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The"new" WDBO

T

Tom Daren

I have two words for the new "News 96.5".......OVER PRODUCED!

EVERYTHING has an intro....EVERYTHING has a music bed...EVERYTHING has a sounder, and there's a produced promo every time you turn around. I get the feeling that human beings are there just to have something to fill in the gaps between the produced elements.

And what's up with Jim Grant the traffic reporter? Here's a guy with a great set of pipes who has been reduced to sounding like he's auditioning for auctioneer school, or if he doesn't spit out the traffic report in the allotted time, a trap door will open and swallow him up!

I could be wrong, but it sounds to me as if someone came rushing into a staff meeting and uttered that fatal phrase, "We're going to lower the demographics!"

If that's true......God help us.
 
What I heard the other morning was a joke. 3 national stories at the top I cared nothing about, then a couple of readers on local stories, and no mention of the venues/soccer debate that was the lead on TV and the front page of the paper. That's what happens when all out of towners are brought in with no sense of Orlando's history and what is important around here.
 
I agree, I find the station way overproduced and annoying. I live in Daytona Beach and tune into WOKV in my car and online because of the format. News 96.5's voice over production sounds like a monster truck show announcer. "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!" I also find the branding off, considering they still carry a news/talk format. "The three big things you need to know" is usually a waste of broadcast. The majority of the time they are sticking the weather forecast as one of the things. In addition, constantly cutting in on broadcasts with "red alert traffic advisory's" is very aggravating! Nine times out of ten they end up going to break right after they give the advisory. And, do you really need traffic at night, unless there is a urgent advisory? I also don't care for the Star Trek red alert traffic sounder. I think it sounds second rate. Finally, I find it insulting they don't acknowledge the stations call letters, given the stations history.
 
What else, exactly, would you like to hear which would also get them a steady climb in the book? 3.5, 3.8, 4.3, 5.8. There isn't a smart radio executive on the planet who would mess with those numbers.
 
Call letters mean nothing to the average listener. There are some limited examples of relevancy <WLW, WSM etc> but for the most part they mean nothing anymore.
 
I concur with those who think that WDBO is waaaay overproduced. It may "work" in the markets they are in, but they have no serious news-talk competition in those PPM markets (Jax, Atlanta, where their only competitor has no signal). In Orlando, they trail far behind WTKS.

Where I live now, I have a choice between Cincinnati and Dayton stations, and I just can't listen to WHIO for more than a break or two before I have to go. There's barely room for any news after the news readers cvram in all the required positioning crap (and that's over and above all the crash-zip-boom produced elements).

Before the Dickeys destroyed it, KGO was a great example of a talk station you could listen to without being bombarded with ten bags of excrement in a five pound bag. And they were #1 for DECADES. Talke a lesson from history...back the **** off this BS.
 
Did anyone notice the call letters and station ID given on the Family Guy video is WQHT 97.1 although New York is never mentioned. Interesting.
 
Troublemaan said:
I concur with those who think that WDBO is waaaay overproduced. It may "work" in the markets they are in, but they have no serious news-talk competition in those PPM markets (Jax, Atlanta, where their only competitor has no signal). In Orlando, they trail far behind WTKS.

Where I live now, I have a choice between Cincinnati and Dayton stations, and I just can't listen to WHIO for more than a break or two before I have to go. There's barely room for any news after the news readers cvram in all the required positioning crap (and that's over and above all the crash-zip-boom produced elements).

Before the Dickeys destroyed it, KGO was a great example of a talk station you could listen to without being bombarded with ten bags of excrement in a five pound bag. And they were #1 for DECADES. Talke a lesson from history...back the **** off this BS.
Click to expand...

Of course, WHIO is a consistent #2 in the market with over an 8 share, but let's not let facts confuse the opinions here...
 
One final thought...

What worked 20 or 30 years ago doesn't necessarily work today.

So often talk stations that engage in the modern day positioning and imaging will get complaints that "your anchors talk too fast" or "you interrupt too often", "you promote too much". Or, the one I laugh at: "You should be more like NPR"...

There's a difference between commercial radio and public radio. Commercial radio has to deal with ratings and an audience with ever shrinking attention spans. They're "casual" listeners. The public radio listener is a much different animal. Which is why the two approaches are different.

Commercial talk radio also deals with two very different types of listeners...the ones who listen for hours at home or at the office, and those who are in their cars. Which type is the biggest part of the audience? If you said the ones who listen for hours at a time...you're wrong. The "casual" listeners are the biggest group.

Same with some forms of music radio. It's always the people who listen for 8 hours a day in the office who complain the most about repeats. But radio survives and thrives with the people who listen for 15-20 minutes, then come back later. They rarely notice repeats. They just know if they tune in station "x", they'll hear their favorite song. It's "occasions of listening", not "length of listening session" that really creates the numbers.

Likewise, these casual listeners know if they tune in talk station, "X", they'll get the news in a capsule form that will tell them what they "need to know" about a story, get the weather and traffic, maybe give them a few minutes of their favorite host. They tune away...and come back later. Some of the "whiz bang" imaging is often just there to draw their attention to the radio.

Does any station try to dissuade people from listening to a program for hours? Of course not. But for a talk station, any talk station to succeed, IMHO...you need to know who the listeners are and program to their needs today. Not "the way it was done" way back when.
 
Jason Roberts said:
Troublemaan said:
I concur with those who think that WDBO is waaaay overproduced. It may "work" in the markets they are in, but they have no serious news-talk competition in those PPM markets (Jax, Atlanta, where their only competitor has no signal). In Orlando, they trail far behind WTKS.

Where I live now, I have a choice between Cincinnati and Dayton stations, and I just can't listen to WHIO for more than a break or two before I have to go. There's barely room for any news after the news readers cvram in all the required positioning crap (and that's over and above all the crash-zip-boom produced elements).

Before the Dickeys destroyed it, KGO was a great example of a talk station you could listen to without being bombarded with ten bags of excrement in a five pound bag. And they were #1 for DECADES. Talke a lesson from history...back the **** off this BS.
Click to expand...

Of course, WHIO is a consistent #2 in the market with over an 8 share, but let's not let facts confuse the opinions here...
Click to expand...

The imaging may be a bit much, but the typical listener CAN depend on WHIO. I've had many occasions to monitor WHIO during severe weather, and they are right on top of it. The problem with the "crash-zip-boom" over the top imaging on WDBO, is it's all flash, and no substance. Hey, maybe Cox could send Jason Roberts to Orlando to straighten things out. At this point, I'd even settle for Darryl Bauer.
 
Troublemaan said:
Before the Dickeys destroyed it, KGO was a great example of a talk station you could listen to without being bombarded with ten bags of excrement in a five pound bag. And they were #1 for DECADES. Talke a lesson from history...back the **** off this BS.
Click to expand...

Take a lesson from reality:

KGO started declining under ABC, and was decimated under Citadel. And the Citadel declines were in part due to failure to keep the format relative, most were due to the introduction of the PPM and management's decision to blame Arbitron rather than fix the underlying issues.

KGO was already "dead" when Cumulus got it.
 
Jason...I consider you a friend and a darn good newscaster (and PD back in the day), but, re WHIO...you have no competitor in the market. I would like to see how a station with production values akin to KGO would fare against WHIO given the same quality of talk programming and news depth.

I maintain that posirtioning is good, and overpositioning makes any station sound overbearing. Especially in regards to WHIO (and, by extention, the other Cox news-talk stations, but especially WHIO due to the need to promote the AM and FM). Take your typical top-hour break and just count the seconds of positioning stuff vs. actual content. That tells the story.

Again, not a content problem...your news content is way superior to what passes for news on, say, WLW.
 
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