WGOP-Pocomoke Just Bad Radio

[Superfly123]

If you're not going to invest the time and money to make your radio station run without problems, you should turn the transmitter off and surrender the license.

No top of the hour ID
Station call letters run before, during and after commercial breaks and over the audio.
Commercials air that are out of date, run over the top of network spots and run longer than the break allows.
Dead air - - - A couple of months ago, the station was silent for four days. Other times it "sits there" and it's obvious that no one is paying attention to it.
The audio of its Spanish sister station "bleeds through".
Poor execution of the network format for the Baltimore Oriole games. The station joins the pre-game broadcasts late, doesn't air spots in the proper breaks and, more often than not, has dead air after the games. There have also been times the scheduled game has not aired. I wonder if the Orioles Network knows how bad this is.

This is what gives local ownership a black eye.

 

[b-turner]

Sounds like a bad station. I have sure heard some horrible stations myself. I even knew a few folks that had such stations.

I knew one guy that had an FM in a little town of about 4,000. His studio was horrible: a Radio Shack mixer, a Radio Shack microphone and I think 3 cassette decks. The station had all their music on cassette tape and recorded commercials in an office with a microphone plugged in to a cassette deck. I think he said he had no processing at first. I recall it sounding weak and tinny. As you might suspect, the guy had bought the station as the prior owner was going under. It seems the previous owner's employees took everything in the office. Rumors were the old staff took everything to sell since their last paycheck bounced. The guy simply assumed existing debt to get in to the station and really didn't have lots of cash. He had been a teacher.

As he told it, he pieced everything together out of his pocket and sold all day long at any price just to cover payroll and the debt. In two years he finally reached break even. He still didn't take a salary until the 5th year after he had invested in the station to the point it sounded like a real station. A few years after that he sold, saying he was tired and worn out. He said he'd spend at least 3 days a week going to towns (pre-cell phone days), trade a motel room for a day and sell small packages by phone, calling everyone in the yellow pages and running out to grab copy and a check once somebody said yes. He said he took anything he could, as lows as 50 cents a spot if he had to go that low. He said if he didn't get the cash then the poor kids making minimum wage couldn't get their paycheck on time. As the only salesperson he had to grab $8,000 a month to stay on the air. The first $3,000 each month supposedly went to the assumed debt but the first couple of years he was only able to cover half a monthly payment on average. He said the lender said to at least pay something each month and he said he did. By year 5 he had retired the debt.

He was doing sales by then at a station where I had worked as a jock. We had a number of long talks about that station and he even had pictures, rate cards, newspaper stories and such that he showed me. Since I had always dreamed of owning a small town station, I was especially interested. In fact the struggle he had I thought would offer some wisdom that might come in handy. That wisdom is work harder than you ever have and never give up. He said to never look back, but always look forward because you can't fix the past but you can fix the future. Last I heard was he got a gig at an office furniture manufacturer selling to retail outlets.

I failed to mention, the tower was in a farmer's field rented for property taxes. The building was a tin building with concrete floor. They put a big room in with an AC unit and walled it in to three small rooms. The bathroom meant walking out of the big room and across the building to the unheated, non-air conditioned bathroom. It had been an auto repair shop at one time and a place to store hay before that. It was a two bay auto repair garage. Instead of garage doors, it had tin and 2 X 4 doors on hinges on both sides. It was on a one lane dirt road in a tiny community of about 30 people about 2 miles out of the community of license. The company he sold it to went under at some point before 1990 and the station was deleted. The building is gone but the tower is still there. There still isn't a local station in the town to this day.

 

[Superfly123]

UPDATE: Two consecutive Saturday mornings with lengthy periods of dead air. One ad running promoting an event that took place on August 1st and a promo for Orioles tickets urging listeners to enter to win for a contest that ended in late June.