I did a promotion/market visit with WTCM in Traverse City and their group of stations over the Memorial Day weekend. I was *way* impressed. Solid crew of talented people, the place was well equipped and well maintained, they had a solid staff of folks on the front lines and behind the scenes, local and on premises ownership and management and from what I was able to hear, the whole market sounded incredibly slick and preformed beyond their market rank by leaps and bounds. Really refreshing to see a group doing it right and really reaping the rewards.
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WAY Impressed!
- Thread starter Holstead
- Start date
I first visited WTCM in 1959 and it was a nice operation, well above the expected for a small market. Good people, but hampered then by an old Class IV 250 watt signal that barely made it out 20 miles in the daytime and about 10 miles at night
I kindly and respectfully disagree, Holstead..
I too, like Mr. DavidEduardo, remember WTCM back in 1959 when Les Biederman owned WTCM and was a proper and locally involved broadcaster in Traverse City. Excellent programming, too. I even remember when Les eventually handed the reins over to his son, Ross.
Ross, a “wannabe broadcaster like his father” NEVER filled his father’s shoes”.Ross was always showing off whereas his father did nothing like that and Les consistently ran a “tight ship” whereas Ross never has and allowed the country station to ever wander.
Yes, WTCM, formatically … and otherwise, is but a “shadow” of what it once was.
Programming a station today is like “cookie cutting” and not much else. That part I mostly ay blame at the feet of consolidators like iHeart Radio (formally Clear Channel Radio) Management, past and present, and the likes of Cumulus Media. Both are headed into bankruptcy…for a SECOND TIME and for the reason of their “bastardization“ of our beloved medium, the likes of which appears to be relegated towards the “dust bin” of history.
I too, like Mr. DavidEduardo, remember WTCM back in 1959 when Les Biederman owned WTCM and was a proper and locally involved broadcaster in Traverse City. Excellent programming, too. I even remember when Les eventually handed the reins over to his son, Ross.
Ross, a “wannabe broadcaster like his father” NEVER filled his father’s shoes”.Ross was always showing off whereas his father did nothing like that and Les consistently ran a “tight ship” whereas Ross never has and allowed the country station to ever wander.
Yes, WTCM, formatically … and otherwise, is but a “shadow” of what it once was.
Programming a station today is like “cookie cutting” and not much else. That part I mostly ay blame at the feet of consolidators like iHeart Radio (formally Clear Channel Radio) Management, past and present, and the likes of Cumulus Media. Both are headed into bankruptcy…for a SECOND TIME and for the reason of their “bastardization“ of our beloved medium, the likes of which appears to be relegated towards the “dust bin” of history.
Remember, consolidation happened in the mid 90's as an aftereffect of Docket 80-90 and the economy in general. Half of all US stations did not make a profit, caused in no small part due to the overpopulation of smaller markets and some big ones due to Docket 80-90.
So the only way to survive was to have the option of economy based on clusters of stations sharing staff, resources, offices and the like. I think things would have been much worse were consolidation not allowed.
As most here know, I owned a consolidated cluster of 9 stations in one market in the 60s. Having multiple stations allowed me to do things like maintain an all classical music FM because it shared overhead with a bunch of others. In fact, years before having multiple AMs allowed me to build the nation's first FM and run it with no ads for over a year... something an independent owner could not do.
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