WBFO and AM 970

[TheBigA]

The folks at WNYPB might be following what others have done in other markets, but that doesn't mean it's a better idea. I'll bet that the overall totals for both dayparts are lower than they were before WNYPB took over - and I'll throw in the fundraising from WNED-AM as well. Right now, that's a wasted signal.

I'm pretty sure they knew they weren't going to keep the former WBFO audience, and they factored that in to the price they paid. As I said, all of the new owners of former college stations threw out the entire previous format. These guys kept a few things. Enjoy them while you can.

I can't imagine any other station in town will pay the hosts for the show. If there's as much money as you think, maybe these guys can buy some airtime on an underperforming AM. I bet we both know a guy who'd take them up on it.

Here's what I've learned: When it's your money, and you buy something, you get to do whatever you want with it. Even if it's wrong.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Once again, you have NO idea what you're talking about. WBFO wasn't a "college station" in the sense that you mean it. It was a charter NPR station with virtually NO student content, and very little content specific to the college.

If they didn't plan to keep the WBFO audience, then there was no reason to buy the station, because the WBFO audience IS the NPR audience in Buffalo. WNED-AM was lucky to hit a 1.0 share, ran many of the same programs that WBFO ran, and it's arguable that their audience tuned in to hear the same content at alternate times.

These guys didn't keep "a few things", they kept MOST things. There were hosts that didn't make the trip, but that's because they're in the state retirement system, which WNYPB can't participate in, and were close enough to retirement that it didn't make financial sense to leave the university for a job that would undoubtedly pay less at WNYPB.

The only reason another FM in town wouldn't pick up the Blues is that virtually all of them are corporate-owned, and nobody working for Cumuless, Town Square, or Entercom is going to put their career on the line to pick up programming that some dope at corporate would see as "fringe". Even if that programming has been kicking their ass.

 

[TheBigA]

Once again, you have NO idea what you're talking about. WBFO wasn't a "college station" in the sense that you mean it.

Then you have no idea what I was talking about. I was talking about a college station as in OWNED by a university. I never mentioned student involvement. That's not the point.

If they didn't plan to keep the WBFO audience, then there was no reason to buy the station, because the WBFO audience IS the NPR audience in Buffalo.

Huh? They bought it to take it off UB's hands. But they obviously had other plans for it, as they detailed in the Buffalo News article posted here a long time ago. You and other argued that those plans would alienate the former BFO audience. Don't you remember that?

 

[SirRoxalot]

I remember that I said that their plans would alienate the former WBFO audience. That's the entire point - that the WBFO audience IS the NPR audience in Buffalo, and they're alienating that audience.

Once again, if you had a clue as to what's really going on in WNY, you'd understand.

 

[TheBigA]

I remember that I said that their plans would alienate the former WBFO audience. That's the entire point - that the WBFO audience IS the NPR audience in Buffalo, and they're alienating that audience.

That's your view. And I don't agree with you.

And as we've seen in this thread, there are others who live in Buffalo who don't agree with you.

 

[jim8230]

Rox: Please explain how WNYPBA is alienating the core NPR audience in Buffalo. Most of the shows they have retained were on WBFO previously. So, your problem is just that they moved the blues show to weekend evenings. This has thrown your life so far out of skew that you have been on a rant for weeks on this board and on their Facebook page. Another gentleman here previously laid it on the line; WBFO was going to unload the station anyway.....so the fact that WNYPBA invested a lot of money to keep it an NPR affiliate should be seen as a good thing. But instead, a handful of disgruntled listeners are bitching up a storm about what's on at what time and how nothing they do will make amends for this transgression.

I have an idea....Put up your own cash to LMA WNED AM and you can put on whatever you want. "Niche" programs that suit your fancy....then we'll post here to let you know how you're doing.

 

[SirRoxalot]

There were several other changes besides the Blues shows. You're right, in that the core programming remains the same - as in the morning and afternoon drive programming. I don't listen as much in mid-days, and evenings are simply repeats of daytime programming.

As I said earlier, I'm perfectly willing to let the fund-raising and ratings determine who's right on this issue.

BTW, I don't know who you think I am, but I've never posted on their facebook page.

 

[Philip_Airtime]

There were several other changes besides the Blues shows. You're right, in that the core programming remains the same - as in the morning and afternoon drive programming. I don't listen as much in mid-days, and evenings are simply repeats of daytime programming.

As I said earlier, I'm perfectly willing to let the fund-raising and ratings determine who's right on this issue.

BTW, I don't know who you think I am, but I've never posted on their facebook page.

It's interesting, Rox, that you really come down hard on the Big A for what you perceive as his lack of knowledge of our market. But you're showing your own unfamiliarity with the WBFO schedule. There are no longer any repeats during WBFO's evening broadcast schedule. The evenings are made up of programs that are airing in Buffalo for the first time -- Fresh Air at 7, the Capitol Pressroom and 8 and As It Happens at 9.

Rox, you may well be right that the ratings and fundraising totals for weekend afternoons will not match what the Blues delivered under UB's ownership of WBFO. But that's not the issue here. I'm sounding like a broken record here. But you keep repeating yourself, so I will do the same. WBFO's new mission under Western New York Public Broadcasting is NPR News and talk. You're in radio. You know how it works. Listeners expect to hear a certain format when they tune in a particular radio station. When listeners tune in to WBFO now, they know they're going to hear news and talk, whether it's 7am Monday, 2pm Wednesday, 8pm Friday, 12noon Saturday or 3pm Sunday.

If all we cared about was ratings and fundraising dollars in public radio, polka would have still been on the air on WBFO. The Sunday evening polka show began in the early '80 as a program with a public radio feel that featured reports and interviews on Buffalo's Polish-American culture mixed in with the music. After the original host died, the show had evolved into nothing more than a traditional polka music jukebox similar to what aired on commercial stations. Even though it continued to generate great ratings and acceptable fundraising dollars for a fringe timeslot on a Sunday night, our research showed WBFO's core audience hated polka music. So, the polka show was dropped in 2001, and it took nearly a decade before we found something that attracted as many listeners in that timeslot with This American Life. Did we make a mistake in 2001? I think not. It took many years. But we finally found something that worked.

So, I understand what management is trying to do by adding the weekend talk shows. I will acknowledge there is more of an affinity between the Blues and news listeners as opposed to those who enjoy polka and news. But the Blues is still music. And if you're trying to establish a news format, you don't play music during prime listening hours.

So, Rox, I'm not sure why we're continuing to have this debate. Everything has been said. I'm even conceding your point about the size of the Blues vs. weekend news/talk audience. But I just ask you to concede my point that this was not all about ratings and fundraising dollars but about a vision and mission that WNYPBA now has for WBFO. In any format change, some listeners will be alienated. But except for weekend afternoons, WBFO is largely the same station it was last year at this time. And I would argue it's even better because of the live announcers providing news and weather updates at times when our old friend Otto Mation was running spots and fill music back in the day.

 

[SirRoxalot]

I'll stand corrected on the repeats. I simply don't listen much at night. I do miss Capitol Pressroom in mid-days. Guess I'll have to look for the podcast.

WNYPB certainly has the RIGHT to do whatever it wants. Silly me, I thought that the idea of PUBLIC broadcasting was to respond to the public. The public supported blues on the weekend in the afternoon. Apparently, canned and/or syndicated programming from outside the market is more important than the blues community which has been nurtured for a number of years by Jim Santella, and later Anita West.

So, WNYPB, feel free to continue to promote NPR programming at the expense of local content. I guess I'll stop "complaining". After all, I wouldn't want the benevolent fathers at WNYPB to think that I was ungrateful. It could be worse. At least I'm not a jazz listener. Well, OK, I really wasn't a jazz listener anyway. At least the Blues aren't only on an HD stream.

 

[spt87]

Sorry to revive a thread that died out a couple weeks ago, but thought this should be added.

Until 1970 WBFO was a student run station. Rather than sell it, UB should have turned it back over to the students.

Having attended UB in the 1990's I was acquaintances with some students who were trying to expand on the then in place carrier current AM and put a part 15 FM in the Amherst dorms. At that time I wondered why UB didn't just give the students what they should have had right along - control of WBFO. UB is a big, spread out school and big commuter school as well so that signal would have been rightly used for the purpose of reaching the entire student population.

Oh, I know its all about the money. But the University should be at least thinking about the students once in a while. They should have at least negotiated a deal to give control of the WBFO HD-2 to the students.

970 AM could have filled the need for NPR programming in Buffalo quite nicely.

 

[Bob1370]

WBFO back in the 60s and early 70s, before its first big signal upgrade, was a pretty limited-range station, a Class A signal without full market coverage. UB could afford to keep it a student activity. When it upped its power it had to serve a bigger public than the students in order to justify itself, so it became a community service outlet.

Student radio stations have had a varied path. Some of them, tied to large scale communications arts and journalism faculties, have become large scale classrooms and laboratories for the students to learn their craft. Others have morphed into community service outlets only incidentally related to the campus. Still others, mostly in smaller to medium sized college towns, spun off to become (or always were) student-owned organizations without official ties to the campuses where their staffers also happened to be students, and a few of them at campuses like Cornell, Brown, and the University of Virginia became totally commercial rock or CHR stations with full coverage of their markets, off-campus transmitter and studio sites, and total financial independence from the university. The history of college radio would be a long one, arguably even too complex to put into a book.

 

[Philip_Airtime]

Sorry to revive a thread that died out a couple weeks ago, but thought this should be added.

Until 1970 WBFO was a student run station. Rather than sell it, UB should have turned it back over to the students.

Having attended UB in the 1990's I was acquaintances with some students who were trying to expand on the then in place carrier current AM and put a part 15 FM in the Amherst dorms. At that time I wondered why UB didn't just give the students what they should have had right along - control of WBFO. UB is a big, spread out school and big commuter school as well so that signal would have been rightly used for the purpose of reaching the entire student population.

Oh, I know its all about the money. But the University should be at least thinking about the students once in a while. They should have at least negotiated a deal to give control of the WBFO HD-2 to the students.

970 AM could have filled the need for NPR programming in Buffalo quite nicely.

I respect your opinion on this matter. But I can't disagree more with your suggestion that UB should have returned WBFO to student control in the 1990s. By that time, WBFO had established itself as Buffalo's NPR station. The 1991 Gulf War resulted in huge audience increase for NPR and WBFO. It would have been totally irresponsible for UB to turn its back on nearly 100,000 listeners and give up on NPR so some college kids could play radio. It was not all about the money. WBFO, as an NPR station, served the public in a much better way than it would have if it was student run. That's not to say that I'm opposed to a student-run college station in Buffalo. WBNY at Buffalo State is a prime example of such a station that I know is beloved by its devotees.

In 1970, dozens of college stations across the country transitioned into NPR affiliates with the founding of the public radio network. So, WBFO was not alone here. One could argue there would be no NPR today if these stations decided to remain student operations. So, a greater good was accomplished here.

And AM 970 alone would not have been a quality source for NPR in Buffalo. I don't think I need to make the case here that the AM band is dying. That's why Western New York Public Broadcasting was always interested in establishing an FM news presence. And now it has one.

WBFO's 1960s era is fondly remembered by all who worked there then. Some wonderful radio was done by the legendary Bill Siemering and his team of student broadcasters. There were talk shows, jazz shows, classical music shows and more. If students controlled WBFO today, I doubt you would be hearing any of that. Instead, it would feature today's music that appeals to the college crowd. Nothing wrong with that. But it would not have been appropriate for a mature, 50W radio station that was already branded as a premier NPR station by the 1990s.

 

[TheBigA]

WBFO's 1960s era is fondly remembered by all who worked there then. Some wonderful radio was done by the legendary Bill Siemering and his team of student broadcasters.

Bill, for those who don't know, went on to become the first Program Director of NPR when the network was founded in 1971, and he's responsible for the creation of All Things Considered.

 

[Element9]

Revelation from the mount.

 

[rdcuffpa1]

Bill, for those who don't know, went on to become the first Program Director of NPR when the network was founded in 1971, and he's responsible for the creation of All Things Considered.

He now lives down in the Philly area. Had a chance to meet him at the Winter SWL Fest - he informally joined us to talk about radio projects in developing countries in collaboration with another gentleman / shortwave enthusiast who focuses on that.

He's an unassuming guy when you meet him, and he certainly casts a long shadow in the world of public radio. The fact that CBL / Toronto was easily audible in WNY helped...as ATC was modeled in part on the CBC's "As It Happens".

Richard in Allentown, PA (ex-East Aurora, NY)