WABC 100% syndicated

[jhguthlac]

A point on syndication. Some people on this board act like shows being syndicated, or a station being almost all syndication is something new.

I doubt if any of us were alive in the 1940's. But that is how radio was. A network flagship station would produce and develop shows. They would be distributed by landline to all of its affiliates. Sometimes the bigger network stations in key markets, like D.C., Detroit, etc., would also produce shows.
But the NYC flagships searched for the best shows and sent them nationally. That was "local" radio in those days. Its no different now. Radio of the 60's is over. And the AM stations trying to act like the 60's are alive and well are themselves dropping dead all over the AM band.

 

[Bob1370]

New York may be behind the curve somewhat...but in other major markets where once nearly all live and local heritage talkers gradually handed themselves over to syndication, their place as format-dominant spoken word station has been taken over by a local NPR affiliate. Happened in Boston, happened in San Francisco (where KQED is #1 6+) and happened in DC, where WAMU is top talker and fighting with (and sometimes beating) WTOP for overall 6+ lead.

Watch how other big markets shake down. WNYC won't be tops in 6+ because there are other strong alternatives for spoken-word listeners like WINS, WCBS and WFAN....but it will gradually gain strength and you shouldn't be shocked if it passes WABC in the rankings before too long.

 

[TheBigA]

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.

And yet when the station in fact HAD a dedicated program director, there were those that said that it lacked focus, synergy, and direction. And looking at the overall competition, it's clear that WABC is still the ratings leader in its format. So having someone with the title of local program director is no guarantee that the ratings trend the station has been in for many years will change.

Shows like Hannity and Rush have NEVER been under the direction of the local station, and at one time got great ratings despite being out of step with other shows on the station. Looking to the future, it's likely that Cumulus will not renew the contracts of those outside shows, and will replace them with more Cumulus-produced shows. If so, those shows WILL be under the direction of a program director, who will set themes, synergy, and focus for talk shows nationally. If, as you say, the lack of synergy is responsible, then it will be addressed.

My view, and it's reinforced by the comparative ratings at similar stations in NYC, is that what's REALLY responsible for the decline in ratings is the fact that this station is on a band and is in a format that NATION-WIDE is declining in the ratings. No amount of money spent by bean counters will change that.

 

[TheBigA]

New York may be behind the curve somewhat...but in other major markets where once nearly all live and local heritage talkers gradually handed themselves over to syndication, their place as format-dominant spoken word station has been taken over by a local NPR affiliate.

And the irony here is that NPR stations have, for the most part, been 80% syndicated for years. It's the syndication that's responsible for their ratings and for their financial success. Sure, most of them have a couple hours of local programming or local news inserts, but the majority of the time comes from NPR headquarters in Washington.

 

[KeyTimes950]

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.

I would suggest that a programmer can utilize syndication every bit as much as he or she could utilize local hosts. If WABC's programmers want less of Hannity's partisan attacks then they tell the syndicator they're dropping Hannity in a contract-specified time frame and seek out a talk show host less likely to make such attacks. I would submit that WABC sees no need to do so, or Hannity would be someplace else in the Big Apple. Likewise, Simone's interviews could be curtailed the same way if his show is syndicated. If he's local, the programmer just tells him to cut back and he either does so or he's gone.

Given that neither are going anyplace confirms that WABC likes what it's got, all things considered.

 

[TheBigA]

A point on syndication. Some people on this board act like shows being syndicated, or a station being almost all syndication is something new.

Or that it's something bad. Need I remind people that WABC (as WJZ) was once the flagship for the NBC Blue Network, and the programs from that era are still very memorable today. In fact, we call that period "the golden age of radio."

WABC continued to run network programming from the golden age until the mid 60s. The last hold-out was Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, produced by WLS in Chicago. WABC's legendary program director Rick Sklar was forced to run this show daily by the ABC brass until he finally achieved enough power to replace it with more local music programming.

 

[uncamark]

A point on syndication. Some people on this board act like shows being syndicated, or a station being almost all syndication is something new.

Or that it's something bad. Need I remind people that WABC (as WJZ) was once the flagship for the NBC Blue Network, and the programs from that era are still very memorable today. In fact, we call that period "the golden age of radio."

WABC continued to run network programming from the golden age until the mid 60s. The last hold-out was Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, produced by WLS in Chicago. WABC's legendary program director Rick Sklar was forced to run this show daily by the ABC brass until he finally achieved enough power to replace it with more local music programming.

Which was the division of ABC into four "networks" on Jan. 1, 1968. "The Breakfast Club" was shunted off to WABC and WLS' FM stations in NY and Chicago and was off the air by the end of the year.

Your point about public radio stations being mostly network has always comes up with pubcasters drop music programming for news-talk--along with the accusations of "betraying culture" comes the argument that music is local programming and that the station's just like Clear Channel. On the other hand, the hardcore public radio news-talk audience *prefers* national programming to local programming and makes it very clear that they do. Although any programming change on public radio tends to get protested, earlier this year WBEZ dropped the first hour of the first feed of "ATC" for a new local talk show. Even though that 3 p.m. CT hour was heard again at 5 p.m. and was still being heard at 5 p.m., the complaints and threats to stop giving money came in.

 

[NJMark]

I don't understand why syndication is a problem. What's the problem with people outside the WABC listening area being able to hear the same shows we can hear?

Look at the local TV dial (to use an antiquated term). Except for a few hours of news each day, almost nothing is local. The talk shows, game shows, soaps, judge shows, gossip shows, and medical shows are all either network or syndicated.

People who watched Oprah Winfrey without being bothered that the show originated in Chicago and not NY, and Jeopardy viewers don't mind that it's done in California.

 

[TheBigA]

My point about local talk is that it exists on several stations, and it simply isn't the automatic draw that some seem to think it is. The main factor in the success of local talk isn't the talk, or that it's about local issues, but the host. And I have no reason to believe that if you replaced all the syndicated hosts on WABC with local hosts talking about local issues that it would attract more people than the station gets now.

 

[badjef]

My point about local talk is that it exists on several stations, and it simply isn't the automatic draw that some seem to think it is. The main factor in the success of local talk isn't the talk, or that it's about local issues, but the host. And I have no reason to believe that if you replaced all the syndicated hosts on WABC with local hosts talking about local issues that it would attract more people than the station gets now.

I could argue that as a local host only, you can attack national issues with a local connection. Local also is a "pocket issue".

Rush likes to talk about "show prep for the media". He can talk about gas prices rising and the local hosts relates it to a local gas station or contrast to the national problem from the "alphabets"

Do people care? We are talking the widgets of radio, here.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[secondchoice]

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.

Is the overall "under-invested vessels" because during Disney's ownership they (ABC Radio) did not "cluster" like CC, CBS and others? Disney had / has deep pockets. They could have "bought" just about any radio property in any market that became available and it would have not impacted the balance sheet that much. IMHO they felt radio was not a "core" business, except to promote the Disney channels via Radio Disney. Why did't they let the Radio properties go earlier? They would have got more money than the Citadel deal. Does any one remember a decade or more ago when the San Antonio treasure stagecoach was buying just about any station any where, even some unrated markets? Just think what the old ABC Radio properties could have brought.

 

[Bob1370]

"Just think what the old ABC Radio properties could have brought."

They did only hold on to the properties for a few years after the Mouse took over CapCities, a company which regarded local stations as a core element of their overall business. The Mouse only looked that way about its TV O&Os (and still does) and its radio vehicles only useful to the extent they could become extensions of their cable and entertainment (film and theme park) brands...that left adult-appeal radio out of the mix completely. The reason they pulled the trigger when they did? The emergence of a buyer who'd offer not only a lot of upfront cash but a tax writeoff through a reverse Morris Trust, a strategy I admit I don't understand but apparently offers tax breaks that magnify the effective cash flow of any sale of business property. The Mouse was then able to take the maximum money and run.

 

[TheBigA]

The reason they pulled the trigger when they did? The emergence of a buyer who'd offer not only a lot of upfront cash but a tax writeoff through a reverse Morris Trust, a strategy I admit I don't understand but apparently offers tax breaks that magnify the effective cash flow of any sale of business property. The Mouse was then able to take the maximum money and run.

That's correct, PLUS the fact that Disney still retains a lot of things, including the WABC call letters and the name of the ABC Radio Network. Citadel, and now Cumulus, pays Disney lots of money to use ABC Radio News. Clear Channel would have wanted to buy it outright. And ABC would have put CC over the ownership limits in a lot of markets. So IIRC, Clear Channel was not among the bidders.

 

[ka2xuk]

What we're witnessing here is the long, slow death of AM radio.

No, what we're witnessing here is the long, slow death of what was once America's greatest, most listened-to radio station at the hands of a greedy corporation based in Atlanta, a corporation led by inept management with a small-market mentality.

The WABC death spiral began in 1982, when talk replaced the legacy Musicradio 77 format. But at least those talk shows were local and addressed issues of interest to New Yorkers. By laying off a lot of key people, micromanaging everything from corporate headquarters in Atlanta, and setting up a lousy work environment, Cumulus just fed WABC a massive cyanide pill.

Before I hear more of that hackneyed "music is dead on AM" crap, read this: A return to the Musicradio 77 format, complete with oldies and reverb, could bring WABC back to life. That killer 50 kW signal reaches far beyond the signal of WCBS-FM, which receives a lot of interference in New Jersey from short-spaced co-channel WBEB in Philadelphia.

Of course, the greedy, ignorant [EDIT] down in Atlanta would never consider that. For them, programming is an afterthought best left to a satellite dish.

AM radio itself is still alive and well in NYC. CBS is laughing all the way to the bank with WFAN, WINS, and WCBS. The Buckley people didn't do too badly with WOR, either.



[Content removed per Terms of Service.]

 

[TheBigA]

No, what we're witnessing here is the long, slow death of what was once America's greatest, most listened-to radio station at the hands of a greedy corporation based in Atlanta, a corporation led by inept management with a small-market mentality.

If people in New York are so much smarter, why did the previous NY based company that owned WABC go bankrupt?

WABC is one of the stations that drove Citadel to bankruptcy. It was a drain on Disney, and that's why they sold it. These AM stations are very expensive to run. Your comment that the changes were made because the companies were greedy shows how little you know about running a radio station. You don't see any successful companies like Apple or Google buying AM radio stations, do you? That should tell you something.

 

[OC3]

"The WABC death spiral began in 1982, when talk replaced the legacy Musicradio 77 format. But at least those talk shows were local and addressed issues of interest to New Yorkers. "

Wrong! WABC's change from Music to Talk was done in part to give a NYC market presense to the ABC Talk Network. There were local shows, but a large part of the Mon-Fri schedule was network programs.

 

[radioguy39nj]

"The WABC death spiral began in 1982, when talk replaced the legacy Musicradio 77 format. But at least those talk shows were local and addressed issues of interest to New Yorkers. "

Wrong! WABC's change from Music to Talk was done in part to give a NYC market presense to the ABC Talk Network. There were local shows, but a large part of the Mon-Fri schedule was network programs.

WABC as a talk station was never like classic KGO. Even in the 80s, about 50% of the programming was from the ABC Talk Network.

 

[1069_KIFR]

WABC-AM is basically KSFO-AM of the New York Market.

Brian Sussman and Melanie Morgan are syndictated?

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

WABC continued to run network programming from the golden age until the mid 60s. The last hold-out was Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, produced by WLS in Chicago. WABC's legendary program director Rick Sklar was forced to run this show daily by the ABC brass until he finally achieved enough power to replace it with more local music programming.

What ended "Breakfast Club" on WABC-770 was the split of ABC Radio into four networks in early 1968, with Don McNeil landing on the Entertainment Network for his final year (which I believe was on the old WVNJ-620 in New Jersey when ABC/E launched).

Had ABC Radio not split into four networks, WABC would have had to run "Breakfast Club" until it ended at the end of 1968.

 

[recto101]

WABC-AM is basically KSFO-AM of the New York Market.

Brian Sussman and Melanie Morgan are syndictated?

Correction not Brian Sussman or Morgan or, Barbara Simpson they are the Local crew on KSFO but the rest of KSFO's schedule of hosts do resemble WABC with exception of Rush. I also know that KNEW-AM 960 is automated.