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WABC 100% syndicated
- Thread starter OC3
- Start date
Backwards perspective.OC3 said:
These hosts started local in New York and went on to syndication after proving themselves capable of being local on the station.
Imus WNBC - local, later syndicated
Rush, WABC - local, then syndicated.
Hannity, WABC - local, then syndicated
Levin, WABC - local, then syndicated.
etc.
So, the way I see it, those stations carrying the hosts, are WABC wannabes and are able to have New York quality hosts on their station in smaller markets for pennies it would costs if the hosts were there.
And Congratulations to the syndicated hosts for proving themselves worthy of syndication.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
I hope they're proud of themselves! This is why talk radio in NYC is the worst in the nation! No local talk in NYC, market #1? Disgraceful! No competition? More disgraceful!
WEMP was expected to be a mostly local news/talk outlet. This was what ad agencies and the staffers Merlin recruited from WINS were led to believe. We know what happened, no need to elaborate.
WABC clearly benefitted from the Merlin scam! I've said it before, WOR and WNYM are not competitors, just knock-offs of WABC! A well programmed and executed all or mostly local news/talk outlet would severely impact WABC and its knock-offs! Unfortunately, no one has the stones to do it!
WEMP was expected to be a mostly local news/talk outlet. This was what ad agencies and the staffers Merlin recruited from WINS were led to believe. We know what happened, no need to elaborate.
WABC clearly benefitted from the Merlin scam! I've said it before, WOR and WNYM are not competitors, just knock-offs of WABC! A well programmed and executed all or mostly local news/talk outlet would severely impact WABC and its knock-offs! Unfortunately, no one has the stones to do it!
radioguy39nj said:
Well there's WNYC. If you want local, issues-based talk, complete with guests who are making the local news on both sides of the political spectrum, I don't think you can beat Brian Lehrer. Along with Leonard Lopate, you've got some top-notch local talk for a good chunk of the day M-F.
Theater of My Mind said:
That's the thing. Ever time this discussion comes up, how there's "no local talk in NYC," we find out just how wrong that statement is. There's LOTS of local talk. If you combine the offerings of WOR, WNYM, and WNYC, you get a full day of live and local talk, with lots of diversity on the issues. Then expand the view beyond the city signals to the suburbs of LI, NJ, Westchester, and Jersey Shore, and all of a sudden the local talk choices explode. Then add WFAN, which is a local sports talk station. There is lots of local talk and lots of competition. With all the choices available, no single talk station will ever again be in the NYC ratings Top 10. Especially if they're all on AM. And it's tough to make money with a station that's not in the Top 10.
WABC's weekly cume has fallen to below a million listeners in recent months and currently sits just above that significant number.
The 50-kw AM station ranks way down in the overall ratings. Starting a new station to split that shrinking and less-than-desirable demo audience, and whatever ad revenue, might just produce two big losers no matter how well the new challenger was programmed.
Merlin never intended to go after the older white male politically Right-leaning WABC AM audience. Remember it was younger females that the advertisers were most interested in, and FM was the way to reach them with spoken word programming. Merlin had no intention of having an impact on WABC, or WOR.
Just for the record, Rush's syndicated show started when he came to NYC, but WABC didn't carry it. In the beginning, Rush did 10-noon on WABC, and then did two or three hours for syndication. His deal with ABC included a trade for the use of the studio and satellite feed for the syndicated show. The deal was put together by a former ABC executive who had heard Rush on a Sacremento station, and thought his, then, lighter and more humerous approach to Conservative Talk might work better across the country than some of the more hard-core urban talkers of the time.
TimeIsTight said:
I agree. What we're witnessing here is the long, slow death of AM radio. In most markets, like Dallas and DC, there are no AM stations at all in the Top 10. In NYC, you still have WINS. AM radio was given a second lease on life in the early 90s thanks to the explosion of conservative talk. But now, 20 years later, that audience is very old and starting to disappear. It's not being replaced by the next generation. This isn't a programming issue. This is a social issue. AM radio is going away, and spending lots of money hiring live & local talk hosts on those big powerful AMs is not going to reverse the trend. So what Cumulus is doing is taking the combined audience of its big powerful AMs and selling it to advertisers as a package. That seems to be the plan, and the hope is it can keep those stations on the air for a few more years. But live & local talk is not going to be the future of AM, because there really is no future in AM radio.
I find it pretty ironic that people are complaining about the loss of local, individual voices on conservative talk radio.
Republicans are the champions of corporate America, so the fact that so many of the talk hosts get syndicated by radio's biggest corporations, and the fact that all the conservative talk stations in town run this stuff as a way to cut costs and maximize profits, are the quintessential results of their own ideology.
If you're not satisfied with the results then I suppose you could take a step back and ask yourself if those cherished right-wing values that led to them are really working out the way you like after all.
Republicans are the champions of corporate America, so the fact that so many of the talk hosts get syndicated by radio's biggest corporations, and the fact that all the conservative talk stations in town run this stuff as a way to cut costs and maximize profits, are the quintessential results of their own ideology.
If you're not satisfied with the results then I suppose you could take a step back and ask yourself if those cherished right-wing values that led to them are really working out the way you like after all.
TimeIsTight said:
The switch from AQH based ratings to cume in PPM markets has really hurt talk radio. That's a well documented fact. Talk radio is built around TSL, not cume. Talk listeners tune in for a show, and stay with it as long as possible. In other formats, listeners come and go. Even news, built around the famous Westinghouse 22-minute clock, can suffer in the cume department. But it's one reason why Cumulus flipped its heritage talker KGO in San Francisco to news. If there weren't already two AM news stations in NYC, I'm sure Cumulus would have loved to go all local news on WABC. They were willing to go against KCBS in San Francisco. But CBS having two AMs with local news keeps Cumulus from flipping. At least for now.
TimeIsTight said:
Just for the record, Rush's syndicated show started when he came to NYC, but WABC didn't carry it. In the beginning, Rush did 10-noon on WABC, and then did two or three hours for syndication. His deal with ABC included a trade for the use of the studio and satellite feed for the syndicated show. The deal was put together by a former ABC executive who had heard Rush on a Sacremento station, and thought his, then, lighter and more humerous approach to Conservative Talk might work better across the country than some of the more hard-core urban talkers of the time.[/quote]
Rush went to New York, first. The syndication started after he was already on WABC. Since he was doing the local show before syndication. It is not relevant that he was doing the syndicated program after his local shift or during his time, there.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
The point is, that the syndicated show was part of the original plan that brought Rush to NYC, and the deal was put together by that former ABC executive with syndication in it from day-one.
Rush did not come to NYC just to do a local show for WABC which somebody then decided to syndicate. That makes Rush's situation different from all the others on the list.
There was a revealing interview with John Dickey of Cumulus in Radio Ink this past week. He was saying that the former ABC AM stations like WABC, KABC, WMAL, and WBAP are dragging down the rest of the company. They're losing money, and have been losing money for a while. My theory is that they were losing money when owned by ABC, and they weren't helped by the 2008 depression. This is what Dickey says:
The Top 10 markets that Cumulus now owns were "under-invested vessels for syndication." He said Cumulus is working to bring them back and turn them around but it could take up to four quarters before that happens. "We're still going to carry that baggage into Q3."
That five word quote, "under-invested vessels for syndication" can be interpretted a few ways. But based on what the company has been doing in the first half of 2012, they seem to be changing the first half, not the second half. That means investing more in syndication, by adding the two new shows. So my expectation is there will be more, not less, syndication at the Cumulus AM talkers around the country.
The Top 10 markets that Cumulus now owns were "under-invested vessels for syndication." He said Cumulus is working to bring them back and turn them around but it could take up to four quarters before that happens. "We're still going to carry that baggage into Q3."
That five word quote, "under-invested vessels for syndication" can be interpretted a few ways. But based on what the company has been doing in the first half of 2012, they seem to be changing the first half, not the second half. That means investing more in syndication, by adding the two new shows. So my expectation is there will be more, not less, syndication at the Cumulus AM talkers around the country.
Well, with New York being such a big metro area, it's hard to have at talk show which appeals to the entire metro area. Are people in Paterson, Rockaway or Nyack interested in Long Island politics? No.
You have so many other stations (NJ101.5, all the stations the other guy mentioned) that have local shows.
You have so many other stations (NJ101.5, all the stations the other guy mentioned) that have local shows.
Limbaugh was hired by EFM Media to do a syndicated show. The only way he could get out of his contract with KFBK was if he was offered a job in a top 10 market. EFM put together a deal with WABC, which allowed Rush to get out of his KFBK contract. Rush did a 2-hour local show on WABC in exchange for WABC supplying a studio, call screener, board op for Rush's syndicated show. WABC initially didn't carry the national show but they did clear the network spots from that show on Rush's local show.recto101 said:
The irony of the timing of yesterday's announcement of Romney's choice of a vice presidential candidate is that WABC was live and local at the time!
Mark Simone, following his interview with the aging and bitter Robert Klein, had the good sense to dump whatever remaining interviews with octogenarians may have been in the can and instead cover the breaking news event. He did a great job, as did Larry Kudlow who isn't actually local but does use WABC's facilities and tends to get calls mostly from the NY area. Both shows were good radio.
WABC is no longer a radio "station" -- a location where broadcasters gathered and listeners felt they could come to eavesdrop on their conversations. It has morphed into a radio "channel" that feeds a series of insular shows that have little or no synergy with one another.
WABC has lost the synergy that the audience could feel a part of. There's no program director to put it all together and, for example, to direct hosts like Hannity to ease up on the partisan attacks or to curtail Simone's numerous interviews with the likes of Ed Kotch, Pat Cooper and Dick Cavett. There's nobody at the helm, the station sounds adrift and the audience is abandoning ship.
It's the lack of synergy as much as the lack of local focus that's responsible for the decline in ratings at WABC, IMO. It's one of those intangibles that doesn't show up on the radar screens of the bean counters.
Mark Simone, following his interview with the aging and bitter Robert Klein, had the good sense to dump whatever remaining interviews with octogenarians may have been in the can and instead cover the breaking news event. He did a great job, as did Larry Kudlow who isn't actually local but does use WABC's facilities and tends to get calls mostly from the NY area. Both shows were good radio.
WABC is no longer a radio "station" -- a location where broadcasters gathered and listeners felt they could come to eavesdrop on their conversations. It has morphed into a radio "channel" that feeds a series of insular shows that have little or no synergy with one another.
WABC has lost the synergy that the audience could feel a part of. There's no program director to put it all together and, for example, to direct hosts like Hannity to ease up on the partisan attacks or to curtail Simone's numerous interviews with the likes of Ed Kotch, Pat Cooper and Dick Cavett. There's nobody at the helm, the station sounds adrift and the audience is abandoning ship.
It's the lack of synergy as much as the lack of local focus that's responsible for the decline in ratings at WABC, IMO. It's one of those intangibles that doesn't show up on the radar screens of the bean counters.
J
jhguthlac
Guest
The ratings situation for Rush at stations like WABC was addressed by Rush on a show this week. He pointed out that with his program being available on so many other sources, I-whatever, means he has more listeners than ever. But how do you prove one way or another?
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