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Traffic And Weather Together!

Well, say what you will about him, but he gets and A+ for finding a way to stay on the air whether as an employee, buying time or whatever. From a listener point of view he sounds good on the air. Seems like a guy who busts his rear to make it in radio.

I am glad you enjoy his work. I think he has a constant negative tone, seems to enjoy reporting when a Boston team losses and when athletes run into personal problems. Cuddy has never busted his rear in fact anyone who covers Boston sports on a regular basis would call him lazy. He regularly shows up at Celtics and Bruins games late in the game walks into the locker room or press conference grabs a few sound cuts and leaves. Years ago he attached his microphone to a broom stick so he could get his mic close to to the athlete talking while he stood back and let the other reporters ask questions.

Seems fairly common that that the people who strike out on their own are are hard to work with - but when your livelyhood is on the line there isn't a lot of time for BS.

Not saying that Tom Cuddy is in this league, but Bill Gate and Steve Jobs were both well known to be total, miserable A**H**** to work with and for but it seems to have served them both well.

The Bill Gates Steve Jobs analogy is one of the most ridiculous comments I have read on here in a while. What does BS have to do with being a miserable, reprehensible arrogant person who goes out of his way to be rude to the people around him. Steve Jobs was tough with the people who worked for him. Cuddy is just a complete jerk to the people he works with and around who have no impact on his work or his lively hood. Trust me, my opinion is shared by virtually everyone who has come in contact with Cuddy.


[/quote]
 
I've never heard one person say a good word about Tom Cuddy. Gil Santos who may be the nicest man in the world has nothing nice to say about the man.
 
Bos79 said:
I've never heard one person say a good word about Tom Cuddy. Gil Santos who may be the nicest man in the world has nothing nice to say about the man.
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Thank you.

I could say more but I think I made my point and anything else I would post would be redundant except to say I worked with Santos for 7 years and to say he is a diplomat is an understatement. I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone except one colleague. The same could be said for several others in the BZ newsroom.
 
Back to the original topic, I agree that it is an interesting move for 'BZ to do traffic and weather together on the 3's. And it would even be more interesting if they started doing transit delays as well.

The only downfall to this all is that you can no longer time your day to the station. I used to use them as a timer knowing that there was news at the top and the bottom of the hour, traffic on the 3's, weather on the 10's, sports at :15 and :45 after the hour. Not to mention specialty reports at :25 and :55 after the hour as well.
 
Retro said:
The only downfall to this all is that you can no longer time your day to the station. I used to use them as a timer knowing that there was news at the top and the bottom of the hour, traffic on the 3's, weather on the 10's, sports at :15 and :45 after the hour. Not to mention specialty reports at :25 and :55 after the hour as well.
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I don't understand why sports can't still run sports at :15 and :45. The weather part of the :13 and :43 traffic and weather together on the threes always seems to end very close to :15 or :45. Don't understand the advantage to running sports at :11 and :41, which is where it seems to have landed. In my mind :15 and :45 are more memorable--sort of something around which you are more likely to plan your day.
 
I'm guessing they want to run spots surrounding traffic/weather. But still, they could run sports at :16 and :46 -- weather usually doesn't last more than 30 seconds.
 
TSBench said:
He also worked as a stringer for Enterprise Radio and UPI. Around 1983, he landed a regular morning sports gig during Matty in the Morning.

I think I remember hearing him doing sports on WARA Attleboro in the late 70s-early 80's. I thought at the time it was a staff gig, but was WARA just one of the stations taking his feed?

One of my DJs always used to put on his 'Joe Radio' voice and mimic him as "Your Buddy....Tom Cuddy"
I don't think it was meant as a compliment.

Regards,
TSB
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I am almost positive Cuddy was never an employee of WARA. There was another Tom Cuddy who worked in Southeastern Mass Radio and in Providence as a DJ and PD. He was either at one time the PD of PRO FM or HJY. That Tom Cuddy went to NYC and had a long successful run as PD at WPLJ and I believe he is now the PD at WOR.
 
Retro said:
And it would even be more interesting if they started doing transit delays as well.
Click to expand...

I'm listening on-line to Bloomberg 1200 and they are now including the trains in their traffic and weather reports.
 
To respond to the hijacked part of the thread... Maybe human behavior has changed since I left the business, but I don't think so. Radio ratings actually measure Volume of ListenING. One listener who listens for ten hours is identical to ten listeners who listen for one hour. Volume, get it? Number of listenERS is of less than secondary importance for most advertisers.

The all-news format produces short listening spans (on average), so you need huge numbers of listeners to add up those ratings points. ("Give us 22 Minutes...) Talk shows are at the opposite end, and produce very long listening spans, (frequently hours and hours) so it takes fewer listeners to get to those identical ratings levels.

Finally (and the tutorial ends here) nights are the worst time period for radio listening (except overnights, obviously, which is the dead zone), so it is very hard to get "huge volumes of listeners" between 7pm and midnight. Voila: from a ratings perspective you go with a (news) compatible talk show in the evening, which costs 1/4 the amount to produce and which can deliver some decent numbers to boot.

Yes, in New York and car-obsessed L.A. There are enough evening listeners to make it worthwhile to continue doing all-news, but from an economic standpoint - almost nowhere else. A news-compatible talk show and a decent producer can jump on a developing story and have a credible presence while newsroom personnel get their act together and, if necessary, call in additional resources.

We had Larry Glick in late evening while I was there. His numbers were gigantic (40+ shares) so we didn't screw around with him, but we always worried that something would break while he was on the air, and the newsroom during his hours consisted of one reader, usually the weakest in the staff since we marshaled the bigger guns for the more important time periods.
 
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