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No more school closings?

S

ssetta

I noticed that this year, none of the radio stations, even WBZ, seem to have school closings on the radio anymore. I remember noticing it during Sandy. I never listened to WBZ normally, the only time I ever really listened to it was for school closings. So I had my clock radio set to WBZ, and all they said was "For a complete list of cancellations, you can go to our website." I wonder if this is going to become more and more common. Even though I'm about to graduate from school and it will have little relevance, if it's a snowy day, I still feel the need to check the school closings to see if school is closed, which sort of gives me a nostalgic feeling of getting excited to get a day off from school. I would always listen to WBZ to hear Gary LaPierre announce the school cancellation list, just hoping that he would mention my town, and when he would, I'd get excited.

Also, get this, the school system always said that you were supposed to go by the school cancellation list on the radio, and NOT the TV. Because I noticed that with the TV stations, not all of them had the same list. There were several radio stations listed in the school handbook for school closings, which they did not appear to update very often. All the way up to the time I graduated high school in 2003, one of the stations listed was WHDH, which has not been around since 1994. Is this happening everywhere where they stop doing school closings on the radio?
 
You are expecting radio stations to interrupt their programming to perform a public service?? ;)
You'll see that happen when flying pigs ask for landing clearance at Logan...hahahaha

I used to wonder why schools were not assigned a number, so that "no school" announcements could be done more quickly as "Schools 1-9 are closed, school 10 is open, schools 11-21 are closed, etc." instead of having to go through the lengthy alphabetical list. I worked at a University with 20,000 students and we'd have to hear all the public schools, then all the day-cares with the cutesy poo names and 20 students, before we'd hear our announcement affecting 20,000.
 
aerie said:
I used to wonder why schools were not assigned a number, so that "no school" announcements could be done more quickly as "Schools 1-9 are closed, school 10 is open, schools 11-21 are closed, etc." instead of having to go through the lengthy alphabetical list. I worked at a University with 20,000 students and we'd have to hear all the public schools, then all the day-cares with the cutesy poo names and 20 students, before we'd hear our announcement affecting 20,000.
Click to expand...

WBZ's sister station KYW in Philadelphia does (or at least did) it that way. When I was at WBZ in the early 1990s, I suggested looking into creating a similar system for Boston, but the word from down the hall amounted to "if it ain't broke..."

In retrospect, I suspect it was really "Gary likes reading them this way, so it's not changing." And in 1994, that was probably the right call. Two decades later, when everyone gets texts or e-mails or automated phone calls from the school district, and when the TV stations are on the air at 4 AM with closing crawls, is there any compelling reason to spend 20 minutes each hour running down "Amesbury, Andover, Arlington..."?
 
One of my fondest childhood memories was of WBZ-TV's school closings. I assume that Carl DeSuze was doing them on radio, but on TV it was Jack Chase and Don Kent. There's just something exciting about that long roll call. Without it, I'd have never heard of the Beaver Country Day School(they seemed to get out for everything). We'd sit and wait for our school to be announced and then, of course, go out and play in the snow, because it was too dangerous for us to go to school.
 
"No school in Foster, Glocester..."--the late Salty Brine father of Wally Brine

They figure many people have TV (scroll on bottom of screen...used to be in bigger letters and maybe even narrated too) or web access thru phones or computers (power out? use smartphone or netbook with a bit of a charge left)

>> reason to spend 20 minutes each hour running down "Amesbury, Andover, Arlington..."?

crawls on your TV screen. Similarly yrs ago they'd have a 5 minute sports report and run thru
the scores, took a few minutes. Now, Scroll at bottom of screen...saves time, more time for
program content or ads

I grew up in Nahant where there were blasts of the horn at the police station when there were
cancellations. According to the back page of the Town Report, right next to the listings for
fire box numbers: "7:00 am No School, High School (Nahant has no high school; used to go to Lynn, now Swampscott, unless you're going to St Marys or Lynn Tech)...7:15 am No School,
All in-town schools"
 
ssetta said:
I noticed that this year, none of the radio stations, even WBZ, seem to have school closings on the radio anymore. I remember noticing it during Sandy. I never listened to WBZ normally, the only time I ever really listened to it was for school closings. So I had my clock radio set to WBZ, and all they said was "For a complete list of cancellations, you can go to our website." I wonder if this is going to become more and more common. Even though I'm about to graduate from school and it will have little relevance, if it's a snowy day, I still feel the need to check the school closings to see if school is closed, which sort of gives me a nostalgic feeling of getting excited to get a day off from school. I would always listen to WBZ to hear Gary LaPierre announce the school cancellation list, just hoping that he would mention my town, and when he would, I'd get excited.

Also, get this, the school system always said that you were supposed to go by the school cancellation list on the radio, and NOT the TV. Because I noticed that with the TV stations, not all of them had the same list. There were several radio stations listed in the school handbook for school closings, which they did not appear to update very often. All the way up to the time I graduated high school in 2003, one of the stations listed was WHDH, which has not been around since 1994. Is this happening everywhere where they stop doing school closings on the radio?
Click to expand...

Whine, whine...we live in the world where majority of people now have full access to digital channels like phone or internet which deliver the message in a matter of seconds, not minutes.
 
There are other things that at one time were traditional content on radio that have disappeared. (Some of these may have NEVER been part of radio in Boston.)

Trading Post broadcasts. (Never a biggie in any city... a staple of life in "village radio" of rural America)

Hospital admissions. Not legal any more. Privacy regulations. Again, never a biggie in cities, a given in rural America a few years back.

Requests and dedications. O. K. Maybe Delilah has kept them alive, but sanitized a bit. Ever work in a small radio market where it was finally called to management's attention that the program had become "Requests Gone Wild"? Only the kids knew the names and knew that the requests were making it sound like certain teachers were making out with certain students.

I would think the next big casualty for radio program content has to be Traffic Reporting. We have the technology available but we don't have the marketing mechanism to monetize the idea that I should be able to punch in my commute route and only information about traffic along my route would display... and for the sake of safety... we would use a voice synthesizer to give us that information rather than diverting our eyes away from the traffic and road.

So that brings us back to radio for the 21st century. All Music. Zero Talk.

Zero nostalgia.
 
I remember when I was very young on the Eyeopener on Channel 5, Jack Hynes and Anne McGrath got into an argument on-air as to who was going to read the school closings! Definitely was back in the 70's--not sure when.
 
In some villages and small towns the fire siren/whistle would use a number of blasts to indicate which part of town the volunteer firemen should head for. That would get you close. Just follow the smoke for fine tuning.
 
Yes the same horn was used for that. Where I grew up at the corner of Sunset Rd and Coolidge Rd. there was a "phantom box"--1-3-5 I think. That meant no actual box on the street to pull;
someone called in by phone and they sounded 1-3-5 to say where the fire or other
emergency was.

small town radio: death notices, school lunches, Trading Post (still around somewhere? Sat.
morning: "Yes I have an old outboard motor I'd like to sell. It's..."
 
raccoonradio said:
thinking of other names for it...Yankee Trader? Swap shop?
Click to expand...

Tradio. That's what it was called on WMMW, Meriden, CT, in the years before it was acquired by Buckley and turned into a WDRC(AM) relay station.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
Requests and dedications. O. K. Maybe Delilah has kept them alive, but sanitized a bit. Ever work in a small radio market where it was finally called to management's attention that the program had become "Requests Gone Wild"? Only the kids knew the names and knew that the requests were making it sound like certain teachers were making out with certain students.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt the Delilah show is allowing the "callers" to make requests anymore. From what I understand, when you call Delilah, you leave a message and they call back the next day or something, not exactly sure. Anyway, with the changes in the music recently on the show, I highly doubt the people that call are actually requesting Katy Perry, Nickelback, Maroon 5, Lady Gaga, etc... which is what the Delilah show is now playing. It's certainly not the Soft AC show it used to be.
 
raccoonradio said:
small town radio: death notices, school lunches, Trading Post (still around somewhere? Sat.
morning: "Yes I have an old outboard motor I'd like to sell. It's..."
Click to expand...
And lost pet announcements...
 
If it was the Eyeopener, it wasn't Jack Hynes.

WBZ did school closings, but not as a public service; it was part of the whole storm coverage thing that became extremely important as AM declined. Well there was some public service; LaPierre seemed to like to talk about how they always had school in his hometown (Reading? Stoneham? some place up that way) when all others called it off, and would get dramatic about the Mother Hen or Humpity Dumpity kindergarten.

Rule #3.
Super-serve your core.
 
I do know that Wayland was always known for NEVER cancelling school. I remember this one snowstorm, I think it was on 1/3/96, just about every town in Massachusetts cancelled, except Wayland, and there was a picture in the newspaper of a kid sitting on the bus, all sad. Then later that month, during THE Blizzard of '96, Wayland DID cancel, and they made a big deal out of it. You could always tell it was a HUGE snowstorm if Wayland cancelled. From what I understand, the reason was because the superintendent was from Maine (I think), where he has seen MUCH bigger snow than we've ever had here, and THAT'S when you have to cancel school.
 
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