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WDJC Birmingham
- Thread starter leepat
- Start date
B
b5
Guest
When I listened this week it was just Terry Patilla...Taylor was on "vacation". Here's the scoop on Tanner though from AL.com:
WDJC-FM fires morning DJ:
Jeff Tanner, who was hired earlier this year to work as a morning talk show host on Christian radio station WDJC-FM, has been fired, he said.
He said he had a disagreement with a Crawford Broadcasting corporate executive about the direction of the "Tanner and Taylor TNT Express" show and was fired on May 1. Efforts to reach station manager Steve Green for comment this week were unsuccessful.
"I think it was a huge mistake for them to pull the plug on something after two months," Tanner said. "There's still a part of me that's in shock."
Tanner and recent UAB graduate Dusti Fincher, nicknamed Taylor Rose, went on the air together Feb. 25. Fincher remains on the air and has been teamed with longtime station employee Terry Patilla.
Tanner, 48, a radio host since the 1980s, had been off the air almost five years when he got the job. He and Fincher replaced Wendy Garner and Ken Lass, former TV personalities for NBC 13 who went on the air as a morning show team at WDJC on Jan. 3, 2006, and were fired Feb. 14.
WDJC-FM fires morning DJ:
Jeff Tanner, who was hired earlier this year to work as a morning talk show host on Christian radio station WDJC-FM, has been fired, he said.
He said he had a disagreement with a Crawford Broadcasting corporate executive about the direction of the "Tanner and Taylor TNT Express" show and was fired on May 1. Efforts to reach station manager Steve Green for comment this week were unsuccessful.
"I think it was a huge mistake for them to pull the plug on something after two months," Tanner said. "There's still a part of me that's in shock."
Tanner and recent UAB graduate Dusti Fincher, nicknamed Taylor Rose, went on the air together Feb. 25. Fincher remains on the air and has been teamed with longtime station employee Terry Patilla.
Tanner, 48, a radio host since the 1980s, had been off the air almost five years when he got the job. He and Fincher replaced Wendy Garner and Ken Lass, former TV personalities for NBC 13 who went on the air as a morning show team at WDJC on Jan. 3, 2006, and were fired Feb. 14.
You know, as much as I wouldn't care for the programming of Salem Communications, it might be worth it to see them feed Birmingham some "Fish". Crawford Broadcasting of Birmingham often seems to be running a circus instead of a radio cluster.
Nate Wesley said:
I've been hoping for years that Crawford would sell out to Salem, at least here in Birmingham. Someone on the board here said that Crawford and Salem aren't exactly the "best of friends", so I guess that ain't gonna happen. 8)
It's not really surprising that WDJC's morning team disappeared as quickly as it did. After all, we are talking about the same folks who changed WYDE's on-air name three times within one week following the format change last year. :
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Sadly, this latest action in a string of firings, isn't surprising. Donald Crawford has always been more of a "corporate businessman" than a "compassionate Christian". The staff(s) of WDJC has always been committed to their mission whereas "The Donald" has always had the bottom line as his gospel. He wanted to fire me back in '83 when I started my own small ad agency without his permission. His tactics were the main reason why whe put "Love 1260, WCRT" on the air in '84. We had four GM's in three years. I don't know of any churches that has ever fired as many people as this "ministry" has. If you want the ultimate in job insecurity, Go to work for Donald Crawford.
Doug M said:
It's unfortunate the current group of Crawfords have abandoned the company's initial mission of sharing the gospel. I can remember back up until about 20 or 25 years ago that all of Crawford's stations were strictly christian programmed. It seems those in control now at Crawford are more focused on making a buck than anything else. I remember reading an interview online someone had with Don Crawford's son, who has bought some of the original Crawford stations from his dad and are now operating them separately from Crawford Broadcasting. He basically said that they were exploring secular formats now because, as he put it, those secular formats had "greater potential to make more money than the christian formats do". I can't really say for sure, but I wonder if that's not the mindset of Don Crawford and Crawford Broadcasting as well. So much for using the gifts God has given you for building God's kingdom. I really feel that's why Crawford struggles with many of these secular formats they've been offering, and nothing really seems to materialize with those stations. They've basically lost focus of what they originally set out to do, and since they're offering both secular and christian formats, their attention is divided and therein lies the problem. Are they really there to share the gospel or just use whatever format they can to make money? Focus and vision are everything. What is the scripture that says that "without vision, the people perish"? At least the staff at WDJC is concerned about sharing the gospel. I've never met any of them personally, but I've listened to them talk about their faith on-air and it's quite evident they care.
I'd like to say that as a christian, I'd be more willing to listen to WDJC than I do, but I just don't listen to them a lot. I've talked to some of WDJC's listeners and I'm getting some of the same issues I have with them...too many commercials, too much chit-chat, problems with the music that's being offered. I also get tired of hearing Don Crawford rant on the "Crawford Stand", too. I just don't think someone should have commentary on the radio about the ills of society when the very same person is out making money on his other stations by playing music with explicit lyrics, the type of programming that doesn't glorify God in any way. It's just another way the world can view christians in a negative light. And as christians we wonder why people view us as "hypocrites"?
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I see EMF has applied to move one of their Kansas stations to the Jasper area with a mere 70 kw of ERP - if that goes through, I'd expect WDJC (and to a lesser extent, WMFT) to take huge hits in listenership.
R
Rick Rose 2.0
Guest
I was just looking over that application and I don't seem to recall any FM stations recently that attempted to make a major change such as moving several hundred miles away. I knew of AM stations that have and are doing this but not FM until now. I see that this 89.7 will put a good signal over over a nice chunk of space to the north of Tuscaloosa and the northwest of Birmingham. I dont understand why Crawford keeps WDJC from really being a great well-programmed station because it should be a great station.
Doug M said:
Tell us some more about this station. What was its format, who did it cater to, and why did 1260 go through so many GM's? I'm sure this AM was still a bit of a player in the '80s as opposed to the afterthought it is now.
William_Yeager said:
and that is if EMF gets it...considering the number of applications for that frequency in the area. I'm hoping, though, EMF does wind up getting its application approved. At least a few of the contemporary christian listeners in central AL would be able to listen to something other than WDJC.
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[/quote]
Tell us some more about this station. What was its format, who did it cater to, and why did 1260 go through so many GM's? I'm sure this AM was still a bit of a player in the '80s as opposed to the afterthought it is now.
[/quote]
WCRT-AM (Love 1260) was a venture sponsored primarily by several members of a local Assemblies of God congregation. They came into the format with so many strikes against it, it wasn't funny. First, WCRT was a daytime-only station. It went 24/7 in the mid-80's, but the nighttime signal was and is atrocious, basically covering only downtown Birmingham, which was and is virtually deserted after 5:00 p.m. Second, the station's signal didn't cover the entire metro area (and it still doesn't as WYDE-AM). By the mid-'80's, suburban migration was heading south, towards Homewood, Vestavia, Hoover and northern Shelby County; the signal was best heard in less-affluent areas of the inner city.
The final strike against it was the fire that destroyed the studios and transmitter just a few weeks before the station was scheduled to flip formats from its previous Music of Your Life format. It took several months for the station to return to air, and by the time it did, the 1260 frequency was forgotten by many AM listeners. Plus, by the mid-80's, there were only three relatively viable AM stations in Birmingham: WVOK-690 (now WSPZ) playing oldies, WERC-960 still establishing itself as a news-talk station, and WAPI-1070 playing adult standards. IIRC, the five highest rated stations in the market in the mid-80's combined for over 60% of the radio listenership in Birmingham...and all of them were FM: WZZK-104.7 (country then as it is now); WAPI-FM-94.5 (top 40 I-95, now hot AC WYSF); WMJJ-96.5 (Magic 96, cranking out AC just like it does now), WENN-107.7 (they had the urban market to themselves on FM then, now urban AC WUHT); and WKXX-106.9 (top 40 Kicks 106, now classic hits WBPT).
Tell us some more about this station. What was its format, who did it cater to, and why did 1260 go through so many GM's? I'm sure this AM was still a bit of a player in the '80s as opposed to the afterthought it is now.
[/quote]
WCRT-AM (Love 1260) was a venture sponsored primarily by several members of a local Assemblies of God congregation. They came into the format with so many strikes against it, it wasn't funny. First, WCRT was a daytime-only station. It went 24/7 in the mid-80's, but the nighttime signal was and is atrocious, basically covering only downtown Birmingham, which was and is virtually deserted after 5:00 p.m. Second, the station's signal didn't cover the entire metro area (and it still doesn't as WYDE-AM). By the mid-'80's, suburban migration was heading south, towards Homewood, Vestavia, Hoover and northern Shelby County; the signal was best heard in less-affluent areas of the inner city.
The final strike against it was the fire that destroyed the studios and transmitter just a few weeks before the station was scheduled to flip formats from its previous Music of Your Life format. It took several months for the station to return to air, and by the time it did, the 1260 frequency was forgotten by many AM listeners. Plus, by the mid-80's, there were only three relatively viable AM stations in Birmingham: WVOK-690 (now WSPZ) playing oldies, WERC-960 still establishing itself as a news-talk station, and WAPI-1070 playing adult standards. IIRC, the five highest rated stations in the market in the mid-80's combined for over 60% of the radio listenership in Birmingham...and all of them were FM: WZZK-104.7 (country then as it is now); WAPI-FM-94.5 (top 40 I-95, now hot AC WYSF); WMJJ-96.5 (Magic 96, cranking out AC just like it does now), WENN-107.7 (they had the urban market to themselves on FM then, now urban AC WUHT); and WKXX-106.9 (top 40 Kicks 106, now classic hits WBPT).
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