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WBZ-AM should not be news overnights

S

Smoke

Norm Rosen said:
They should still fill the 8:00PM to 5:00AM programming with news, and no more infomercials such as NECN with theirs.
Click to expand...

Norm, you've posted about this many times, but aside from "New York does it" I haven't seen any reason why WBZ-AM should do news all night. With cell phones and countless other news sources, ripping and reading the headlines every 15 minutes doesn't provide a compelling reason to tune in.

Radio needs unique, compelling reasons to listen, not someone reading Google News to us.
 
Exactly and while some may like it, the majority do not.

>>Radio needs unique, compelling reasons to listen

After news all day talk all night works just fine and if you do want news there are probably
some sources out there that can still give you some...even the cable news networks branch
into talk, features, etc at night.
Also TV stations like 4, 5, 7, 25, 56 (7) etc have newscasts at 11 pm and in the wee hours. Those with smartphones can surf to newspaper sites or these TV stations, etc.
 
Radio needs unique, compelling reasons to listen, not someone reading Google News to us.
Click to expand...
Agreed, though I find having a guy come on in the middle of the night to list all the places where there's no traffic isn't all that compelling.
 
Sirius/XM has traffic for Boston, Philly, and Pittsburgh 24/7 on one of their channels. I need to know there's no traffic on 128, on the Schuykill, and on the Parkway West at 3 in the morning. Granted, I do like visiting Pittsburgh and hearing them saying due to construction, the Squirrel Hill Tunnel
is down to one lane westbound will make me nostalgic for the Steel City, but...

Some may well want news all night but they figure most people want talk. They are going with the
majority. If elections went with the minority, we'd be talking about President Romney, Governor
Baker, and Senator Gomez right now :D
 
The overnight talk format is not the problem...THAT Woman is the PROBLEM.
 
To say we don't need All-News at night is silly. If you want news at 3pm, you want it at 3am. If you need traffic and weather at 1pm, you need it at 1am. Again, to say there's no traffic overnight is silly as well. Plenty of overnight construction projects close highways. If a truck can overturn at noon, it can overturn at midnight.

Now, if you say that Boston should have more than one Talk station, I'd agree with you there. Maybe that's why some folks say WBZ should do Talk at night, because the only other option for nighttime talk is WRKO. If you're not a fan of Coast to Coast, you're out of luck. Even the NPR stations, WBUR and WGBH, don't really do regular programming overnight. They either run Public Radio Exchange or BBC World News. Sometimes both stations are running the same program. They should repeat some of their shows from earlier in the day for late night listeners who may have missed or been asleep for the daytime shows. WNYC NYC repeats its local Talk shows at midnight, one on the AM, one on the FM. (I'm surprised NPR hasn't started a late-night Talk show, since most NPR stations simply go with the BBC all night.)

As we've said before, all the other CBS All-News stations (except KRLD Dallas) do news overnight. If I turn on the hot water at my kitchen sink, I expect hot water to come out, all times of the day. I don't expect apple juice between 8pm and 5am, as nice as apple juice might be.
 
XM radio can give you traffic for a small amount of money. WBZ will do it once or twice an hour. If there's a highway closure it can be said at TOH or bottom of hour news.

Lots of people are home overnight w/ access to TV, computer etc. And yes there are night workers;
I'm one of them, and not everyone has smartphones etc to keep up on things. (We do have a TV in the breakroom and there are overnight newscasts, even if they're reruns of the 11 pm 'cast).
There aren't that many breaking stories overnight though certainly the Thu. night (and Fri night)
after the Marathon bombings was an exception. So was the Japan tsunami--and I was able to hear the audio of CNN and Fox News via XM for coverage of that, on my way home. Death of Bin Laden, another (rare) case.
WBZ figures most people got their fill of news by day and they want to hear talk at night.

And some news stories can break via a talk show. Scott Brown went on Rea's show last night to
say he wasn't running for governor.

>>They should repeat some of their shows from earlier in the day
I think WGBH and WBUR do repeat their shows, maybe Eagan & Braude etc, overnight

>> all the other CBS All-News stations (except KRLD Dallas) do news overnight.

By definition, WBZ is not all news because they run talk from 8 pm-5 am. Now, all news the REST of the day, yes. Other CBS news-talk or talk stations have things like Overnight America
overnight (KDKA, WCCO, KMOX; WCCO actually picks up part of Jordan Rich)
 
Gregg said:
To say we don't need All-News at night is silly. If you want news at 3pm, you want it at 3am. If you need traffic and weather at 1pm, you need it at 1am. Again, to say there's no traffic overnight is silly as well. Plenty of overnight construction projects close highways. If a truck can overturn at noon, it can overturn at midnight.
Click to expand...
I didn't say there's no traffic overnight. I pointed out how silly it was to bother with "Traffic on the 3's" in the middle of the night when there's nothing to report. If there's a tie-up at 3:03AM, let people know, but don't waste air time having the guy list all of the major roadways that have nobody on them.
 
Cap-n Spackle said:
I didn't say there's no traffic overnight. I pointed out how silly it was to bother with "Traffic on the 3's" in the middle of the night when there's nothing to report. If there's a tie-up at 3:03AM, let people know, but don't waste air time having the guy list all of the major roadways that have nobody on them.
Click to expand...

As someone who often has to drive overnight and very early morning hours, I'm glad to know about the many partial and full road closures often in place all over greater Boston. I agree that there's no need to list all the major roads just to say that they're empty, but I'd like to hear traffic added to the :33 as well as the :03 breaks overnights just to announce all the road closures, then something like "...the rest of the roadways in the area are all quiet right now..." would suffice.
 
WBZ-AM WILL not be news, overnights

I worked overnights, for a number of years. I have also worked for CNN.
Yes, there are always people out there who may be listening, at any given hour.
News on the overnights is just too expensive to do, for a very limited return on
investment. Not gonna happen. All planned events (press conferences, reports made
public, etc.) are timed to get the maximum news coverage, at times when there is
a substantial audience to hear/view it. Why bother to repeat news that everyone has
already heard, and that will not keep until the next morning's drive time? 24 hour news
eats material, constantly...Not gonna happen...
 
Exactly, and there are headlines and other news sources out there if you need them.

>>too expensive to do...limited return on investment...Not gonna happen

And for those saying New York does it, well there are eight million stories in the naked city...
but we're not as big a city as NY-metro area.
If you're on the North Shore and you want to find out about the big fire in Salem Willows area,
Salem News site has it. There are some TV newscasts in the early morning--yes the explosion
in Danversport (paint plant) that happened at 2:45 am one morning didn't have immediate TV
coverage but 2 hours later the eyeopener news had it. And before then, people were calling in
to WBZ's _talk_ to share what they were seeing near their homes. Repeated news can only go on for so long, be it on NECN on WBZ or whatever. People listening on their bedside radios would rather hear some talk from WBZ not news, news, news.
 
If they did news 8pm to 5am time spent listening would go down as the regulars who tune in for a couple hours at a time would be gone. I just read that Dan Rea is number 2 in his time slot only behind Kiss 108. The station overall is 4 or 5. Why risk it when there is nothing to fix and it is out performing the overall #s.

Any breaking stories have always been covered by the talk hosts so Bin Laden, the paint plant explosion, all of them have been on WBZ overnight faster than on any of the TV stations or print web sites just because they have someone live on the air ready to go. They call in reporters for those events so usually within an hour you have live reports from the scene or national stories need to go to the network anyway. Running all news during those hours would not change that.

If they did go that way it would be done on the cheap. They wouldn't have a staff of writers, reporters in the field, etc. on duty overnight. Someone on the air reading news and a producer. Maybe the news would be voicetracked. Their current night time content is much better suited to their skywave service anyway since many of the topics have appeal outside the Boston area - their new content not so much. And every night the callers from distant places prove that service is of value.
 
Exactly it does cost $$$..want to take up a
collection and send it to BZ?..
Even if post midnight doesn't matter as
much to them there are loyal listeners
to talk. And if there's a breaking news
major story, an RKO can bring in hosts
etc like when a big blizzard hit about 10
yrs ago and they pre-empted Savage to
bring in Moe Lauzier.
 
I do think they should have traffic and weather at :33 past the hour too. But keep the overnight talk programming. Though the tacky snake oil infomercials, Kim Komando and the various financial programs need to go.
 
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