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Talk notes:2/10

Q

QED

*Mustard and Johnson were on EEI Sun. afternoon, making their first FM appearance (103.7) in years?

*Bob Raleigh was on WBZ's Replay for the last two Sunday's. Last week he was talking about HIV and disputing a caller's claim that 1/250 in the US had the disease. She was correct. This must have been broadcast somewhere around 1985 and prior to Brudnoy's problems. Good to hear Bob again.

*Morgan still isn't taking questions on iheart changes. Not that you would expect he would. But maybe having a standard answer that the early AM shift was blown away by corporate, might make some uninformed callers better understand what happened to Bradley Jay.

*WBZ overnight is terrible. You notice it on a big news night. Makes you appreciate a station like WGN. Live news,talk great radio which BZ no longer is.
 
TheBigA said:
They'll be cutting staff at WGN very soon. They already replaced the morning show.

Nobody has deep pockets any more.
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Unfortunately, two great radio stations, WBZ and WGN are starting to sink. I don't see a happy ending for either. We will have to see about WABC in New York. My expectations are not very high, but we have to give the new owner a chance.
 
Cap-n Spackle said:

News in a loop is never any good, even if you haven't already heard it, you can tell it's not live.
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News has been "looped" since the first all news stations appeared in the 60's. New items were added as they occurred and old or outdated ones were removed.

Unless the live anchor(s) changed shift, the stories are, and have been, repeated over and over. Yes, as they age, they may get a face-lifting rewrite, but there is constant repetition.

Think of news stations like Top 40 stations. They play the "hits" over and over until interest in them fades, or a new item comes along that gets peoples interest.

The only thing that has changed is the technology that lets the items be recorded and automatically played until replaced. And any problem with the equipment malfunctioning is totally unrelated to the format itself which is based on the original concept of "give us 20 minutes and we will give you the world".
 
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DavidEduardo said:
News has been "looped" since the first all news stations appeared in the 60's. New items were added as they occurred and old or outdated ones were removed.

The only thing that has changed is the technology that lets the items be recorded and automatically played until replaced. And any problem with the equipment malfunctioning is totally unrelated to the format itself which is based on the original concept of "give us 20 minutes and we will give you the world".
Click to expand...


Don't change it. 1010 WINS (the city) and WCBS 880 (leaning toward the suburbs) are the best sisters in the country. Let's not forget SPORTS RADIO 66 AM, 101.9 FM THE FAN! There's an AM trio that keeps NYC up to date any time, day or night!!! Well ... except (errrrrr) for a couple of informercials on Sunday.
 
DonMatsen said:
Don't change it. 1010 WINS (the city) and WCBS 880 (leaning toward the suburbs) are the best sisters in the country. Let's not forget SPORTS RADIO 66 AM, 101.9 FM THE FAN! There's an AM trio that keeps NYC up to date any time, day or night!!! Well ... except (errrrrr) for a couple of informercials on Sunday.
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That's dumb, I left out the Boston paragraph ....

WBZ is a much smaller market. They were owned by Westinghouse, then CBS, and the news blocks from 5 am to 8 pm worked well, very much like a combination of WINS/WCBS. The talk from 8 pm to 5 am had some amazing talent in those spots over the years. Sadly, iHeart is in the house. As I mentioned in an earlier post, that won't be a good thing for BZ. What a shame!
 
DonMatsen said:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, that won't be a good thing for BZ. What a shame!
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It would have been any different had Entercom kept the station. Or if CBS hadn't sold it. These are not unique problems to iHeart or WBZ.

The entire financial basis for many things has been destroyed, from newspapers, to retail, to media, and the music business. It's all part of the same story. There's a reason why all of the TV and music companies are trying to get you to subscribe, to pay $20 a month, to give them your credit card number. If radio could do that, it might survive. But without money, it's hard to keep anything going.
 
DonMatsen said:
Sadly, iHeart is in the house. As I mentioned in an earlier post, that won't be a good thing for BZ. What a shame!
Click to expand...

While iHeart has some philosophical perspectives I don't agree with, the ownership is not the issue.

As I have said many times before, the current status of radio was determined about 12 years ago when radio was hit by the "perfect storm" of the PPM measurement in the top 50 markets, the introduction and growth of the smart phone and the huge recession.

Radio now bills about 40% less than it did in the early years of the 2000's, and that figure is more like 60% if you also include the adjustment for inflation.

So labor costs, property rentals, property taxes, electricity, music licensing fees and all other expenses have increased while revenue, adjusted for inflation, is off by about 2/3.

We are in a different era. Today I got an email for my business account at UPS talking about how they will be in full trials of driverless vehicles this year for transport between local distribution centers.

It's a different world from when all news was first developed in the US 60 years ago at "Extra News over Los Angeles" by Gordon McLendon... and it is over 70 years since the world's first all news station went on the air in Havana, Cuba.

We can't expect stations to be operating with the same kinds of budgets as they did before the recession.
 
TheBigA said:
It would have been any different had Entercom kept the station. Or if CBS hadn't sold it. These are not unique problems to iHeart or WBZ.

The entire financial basis for many things has been destroyed, from newspapers, to retail, to media, and the music business. It's all part of the same story. There's a reason why all of the TV and music companies are trying to get you to subscribe, to pay $20 a month, to give them your credit card number. If radio could do that, it might survive. But without money, it's hard to keep anything going.
Click to expand...

True. It's bound to happen sometime or another. Entercom (the NYC properties, WTIC Hartford, KDKA Pittsburgh .....) all seemed to do pretty well, even with the cuts they all made when taking over. It's a shame that WBZ wasn't part of that group. Boston loses.
 
"WRKO will have ongoing coverage of the NH Primary".
But not with an extra stint for Kuhner or VB.They had a national iHeart host on last night, no doubt run on a bunch of their talk stations.Sister station WBZ did have Dan Rea on.(1200 had Levin, etc)
 
DavidEduardo said:
News has been "looped" since the first all news stations appeared in the 60's. New items were added as they occurred and old or outdated ones were removed.
Click to expand...
I'm well aware, but now it sounds as though, at least in the overnight, they're just running nothing but recordings over & over except for the (almost never useful) traffic spots.
 
DonMatsen said:
True. It's bound to happen sometime or another. Entercom (the NYC properties, WTIC Hartford, KDKA Pittsburgh .....) all seemed to do pretty well, even with the cuts they all made when taking over. It's a shame that WBZ wasn't part of that group. Boston loses.
Click to expand...

My sentiments exactly. Were it not for the ownership caps, Entercom could've kept WBZ, but instead they chose WEEI-AM/FM over WBZ-AM/FM. I guess that ever-lovin' "WEEI brand" is such a freakin' treasure. :rolleyes:
 
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