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Tornado Coverage

M

Media Mogul

I will have to admit, the tornado coverage on KRLD was some of the best I have heard on radio yesterday. Brad Barton did a great job keeping people informed, and the others on the ground did a great job as well. I will admit that the constant beeping in the background seemed like overkill at times, but other than that, I was very informed.

On the other side of the coin, while the tornado was on the ground, I brought up the listen online feature from WBAP, and they were running Mark Levin. Unless there is something that kept the local coverage from being streamed, I would say that they should be ashamed of themselves.

I know a lot of people bash KRLD, but yesterday they really came through. Congrats guys...
 
I completely agree with you. What I heard yesterday on KRLD is the way that Brad Barton used to do it back in the late 90's. Brad is damn good at what he does, but I can't help but to wonder if management has held him back from doing what he wanted during some past weather emergencies? They even had Tom Hale there yesterday as well. I've never seen anything quite like that before either. Does anyone know what Tom Hale normally does around there?
 
Radiowise KRLD did indeed do a fantastic job. Both Brad and Tom were on duty since 3am in the morning predicting what eventually took place. It illustrates even more why DFW needs an all news station. KRLD stood out and congrats to them.
 
WBAP did EAS break-in bulletin weather alerts, and KSCS did the same.

R
 
When you are "The News and Talk of Texas" and there is a tornado carving a swath of damage across your city of license during rush hour, you should probably be doing a little more than sporadic bulletins. KRLD from yesterday is an example of what should be happening when there is a life threatening situation. If I was general manager of a Cumulus or ABC cluster, would I be crazy for insisting that a tornado warning for Tarrant or Dallas Counties get wall-to-wall coverage on ALL stations? (be it locally produced or a television simulcast)
 
Major Kudos to RLD for their work yesterday. I had to travel to downtown just as the storm was approaching, and their reports told me what I needed to avoid, and where the storm was. I got to my destination just before the storm hit downtown.

And speaking of coverage... does anyone remember the story from several years ago in which a Dallas station PD told his team not to interrupt music because of a tornado warning.. and the on-air did anyway? I want to say it was the old KZEW or KZPS, but I don't remember...

John
 
Did the Rangers play last night? If so, did KRLD put weather before the game? WBAP has gone to complete crap. They are a big joke when it comes to news and informing the community. It does surprise me that they can't preempt a national talk show to cover the weather. Yesterday was an unusual occurance due to the fact that we were under a high risk for severe weather which doesn't happen that often. The storms were moving so quickly and doing so much damage that you would have had to cover them non stop in order to properly inform those who especially happened to be out on the roads.
 
Ditto on the compliments to krld. I flipped it on as I was driving into Irving on 183 and the sirens were going off. The team coverage was really tight and together. I flipped over to the other leading brand, and you're right... some storyteller talking about a girl who strained her voice from cheerleading. Only when I got back into the car about an hour later did I hear anything about the wx. KRLD had been with it from the get-go.
 
Gordon said:
Did the Rangers play last night? If so, did KRLD put weather before the game? WBAP has gone to complete crap. They are a big joke when it comes to news and informing the community. It does surprise me that they can't preempt a national talk show to cover the weather. Yesterday was an unusual occurance due to the fact that we were under a high risk for severe weather which doesn't happen that often. The storms were moving so quickly and doing so much damage that you would have had to cover them non stop in order to properly inform those who especially happened to be out on the roads.
Click to expand...

They played on the West Coast. It was a 9:05 start.
 
John: It was Ken Baker formerly of News talk'57 Wfaa_AM who ws told by the GM after he read the Tornado warning "We are a music station,NOT a news station" Ken quit a minute later on the air.
Ken was on the Old KZEW when it was "Warm 97"

Yeah Considering there are good reporters on WBAP, they blew it. I am surprised Tyler Cox allowed that to happen.
 
Seems like I post this every Spring, but Brad Barton's severe weather coverage is probably as good or better than anyone's in the country (I suspect better). As far as I could tell, Tom Hale was there to help Brad catch his breath. And he did so nicely, I thought.

Mark Watkins sounded top notch as usual.

Honestly, why bother tuning around to the other AM's in town during severe weather. Brad Barton is the standard. I feel absolutely no need to check his competition. He leaves no room for anyone to make a serious challenge to his coverage.
 
OK folks allow me to chime in with this thought.

Since WBAP (and KSCS) are the LP EAS stations in North Texas, it may be a bit tricky for them to do wall-to-wall weather coverage. WBAP would have to find a way to do this, and still transmit EAS alerts. If they discontinue use of EAS in favor of broadcasting WTW weather coverage, all the participating stations monitoring WBAP for EAS relays would essentially be screwed. Yes I am aware NOAA weather radio can be monitored for weather bulletins, but that presents a whole different onset of problems as well. The mechanical voice NOAA uses for EAS weather alerts sucks. I don’t care how good NOAA’s “Perfect Paul” system may be touted as; the monotone delivery does not work well on terra radio.

I do agree Brad is one of the best, and KRLD should be so lucky they have him. I wonder what would happen if WBAP offered him a better deal than whatever KRLD gives?

R
 
You guys were actually lucky.

It wasn't the "monsterous disaster" the Weather Channel had predicted in it's series It Could Happen Tommorow(it missed downtown Dallas and from the looks of damage it wasn't any higher then a EF1-EF2). Which means something really bad could still Happen Tommorow.
 
I am outside of the area but have family out there for the races this weekend. I was not able to listen to any of the stations but I was going back and forth between the online streams for the Dallas TV stations. I was very impressed with the Fox affiliate . They had not just a video stream but a live chat going on at the same time and the people on TV were using the reports coming in via the chat session in their coverage, That was until the stream cut out because of what might have been a station outage according to what I read in the chat. All the TV stations I could see were also doing a great job.

Shame on a legendary station, WBAP, not giving the situation the coverage it deserved.
 
Robert before the "cuts" WBAP COULD AND DID handle wall to wall weather coverage,plus transmit the EAS alerts. Then the suits made the cuts,and if its on a friday evening and weekend,your primary reporters are off duty,thus you have skeleton crew of part timers from Metro.
WBAP will defend themselves and say events like these are rare,and we alert our listeners when information becomes available( translated--other services=Nat. Weather Service,)therefore it is not cost effective to have a full staff on duty. Another reason why radio has gotten worse and thankfully there are a few bright Gems like KRLD that knows how to serve the public.
 
Kplex..

Thanks for the heads up! I had no idea about all that. :(

That's just stupid of WBAP. There is NO excuse for that corporate cost cutting BS! :mad: This is a public safety issue, for crying out loud!

R
 
I am surprised that the FMs in the various clusters didn't simulcast their AM News/Talkers (where applicable) or whoever they have a TV affiliation deal with and have WTW weather.

This was a tornado during rush hour and electrical outages are prevalent, thus many had no TV information. These are times that the public service aspect should take precedence.

KRLD did a tremendous job, but WBAP was just pathetic for a News/Talker.
 
The current state of affairs at WBAP is quite frustrating. I'm a radio and breaking news junkie. If anything happens after the noon hour, however, I find myself turnnig to sources other than WBAP.
 
Robert Bass said:
OK folks allow me to chime in with this thought.

Since WBAP (and KSCS) are the LP EAS stations in North Texas, it may be a bit tricky for them to do wall-to-wall weather coverage. WBAP would have to find a way to do this, and still transmit EAS alerts. If they discontinue use of EAS in favor of broadcasting WTW weather coverage, all the participating stations monitoring WBAP for EAS relays would essentially be screwed. Yes I am aware NOAA weather radio can be monitored for weather bulletins, but that presents a whole different onset of problems as well. The mechanical voice NOAA uses for EAS weather alerts sucks. I don’t care how good NOAA’s “Perfect Paul” system may be touted as; the monotone delivery does not work well on terra radio.

I do agree Brad is one of the best, and KRLD should be so lucky they have him. I wonder what would happen if WBAP offered him a better deal than whatever KRLD gives?

R
Click to expand...

Yes Robert, i was thinking the same thing about WBAP and EAS. The way they do EAS it sounds very canned and when precious minutes even seconds are at hand those lengthy EAS intros can be a nuisance.

I remember KSCS had to do that EAS format too while The Wolf was cutting in IMMEDIATELY.

Yes KRLD was doing a great job. I remember i just got home and the storms were just arriving in Dallas Country where i live. Brad immediately got the info out thast the sorms were headed to Dallas. Good Job!
 
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