WBUD going bye bye's?

[musicrrrr]

I've been listening to Trenton's 1260 WBUD for years now...I remember when they were a nostalgia/big band station, and when they switched to oldies in the late 90's. Today they are sort of an easy listening oldies station with a lot of 70's stuff mixed in with the format.

I was reading on the New Jersey board that they may being going satellite in a couple of weeks. Has anyone else heard this?

If so it's a crying shame. I work in Trenton and live in Montgomery County so I'm able to listen to the station a lot and I was just starting to dig it again the last couple of months since we lost WPEN.

The current playlist is decent IMHO. It definitely needs some fine tuning but I'll take it any day over a watered down nationally syndicated musical program that lacks a local focus and local talent.

 

[Vince2003]

Yes sateliite programming is the direction BUD may be heading in a couple weeks or perhaps after the 1st of the year.

BUD has said they are keeping the Mercer News Morning show around(probably to satisfy the FCC mandate of at least a few hours of programming a week that caters to the public interest)

If you noticed they have added music to the show and eliminated most of the fluffy stuff.Weather still comes on at 10 and 40 past the hour,sports at 15 and 45 business news at 23 and 53 past the hour traffic every 15 minutes,milenium radio network news at the top and the bottom of the hour,and music and lots of commercials in between.Pretty much the same format they have followed for the last 15 years but music is now featured on the show in place of the old local news and fluffy segments.

Its sad the BUD has gone down hill the last several years or so with mostly automated music.Sad to see the demise of a once great radio station that has played big band music nostalgia music MOR stuff or a mix or combo or some of each for 25 years now,in favor satellite or talk radio perhaps.

BUD says they are scaling back on news and let 2 radio vets in John Weber and Ed Salvas go huh.Yea right!I smell a format change or sometype of change.

 

[k2pg]

> Yes sateliite programming is the direction BUD may be
> heading in a couple weeks or perhaps after the 1st of the
> year.
> BUD says they are scaling back on news and let 2 radio vets
> in John Weber and Ed Salvas go.

The suits who run a lot of the radio stations in this country still don't get it! Why should anyone want to listen to canned, stale, satellite-delivered programming on AM when XM and Sirius are readily available and provide better audio quality? I see a lot of whining by broadcasters in the trade journals, as they wonder how they can compete against XM, Sirius, and nonbroadcast media such as MP3 players and iPODs. The answer is MORE, not less local programming. Give people the local news that satellite can't provide, offer them local air talent, and talk about their area while playing music that LOCAL people...not some overpaid "consultant" from a state with more cows than people...want to hear.

Far too many of today's group owners are like the sailor who tries to quench his thirst by drinking sea water. They paid inflated prices for stations in their feeding frenzy to acquire as many stations as possible in each area. Then they find that they have trouble meeting the loan payments, so they cut costs by cutting local news and local programming. Ratings plummet, advertisers cancel, the stations have to lower their rates, and revenue plummets. Then management makes even more programming cuts and the lousy programming that they put on drives even more listeners...and ad revenue...away. Just as the salt in sea water increases the sailor's thirst, the programming budget cuts only increase a station's financial losses.