilmington's July 4th festivities (Fireworks on the radio. Ohhh... Ahhh...) I think I heard John Lewis anchoring news during the 7 o'clock hour.

 

[650AM]

I heard Loudell on the air from the live July 4 event in Wilmington.

From the portion that I heard, he was focused exclusively on what was occuring in Wilmington and offered no updates on the status of the several other fireworks displays in the area.

 

[gohens1]

So, WDEL was live and local after all.

Maybe there were no weather-related problems to report. And how many other Delaware fireworks (in their listening area) were there anyway? Newark. Dover. Longwood, if you want to get picky. That's it.

I got it - next year: FireworksWatch.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

That was great that WDEL was live and local on the 4th. Unfortunately, both WDEL and WILM generally are live and local during the morning parts of the weekend (at least for their local talk shows), but aren't live and local during major parts of the afternoons and evenings of the weekend ( there on the bird) so you get out of the habit of thinking of either WDEL or WILM as a source for a traffic or weather updates.

Yesterday (Thursday) I did hear a Friday Max Morgan weather update on WILM during Rush. The big question is, was the weather presented actually for Thursday or was it Friday's forecast also pre-recorded ahead of time? Or even worse yet, as WTUX heard a wrong day weather update last week. Was this last week's weather we heard yesterday as possibly did someone forget to update the computer and just continued to use the old ones?

Makes even an old radio hand like me, who prefers using the radio to start thinking it's time to use the computer and the Weather channel for local weather updates.

In a related question, as most TV stations are airing syndicated and national satellite shows, are they also automated other than during local shows like the news or is this strictly a radio thing?

 

[650AM]

Gee, Gohens1 must be Pete Booker in disguise or something. Quite defensive about WDEL.

The point is that all New Castle County area fireworks displays were in danger due questionable and threatening weather (where were you on July 4 between 7pm & 9pm?) and there should have been a greater effort on the part of local radio to provide the public with the final word, go or no, on each of them...Newark, Hockessin, New Castle, Delaware City(?), Longwood, wherever!

 

[WTUX]

I agree with 650 about the weather issues on the 4th. It was touch and go right up until fireworks time. And there was nowhere to turn to get up to the minute info. Of course, since even if a warm body is in the studio, no one will pick up the phone, if event organizers tried to call the station with a cancellation, no one would take their call!

 

[MikefromDelaware]

That was the great thing about the "old" WILM, while at 12th and French Streets. We may have been in an old dilapoldated building using very old radio equipment that I used while on Armed Forces Radio during Viet Nam, but WILM always had someone there, and they were instructed to always answer the phone if not on the air, just for that reason. The Hawkins wanted it that way as did Allan Loudell. That tradition continued on during the early CC Delaware days, until the move from Downtown to New Castle. With the new fantastic facility which includes state of the art equipment and computer automation WILM pretty much gutted their part time weekend and evening staff. The phones no longer get answered unless you know the person's extension and they are sitting at their desk. This is also true at WDEL during the off hours. You just can't get to a live person.

Unfortunately for WDEL, Allan Loudell isn't in management there, so he probably doesn't get a lot of say on these sorts of issues as he did at WILM. Yet, I do see some of Allan's hand in some of the changes we hear at WDEL. No doubt, in my mind, it was probably Allan's idea to have coverage of the 4th as any of the other local events they've more recently started covering. So maybe given a bit more time, WDEL will continue to become more like the "old" WILM by starting to keep a lone weekender there during the off hours to cover local news and important event updates except that unlike the "old" WILM, WDEL already has great state of the art equipment at a very modern and comfortable studio in North Wilmington.

 

[oaktree]

And as a former two-year hand at both WILM and WDEL in the early 70s, this would have never happened under Ewing Hawkins or Harvey Smith.

I am surprised at the outrage, frankly, because being in radio, still, I'm being told that all radio wants is the cheapest way out. The NAB is screaming about new "localism" rules to fix the very things you're talking about. The FCC wants to resort back to the "old way" and have stations staffed 24/7 with a warm body who is capable of turning on a mike switch, moving mouth, and sound will come out!

Oh, my ... think of this: Since having to pay someone to be there, even minimum wage, could that mean that it could lead to more local programming, too? Oh, good golly ... what a sin that would be. Hell, that syndicated Coast-to-Coast crap costs $150 a month ... and to the NAB, a board op would be, like, a fortunate to answer the phones, give the weather, etc.

You think missing fireworks is a shame. How'd you like to miss an explosion at Delaware City, or along the river? A refinery fire, a large boat exploding? A huge accident on the Del. Memorial Bridge at 3 a.m.

Fortunately, we didn't. Because we covered them all ... even a little 3.0 earthquake that you'd have thought had knocked Wilmington on its keester back in 1971. Oh yeah, I remember covering it live at 2 a.m. on 'ILM.

But it's your BROADCASTERS who don't want to step up the "improvement" because they see their economy in the tank.

Gee ... I wonder why?

Bring back localism, less redundant syndication, people who can do the job and do it well even just starting out ... and serve your community.

Used to be, you'd serve your community before somebody else came in and did it for you. Well, that went out the window pretty quick.

I was at WAMS when it signed of, as did WDEL & WILM at 1 a.m. Then they got smart and actually hired people to do all nights. Maybe we should go back to the way it was. If you have nobody at home manning the place on auto pilot, then you shouldn't be on the air ... period. Your choice.

Wonder what they'd do? And don't give that crock about "Oh, technically, things are so much better now." Yeah ... it's not the technical part that bothers me ... it's the lack of human part that does. Automation can't tell you when the next No'easter just hit or the next severe thunderstorm with hail is bearing down on your neighborhood's power poles.

Those were the days.

 

[gohens1]

You're right. I am defensive about WDEL - especially when people are writing things that aren't true about the station.

There WAS a warm body in the station on the 4th. Several, in fact. A news anchor, a board op, and two people at a remote broadcast location. FOUR people on a holiday, getting paid a holiday rate. Yet no one wants to give them credit for that.

And, yes, they would've answered the phone if someone had called. But no one called. And nothing was cancelled. Can't report what's not there. (There weren't fireworks in Hockessin, New Castle, or Delaware City, by the way.)

WDEL broadcast Wilmington's 4th celebration last year too, but Loudell wasn't involved. The Saturday morning host at the time did, so I don't think this was Allan's idea. He has been a big reason why WDEL is at as many church carnivals as they are. He might not be management, but they'd be crazy not to ask for his input.

Maybe we should go back to the way things were. Maybe we should also go back to $1/gallon gas. Even if they're paying minimum wage to staff overnights, money's not growing on trees. I'd rather have them trying to do the best they can than have them go out of business and off the air altogether.

 

[wheatstone]

Radio across the country is having a rough time right now. Much of their problems were brought on by relentless cost cutting and its devistating effect on creativity and talent. Locally (to my ear) it's pretty easy to figure out who's still trying to do good local radio and who's taking the Walmart route. WDEL's not perfect but it sounds like they have twice as many people as WILM. And (I suspect) a lot more people than in the 70's when they were playing music.

If the measure of a good radio station is having an overnight anchor or jock, every station outside of a major market would fail that test. (Who has live overnights in Philly?? KYW right? and...?)

Local radio could always be better, but I give WDEL a break. A least they are trying.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

I think WDEL deserves some credit for having 4 people there on the 4th. The one thing that might give that more meaning is consistancy. Maybe not overnight, but during the entire daytime parts and early evening both weekdays and weekends so that people would know that when most people are awake, for anything local the choice would be NOT the News Journal, NOT WILM, NOT WJBR, but 1150 WDEL.

One thing, as WSTW/WDEL are the EBS station for the region, aren't they supposed to have someone there in the building on Shipley Road 24/7 ?

Does WSTW really need a DJ overnight. Might it not be a better use of that person's time to gather news, prepare news for the early morning newscasts on WDEL, thus giving 1150 that overnight person for no extra charge. It would seem to me that WSTW could just as easily voice track over nights as most other stations do.