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Terre Haute

N

nuffsaid

So .. how are things going in Terre Haute since Crossroads sold out and the various changes have taken place. Was there a replacement for Doc on the oldies station. Party Marty still going strong?
 
nuffsaid said:
So .. how are things going in Terre Haute since Crossroads sold out and the various changes have taken place. Was there a replacement for Doc on the oldies station. Party Marty still going strong?
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Nothing really exciting. A lot of voice tracking from Midwest, and Emmis is still running Bob-FM jockless. If my math is right, Terre Haute has just 2 live midday and 2 live night shows. That is pretty sad.

Not sure enough people in Terre Haute actually care about WAXI anymore, as they are completely focused on Parke County, as they should be.

Surprised nobody has mentioned the very quiet departure of Ed Zeppelin from Emmis. Great guy with an awesome set of pipes. I sure miss hearing him on The River.
 
Last I saw Ed Zepplin was fishing and playing piano. Julie Henricks apparently joined Midwest Communications for weekends at 100.7 Mix-fm. I listened to 104.9 WAXI today, because I was curious what they were doing. All I heard was a feed that was the True Oldies Channel, or they kept saying the TOC. Not sure what syndicator runs that feed, but that is what I heard. Doc Long went off to sell cars at Honda. There is lots of voice-tracking for sure going on in the market. Hi-99 still remains with the most live DJ's, although Blair Garner is no longer on overnights there in the syndicated realm.
 
True Oldies Channel is syndicated by Cumulus Media.

I guess the two live night shows are on WTHI-FM and WMGI? They sure weren't live the last time I listened to Q102.7 at night...
 
Sad to hear there are so few live jocks on the air in this community. There were some good folks on the air in TH over the past ten - fifteen years. Not sure if the economy or greed in the community is killing "live" radio.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
True Oldies Channel is syndicated by Cumulus Media.

I guess the two live night shows are on WTHI-FM and WMGI? They sure weren't live the last time I listened to Q102.7 at night...
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Bingo.

Local Jocks for Midwest (4 FMs): 8
Local Jocks for Emmis (3 FMs): 7

Remember the days when each station in the market had 7 or 8 jocks per station, not cluster? I guess this trend is certainly not exclusive to Terre Haute, still it is sad.
 
I don't think it's ever going to go back. There are less and less voices on the air. I am not even sure that very many stations will employ local voicetrackers. Just have your staff work on as many stations as possible, so it doesn't cost you any extra money, or have somebody from one of your out of market stations do it for variety. Somebody told me that CNN said maybe last year that radio DJ was one of the ten professions that could be extinct in the next 5 years? I don't know that I would go that far, but there are less and less DJ's all the time. 15 jocks between two companies that own several stations? Sounds like the new norm to me. They could probably even eliminate a few of those. There will probably be a standard on most stations of two voices, and that is about it. The market leaders will keep more staff, but if some leave you never know if they will replace them or not. If you look there still is no replacement for Ed Zepplin on the River, and it would not be surprising to either not see one, or at least not see one for awhile.
 
the new company that bought waxi is more known for "board-ops" that aren't treated very well. the river wasn't much of an innovator
 
Midwest is cheap outfit. Mixed up FM is now running only at 40% power output. None of the Midwest stations have any back up transmitters. The 100.7 transmitter site is horrible, and the studio is a hay wired mess. Often their stations are off the air with technical problems.
 
I noticed the 1300 Khz. Midwest frequency has been off the air for the past several days or at least I can't hear it in the Terre Haute city limits. Emmis Communications, 99.9 Mhz., 105.5 Mhz., 92.7 Mhz. and 1130 Khz. have made huge investments in their physical plant in Terre Haute and Brazil. Although I am not particularly fond of any of the Emmis formats on a personal basis, they should be congratulated for the thousands of dollars they have put in the community. I know that more investments are to follow, also.

We still have the old Mike Rice, Contemporary Media, stations which were awarded to different identities by the F.C.C. and are still off the air. These frequencies are 640 Khz., 1230 Khz. and 107.5 Mhz. Meanwhile WFIU, the NPR affiliate, operates from a translator that has a very slight static on their signal 7 miles away.

The Midwest 102.7 Mhz. frequency is making the same mistake that some others have tried over the past few decades by trying to compete against HI-99. WTHI HI-99 radio seems stronger than ever now.

Word Power runs two stations that are religious in nature and Covenant Networks runs a Catholic religious station. Both of these stations run local programming as well. WCRT is a religious station run by the Illinois Bible Institute that plays contemporary Christian music and the other two stations are run by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Indiana State University. Both of these educational stations are operated by students.

WAXI is really not officially in the Terre Haute market but we sure welcome the new owner who has also done a lot of physical improvements to his facility. I am sure everyone wishes Dave Crooks good luck in operating WAXI!
 
Rosebud3 said:
WAXI is really not officially in the Terre Haute market but we sure welcome the new owner who has also done a lot of physical improvements to his facility. I am sure everyone wishes Dave Crooks good luck in operating WAXI!
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Actually, Arbitron does consider it to be in the Terre Haute market. As to everyone wishing Crooks good luck, let's see a show of hands.
 
Arbitron must have changed WAXI to the Terre Haute market as I have been out of the broadcast business for several years. Dave Crooks took a gamble in buying WAXI and taking the station more local to Parke and Vermillion counties. After all the changes in this station over the years and the financial risk that Dave Crooks is taking, yes he deserves applause.
 
nuffsaid said:
What do you feel it would take for one of the smaller stations to pull ahead of the other marginal players?
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Terre Haute going forward will be all about Emmis and Midwest, and that's it. WAXI, WNDI, WMMC, and WCBH will continue to serve their local communities and be fine.

It's a real shame WCBH is just a little too far away to challenge WMGI. Talk about a station that is ripe for someone to come in and take some big shares away. Okay morning show, but terrible the rest of their day, and their playlist (especially gold selections) are way off. Might be the only Top 40 in America still pounding Finger Eleven in the power golds.
 
Is there no one in the market that can put a strong front up against MGI? I listened to their stream and they are all over the place.
 
The golds are all over the place. It must be the research they are getting back from Club 100.7 Members. Terre Haute always leaned a little rock with some of the golds back in my day at WMGI, but you have to keep up with the times. Finger Eleven needs to go, along with some others that I have heard. This is a perfect example of radio stations not valuing music directors anymore. It's probably the last thing that the station worries about. Radio people are spread very thin in 2013. Ray J "Sexy Can I" is a song that has no business on as gold in my opinion. That one concert night at the Indiana Theater does not a "Gold" song make. Cromwell doesn't seem real serious about challenging WMGI with their basis of operations being in Mattoon. It's a bit of a haul for their salespeople to make sales in the Terre Haute market. Two big companies in the market with the only competition being satellite radio, Spotify, I-tunes playlists, and internet radio. Those are your options. If terrestrial radio does not give you what you want in 2013, you always have the option to flip away from it all together. It's what a lot of people have done. Join the revolution.
 
I felt the same way about the muisic on WMGI. If they could clean up the music, work on their imaging, put some local talent on the air and work on the content they could be a good radio station. My understanding is that MidWest is not known for spending any money on promotion and very little on talent and research! You cannot look at a job opportunity listing and not see an ad for sellers. How can one company go through so many people but not find a few who are keepers?
 
Gosh...so much talk about Terre Haute....I know there's a "Who went where?" thread, but it's sorta forgotten.
Does anyone remember Mark Lange, who went to Terre Haute at WBOW in the early 1970s?

He was a Valparaiso Technical Institute Alum who was at WNWI 'way back in the early 70s.

And can anyone help me contact him?
 
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