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WGST layoffs?

Many locals would say the shame actually happened 15-20 years ago either when GST did Planet Radio, or even before that when they dropped Counterpoint and brought in Limbaugh. WGST now is not even a fragment of a shadow of what the station once was. And it's hard to comprehend that if you weren't listening back in the 80s.

Imagine the biggest radio station collapse you can imagine, from great heights to nothing. What's happened is actually worse than that.

What happened today is nothing but the end of the road that has been an awful long time coming.

F.M.Hertz said:
Such a shame. I just started listening a few weeks ago, and really liked their product.
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I always figured CC had thrown in the towel on WGST by never giving it an FM despite increased competition. It has been an afterthought for years. I wonder if they were planning on this, even when WSB added 95.5?

I wonder what will happen to Coast To Coast AM?

Next up is WiLD.
 
As of 6:01 this morning, NOTHING has happened. I listened off and on and nothing has changed. Canned programming, but Nothing. If this is what has happened, then what a shame.
I agree with others who have stated, TOC would work well here. What they had on was pretty damn boring, except for Rob and Dave in the morning was pretty good listening. Humpries was a absolute bore, it sucked !
 
lilburncommunityradio said:
As of 6:01 this morning, NOTHING has happened. I listened off and on and nothing has changed. Canned programming, but Nothing. If this is what has happened, then what a shame.
I agree with others who have stated, TOC would work well here. What they had on was pretty damn boring, except for Rob and Dave in the morning was pretty good listening. Humpries was a absolute bore, it sucked !
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Just canned news this AM, with local weather and traffic. The canned news was good--for canned news. Doesn't hold a candle to what's going on at WSB and AN106.7.
 
nightmanager said:
Many locals would say the shame actually happened 15-20 years ago either when GST did Planet Radio, or even before that when they dropped Counterpoint and brought in Limbaugh. WGST now is not even a fragment of a shadow of what the station once was. And it's hard to comprehend that if you weren't listening back in the 80s.

Imagine the biggest radio station collapse you can imagine, from great heights to nothing. What's happened is actually worse than that.

What happened today is nothing but the end of the road that has been an awful long time coming.

F.M.Hertz said:
Such a shame. I just started listening a few weeks ago, and really liked their product.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
WGST was awesome as all-news back in the late 1970s, and they were at their zenith when they had the Tom Hughes/Boortz then local Hannity/Rush/Kimmer/Ralph From Ben Hill News Monster lineup in the early 90s, and then they added the FM. They absolutely took it to WSB.

Planet Radio was fantastic compared to what WGST had become lately, and the ratings proved it. Not showering praise on the mess that was Planet Radio, but they were certainly better back then.

They lost Clark Howard, then Boortz, then Hannity. Then they fired Tom Hughes and the Kimmer and dumped the FM. At that point, CC was just mailing it in.

And here we are.
 
agentUrge said:
Wonder what's going to happen to Coast To Coast AM.
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Most likely a second or third tier AM station [Salem or WGUN (city of license Atlanta)] picks it up. Remember the national syndication ad sales want coverage in all large markets. Even a "flea" powered station would allows the sales person to claim Atlanta coverage.
 
agentUrge said:
Wonder what's going to happen to Coast To Coast AM.
Click to expand...

It wil fade away into the contrails of our memories where eventually the goverment implanted chips we all carry in our necks will erase any memory of black helicopters and mysterious men. Only the few who have not been injected with the chips will band together as the ABC(Art Bell Coalition) Freedom Fighters and risk their lives to save us from SkyNet and their T1000 bots.
 
Many locals would say the shame actually happened 15-20 years ago either when GST did Planet Radio, or even before that when they dropped Counterpoint and brought in Limbaugh. WGST now is not even a fragment of a shadow of what the station once was. And it's hard to comprehend that if you weren't listening back in the 80s.
Click to expand...

When I came to Atlanta in 1994, WGST was still a top-notch station, and Rush's ratings were through the roof. Despite the handicap of WGST-AM's nighttime signal, the station was doing really well in ratings and billings.

Things started to unravel when the following took place:
1) WSB got its act together in 1994; it had lost its way but was rebuilt as a new/talk station under Greg Moceri. WGST's ratings started declining.
2) WGST had been the Braves flagship when the team went from worst to first, but lost the team to WSB starting in 1995.
3) Sean Hannity left WGST for FOX News Channel in early 1996.
4) Planet Radio kicked off around 1996 in response to WGST's eroding ratings. It of course resulted in more listener loss although I think a big part of that was the departure of Sean Hannity (replaced by Ian Punnett) and the Planet Radio name itself.
5) Clear Channel finished off the destruction of WGST when, after they upgraded the 105.7 signal, they decided they wanted another profit center and took the FM away from WGST.

But I well remember the News Monster making appearances around Atlanta.
 
RoddyFreeman said:
When I came to Atlanta in 1994, WGST was still a top-notch station, and Rush's ratings were through the roof. Despite the handicap of WGST-AM's nighttime signal, the station was doing really well in ratings and billings.

Things started to unravel when the following took place:
1) WSB got its act together in 1994; it had lost its way but was rebuilt as a new/talk station under Greg Moceri. WGST's ratings started declining.
2) WGST had been the Braves flagship when the team went from worst to first, but lost the team to WSB starting in 1995.
Click to expand...
Before WSB hired Boortz away from WGST in 1992 (and Clark Howard shortly before that), WSB was trying to build a progtalk schedule around Mike Malloy that was not. successful. at. all. Before that, WSB as I remember was a crazy-quilt patchwork of the Morning Merry-Go-Round, random talk shows like Ludlow Porch, and local news, sports, and full service.

WSB had actually been the longtime home of the Braves through the 1991 worst-to-first season. At the beginning of the 1991 season, WSB announced they were not re-upping their deal with the Braves and would let the contract end at the end of the season (whoops!). WGST came in and signed the Braves to a 3-year deal, with Peach serving as an FM simul until they got ahold of 105.7 from McClure (first as an LMA, then Jacor bought the station outright). Lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth resulted as a lot of out-of-town listeners lost their ability to listen to the Braves after dark on WSB's class A clear channel signal. WSB didn't make the same mistake again and snatched the Bravos back for 1995.
 
In August, Clear Channel blew up its Boston Talk station, 1200 WXKS, to go All-Comedy. WXKS, despite being 50,000 watts 24/7, has only a so-so signal and had poor ratings. It handed its competitor, 680 WRKO, both Rush and Coast to Coast. Beck, Hannity and other syndicated Clear Channel/Premiere shows are gone. No one in Boston has picked them up. The two WXKS local hosts and all the newscasters and most producers were also let go.

So in Atlanta, Clear Channel has a 50,000 watt Talk station, WGST (1,000 watts nights) that gets poor ratings. And it just handed its competitor, WSB, the Rush Limbaugh show. (I guess they didn't want Coast to Coast.)

Could what happened in Market #10 be happening in Market #8? Will WGST simply go All-Comedy 24/7, as WXKS did, with NO local programming at all, other than commercials? WXKS uses a syndicated comedy service that's totally automated. No hosts. A female voice simply says "Here's Ray Romano" or "That's Jerry Seinfeld" before or after each comedy segment.
 
IIRC, one reason Cox was not putting a lot of work into WSB before they aggressively started pursuing WGST, Clark Howard, and Neal Boortz was on-again, off-again discussions about Cox divesting (or being forced to divest) the Atlanta radio group, which at the time consisted only of 750 and B98.5. This was over the ongoing cross-ownership concerns with the AJC and Channel 2, and possibly a desire for Cox Cable to buy their way into the Atlanta market (although, IIRC, they would have had to get rid of Channel 2 to do that).
 
Find it interesting that as recently as last week, Rusty Humphries was advertising for potential sales weasels to send their resume to [email protected], yet his facebook page states that he decided a month ago to not renew his contract for the local show. Either lying on the fb page or disingenuous in the ads.
 
hail2theorange said:
Find it interesting that as recently as last week, Rusty Humphries was advertising for potential sales weasels to send their resume to [email protected], yet his facebook page states that he decided a month ago to not renew his contract for the local show. Either lying on the fb page or disingenuous in the ads.
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I'm listening to Rush right now and they just ran one of those ads a few minutes ago.
 
The clue should have been the day they kicked The Kimmer out the door..

More of a reason I stick with my XM..all this local flip-flop confuses me
 
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