WEHM FEATURED IN NEWSDAY ARTICLE

[fang39]

Check it out:

http://www.newsday.com/features/pri...25,0,5635158.story?coll=ny-features-headlines

Though reception west of The William Floyd Parkway is a crapshoot, I hope their webstream gets a nice bump from readers of the piece who may be curious about the station. It's a great listen! Two years ago, Howard Stern, who lives in East Hampton, commented (on his show) what a great station 'EHM is!

 

[engineer16]

WEHM used ot be a better station.....hwne it was first launched and in the first two years.....it was very professional sounding, had local news, was involved in local events and activities...it was a much better station than it is today. Unfortunately they made a number of mistakes in letting people go, changing the format and it was all down hil from there.....its just another mediocre station now...

 

[hopwilson]

Isn't WEHM the same format it always was? AAA?
I've lived in a lot of places and WEHM is the best station I've ever heard in terms of programming and music. Their signal and processing leaves much to be desired. But it *is* an otherwise professional sounding station. With some decent jocks on there too. Nice article--I hope it sends some more listeners their way!

 

[engineer16]

No the original format was Adult Contemporary. The format was changed after the original PD and Music Director essentially faked a listener survey and used the results to convince station ownership to change the format. It was all down hill from there. The station's processing used to sound great...but alas they ruined that too. Like I said its a shell of its orginal and former self....

 

[RadioStationDudeUSA]

It's owned by Cherry Creek Radio, enough said.. they aren't the worlds best operators, just happy with the Status Quo.

 

[fang39]

WEHM used ot be a better station.....hwne it was first launched and in the first two years.....it was very professional sounding, had local news, was involved in local events and activities...it was a much better station than it is today. Unfortunately they made a number of mistakes in letting people go, changing the format and it was all down hil from there.....its just another mediocre station now....

It's owned by Cherry Creek Radio, enough said.. they aren't the worlds best operators, just happy with the Status Quo.

It's been a AAA format for several years, and as such, is the Cherry Creek clusters' most successful billing station. Technical issues aside, the format is unique and has introduced new music and artitsts (Jack Johnson, Madeline Peyroux) not available on commercial radio in this listening market. Blending it with classic AOR (Neil Young, Grateful Dead, Beatles) make it a very enjoyable listen. If you want the AC format, then listen to WBAZ.

 

[engineer16]

Except that as an AC station in its first 12 months it outbilled everyone but WLNG. Fine its AAA, but its not the local orientated and involved station that it was launched as. Its just another lousy sounding station..proving no real service to the public...

 

[fang39]

Except that as an AC station in its first 12 months it outbilled everyone but WLNG. Fine its AAA, but its not the local orientated and involved station that it was launched as. Its just another lousy sounding station..proving no real service to the public...

Addressing the former, EHM is a $1m biiling station, so in that regard they do well enough. On the latter, yes, because of the parent company's unwillingness to pay for necessary upgrades to the processing, it is (at times) "another lousy sounding station." But's that's a techincal issue...the music and programming are sound.

As far as it not being the "local orientated and involved station" and providing "no real service to the public," yes I agree they need be more locally and "civically" conscious and not just rely on appearances at The Stephen Talkhouse and the occasional Happy Hour along the Nappeague stretch. There are lots of high profile activities on the east end that the station should be visible at, especially during the summer season. That's a responsibility of the Sales department to make those appearances possible, so the talent can get paid for their time.

 

[EastEnda]

WAIT...Hold on a second....

This is the second time I've seen this statement made about the "Old" WEHM & how it was "better" than the current one...

Let's work on the facts....The group that launched WEHM WAY overspent on start-up costs & never were able to dig out of that hole. When WEHM was an AC station that as you say, "Outbilled Everyone" in its' first year....Let's remember it was getting a TON of commercial money "filtered" to it by it's original owner (Who was the chairman of Sony @ the time)...Ever wonder why those 5-minute movie reviews they did were always for a Columbia Pictures Release??

Once that money dried up...They HAD to do something different...Down the street, (Literally) "Beach" was already doing Bright/Hot AC, so WEHM moved to the AAA format...Unfortuntely for them, the Hot AC format was moving into that Modern AC/Lilith era of the Mid 90's, so there wasn't a HUGE difference between the 2 stations, (Except for WEHM's jazz @ Night (?)...

By the time the station announced the merger with "Beach" in 1997, their staff had been cut from 32 to 4 because they weren't billing enough money to stay afloat....

After the merger, the new company was able to better seperate the 2 stations programming & WEHM started to come back to life...

 

[engineer16]

Yes, the original owners did spend alot of money on startup. But that wasnt the reason for nor did that create necessity for the format change,. The format change was implemented simply because the former PD and his two sidekicks created a listener survery which they manipulated and faked the results of in order to convince the owners and GM to change based solely n their personal preferences. The station was doing well, billing well. and had no real reason to change formats. It was an AC which better than Beach, had a great sound, community orientated and a dedicated staff. it was a better station.

As for the comment about needing monry to upgrade their processing....not at all, they had excellent audio gear that essentially was screwed around with after the original station engineer, a fulltimer was let go. The contract engineers to follow screwed up the processing and it has never been set up correctly again.

The original WEHM was a better radio station.....end of story