The top-of-hour "news" on WPHT's morning show is just a couple of headlines interjected with conservative political commentary. It is obviously adlibbed and sounds sloppy and unprofessional. And then after a quick weather report they just go straight into the talk show with no traffic, sports, or commercials. I know the excuse will be that if you want real news, you should go to co-owned KYW, and if you want sports updates, go to WIP. But I didn't hear any cross-promotion of these stations, so that's a wasted opportunity, and acting like they're giving some kind of actual news report at the top of the hour when it's really just a slapdash political riff on the day's headlines ruins any hope of the station being perceived as a source of any kind of objective, factual information.
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No news is bad news on WPHT
- Thread starter kevtronics
- Start date
Hopefully that's the worst part of your day. You made your own argument, go to KYW if you want the news, 1060 or 103.9. The bar has dropped lower and lower in today's broadcast world so this should not really be surprising in the least. Sloppy and thrown together seems to be a general trend more times than not. I hope your day gets better...
It's not 1985 anymore. It's not a requirement, though some choose to make it an option, to present full-on newscasts in the old sense. They're there to listen to the morning dude do his thing. The rest they can get anywhere.
Well, I mean if anyone is looking for "any kind of objective, factual information," their first mistake is tuning to 1210 AM.
I never said I expected WPHT to have its own newsroom and team of reporters providing in-depth hourly newscasts. I just expected something better than "let's see which headlines we can use to our political advantage and gripe about them for two minutes" -- and not in a witty, well-written and delivered way. They're obviously just making it up as they go along and it sounds bad.
The days of WWDB circa whatever decade are long gone. The few headlines as basically a part of the commentary are likely very much what a good chunk of the audience, such as it may be, want.
Yeah you have no one but yourself to blame if you keep listening to that kind of hate-peddling radio station. Their lack of "news" is probably a blessing in disguise.
It's exactly what the intended audience wants. Have you ever watched even a few minutes of FOX News Channel? It's all fiery opinion presented as news. The audience doesn't want news; they want to be told what they want to hear.
To be honest I'm not a regular WPHT listener. I just happened to tune in at 7:03 AM yesterday and was surprised to hear that they were already into the morning show, while most other talk stations (even 1 kW graveyard channel stations) don't begin the program until 6 or 7 minutes after the hour. So I tuned in at exactly 7:00 today and this is what I heard...
Their morning show has long deviated from the top of the hour convention. Even back to the former guy, when the headline segments were a bit more along the lines of a quasi news break, they did them at 15 and 45. Afternoon followed the same basic concept but did it more along the lines of what you hear now; they just moved that to mornings.
This is why? Not having what someone deems proper newscasts?
OK PARTLY why. Add to it the terrible talk shows and now the loss of Rush.
People get the news they deserve. They don't want to believe what they hear on KYW. So this is what they get instead.
The entire lineup is wretched. But I’m struggling to reconcile any part of their predicament is related to how they deliver news headlines. Or lack thereof. To the listeners, the entire presentation is delivering the news in their preferred way.
installing a traditional TOH 5-ish minute newscast isn’t going to make any difference.
installing a traditional TOH 5-ish minute newscast isn’t going to make any difference.
Your third sentence perhaps is bit of a hidden answer to what you presented in your first sentence. To include what purports to be actual news blurbs helps them convince listeners that they are a news station. Without it, the station would just be one bloviating blowhard after the other cramming the same odious, ludicrous talking points down the throats of the (admittedly willing) masses.
Very likely not understanding as this old brain is mush. They call it news, or headlines or some such. Is that what’s really convincing listeners of anything? They’re basically a sadly lame wannabe morning zoo cast that pretends to do news to feed the overall bit. It’s not entirely unlike Preston and Steve chiming in with comedy on what passes for news on their show. Except they’re actually intelligent and witty.
If PHT put in a more formal (?) headline segment, for…I’m guessing what nowadays, two minutes?….is that going to make someone think the station really isn’t just odious, ludicrous talking points? Would someone listen more/longer if the headline reader droned on for a bit longer and the host went on his bio break earlier?
Down at 990, they have the TOH Salem propaganda, er, news, but the station is still Stigall, Gorka and the like. Same odious talking points, same odious “guests.” Do those newscasts actually convince someone with a functional brain cell the station is news?
If PHT put in a more formal (?) headline segment, for…I’m guessing what nowadays, two minutes?….is that going to make someone think the station really isn’t just odious, ludicrous talking points? Would someone listen more/longer if the headline reader droned on for a bit longer and the host went on his bio break earlier?
Down at 990, they have the TOH Salem propaganda, er, news, but the station is still Stigall, Gorka and the like. Same odious talking points, same odious “guests.” Do those newscasts actually convince someone with a functional brain cell the station is news?
I still think each hour should begin with a newscast of some detail. OK, we're past the point where WOR did 15 minute newscasts at the start of each hour when I was a kid. Today's newscast has to be faster and to the point. But I think it's a sign of impatience if we don't want to hear five or six stories, of a few sentences each, to know what's going on in the world.
BTW, WABC in NYC is also limiting its top of the hour newscast to 77 seconds, plus a weather report and a traffic report.
I think both WPHT and WABC run regular network newscasts late nights and weekends, when it doesn't have its own newscaster. If I'm not mistaken, WRKO Boston does only brief news at the top of the hour too. WPHT uses CBS, WABC uses Fox, WRKO uses ABC when it doesn't have its own newscaster.
BTW, WABC in NYC is also limiting its top of the hour newscast to 77 seconds, plus a weather report and a traffic report.
I think both WPHT and WABC run regular network newscasts late nights and weekends, when it doesn't have its own newscaster. If I'm not mistaken, WRKO Boston does only brief news at the top of the hour too. WPHT uses CBS, WABC uses Fox, WRKO uses ABC when it doesn't have its own newscaster.
I very much keep on top of the world. I don’t need radio stations whose format is something else to do that for me. Impatience? Sure. I want content. News is available in a multitude of places.
They had used a :60 news update from co-owned WBZ for a while, but recently dropped news casts entirely.
Because they're all programming to an audience that's willfully ignorant.
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