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Sunday Wasteland

J

jhguthlac

Guest
Found myself tuning around the AM dial Sunday morning. Early, around 5-7 AM.

What a bunch of crap.

Infomercials about a "new" Vitamin C product. Political talk on a Sports-Talk station. Junk on most Talk stations. Only the All News stations like KYW were worth my time.

I was reminded of an article in Broadcast magazine back in the early 70's. It was an interview with the PD at KBIG, a B/Ez outlet at the time, and a huge rating station. He made the point that he hired as little "weekend" help as possible. His style included the weekday annourcers doing a shift on Saturday or Sunday. His point was that "week-enders" give you "weak-ends".

I was in college at the time and my radio gigs were primarily week-ends only, so I took offense! But then I realized that Rick Sklar followed the same policy at Top 40 powerhouse WABC. There is a huge audience potential on weekends, with many who cannot listen as much during the week. So put your "A" team on weekends instead of your second or third string.

Now to Talk Radio. Aside from the "Best of Rush" shows, much of weekend Talk Radio is second and third string talk. Coast-to-Coast AM is the "A" host on Saturday, even on Sunday every so often. But that is about it. Talk Radio is more host-intensive than Top 40 was and especially more than the old B/Ez. It is hard for a talk-host to work a 7-day week. But something needs to be done to improve the waste-land that Talk is on weekends.
 
Why? Few listeners are there that early. Stations have better ways to allocate employees and religion _PAYS!

Even wgn (radio God) has an hour of paid religion and then a sort of "what to do today" show with live guests, a little music and a very good host. They have doe this for more than a generation.
 
Why? Few listeners are there that early. Stations have better ways to allocate employees and religion _PAYS!

Sunday mornings have always been no-man's land for radio. But in talk radio, that concept has expanded so that now all of Sunday and almost all of Saturday is a wasteland of infomercials, brokered programming and "worst of" shows. Talk radio isn't a 24/7/365 medium anymore. It's more like a 12/5/260 (five days a week minus Christmas) medium. Talk radio's problem is FEWER weekenders... meaning it's not developing the talent of the future.
 
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