Valentine's Snow Storm

[NigelWick]

If WARM is going to do news at a non traditonal time, it has to let people know it's there. So far, citadel has done a pee-poor job of doing that. Another poster brought up WABC. It never made a secret of news at :55.

 

[joewhlm]

Seldom do I post, but I will come out of the closet on this one as a station owner and one who anchors the morning show on News Radio 930 WHLM, Bloomsburg.

I believe broadcasters did a better job of keeping listeners informed prior to de-regulation, downsizing and the installation of todays unattended on air computer systems.

However, I can tell you first hand that PEMA, The State Police and Penn Dot dropped the communication ball on the Valentine’s day storm and what’s even worse is they continued to drop the ball in the succeeding days!

Thursday morning, Feb 15th, we called state police to get an update…they would not release any information. We put our local Chief of Police on the air live asking him to please intercede as we were receiving reports of eyewitness accounts of highway issues. He got nothing from State Police.

We could not get information from Penn Dot…they said we would have to wait for information. By Thursday afternoon it was ridiculous. Our AM station went into local sports programming. I hopped on our More Music FM station with the official information at 5:10 PM with faxed information we got at 5:03 PM that at 5 PM Penn Dot was closing the interstates!

I took my cell phone number on the air looking for requests from people stranded in traffic. While I did take requests and actually played them, I was really looking for information as to the conditions of the roads. Information that I taped and used on the morning show on our AM station for Friday morning.

Now get this, at 6:10 AM Friday morning Feb 16th, I got a call from one of our listeners that tunes to us for local news then switches over to Froggy. We reported that I-80 was closed; she called us and wanted Froggy’s phone number to tell them that in fact I-80 was still closed and not opened as she heard on Froggy!

I got a Penn Dot worker on the phone at 6:20 am…they would not give us any information and said we would have to wait for the PR people to get in office at around 8:30 Friday morning!

I will not go into details here but since I was at the second day hearings in Harrisburg I can report to you that the communication failure between State Police, PEMA and Penn Dot was monumental. This communication breakdown subsequently meant that EAS was rendered useless as any EAS announcements were well after the fact.

In my opinion, it would be unfair to point the judgment finger at radio operators over This Valentines day debacle.

Joe

 

[NigelWick]

Joe, it seems like you made a good faith effort to actually gather information. I heard too much about Scranton/WB radio waiting to get things handed to them. WB's mayor held two news conferences. Did any radio reporters attend? Did anyone get out of their cubicles to look around and actually SEE what was going on out there? It was lots of complaining after-the-fact.

 

[emo474]

Well I've given WARM a week now, and I get nothing. Today, another snow storm, sub zero temperatures, terrible road conditions and school closings. I listened from 6:30 to 7:15, all the way into work. Not one weather forcast, road report or even a temperature. But I do know that this station is broadcasting from "THE MOTHER SHIP STUDIOS!" Yes, WARM must be on the Mother Ship, because it was no contact with Northeast Pennsylvania and what's going on here. In the past two days I've heard Scott Shannon do one bit.. about a guy & a donkey in a hotel...everything else sounds like pre recorded liners. There is no personality there at all. Is Scoot doing double duty on another satellite channel, cause he's mailing this show in.

 

[PhilGalasso]

Well I've given WARM a week now, and I get nothing. Today, another snow storm, sub zero temperatures, terrible road conditions and school closings. I listened from 6:30 to 7:15, all the way into work. Not one weather forcast, road report or even a temperature.

That's because the local news, weather, and school closing information air at :20 past each hour in morning drive.

 

[emo474]

Yes, I can understand if it was 80 degrees outside and a sunny Summer day, but then I know if I tune in at 30 past the hour I will get nothing... just music and liners for the next 50 minutes. I know you're trying to become a force in this area again and it's a daunting task, but I have five other stations I can turn to where I know I have a good chance at getting road conditions, a brief weather statement and school closings. When we create a station image, we must realize it will stick with listeners for a long time. When you said, WARM is a force to be reckoned with, you shurely coudn't mean for News, Sports and Weather... and it's not a place to tune for engaging personalities. The music "true oldies" is a good concept and I applaud you for choosing an appropriate format. It's just that there are so many ways to blow you guys out of that water it's not funny. Still I have faith in you.... it's a big hill to climb, you can do it!

 

[NigelWick]

It's better than nothing and on par with WILK.

 

[normhill007]

This may be substantially dated as I have sunny skies and 85 degrees expected today, but the snowstorm debacle piqued my interest. I did the first real traffic reporting on WARM in the mid-late 80's and was given a company car (good old Thrifty Rent A Car-Had a Chrysler New Yorker that the news dept coveted and couldn't touch)..Anyway, I did it kicking and screaming against it and it turned into something that took a life of it's own..There wasn't a day that I wasn't on the road actually telling what conditions were..That includes some God awful Snowstorms. I was on the scene minutes after Penny Lindgren and 22's van got nailed by a semi..I would stumble across fatal fires and car wrecks long before the tv stations heard it on the scanner. At least once a week I would call the newsroom and have them tell Harry to get me on FAST. I would joke about what Mr. Donut I was at. What better way to find out what traffic conditions were over a fairly large area. And many times listeners would tell me of times that I had saved them time because of some wreck or the annual Route 81 parking lot fiascos. One of those backups had me driving from the Avoca on Ramp to the Kidder Street exit on the right shoulder of the road. A bunch of nice people pulled to the left enough for me to make it. WARM still had respect. Then somebody decided I could do a better job in studio by calling every police department in the area every half hour. That was a real joke.