Rumor Mill: WROC-AM Dumping Progressive Talk?

[alw]

Phillip:

I see your point regarding Progressive talkers being just a strident as Neo-Con talkers…..in many cases it’s true.
But, I’d like to add this to the mix:

Bill Press is a very reasonable and even-keeled Progressive talker, as are Lionel, Big Ed Shultz & several others out there.

That having been said, It’s my opinion that “on the edges” Prog. talk needs to be as loud, angry and bilious as Rush and O’Reilly in order to be heard above the din. They are putting ideas out there that some of the more moderate Progressive talkers are too polite (read: politically correct) to express.

The bilge water that is being thrown in all directions by the Right at 100db cannot be let stand without challenge with an equally loud message.
If the Progressives go away, due to lack of listenership, this country is in trouble.

I, personally, find it hard to listen to all of them. I find Amy Goodman to be a brilliant journalist, but after about 20 minutes of the droning on I feel like opening a vein. I enjoy, from time to time, Stephanie Miller because I think that somebody needs to lighten the topic up a bit.
Leslie Marshall makes me rethink my stance on the NRA. (!)
And what’s so wrong about bouncing your boobies..I do it all the time.

I guess divergence of taste is what makes America,America.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

It might be interesting if somebody took a shot at LOCAL talk - whatever the political viewpoint. You know, a local host, and local newsmakers discussing local issues? After all, look what happened "when Alan Harris had a morning show".

But, that's probably way too expensive, even if Voice of Reason and others volunteered to work for a minimal salary and a share of any profits.

Realistically, "progressive" talk isn't doing business anywhere, not just in Rochester. The news/talk board has endless discussions as to "why", so I'm not going to speculate on that here.

WROC needs to make enough money to survive, or surrender the license. Since the second option is unlikely, they'll do whatever they can to make sure that the first option comes true.

Gee thanks for volunteering me to work for minimum wage And I doubt the profits I would receive could buy me a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Local talk could be an excellent option, however, as you and others have pointed out, it takes money to launch and maintain such a format, and I doubt that neither Entercom nor Clear Channel is about to cut into their profit margin by hiring a group of local talk show hosts. I also do not think that Stephens Media could afford such a venture, even if they wanted too.
Now if I had the money and willingness to buy a radio station and wanted local talk, I would start out by hiring Lonsberry away from WHAM. Followed by Bob Smith from WXXI. Then I would get Bill Nojay. I'm sure there are a number of current, or former radio people who have had talk show experience that would come on board for the right amount of cash. Those people could fill out the rest of the broadcast day. Overnights I would run a syndicated talk program that nobody in the Rochester market currently airs.
Weekends I would rerun the best of the local talk shows. But like I said this is just a suggestion. It won't happen.

 

[Mark Giardina]

Now if I had the money and willingness to buy a radio station and wanted local talk, I would start out by hiring Lonsberry away from WHAM. Followed by Bob Smith from WXXI. Then I would get Bill Nojay. I'm sure there are a number of current, or former radio people who have had talk show experience that would come on board for the right amount of cash. Those people could fill out the rest of the broadcast day. Overnights I would run a syndicated talk program that nobody in the Rochester market currently airs.
Weekends I would rerun the best of the local talk shows. But like I said this is just a suggestion. It won't happen.

Let me add my two cents to this topic if I may. I would buy WWKB and turn that station into local talk featuring not only talent from Buffalo but also Rochester. ( Rochester hosts could do their shows from a studio here). After all the signal does reach both cities and the rural areas in between. And just look at the possible on-air staff you could hire; conservative and liberal.

When it comes to part-time or weekend help, hire people from stations between Rochester and Buffalo and even the Finger Lakes.

I would also hire top-notch news people who can report news that covers all of Western New York.
Such a news department could put together a 1/2 hour weekday newscast or even longer, depending on how much news there is.

My idea, like yours, is only a pipe-dream. But it's nice to dream once-in-a-while isn't it ?

 

[Bob1370]

Let's see, Voice of Reason imagines a talk station whose daily lineup includes Lonsberry, Bill Nojay and me...

wow, talk about an eclectic lineup...

I know and like Bill Nojay, we'd probably be a pretty good yin-and-yang morning show, but I doubt anyone will offer us that gig...

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Show Me The Money

There seems to be one very important issue missing from this merry discussion of News-Talk radio, alternative formats, progressive and right wing talk.

There have been countless opinions about the viability of programming news-talk on WROC and other stations, but what's been neglected is and mention and discussion of sales. Feet on the street. Revenue. Without sales, nothing happens.

The greatest programming fails if it cannot generate revenue, whether it's News-Talk, Country, Urban, Classic Rock or AC.

As we observe WECK and as we watched WHLD in its brief Progressive Talk stint, it's more than programming, talent, news and features that need to be assessed.

Selling radio these days is no day at the beach. Selling News-Talk is even tougher: A combination of chutzpah and statistics. It's not like securing a buy on a CHR based solely on Women 18-49, where a buy may be made three-deep.

There have been many accomplished sales men and women who've successfully sold CHR, Rock, AC, Country and Urban only to wilt when it came to them selling News-Talk. A number of GMs who've run successful FM clusters dedicated to music formats falter when it comes to strategizing, directing and motivating their sales forces to sell News-Talk.

It takes an educated, wide-eyed zealot to sell News-Talk, especially live and local News-Talk, where local talk show hosts can be heard taking shots at the mayor, the school board, cops, lawyers, teachers, doctors, priests and the sacred cows of the community.

To its credit, this is where WBEN and (I would presume) WHAM excel. Talk about programming all we want. Without a good sales department, even the best News-Talk stations are destined to fail. As to WROC, or whatever the station on 950 kHz in Rochester might be called, it doesn't matter what format they choose, if they can't sell it, it's just as doomed as what's on 950 today.

 

[aaronread]

It takes an educated, wide-eyed zealot to sell News-Talk, especially live and local News-Talk, where local talk show hosts can be heard taking shots at the mayor, the school board, cops, lawyers, teachers, doctors, priests and the sacred cows of the community.

I wonder if this is getting more or less true with the advent of the Arbitron PPM. Certainly the statistics start becoming a lot more concrete, which presumably makes the sale easier (assuming the numbers are in your favor). I suppose the aspect of "I hate that talk host, I'll be damned if I'll support the station he's on" is still an issue, but with PPM it should - in theory - be easier to convince a business that they'll see material benefit because they're reaching the listenership they want to reach.

 

[thxscoop]

(The answer: Nobody in their right mind. Why waste money on an AM station with poor signal coverage? Entercom could rent out 1280 to some religious or informercial types and maybe make a few bucks, otherwise the smart thing to do is turn off the transmitter and go dark. The money Entercom would save on electricity would more than make up for the lack of revenue WROC-AM generates.)


Hey, Voice of Reason....I can't resist, I think Entercom may buy themselves some trouble if they rent out "1280" since Clear Channel owns it!!! The discussion centers around WROC --950 am--

 

[dampier]

After August 1, if the rumors are correct, Rochester’s spectrum of political talk will range from well right-of-center to toxic far-right. It’s not just liberal opinion that will disappear, but also plenty of solid information that’s hard to find elsewhere in the so-called “mainstream” media. NPR, rather than being “liberal” as alleged, plays things so close to the middle that it tends to lean over backwards to avoid offending, sometimes at the expense of leaving its audience inadequately informed.

Actually, NPR Bias is more subtle than simply left or right. They have become Beltway Establishment, particularly with their national opinion shows eminating from DC. Diane Rehm is an excellent example. Her show has degenerated into two categories of topics - beltway politics and incredibly impenetrable book discussions (Albanian poets, haikus about sand, an author writing about sausage as an allegory for starvation). The former consists of beltway insiders and their media enablers chattering with one another. The media guests (and hosts when Susan Page or others are guesting) are comfortable with pre-established political notions coming from their guests, almost all of whom are very familiar to them, usually paid by a policy institute or their paper to work the media circuit with talking points but also keep themselves noticed, in hopes it well help their career. It's utterly predictable... and safe radio.

If Diane Rehm had a drinking game, people would all be in AA by now if they had to down a shot everytime a Tony Blankley, EJ Dionne, or Jim Angle turned up at WAMU's microphones. The only show with more predictable political guest lineups would be The McLaughlin Group, which hasn't changed since 1982 unless one of the panelists dropped dead. You can get the same kind of lightweight by the numbers nonsense from Chris Matthews, but at an incredibly faster pace and more interruptions.

That's why the liberal media bias of NPR is such a fiction. They won't alienate either side of the aisle because to do so threatens their funding -and- grant money, often from politically connected foundations looking for safe places to spend their money for a write-off or social corporate consciousness PR campaign (the oil companies are reopening their wallets to dent their evildoer image).

NPR is not political talk radio and bears no comparison to the talk radio format, despite conservatives who always suggest NPR is the alternative choice to Rush or Hannity. It's not.

So, people, let’s read how you think Rochester can keep a full spectrum of talk radio. If AM 950 dumps progressive talk, could it reappear on another frequency – this time under a management that considers it important enough to promote even with a few bumper stickers? I’d like to think that some contributors would be concerned about the negative effect of its absence on our democracy.

Outside of the religious community and a few movement conservative owners (Sinclair TV being a great example when it force-fed conservative talking points on their owned/operated station newscasts, forever trashing their credibility), the radio business only has a passion for one thing - earning quick cash. The corporate owners of most stations have zero interest in the content of the programming - they just want it cheap and easy to obtain, preferably without having to hire local people to program it. Most of the owners these days see stations not as a public interest or program them because they love the radio business. They are business investments, and since the FCC abdicated their responsibility to ensure that radio stations operate in the public interest, it has deteriorated into a lowest common denominator business.

Unfortunately for corporate radio, years of lousy radio has meant listeners are fleeing the medium in droves for alternatives.

To maintain a format on a radio station, usually the protest campaign needs to be tailored to suggest their ad sales team can run with it in hopes of drawing in more advertisers. In a few markets where progressive talk survived a planned format change, the local media publicity was like gold to the station owner, who would keep the format in hopes all of the attention would bring the listeners he or she refused to invest in before through station run promotions and advertising campaigns.

The fact is, with almost every local station owned by a corporate interest who owns a lot of radio stations, there is really no audience for an argument that makes the case imbalance on the airwaves hurts democracy. They honestly could care less.

 

[dampier]

Glenn Beck (arguably the network's only successful primetime offering, and one which would promise to attract a lawsuit from any local Beck Premiere affiliate) and some Hollywood hour with today's Britney sightings and earnest four-cam talkathons discussing the chemical composition of Angelina Jolie's amniotic fluid.

Talk about must-hear radio! CNN Headline, for the benefit of its radio affiliates, even thoughfully fails to mute out (or use a separate audio path to avoid) closed-captioning announcements which sound utterly hilarious on the radio.

Glenn Beck is certifiable. If there is one radio host in this country that will be taken away to the nearest mental institution, it will be him. People saw a preview of that from his BIZARRE and psychotic rambling YouTube video he did about some hospital trying to kill him. He was literally unshaven and disheveled and rambling, right from his freakin' bed. It was the Oh. My. God moment of the year. Law & Order's ripped from the headlines wouldn't have even gone that far out recasting this for TV.

Beck's not fooling anybody with his "I'm just saying what you're thinking" line (which would be true if you were in the KKK, perhaps). The populism label might have worked if you weren't only spouting conservative talking points. I'm surprised he's not on Fox News. By the way, his ratings are good for Headline News, but that is not saying much. Compared with his news competition, his ratings are terrible.

Headline News itself has become eye candy, with the Gam Cam and the news twinkies with way too much makeup, and the other sweet young things playing news, which is tough to portray on radio. I've said for a long time that news has been cancelled on cable news, and Headline News is another example of that. Ted Turner would have never allowed that to happen, but Time/Warner bought him off and sent him to his ranch years ago.

A station wishing to run all news these days would have to get the News & Info stream from the BBC World Service, which is about all that is left.

 

[dampier]

Realistically, "progressive" talk isn't doing business anywhere, not just in Rochester. The news/talk board has endless discussions as to "why", so I'm not going to speculate on that here.

WROC needs to make enough money to survive, or surrender the license. Since the second option is unlikely, they'll do whatever they can to make sure that the first option comes true.

Actually the format is working well in Phoenix, Portland, Madison, and parts of coastal Florida around West Palm. Of course, Thom Hartmann is from Portland, Randi Rhodes is back in West Palm Beach, and Phoenix has a very unique marketing and ad sales partnership campaign with their advertisers, who also pitch the station to other advertisers, both on the air and off. Madison survived a format change pushback, which got the station some attention.

What do progressive talk success stories have in common? Local hosts, even if going national and publicity and marketing. WWKB could run 500,000 watts and unless they promoted it, who is going to find it on AM radio. A lot of the potential audience doesn't even know AM exists, except for time.

I think conservative talk succeeds mostly because its older skewing audience, long alienated by a youth obsessed TV business, found a home on radio with opinions that seemed to work for conservatives who felt left out of the culture. Fox News works for precisely the same reason. In the radio business, the imbalance is loud and clear, but because a lot of the advertisers are also often listeners, it's not such a hard sell. In the overall culture, encompassing radio, TV, and print media, conservative talk radio is a minor phenomenon, and growing more so with the continued abandonment by Americans in general of the values that brought us the last eight years of TeamFailure, and the apologist talk show hosts that manned the barricades trying to defend it.

I notice some of the hosts like Michael "Savage" have slowly been doing more culture topics and are less inclined to tote water the way Limbaugh continues to this day. But we've seen where that has gotten the vitamin peddler this week after his charming comments about autistic children. It will be his Imus moment for at least some talk radio outlets who will dump him.

 

[dampier]

That's why, according to Aaronread, "Democracy Now" has a loyal following on his station, WEOS. Flame away if you disagree. But I think I'm on to something here!

I've been a flaming liberal since Reagan forgot he was president later in his second term (even I couldn't vote for Walter Mondale). So I'm a rational liberal leftwinger on most social issues. But I can't stand Democracy Now. Maybe it is better as the TV show it really is, but it's awful radio. Terrible sound, an announcing style comparable to Radio Tirana Albania back in 1986, and programming today that is honestly indistinguishable from Radio Havana Cuba's English service. Dare to compare. Radio Havana's English language service can be streamed from their website in the evening: http://www.radiohc.cu/ingles/portada.htm They even quote regularly from Democracy Now. Between that and the cuddly relationship they have with Hugo Chavez, whose speeches are run regularly, it's gotten to being too left for even me.

There are some movement leftists who consider DR to be indispensible radio, and bully for them, but the granola people alone will never be enough to build a successful radio format. Talk radio that really works has to be entertaining. Stephanie Miller is probably the closest template to successful entertaining talk radio that is funny and doesn't take itself too seriously. Ed Schultz is probably the most accessible host in the flyover states. Randi Rhodes is probably the best drivetime host the format has to offer at the moment. When WROC plunks DR down at 8pm, it's frankly surreally different to all that came before and would come after it. I almost expect to hear an interval signal before it signs on. It's a program made for non-commercial radio, but WXXI won't carry it "for professional reasons."

 

[dampier]

Now if I had the money and willingness to buy a radio station and wanted local talk, I would start out by hiring Lonsberry away from WHAM.

The dream radio stunt of the century, assuming one of the two were still around to do it, would be:

The Reverend Raymond Graves & Bob Lonsberry Show

But due to global warming, Al Gore would have to do another movie to warn about the excessive hot air that would be coming out of that studio.

 

[alw]

WOW!
Mr. Dampier:

Take a deep breath and cool down. You'll break your keyboard.

Someone certainly hit a nerve.

We're on your side.

 

[audio4tv]

When WROC plunks DR down at 8pm, it's frankly surreally different to all that came before and would come after it. I almost expect to hear an interval signal before it signs on. It's a program made for non-commercial radio, but WXXI won't carry it "for professional reasons."

The quality of the show, always an issue, in terms of its production and objectivity, has also slipped. DR is now a tv show, that allows radio to simulcast it. It is not the same show it once was, in terms of being a radio program. At times, it is no better than listening to Channel 10 news on WYSL, in terms of its video references.

 

[alw]

Heard Bill Press this morning confirm the news that Prog Talk will be leaving Rochester.

Too Bad!

 

[Philip_Airtime]

That's why the liberal media bias of NPR is such a fiction. They won't alienate either side of the aisle because to do so threatens their funding -and- grant money, often from politically connected foundations looking for safe places to spend their money for a write-off or social corporate consciousness PR campaign (the oil companies are reopening their wallets to dent their evildoer image).

I do respect the opinions of the various people posting on this board. For the most part, you can't say someone's opinion is wrong, because it's, well, an opinion and there's no right or wrong. But I do have to call out Philip Dampier on the above statement. It reads "They won't alienate either side of the aisle because to do so threatens their funding - and -grant money." That's just plain wrong! I dare say none of you with the exception of Mark Giardina, alw and Aaronread have ever been to NPR or sat down with its news management. I have. I was with NPR's Vice President of News Ellen Weiss last week. I will say this one last time. The issue of a corporate underwriter or foundation being offended by a particular story is NEVER a factor in NPR's coverage decision. If a particular funder is underwriting a specific series or program, that funder has no say over the editorial content. If you're going to argue otherwise, cite specifics. Don't make broad generalizations based on your perception as a listener.

Now, you're welcome to your opinion that NPR is liberal or NPR is now leaning to the right. People will have their perceptions. I can't speak for Diane Rehm. She's certainly an establishment figure in the Beltway. And that's the show she chooses to do. You see it as safe radio. As a political junkie, I find it enlightening. That's fine. We're all entitled to our opinions and our likes and dislikes. What I can't tolerate is people making unfounded statements about journalists who I believe have the most integrity in our entire profession. Yes, I'm sure NPR's development office is concerned about the impact of coverage on its funders. But there's a clear firewall between that office and the news division. In fact, that firewall is so strong that NPR once ran a critical story about food company ADM, only to have an ADM underwriting announcement run near the report. So, I can flatly say that an NPR news professional is never swayed by whether his or her report will "threaten" funding or grants.

 

[gabigley1]

Heard Bill Press this morning confirm the news that Prog Talk will be leaving Rochester.
Too Bad!

I heard him say Progressive talk will be be dropped on WROC-AM as of Labor Day.

 

[Mark Giardina]

Heard Bill Press this morning confirm the news that Prog Talk will be leaving Rochester.
Too Bad!

I heard him say Progressive talk will be be dropped on WROC-AM as of Labor Day.

Was anything mentioned on what kind of programming WROC-AM will be carrying after Labor Day?

 

[alw]

Sports

 

[Element9]

Sports

... stone cold lock for a 10 share ... [/sarcasm]