• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Radio hijinks

J

johnbasalla

On Thursday evening, 08/22/24, WHKW, AM1220 was airing a high school football game. The shows that normally air at that time were moved over to WHK AM1420, displacing The Larry Elder national show. A case of "Keep The Customer Satisfied", I presume.

This morning, in the 7am hour, on WTAM AM1100, they played a promo for "The Lutheran Hour". The tag at the end said the show airs Sunday morning at 7:30 am on ... ready for this (?)... WFLA. What happened there?
 
A while back on WTAM, on a Saturday morning, they aired a traffic report for Detroit as they mentioned I-75 and other Detroit roadways.
 
The really sad part of this except for folks on this site, did any listeners catch the errors? Does anyone outside of the business care? I remember when I first worked on air. I messed up a name pretty bad one Saturday afternoon during rip and read news. I had 3 folks (not family members) call me to give me the correct pronunciation.

It would be interesting to check the station's social media site to see if anybody cared enough to complain. Has corporate broadcasting "desensitized" listeners to local stuff? If so then nationally there is only a need of set of announcers per format per company. A. I. will eventually so away them too.
 
the average listener doesnt listen in nearly as much detail or with as much attention as we radio people do.. and they listen for different things. they arent dumb

did some listeners catch it? maybe a few... but what likely happened is.. they realized it after it happened.. "what did i just hear that?" they arent sure and have no way to really check
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
the average listener doesnt listen in nearly as much detail or with as much attention as we radio people do.. and they listen for different things. they arent dumb

did some listeners catch it? maybe a few... but what likely happened is.. they realized it after it happened.. "what did i just hear that?" they arent sure and have no way to really check
Click to expand...
... And it isn't important enough to average listeners to find out why, or even remember the incident for very long. However, I'm interested in such occurances.
 
johnbasalla said:
... And it isn't important enough to average listeners to find out why, or even remember the incident for very long. However, I'm interested in such occurances.
Click to expand...

when you have hundreds of radio stations interconnected by just a few mouse clicks, mistakes are easy to do
 
As an example, think it was one of the ishart stations a few years ago that had a report of a traffic accident in the morning that had tied up traffic on I-71 or 77 or 76 [can't remember] and later that afternoon, after I had awakened, they were STILL running that same traffic info at 4 PM. Either the world's slowest accident investigation was going on or someone was too lazy to check. Low and behold, I went by the very same spot about an hour later that accident was supposed to be at and all I saw were potholes and trash blowing around....nary a cop or crashed car in sight.
 
On a Sunday morning in late April of 2005, we got a surprise snowstorm which dropped several inches of snow. The power went off at my house so I tuned in to WTAM on a small battery operated radio to get weather updates. Apparently, the station was on auto-pilot airing pre-recorded programming. For the entire day, they kept airing the same weather report by AJ Colby which must have been recorded the night before in which he was saying "cold with a chance of snow".
 
johnbasalla said:
On Thursday evening, 08/22/24, WHKW, AM1220 was airing a high school football game. The shows that normally air at that time were moved over to WHK AM1420, displacing The Larry Elder national show. A case of "Keep The Customer Satisfied", I presume.

This morning, in the 7am hour, on WTAM AM1100, they played a promo for "The Lutheran Hour". The tag at the end said the show airs Sunday morning at 7:30 am on ... ready for this (?)... WFLA. What happened there?
Click to expand...
On the first item, a lot of WHKW's shows are paid for by the various ministries they represent, thus they had to fulfill the obligation.

Second item - somebody simply pushed the proverbial wrong button.
 
We used to read the weather report, word-for-word, but backwards. As long as you had the right inflection and delivery no one noticed.
 
vjm said:
somebody simply pushed the proverbial wrong button.
Click to expand...
Thats the problem. There is no "somebody" there to hear it. Most likely they are using a form of PC Automation. The file was never listened to or a "kill" date or time wasn't put on the cut when it was loaded into the system. There could be a data entry error when they did the format hour. There are a couple of other things that can go wrong depending on the system they are using. You are correct somebody messed up.

My Dad use to say: to error is human it requires a computer to really foul things up
 
skiwest said:
On a Sunday morning in late April of 2005, we got a surprise snowstorm which dropped several inches of snow.
Click to expand...
Not to change the subject, but I remember that day. The 26th I believe. Heavy wet snow broke several large tree branches in my yard, which at that time were in the process of budding, adding additional weight.

skiwest said:
Apparently, the station was on auto-pilot airing pre-recorded programming. For the entire day, they kept airing the same weather report by AJ Colby which must have been recorded the night before in which he was saying "cold with a chance of snow".
Click to expand...
Funny story, but when I was younger, I would occasionally record Majic 105.7 onto tapes. One day around August/September, I decided to randomly pop one of those recordings into the car's stereo, which my mom either did not realize or apparently forgotten about while driving. During the weather report on that tape, she was shocked to hear that they were expecting a good accumulation of snow. Afterwards, I mentioned that it was on the tape, and popped it out of the stereo, which switched back to present day Majic.
 
snowdog88 said:
Not to change the subject, but I remember that day. The 26th I believe. Heavy wet snow broke several large tree branches in my yard, which at that time were in the process of budding, adding additional weight.
Click to expand...
I had the same thing happen with a tree in my yard. It was heavily damaged and I had to remove it.
 
johnbasalla said:
On Thursday evening, 08/22/24, WHKW, AM1220 was airing a high school football game. The shows that normally air at that time were moved over to WHK AM1420, displacing The Larry Elder national show. A case of "Keep The Customer Satisfied", I presume.

This morning, in the 7am hour, on WTAM AM1100, they played a promo for "The Lutheran Hour". The tag at the end said the show airs Sunday morning at 7:30 am on ... ready for this (?)... WFLA. What happened there?
Click to expand...

Probably off topic, but I'm always amused that the "Lutheran Hour" runs for half an hour, 7:30 - 8:00am, LOL.
 
Most people today get weather alerts, traffic updates, school closings and breaking news on their phones. Except for the mandated automated eans alerts, few stations have anyone on duty nights and weekends to provide such updates. Standards have been lowered in the name of cost cutting efficiency.
 
Santa fe said:
Most people today get weather alerts, traffic updates, school closings and breaking news on their phones. Except for the mandated automated eans alerts, few stations have anyone on duty nights and weekends to provide such updates. Standards have been lowered in the name of cost cutting efficiency.
Click to expand...
They don’t need anyone on nights and weekends to give updates because of your first sentence. It isn’t 1965 any more.
 
radiofan2023 said:
They don’t need anyone on nights and weekends to give updates because of your first sentence. It isn’t 1965 any more.
Click to expand...
The problem is that instead of fighting to stay connected and relevant with up-to-the-minute news and weather information, broadcast radio has surrendered to online essentially telling people to go over there to get your information.
 
radiofollower said:
The problem is that instead of fighting to stay connected and relevant with up-to-the-minute news and weather information, broadcast radio has surrendered to online essentially telling people to go over there to get your information.
Click to expand...
Exactly - when people figure out there is no point to flipping the radio on to get info they won't.
 
Is WTAM 1100, with the only really wide ranging signal from Cleveland, no longer the primary EAS station for NE Ohio? If they still are, there ought to be some sort of standard of behavior that listeners, and other relaying broadcasters, should be able to expect from them in a weather emergency. Otherwise it's just the weakest link in the chain for emergency info - except it's at the top. The public deserves better.

A lot of weather emergencies come with power outages, where the radio - if you can find one in the house - may be the only reliable source for information for a few hours, or a few days. So please don't absolve them of this basic responsibility because you have a smart phone that'll work for a few hours when the power goes out at your house.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom