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WBUR Car Talk & Wait Wait

N

necrat123

Guest
Looks like WBUR has flip flopped Car Talk and Wait Wait don't tell me, and put Car Talk on 7 and WWDTM on at 6.
Unsure if this is just for the remainder of the summer or permanent.
I don't listen to any more of WBUR's program list to know if other changes were made.

Fortunatley, WRNI has left car talk alone at 6pm.

http://www.wbur.org/programs/schedule
 
Necrat said:
Looks like WBUR has flip flopped Car Talk and Wait Wait don't tell me, and put Car Talk on 7 and WWDTM on at 6. Unsure if this is just for the remainder of the summer or permanent. I don't listen to any more of WBUR's program list to know if other changes were made.
Click to expand...

You're talking about the Sunday evening rebroadcasts. Car Talk airs on WBUR for the first time each weekend on Saturday mornings at 11:00 and Wait, Wait airs for the first time each weekend on both WBUR and WGBH (FM) on Saturdays at 10:00AM. The Sunday evening flip began a week ago--on Sunday, July 25. At that time, I thought it was a production mixup at WBUR as I had heard no announcement of a schedule change. I have still heard no announcement and I don't appreciate the rearranged schedule. I had kind of built my Sunday evening schedule around listening to Car Talk at 6:00PM. I enjoy the program enough to want to listen to it twice--although WBUR's previous practice of airing a week-old program on Sundays was better yet. Hearing Wait, Wait only once during the weekend is enough for me; WBUR carries it a total of three times each weekend. Besides the Saturday 10:00AM and Sunday 6:00PM airings on 90.9, it also appears on Saturdays at 2:00PM. Enough, already!

My hunch is that both the switch from airing a week-old Car Talk on Sunday evenings at WBUR and the switch in the order of airing Wait, Wait and Car Talk on Sundays at WBUR were made for the convenience of the station staff. I would not be surprised to learn that NPR feeds Wait, Wait and Car Talk in that order earlier on Saturdays than WBUR first airs them and that the two shows go onto the hard disk together with Wait, Wait cued up first. This way, WBUR can air the same two hours Saturdays from 10:00AM to noon and Sundays From 6:00 to 8:00PM. If I'm right, Car Talk should soon start to air one more time each weekend on WBUR--on Saturday afternoons at 3:00PM. One would think that modern broadcast-automation technology would allow something a bit more creative.
 
Most NPR stations actually air Car Talk first, then Wait, Wait, usually at 10 and 11am on Saturdays, respectively. Only some NPR stations air one or both of those shows a second time on Sunday, making the fact that WBUR airs Wait, Wait 3 times per weekend quite an anomaly. It's my understanding that WBUR moved Wait, Wait to 10am on Saturday to compete with the fact that WGBH was airing it at the same time, so WBUR needed to compete.

I think it's OK that WBUR repeats Car Talk and Wait, Wait on Sunday evenings, I think that the Saturday at 2pm broadcast of Wait, Wait is a little too much. NPR has many weekend programs that do not get aired between the two major NPR stations and handful of college public stations that they could easily get something to fill that slot.

Jacko
 
I think it's OK that WBUR repeats Car Talk and Wait, Wait on Sunday evenings, I think that the Saturday at 2pm broadcast of Wait, Wait is a little too much. NPR has many weekend programs that do not get aired between the two major NPR stations and handful of college public stations that they could easily get something to fill that slot.
Click to expand...

You are correct that there are many excellent weekly shows produced by NPR, PRI, APM, PRX (and independently). However, I have learned over the last three years that weekend listening for public radio (and probably commercial radio, too) is a strange and slippery beast. The rules of the weekday listener just don't apply, and audiences usually tune in and out in fairly specific patterns. For example, a lot of people listen on Saturdays relatively early (7-9am) as they get up and get ready for the day. But there's also a large contingent of people who sleep in and are rarely awake before 11am or noon. And then there's people who may be away from a radio for most of the morning but are puttering about the house (either the regular home or a vacation one) by 2pm. Etc etc etc.

The upshot here is that it's entirely possible that even though the 11am and 2pm airings of WWDTM are only two hours apart - they're mostly reaching different audiences. Or maybe not; it's a highly localized phenomena and I'll bet it's also highly seasonable with Cape listeners. Hard to say without having the actual Arbitrons to look at.
 
DanStrassberg said:
have still heard no announcement and I don't appreciate the rearranged schedule. I had kind of built my Sunday evening schedule around listening to Car Talk at 6:00PM.
Click to expand...

Yes, thats how I feel. Fortunatley for me, I discovered last night that my other NPR affil here, WRNI, still airs it at 6pm, so I can still listen to it at 6, just not on BUR anymore. (Which isn't the worst thing either, as my older radios tend to struggle with WBUR, with WTKL blasting away on 91.1. I'd frequently have to tune it in on my DX398 or G8.)
 
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