WBUR revamps Saturday program lineup

[DanStrassberg]

In a move that is obviously aimed at blunting WGBH's attack on its weekend lineup, WBUR has changed the time at which several NPR programs air. WGBH now airs Wait, Wait! at 10:00AM Saturdays. So does WBUR now, although WBUR's feed this morning was approximately one second ahead of WGBH's. WBUR is also rebroadcasting Wait, Wait! at 2:00PM Saturday. Other affected shows include This American Life (moves to noon Saturdays on WBUR) and On the Media, which is now heard at 1:00PM Saturdays on WBUR. There are additional changes to both the Saturday and Sunday schedules on WBUR. See www.wbur.org.

One can only hope that these moves don't presage the start of a battle for one-upmanship in scheduling between WBUR and WGBH, Changing program schedules can quickly annoy the audience to the point of becoming counterproductive. People actually do organize their routines around familiar and beloved prgrams. Listeners also feel that their contributions to public radio stations entitle them to input on matters such as scheduling. Push the audience too far in this regard and the result may be that a lot of listeners will sit on their wallets at pledge time.

 

[Laurence Glavin]

Most of the comments that appear on WBUR's website echo my opinion: I felt a little Blind-sided(tm) (name of a movie I don't intend to see) by the changes. I tended to listen to WE/SAT from 9:00 top 11:00 on 'BUR and WWDTM on NH Public Radio at eleven. It turns out that WFCR-FM 88.5 continues the first hour of WE/SAT at 10:00, and most mornings I get a satisfactory signal from them. (I'm sure that when spring and summer arrive, TROPs my interfere with WFCR.) I agree with some of the people who commented on WBUR's website that these moves may have been hasty and ill-advised. I wonder if WGBH-FM placed WWDTM at 10:00 am to try to drive that show's fans to their frequency.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I wonder if WGBH-FM placed WWDTM at 10:00 am to try to drive that show's fans to their frequency.

They seem to be doing anything they can to grab a piece of WBUR's ratings pie.

 

[aaronread]

If there's one thing that WBUR never does, it's anything "hasty and ill-informed". Sometimes to their detriment, IMHO, but they always make very deliberate moves after much research and analysis. And I don't think we'll see a lot of one-upsmanship going on here. I can't speak too much for WGBH simply because I don't know their PD, but while I often haven't seen eye-to-eye with Sam Fleming, the man has a ton of experience and he's no dummy. He knows that constant program changes are always a bad idea, and that WBUR has little to explain for their product/schedule. That was something I always liked about WBUR; their schedule was tight even without a lot of direct competition.

The amount of repetition is interesting. I mean, there's something to be said for airing your strongest programs multiple times, but now WWDTM is on four times per weekend, just on WBUR. That feels like a bit much to me, but I'll take it at face value that there's a reason behind it, and that makes me wonder if a sea change is going on in listening habits. At least for WBUR listeners? I mean, there's certainly several other shows that could be snuck in there: TechNation, World Vision Report, Inside Europe, Splendid Table and Marketplace Money all come to mind. And they could even delay Friday's Fresh Air (which is covered up by RadioBoston) or put in Fresh Air Weekend. Reaching a bit into the leftist side, there's Alternative Radio, Humankind, War News Radio, 51%, Le Show and Making Contact. And there's even the not-really-leftist-but-still-underground Out of Bounds, The Treatment and The Business.

I'll grant you, a lot of these shows are not as "strong" as WWDTM, Car Talk, This American Life and On the Media are...but honestly I'm not sure any show is strong enough to justify that many repeats. That's why I'm very interested to see how well it works or doesn't work. Certainly its success might (among many other factors) have implications for WEOS's lineup...

(note, I believe WBUR airs last week's Car Talk on Sunday, so it's not like you hear the same exact show both days...but you can't do that with WWDTM. Besides the topicality, the terms of the show don't allow it being delayed more than the following Monday)

@Laurence: for what it's worth, the comments are ALWAYS negative when you make a programming change. Nobody likes change in a schedule. Not at first. It's what they say (or more importantly, what they give) in 3 - 6 months that really matters.

As for the "one second early", everything in public radio is based on the clock, and usually down to about the half-second level of timing. Since WWDTM has a NPR newscast hole and I assume both WBUR and WGBH use it, then that second's worth of time difference cannot be intentional. I have to assume that the delay you're hearing is either from WGBH's STL or possibly their HD encoding delay. Either can be different for every station, depending on what gear they use.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

@Laurence: for what it's worth, the comments are ALWAYS negative when you make a programming change. Nobody likes change in a schedule. Not at first. It's what they say (or more importantly, what they give) in 3 - 6 months that really matters.

Right, and in any media situation, it's always the people who are dissatisfied in the face of any changes who speak up the most loudly and prolifically in protest at first, even if they are only a small minority. The people who have no problem with the changes or who may be satisfied with them, even if they are a much larger segment of the audience, tend to make no comments at all if they feel that they have no need to protest anything.

As Aaron says, it's what the audience at large says and contributes (and the ratings numbers) a few months down the road that will bear out the value and wisdom of the changes.

 

[DanStrassberg]

(note, I believe WBUR airs last week's Car Talk on Sunday, so it's not like you hear the same exact show both days...but you can't do that with WWDTM. Besides the topicality, the terms of the show don't allow it being delayed more than the following Monday)

Car Talk on Sunday USED to be the the Saturday show from the previous week. No more, however. It is now the show that aired the previous day (that is, approximately 30 hours earlier). AFAIK, the change took place sometime this year--in the spring I think. I just assumed (possibly incorrectly) that NPR had begun feeding the program on both Saturday and Sunday and grabbing the feed when it came down from the bird was easier and less error prone than loading and playing the correct tape. Under the old system, every month or so, the wrong week's show would air on Sunday. Sometimes WBUR would catch the error and switch programs after the first local break (~00:20), but sometimes the error would not be corrected.

As for the Car Talk content being timely. Naah! Used to be that when they broadcast a repeat show from a bygone year, they would announce that it was a repeat at the beginning of the program. Now, they do it without any notice. But there is a dead giveaway. The callers mention the model years of their cars, and when everybody's car is from the early or mid '90s and when the odometer reads, say, 70,000 miles on a 1994 Malibu, you can pretty much guess that the show is a repeat.

 

[MarcB]

Both WFCR 88.5 in Amherst, Mass and Connecticut Public Radio carry Car Talk on Saturdays and Sundays. The Sunday edition has been next day repeat for a while now.

I recall WFCR used to carry the previous week's car talk Saturdays at 11AM waiting until 4PM Sunday's to air the new episode. Back then WFCR used to carry the current week's Car Talk Saturdays at 10AM on sister station WPNI 1430. Now that WPNI 1430 is now on WNNZ 640 they changed it to Sundays at 10AM.

 

[Jacko]

When Wait, Wait was on both stations yesterday morning, WGBH also may have had the slight advantage over WBUR by being in stereo. I drove from Watertown to West Warwick, RI yesterday between 10-11 am and got a solid signal from 89.7 the whole way. Another advantage WGBH has. The huge advantage WBUR has is the news department. WGBH pretty much seems to be off the bird as far as news, with very little actual local content. And if that continues to be the case, WBUR should be fine.

Jacko

 

[aaronread]

When Wait, Wait was on both stations yesterday morning, WGBH also may have had the slight advantage over WBUR by being in stereo.

I just checked, the audio files for WWDTM off the PRSS ContentDepot are indeed in stereo. But while it probably makes the ambience sound a little more "live", the essence of the show is still mono: people talking.

With most stereo-capable radios having digital tuners, the usefulness of being in stereo as a tuning aide has dropped substantially in the last ten years. These days being in stereo, unless needed because of programming, can actually hurt you since a stereo signal has an inherently higher noise floor (and is more susceptible to perceived interference from multipath) and thus a mono station can have the edge in perceived "better" audio quality.

 

[Blackroc]

Apparently "Sunday Baroque" is gone from WGBH's schedule and didn't get picked up at 99.5

 

[dyeingeye]

(note, I believe WBUR airs last week's Car Talk on Sunday, so it's not like you hear the same exact show both days...but you can't do that with WWDTM. Besides the topicality, the terms of the show don't allow it being delayed more than the following Monday)

Car Talk on Sunday USED to be the the Saturday show from the previous week. No more, however. It is now the show that aired the previous day (that is, approximately 30 hours earlier). AFAIK, the change took place sometime this year--in the spring I think. I just assumed (possibly incorrectly) that NPR had begun feeding the program on both Saturday and Sunday and grabbing the feed when it came down from the bird was easier and less error prone than loading and playing the correct tape. Under the old system, every month or so, the wrong week's show would air on Sunday. Sometimes WBUR would catch the error and switch programs after the first local break (~00:20), but sometimes the error would not be corrected.

As for the Car Talk content being timely. Naah! Used to be that when they broadcast a repeat show from a bygone year, they would announce that it was a repeat at the beginning of the program. Now, they do it without any notice. But there is a dead giveaway. The callers mention the model years of their cars, and when everybody's car is from the early or mid '90s and when the odometer reads, say, 70,000 miles on a 1994 Malibu, you can pretty much guess that the show is a repeat.

When Car Talk is in repeats they are clear. T&R come on and say that they are presenting something from the archives and there is no puzzler.

 

[DanStrassberg]

When Car Talk is in repeats they are clear. T&R come on and say that they are presenting something from the archives and there is no puzzler.

That USED to be the case. As I pointed out in my previous posting, as far as I am able to tell, it is no longer the case. In fact, the Tappet Bros are sometimes even sneakier than my posting suggested. Not only do they now sometimes broadcast repeat shows without mentioning that they are doing so, the now also sometimes sneak in years-old phonecalls amongst the current ones. If you've followed the show for a long time and listen carefully, you may recall the old phonecalls when they use them. I would not be surprised if these "classics" appear on the CDs they sell on their Web site. Two that I've heard recently were a story about keeping pet goats off of the roof of the car of someone who came to visit the caller and two calls in one show (the second call intiated by C&C) from/to a retired postal employee on Long Island who had a good sense of humor and a very strong New York accent.