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Talk radio on the weekends

W

wadio

A look at TalkStreamLive today reveals that there is no such thing on weekends - all the programs listed (with one exception) are repeats from during the week. And on a relatively busy news day like this it really shows. Radio has ceded its weekend audience to TV and Satellite. I never thought I'd see that.

The only exception seems to be "The Weekend with Joe Pags" which airs for 3 hours, noon to 3 pm ET on Saturday and is repeated on Sundays. I've noticed that Joe makes good use of the weekend show to promote his daily weekday show, and I think he's onto something.

I've always felt that stations are giving up a huge promotional opportunity to plug the weekday shows. And keeping the audience engaged on the weekends is the best way to build loyalty and keep that audience in place during the week where the advertisers are.

Kudos to Pags for making good use of the medium.
 
wadio said:
Radio has ceded its weekend audience to TV and Satellite.
Click to expand...

Maybe. You see that on cable news stations too. The top cable hosts take the weekends off. Sirius is loaded with repeats on the weekends.

TalkStreamLive might not be the best way to assess the situation. There are several weekend-only talk shows that aren't listed, including Sterling On Sunday, a nationally syndicated show hosted by Walter Sterling. I also know of a lot of local weekend-only talk shows that weren't listed.

What I see is the music stations get better TSL and higher cume on weekends. Talk radio is typically listened to by individuals, while music radio (especially on wknds) is listened to in groups.
 
You might want to have to go to more local radio stations in your are to see what weekend programming is available for you to listen, or look online to other cities. And for people that work during the week and gets the weekends off, it can give up a good chance to catch up on their favorite radios local or national on he radio, I know you can do podcasts but do you always have time to listen to them? And in less you are old enough to be retired, you don't have time to listen to your favorite radio shows when they are live. But where did you go to where you got your information? WCPT in Chicago they both local shows that go on in the weekends, and some syndicated programming they air repeats of. Like there is a show on Sundays called Out Chicago with Scott Duff that airs for 2 hours from 11:00-1:00 (central time), and I see that they follow that up with best of their only week day show that airs live in their studios in the afternoon, and the rest are syndicated radio show hosts, they are the only radio station on regular radio that still airs Bill Press's show on weekday mornings with no repeats. And other times on the weekends they do re-plays of The Stephanie Miller Show and Thom Hartman's show that follows her show weekdays.
 
It's true that the cable stations are cutting back on weekend programming too but at least they go into live mode during events like today's Supreme Court vote. That's what I punched today on Sirius in my car.

Red Eye Radio did something interesting during Hurricane Florence - they went live over the weekend with two meteorologists hosting to talk about that breaking news instead of airing repeats from the previous week. It was good radio.

Talk radio has a short shelf life - when a show ends it's over and on to the next. There's always breaking news or a new story to talk about. Even when there's not much going on there's the expectation by the listener that something might happen at any moment.

One of the foundations of radio is immediacy. That's where radio differs from Podcasting. If radio can't offer immediacy, then it's nothing more than a single-stream Podcast where you can't select, fast-forward or rewind the content. Talk about a death wish! If I'm willing to accept stale content why would I choose radio?

Podcasts are gaining traction and they're easy to access. Unless talk radio can offer something more - mainly a place to tune for LIVE conversation 24/7 - I don't see how it will ultimately be able to compete.
 
wadio said:
Talk radio has a short shelf life - when a show ends it's over and on to the next. There's always breaking news or a new story to talk about. Even when there's not much going on there's the expectation by the listener that something might happen at any moment.
Click to expand...

I think that's one of the limitations to the format the way its being done. It's very disposable. Therefore, why listen if there's really nothing of substance? I think this format has to evolve beyond the easy crutch, which is jumping on the news of now. We're starting to see that constantly focusing on now leaves out all of the perspective. Also, when nothing new happens in the hot topic of now, the talk shows end up regurgitating the same stuff, trying to make news where none exists. That can be a dangerous thing when you have the media being accused of fake news.
 
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