WARM reflections

[yonkstur]

1. Went to the Stadium last week to buy tickets for the remainder of the season. As I passed a few cars, WARM was playing in each one of them. Driver in each case was over 40. Unscientific poll.
2. WARM has Dunmore Lumber as a sponsor. Wasn't Dunmore Lumber owned by the Cordaro family? Coincidence or not?
3. I heard ABC network feed sports and some ABC feed news this weekend. Can a regular weather forecast be far behind?
4. The songs in this format are very diverse and pretty good.
5. Now that people seem to be aware of the format and the station seems to be growing inch by inch, look for a format change.
Yonkstur

 

[marker102]

3. I heard ABC network feed sports and some ABC feed news this weekend. Can a regular weather forecast be far behind?

No. Although the only thing stopping them is the fact that ABC doesn't feed weather forecasts.

5. Now that people seem to be aware of the format and the station seems to be growing inch by inch, look for a format change.

Hey, we can use a third rated host talk station again.

 

[Tiger1983]

5. Now that people seem to be aware of the format and the station seems to be growing inch by inch, look for a format change.

How 'bout those Yankee broadcasts? It certainly helps advertisers sell time for the station. The listeners who were regular Oldies listeners are also Yankee fans, since the generation grew up enjoying baseball.

 

[ColorRadio]

What good is any type of program to an advertiser if the audience is limited due to a poor transmit signal. I am in the South W-B area, and at night WARM is not cutting it here. Their five tower array used to boom in here when they actually cared enough to take care of the technical issues. Why don't they raise the towers out of the muck, and get the counterpoise back into shape? Oh...$$$$$.

In fact, from the hill I live on, on a clear night I can actually see the tower lights in Falls. It seems to me that they are outputting the transmitter into a dummy load. But, then again, of late, the Phillies have become more a bunch of losers than WARM's potential audience! So, what's the point?

 

[yonkstur]

As for the reception, I agree. I live in North End and in various radios in the house the station comes in. But I have to adjust the antenna on the radio to do so. The reception is a total disgrace. In the car, it can be hit or miss.
Yonkstur

 

[yonkstur]

The Yankee broadcasts add something to the station. I believe John Sterling and Suzie Waldman are very good broadcasters, as was the team of Charlie Steiner and before that other broadcasters (Michael Kaye---not the WNAK Mike Kaye) who were paired up with Sterling. With the lack of cable coverage in the Wilkes Barre area of Yankee baseball, (they block out Yankee games on ESPN on Service Electric and don't give us the YES network) WARM is a welcome sports add. Now I'm not a Yankee fan (Indian fan in fact) but I like baseball and feel at least the Yankee broadcasts are easy to listen to. I wonder how much they are paying for the Yanks or if it is part of a Citadel station package from New York state. Remember last fall when there were rumors of a possible Bills football broadcast on WARM because the other Citadel New York stations were running the Bills?
yonkstur

 

[masterg]

Funny, but many of us who were at WARM towards the end of her glory pretty much mark the beginning of the end as the day WARM began carrying Phillies PBP.

 

[travist102]

Me personally... I mark it as the day that Susquehanna sold it to TeleMedia. All due respect to those who hung on til the end of Doo-woppin' Oldies, the fall of '96 was the end for me.

 

[masterg]

Me personally... I mark it as the day that Susquehanna sold it to TeleMedia. All due respect to those who hung on til the end of Doo-woppin' Oldies, the fall of '96 was the end for me.

I'd say WARM was cooked by '91/ '92 latest. The accelerated slide, however, had begun by '85/'86. WARM's best days were well behind it when TeleMedia entered the picture. Actually, very hard to believe WARM doesn't even qualify as a shadow of its former self. In many markets, including majors, the dominant AMers carved out a respectable market niche, but WARM just seemed to have thrown in the towel.

 

[yonkstur]

When WARM did the "back to the past" format, (as Kelly Reed called it) where Gilbert and Allen were back to playing music, that was a turning point. WARM could've rebounded had they been consistent as a Sports Talk entity. WILK's strength is that the core line up has never changed. In the time I was there, the billing was decent but not enough for the suits from Wyoming. If they keep what they are doing now, for a few years, you might see a rebound. People in the oldies demo are tuning in despite the bad signal.
Yonkstur

 

[masterg]

There were a number of employees who truly believed WARM could somehow get back to those halcyon days of the 60s, that those days were retrievable. Most of us pups there at the time, say, '78-'84 or so really didn't buy it, we knew it was never going to happen, but we smiled and and kept our mouths shut. The oddest thing was, WARM's numbers in that very same time period were still big, and some day parts were performing better than they had back when WARM Days filled Rocky Glen. All that aside, I continue to believe WARM could have clung to a respectable market share had the meddlers from York kept their hands off the place. These clowns were running WSBA, which had a much smaller share than WARM in a smaller market, yet they were allowed to "solve" WARM's problems - they began a downward spiral that didn't end until the station slammed into the bottom of the heap. A real shame...

 

[warm590]

With the oldies stations dying, I still think that a well programmed oldies show would regain WARM's success, bring back the ethnic shows sunday morning, etc...too bad the transmitter and equipment is in tough shape.
I work for a small AM in new york; we play 50's-60's oldies, (13,000 titles) and play the rare stuff.The listeners love it. Yonk, I'll kick in $5 a week for a lotto ticket if u will; thats if we can still use your kitchen for a studio ;D...think we could get Harry West to come back???

Wonder if anyone saved the old jingle packages....

longing for the good old days
warm590

 

[masterg]

Wonder if anyone saved the old jingle packages....

longing for the good old days
warm590

Which reminds me...few people would know that WARM, circa 1985, had virtually no oldies library dating back prior to even the late '70s. Remember now, this was the station that played the hits, the station everyone counted on to hear the new and the great, and to hear it first and often. You'd think there would've been an oldies library (obviously on 45s) rivaled by few other stations. Just think of all The Beatles singles they should've had alone. This was not the case at all. Most of those 45s, and there should have been thousands, were given away over the course of perhaps ten years or so. Anyone who was there want to jump in on this?

 

[MACK184]

With the oldies stations dying, I still think that a well programmed oldies show would regain WARM's success, bring back the ethnic shows sunday morning, etc...too bad the transmitter and equipment is in tough shape.
I work for a small AM in new york; we play 50's-60's oldies, (13,000 titles) and play the rare stuff.The listeners love it. Yonk, I'll kick in $5 a week for a lotto ticket if u will; thats if we can still use your kitchen for a studio ;D...think we could get Harry West to come back???

Wonder if anyone saved the old jingle packages....

longing for the good old days
warm590

The biggest problem facing anyone who wanted to make a good go of WARM is the physical plant. With all the tower and transmitter problems a new owner would have to invest in excess of 1 million dollars to really bring things back to shape. Whoever bought it, would have to be able to go several years without any profit, just to take care of the needed refit expenses. Not many people are able to do that. I guess Mr. Yonkster's lotto winnings are about the only chance the place has.

 

[yonkstur]

Wonder if anyone saved the old jingle packages.
I have a jingle pacKage I bought on line which includes WARM, WSBA and WICE jingles.

Which reminds me...few people would know that WARM, circa 1985, had virtually no oldies library dating back prior to even the late '70s. Remember now, this was the station that played the hits, the station everyone counted on to hear the new and the great, and to hear it first and often. You'd think there would've been an oldies library (obviously on 45s) rivaled by few other stations.

That was the reason you heard Dee Clarks "Raindrops" every single show. I remember having a conversation with Paul Ciliberto about the dearth of music at the Mighty 590. And they never updated them either. No cd compilations, nothing. When I worked at NewsTalk WARM, in the control room was a cart rack with music, there was "Raindrops", "Rythym Of the Rain", "She's A Lady" and something by Donna Lewis circa 1997. I had more variety in my car when I was changing over from cassettes to CD.
Yonkstur

 

[yonkstur]

Yonk, I'll kick in $5 a week for a lotto ticket if u will; thats if we can still use your kitchen for a studio ...think we could get Harry West to come back???

I'm still playing that PowerBall and have space in the kitchen. We'll use your 5 bucks to buy Harry lunch and see if he'll bite!!!!!!!!!!!

Yonkstur

 

[masterg]

Yonk, I'll kick in $5 a week for a lotto ticket if u will; thats if we can still use your kitchen for a studio ...think we could get Harry West to come back???

I'm still playing that PowerBall and have space in the kitchen. We'll use your 5 bucks to buy Harry lunch and see if he'll bite!!!!!!!!!!!

Yonkstur

The lack of oldies was the result of two things, 1) York's non-stop interference with what WARM played, oldies were constantly being pulled from the rotation in order to keep the corporate meddlers at WSBA happy. Susquehanna actually had a corporate music director who would run focus groups on all music, current and past, then decide its fate from there. It was sheer lunacy. 2) Once a music cart was pulled, its back-up 45 was no longer needed. Those 45s were given away by the PD. Paul Ciliberto could shed some light on that situation.

 

[NigelWick]

Please... by the mid 80's, WARM was mostly talk. It didn't need a lot of music. If a dub was needed, there was plenty to borrow on the FM side. By then, Magic 93 was in da house.

 

[masterg]

Please... by the mid 80's, WARM was mostly talk. It didn't need a lot of music. If a dub was needed, there was plenty to borrow on the FM side. By then, Magic 93 was in da house.

No, by the mid-80s WARM was not mostly talk. Through at least the end of 1985 WARM was doing music from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and at times, it was still doing music 7:00 to Midnight. Yeah, it was loads of fun doing a four hour airshift with a current list of maybe nine songs, and an oldies library with, oh, as little as a hundred songs, maybe less - and that scrawny oldies rack covered fifteen or more years. Never once was there an instance where any music made it across the hall from Magic to WARM. One concession; at times, WARM had an hour of mid-day talk during that time period, but it was never consistent - one week it was there, the next it was not. Susquehanna had a music policy that was probably one of the most logic-defying in the radio business. Even on MAGIC, there was a ton of music corporate dictated they not play. One final thought; WARM's oldies library had been decimated by the late '70s, and it only got worse into the '80s.

 

[yonkstur]

It was the "Hybrid Format." Music in the AM and PM, then Ron Allen's hour sportsline, 6 to 7Pm, Bruce Williams and Dr. Joy Brown, then Larry King. (In the summer, Phillies baseball). At one point, there was a nightime show, 7 to mid called Norm Hill's Hall Of Fame. I want to say that Harry was still there, Melaine Apple, John Hancock, and Terry did the air shifts. Not sure about the specifics but that's what I remember. Maybe Terry was back in news at the time.
I remember an interview George Gilbert gave on Channel 44 in the late 60s with George Strimel. And he was talking about the Susquehanna music philosophy, that the songs were tested and focused, the station followed a tight playlist with specific music for parts of the day. You'd never hear Jack Jones after 6pm but hear him in the mid days which made sense. Even at a young age, I found that listening to WARM for the music was not for the adventuresome in spirit. In the spring of '66, Joe Nardone and the All Stars released "Shake A Hand" and it got nary a play on WARM (now this was a local guy) until a few months after it was out. In the meantime, Jim Ward on WBAX was wearing down the grooves on that thing. SAme thing with WSCR in Scranton too. So I guess there is a history there of "tight" lists.
When the great local band explosion of the early 70s happened, Gilbert loosened it up and allowed songs like "The Raven" (Glass Prism), "These Days" and "Timothy" by (the Buoys), and (Mel Wynn) "Bell Bottoms" and "Hit Record" to be played on WARM but it was always after 6PM when the "kids" were tuning in. He was doing it for "THE KIDS".
Yonkstur