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WARM

Kevin Fitzgerald said:
I concur....moving down to the valley and diplexing with another facility or building new towers would be likely scenario. Best if towers were right wavelength or longer in height. Night could be flea power.
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Actually, they wouldn't have to go to flea power at night. WARM is a Class B (formerly Class III) station. The night pattern is almost identical to the day pattern and, in fact, WARM has been operating on its night pattern at all times for years. One city that they have to protect at night is Boston, which has a co-channel station.

590 is a Cuban Class I-C allocation, but we all know what happened to any agreements between the United States and Cuba (or the NARBA) after Castro came to power. A Cuban station can often be heard here on 590 at night, playing classical music.
 
pell guy said:
Yeah,it is a shame,with the right direction Warm could be a true full-service Am Station.
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With the unpopularity of AM radio these days and With money not being an option (say a big lottery win) the smart thing to do would be to see if Cumulus would also sell You one of their FM's to do an AM/FM WARM combo. Hey you can dream right?
 
Dave McAndrews said:
With the unpopularity of AM radio these days and With money not being an option (say a big lottery win) the smart thing to do would be to see if Cumulus would also sell You one of their FM's to do an AM/FM WARM combo. Hey you can dream right?
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And why is AM so unpopular? Take a listen to the rotten programming on most AM stations these days: right-wing political propaganda from syndicated blowhards; infomercials for cure-all laxatives, quack dietary supplements, male enhancement products, and questionable real estate deals; canned sports talk from distant cities; and, on some stations, left-wing political propaganda from syndicated hosts who are a great cure for insomnia. There are AM stations that are anything but unpopular: WBBM, Chicago, one of the nation's top billers; KYW, Philadelphia, consistently within the top five in the ratings there; WGN, Chicago, another ratings powerhouse; and, closer to home, WHLM, Bloomsburg, which plays oldies with plenty of local news.

Looking at the changes that Cumulus has made in this market, they might have to sell ALL of those stations someday. WARM was off the air for three days due to the lack of a local engineer, while WBSX is driving away listeners in droves with that horrible syndicated morning show. "Stale Beer and Cold Wings", anyone? And, with A.J. gone, what syndicated crap will show up on WBHT?
 
i agree with the last post about am radio. there are am stations that have a polka format, and alot of local news, and other local info that do well. what they need are people who know radio, and care about the people who are on the payroll. alot of these stations are sold out, and are making money..that makes everyone happy..
 
Cowboy is right.....live and local would get the job done with a good oldies format and jocks that know the music.....hmmm powerball......

oldies4ever
WARMLAND reunion aug 11, 2012 at the Pocono Drag Lodge, bear Creek.....
;D
 
normhill007 said:
WGN amd KDKA are still going strong.
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Live and local takes money, and no one is spending money these days.

Yes, WGN and KDKA are going strong, but these's a difference. Those stations never totally lost their audience the way WARM did. Once they're gone, they're not coming back at a level where you can make money.
 
Here is a locally produced college radio Public Affairs special that parallels the decline of WARM-AM and "local radio". Jill Bodek, a student at Luzerne County Community College and WSFX-FM produced it as a Special Project.

http://depts.luzerne.edu/wsfx/sp.jsp

You will hear from a combined media experience of over 200 years. Joe Middleton , Vince Kearney, Billy Kelly, David DeCosmo, Erica Funke and David Yonki - thank you for your assistance.

We hope you find a memory or two in it.
 
WARM on 590 will never be a success ever again; I can't believe I've just posted that, but lets face it, everyone on this board claiming 'live and local' would win forgets the whole problem with WARM: it is on AM. (Yes we have a successul AM in town: WILK, but even with three AMs management still felt the need to take over 103.1, yes we have WGMF/WZMF but management covers the market with a bunch of FM translators and now GMF has numbers). I listened to Harry West back in the 70s and early 80s and couldn't wait for Operation Snowflake to see if my school was closed. WARM had local newscasts twice an hour with two anchors, news reporters who actually had a beat, 20/20 sports, etc. Who could forget that awesome legal ID from Charlie Van Dyke over the beginning of the Mutual News theme: W-A-R-M Scranton, serving Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and the Poconos, Where News Comes First. But those days are long gone: the only viable AMs today have either stuck to their guns (WEEU Reading), have 50kw (WBZ/KYW ,and that doesn't even help WWKB Buffalo), acquired an FM translator or more (WGMF), or acquired a full-power FM (WBBM on 105.9, WIP on 94.1, WBEN 930 on 107.7, and a whole string of others). AM-only is basically dead as a door nail (except for the big city stations I have mentioned and small stations who still spend money);where else do employ 100 year old technology and expect people to use/utiltise it; who wants to hear a narrow band mono-signal (thank the FCC for taking forever to make C-QUAM the stereo standard) that is even worse when there's a thunderstorm. The problem with WARM is that it was left to rot (the format and the physical plant), and now a generation or two has never ever listened to it, and the generation that did turned elsewhere (even my Grandfather complained how bad the signal was). The only chance WARM would have is to put it on FM, spend a huge chunk of change to staff it up (that would mean an actual news team, etc) provide a real full service format,and it might make a dent. Unfortunately radio today is all about automation, voice tracking, big corporations, etc. The internet means people no longer turn to radio as their first source of news, school closings are sent my SMS/text, and high school football games not on traditional radio are now on internet-only broadcasts (and they get listeners) Did I mention smart-phones? Like it or not internet-only radio will start to directly compete with terrestrial radio even in the car. 590 should be put out of its misery once and for all (if it stood a chance of making money someone would have bought it already and fixed the array). I'll probably get a ton of people reacting angrily to this post but those are the same folks who still want to use carts and CDs (time marches on and it is best to remember WARM in its heyday than try to bring it back on AM-only and have it fail miserably).
 
doubleacoach said:
Here is a locally produced college radio Public Affairs special that parallels the decline of WARM-AM and "local radio". Jill Bodek, a student at Luzerne County Community College and WSFX-FM produced it as a Special Project.

http://depts.luzerne.edu/wsfx/sp.jsp

You will hear from a combined media experience of over 200 years. Joe Middleton , Vince Kearney, Billy Kelly, David DeCosmo, Erica Funke and David Yonki - thank you for your assistance.

We hope you find a memory or two in it.
Click to expand...


Oy! Factual errors.
 
Glaring examples: deregulation was pushed through by Sen. Bob Dole and signed by President Clinton in 1996, not Reagan as an interviewee asserted.

WARM was always run by "out of town jaspers" while local owners at other stations were incompetent.

Check facts.
 
I shouldn't be so harsh. The kid made a nice effort, and it's nice to see college radio attempting some local news and public affairs.
 
Noticing the list of "interviewees", I don't see anybody who was really involved in making WARM the number one cume station in the country. At one point, WARM had almost a 60 share. That was because of the personalities, not the news. No on-air personalities were listed even though Harry was just down the street. And as I've said, when WARM went talk, we committed suicide. I was the first to move on followed closely by Harry. Arbitrends had us above a 9 share after the first two months of the fall book. Then the switch to talk and the bottom fell out. Can't do a talk show with 2 callers. Frank Andrews would call in unavailable at the last minute and one of the news girls would spend 2 hours with some charity and no calls. We brought back some of the old jingles and cleaned up the music. I was MD at the time and Ron Allen PD and he wanted us to play the top 40, no exceptions. The only problem was Madonna's "Vogue"..I asked him if we wanted to go with it as Magic wasn't playing it and he said if it's on the charts, play it. Our problem wasn't the song which I actually liked..It was that it drove our compression nuts so we had to pull it. The real problem for all stations came in the late 80's when stations started selling for far more than they were worth. The old rule of thumb was 2 1/2 times billing..Suddenly it became 5 to 10 times billing. When ownership rules changed, leeches like Citadel started buying stations simply because they didn't want anybody else to own them. WEMR in Tunkhannock went for 800 thousand. Our AM was actually successful and made money and we wanted to hang on to that but Citadel said all or nothing. The would have been happy to get 3-4 hundred thousand and kissed the ground. So local stations suddenly became nothing more than translators and a drain on the corporate bottom line. FM radio will probably go through the same thing in a couple of years because there are too many other options out there. Between XM, Pandora, Ipods, etc, we can now choose what we listen to, not something they decide to play for us...
 
Thank you Norm. If you listened to the show, you can hear that some of your points were discussed. The show is NOT about WARM (directly). Sorry if people get so hung up on "I don't like this guy" or "that guy." A student simply pieced together a show "paralleling" AM and local radio decline with the same path WARM took. There are several factors that shot a hole in AM...some of those points are discussed.
 
normhill007 said:
Noticing the list of "interviewees", I don't see anybody who was really involved in making WARM the number one cume station in the country. At one point, WARM had almost a 60 share. That was because of the personalities, not the news. No on-air personalities were listed even though Harry was just down the street. And as I've said, when WARM went talk, we committed suicide. I was the first to move on followed closely by Harry. Arbitrends had us above a 9 share after the first two months of the fall book. Then the switch to talk and the bottom fell out. Can't do a talk show with 2 callers. Frank Andrews would call in unavailable at the last minute and one of the news girls would spend 2 hours with some charity and no calls. We brought back some of the old jingles and cleaned up the music. I was MD at the time and Ron Allen PD and he wanted us to play the top 40, no exceptions. The only problem was Madonna's "Vogue"..I asked him if we wanted to go with it as Magic wasn't playing it and he said if it's on the charts, play it. Our problem wasn't the song which I actually liked..It was that it drove our compression nuts so we had to pull it. The real problem for all stations came in the late 80's when stations started selling for far more than they were worth. The old rule of thumb was 2 1/2 times billing..Suddenly it became 5 to 10 times billing. When ownership rules changed, leeches like Citadel started buying stations simply because they didn't want anybody else to own them. WEMR in Tunkhannock went for 800 thousand. Our AM was actually successful and made money and we wanted to hang on to that but Citadel said all or nothing. The would have been happy to get 3-4 hundred thousand and kissed the ground. So local stations suddenly became nothing more than translators and a drain on the corporate bottom line. FM radio will probably go through the same thing in a couple of years because there are too many other options out there. Between XM, Pandora, Ipods, etc, we can now choose what we listen to, not something they decide to play for us...
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you hit the nail on the head norm...good post..cowboy
 
Noticing the list of "interviewees", I don't see anybody who was really involved in making WARM the number one cume station in the country. At one point, WARM had almost a 60 share. That was because of the personalities, not the news. No on-air personalities were listed even though Harry was just down the street. And as I've said, when WARM went talk, we committed suicide. I was the first to move on followed closely by Harry. Arbitrends had us above a 9 share after the first two months of the fall book. Then the switch to talk and the bottom fell out. Can't do a talk show with 2 callers. Frank Andrews would call in unavailable at the last minute and one of the news girls would spend 2 hours with some charity and no calls. We brought back some of the old jingles and cleaned up the music. I was MD at the time and Ron Allen PD and he wanted us to play the top 40, no exceptions. The only problem was Madonna's "Vogue"..I asked him if we wanted to go with it as Magic wasn't playing it and he said if it's on the charts, play it. Our problem wasn't the song which I actually liked..It was that it drove our compression nuts so we had to pull it. The real problem for all stations came in the late 80's when stations started selling for far more than they were worth. The old rule of thumb was 2 1/2 times billing..Suddenly it became 5 to 10 times billing. When ownership rules changed, leeches like Citadel started buying stations simply because they didn't want anybody else to own them. WEMR in Tunkhannock went for 800 thousand. Our AM was actually successful and made money and we wanted to hang on to that but Citadel said all or nothing. The would have been happy to get 3-4 hundred thousand and kissed the ground. So local stations suddenly became nothing more than translators and a drain on the corporate bottom line. FM radio will probably go through the same thing in a couple of years because there are too many other options out there. Between XM, Pandora, Ipods, etc, we can now choose what we listen to, not something they decide to play for us...
Click to expand...

Norm, I've been watching this thread for some time now and you have absolutely hit it out of the park with this reply! Good radio happens between the records. The unique personalities that are now so rare are really the only element of any format that competition (radio, internet, iPod, etc) can't duplicate. If you are trying to program a music intensive station today (AM or FM) you are doomed! The problem is that there is no one left to fill the voids between the music. At least not for what radio pays today. Face it, no matter how tightly formatted a station may be, there will always be clinkers in there that will not fly for everyone. On the other hand, if you put 5,000 songs in your iPod you like all 5,000 of them or they wouldn't be there. The consultant's way of dealing with this is to tighten up the playlist and go for a more defined audience. In reality, all this does is add to the perception (which is absolutely correct!) that radio has become far too repetitive and is actually driving listeners to other media choices.
 
How many times a month does WARM go off the air? And do they have the Allentown geek come every time it's down, or just hit the reset button and hope to god it comes back on? They were off on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago, and as of tonight they are once again off the air. Fellas, I believe the end of WARM has either come or is near. Cumulus will not put a dime into it, and Phil is probably won't be volunteering his time to fix the transmitter for a company that canned him. Even though True Oldies is canned, they do play a very good selection of music along with Scott Shannon being a great personality.
 
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