WGST what could make it work, or make it DIFFERENT?

[lilburncommunityradio]

A previous thread had to bring up Mike Rose again.. So I am asking IF you REALLY think WGST has a chance at anything what would it be? I think WGST is DEAD.
Do you think you can take a station that has a bad signal for the most part, is owned by a coporate media giant and do anything with it at all? This post is not meant to bring up FIRED employees: This post is to answer a question with some ideas, ideas that have been well thought out. Do you think this station even has a chance of success again? If another media company bought them, could they make a decent mark again? My thoughts are this, WSB even though not tops in ratings at the moment, will at best in news talk continue its domination over 640. I think that you could contiunue to try and tune up the hosts, e.t.c. The main thought I have is that eventually one day this station will go by the wayside as one who just didnt have what it took anymore. It is perfect for a religious outlet to buy and re format.
This station as a Atlanta News Talker is gone. But in any case what are your thoughts? Just wondering, and please Don't bring up all the mud that is mostly
talked about with this set of call letters. Let's talk about some ideas for a station
that needs some help.

 

[CT Yankee]

I never bought the poor signal argument. The nighttime signal provides city grade service to an area in which nearly half a million folks live. In the early 90s, before the era of 105.7 FM's simulcast, they competed effectively, and there's no reason they can't again with the present facility.

I think all news, or a WBZ-like news all day, talk all night format would slowly accumulate listeners--not overnight, and probably not to WSB's level, but a respectable audience nonetheless. The startup costs would be huge, and current ownership would never do it for that reason, but at least such a product wouldn't be something air staff and advertisers would be ashamed to be heard on.

 

[Firebird]

Sometimes I wonder if Clear Channel can compete in the larger markets. It's almost as if Clear Channel can't dominate the market, they don't really want to compete. Look at markets like Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Tampa, they are a major player. In the top 15 markets, CC has a few stations in with high ratings, with the remainder in a particular market basically being bottom feeders, like Atlanta. :'(

As for WGST, the first thing would be to dump 640 and go FM. CC recently added another FM talker in Tallahassee, joining Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. Which frequency? There aren't any available. 94.9, 96.1, and 105.7 won't be touched, leaving 96.7 and 105.3. Unless CC is willing to do a swap with Cumulus where CC swapped 3 stations in Ann Arbor and Battle Creek, MI for 1 Cumulus station in Canton, OH. Could it happen here? Doubtful.

There is no way to fix the station until incompetent people like Bloomquist and Del Core are gone. Del Core can't handle a large market, and Bloomquist is a moron. No decent programmer will risk their career if they must take their orders from San Antonio. It seems like the smaller the market, like Louisville- which has more local programming, the less hands-on approch from San Antonio. :-[

Taking away the animosity many have for The King and The Kimmer, look at how CC, and Bloomquist in general, are killing their shows. Before Dukes pulled the plug on the FM simulcast in 2000, WGST was in the top 10 in the ratings. The only way for CC to pull the plug on WGST is for WSB to pick up Rush Limbaugh, which could happen if Boortz or Howard retired, thus freeing up the available timeslot. Will that happen? Not likely....... ???

A good analogy for what CC has done to the Atlanta cluster is what General Motors tried to do with Cadillac Cimmaron. The car had a Cadillac badge, but underneath, it was still a Chevy Cavalier.

This may be market 10, but it's run like it's market 297, only worse...... ??? :

 

[del_griffith]

They have had success with an AM talker in Los Angeles. But when they aren't the dominant signal, even with Rush, they perform like WGST, when on AM. See Orlando.

But that's not unusual. Usually there is a dominant AM, then it drops through several FMs before another AM shows.

Even thier 12+ numbers on the FM talkers haven't done that well. See Minneapolis. Smooth Jazz had better ratings.

 

[wja30319]

IMHO:

5AM-9AM - The King
9AM-11:30 - Strong local talk (Sorry Denny) (maybe even Pete Davis and Wayne Kitchens)
11:30AM-12N - Paul Harvey (yes, Paul Harvey)
12n-3PM - Rush
3PM-6PM - Kimmer with Watne, Pete, Jim Gosset, Waynette from Tifton and Leslie Dove
6PM-7PM - 60 at 6 with Dennis O'Hair
7PM-10PM - Michael Savage
10PM-5AM - good strong Midwest talker like Larry King used to do all night.

Bring back Harry Beadle for news and Eric Seidel to run the whole thing.

Forget the braves

My 2¢s worth

 

[jerrydcore]

There is no way to fix the station until incompetent people like Bloomquist and Del Core are gone. Del Core can't handle a large market.

To be fair, there's no evidence I can handle a small market either.

 

[DashRiprock]

OK, I can’t resist. Hire David Paul for an instant ratings bump.

As a topic here, WGST has been absolutely beat to death. Enter WGST in the search box above and you will get eight pages of threads full of comments and suggestions. What happened to GST? Clear Channel. How do you fix it? New ownership.

 

[lilburncommunityradio]

God you people are so pityful. What a shame. But I agree with a lot of the ideas posted. New ownership and a new manager.. Get rid of Chump Channel and blow up all the inside people and go unregulated noise.. Comon, you know chain saws, dogs barking, put on tradin times,start running the local obits, and change the city of licence to Winder Georgia.. Now that's a radio station. Lol

 

[johnnykool]

3PM-6PM - Kimmer with Watne, Pete, Jim Gosset, Waynette from Tifton and Leslie Dove

That's the lineup when Kimmer was on top of his game. I would tune in and laugh my ass off. These days, not so much.

 

[middlega]

My thoughts are this, WSB even though not tops in ratings at the moment, will at best in news talk continue its domination over 640.

That pretty much sums up my take on what their prospects are. As long as Clark & Neal stick around, I don't see anything 640 could do to beat them.

However, the question that follows is whether being a distant #2 N/T in a market the size of Atlanta is still potentially more profitable than the other realistic options available to an AM.

 

[BDBopper]

When WGST had good ratings in the early 90's could the fact that more people lived inside the perimeter be a contributing factor, epecially when they had the Braves the first time? Not too mention that GST had Boortz and was competing with Ludlow Porch on WSB.

Also who was first with a Morning news show, WSB or WGST? What was WGST running while Bobby Harper was doing mornings at WSB?

1993-1994 was very interesting PM Drive time on Atlanta AM. WSB had Gary Mckee, of course GST had Kimmer, and also you had Scottie Ferrel on The Fan. Lots of laughs wherever you tuned in.

When was the turning point in ratings for WSB vs. WGST? Could it have been between 1994 and 1995? WGST lets the Braves go after the baseball strike and WSB scoops up Boortz while canning Gary Mckee for more Clark Howard and a PM news show.

 

[nightmanager]

Before Kimmer, it was Brian Wilson up against McKee.

Boortz killed Ludlow, then took his slot. Ludlow was sent spinning to WCNN which had been or was going 24-hour CNN news. I forget the exact timing. Anyway, nobody listened to WCNN so it didn't matter.

I don't know why Denis Ohair would bother with radio any more. WXIA is probably going to need news people for their new 10:00 news show. If not them, Monica has to leave someday.

Paul Harvey is gone and bringing him back won't fix anything. If you want to look at when WGST started going wrong, it was around the time they joined the ABC news network and sliced up hours to make room for Paul Harvey. To be sure, it got a lot worse after Planet Radio when heads started rolling.

The other big mistake was when Clark Howard took a vacation for a couple weeks and got subbed by Rush. Dumping Clark for Rush may have seemed like a good idea at the time but not any more.

So what to do to FIX it? Forget WSB. There is no practical way GST can hope to imitate WSB and win. Their stick is too big. They have too much money, and they have daytime hosts at least until someone retires. At the same time, the listeners should not expect GST to be WSB. So what GST should be is different.

1) Find a good local morning host and stick with him or her. Offer Royal Marshall more money than God.

2) Think about moving Rush against Boortz. A 1-day delay won't matter when Rush is spouting the same thing every day. If Rush cannot hold his own against Boortz, then maybe it's time to rethink having him at all.

3) With Rush moved to AM, put in a new local guy against Clark, or hell,

3) put in Dave Ramsey and let him have a shot at Clark. This would be an interesting fight.

4) unleash the afternoons and let it do what it does best, or just give up and bring in something better. You can't strangle it AND hope for big numbers.

5) Lose the Braves. When bidding comes up, fight for it but only enough to look interested. LET the big stick outbid you and run like hell.

6) Evenings. Book somebody with spark.

7) Late nights are OK. Coast To Coast is solid.

9) Early AM, traffic is required in this town so forget longform shows. Unfortunately the big stick will win this fight. Put on Whoopi until dawn. Just break in with traffic every 90 seconds and run ads for another 60.

 

[Radio1360]

I think all news, or a WBZ-like news all day, talk all night format would slowly accumulate listeners.

[/quote] Now there's someone who's on my wavelength (Pardon the pun). Only
more like a what the station in my ex-hometown did back in 80's: News from 5-10a.m., talk from 10a.m-4p.m., heavy news from 4-8p.m. and more talk from 8p.m. to midnight. It went south after they added more talk and dropped round-the-clock news coverage. Now that station no longer exsists.

 

[FMFreq]

2) Think about moving Rush against Boortz. A 1-day delay won't matter when Rush is spouting the same thing every day. If Rush cannot hold his own against Boortz, then maybe it's time to rethink having him at all.

3) With Rush moved to AM, put in a new local guy against Clark, or hell, put in Dave Ramsey and let him have a shot at Clark. This would be an interesting fight.

9) Early AM, traffic is required in this town so forget longform shows. Unfortunately the big stick will win this fight. Put on Whoopi until dawn. Just break in with traffic every 90 seconds and run ads for another 60.

Ok, Dave is live 2-5 Eastern, Whoopi is live 6-9 eastern. Both of which would need to be tape delayed to air at the times you'd like on GST.

So your plan is to make WGST "yesterday" News station?

That'll work.

 

[BDBopper]

Before Kimmer, it was Brian Wilson up against McKee.

Boortz killed Ludlow, then took his slot. Ludlow was sent spinning to WCNN which had been or was going 24-hour CNN news. I forget the exact timing. Anyway, nobody listened to WCNN so it didn't matter.

I don't know why Denis Ohair would bother with radio any more. WXIA is probably going to need news people for their new 10:00 news show. If not them, Monica has to leave someday.

Paul Harvey is gone and bringing him back won't fix anything. If you want to look at when WGST started going wrong, it was around the time they joined the ABC news network and sliced up hours to make room for Paul Harvey. To be sure, it got a lot worse after Planet Radio when heads started rolling.

The other big mistake was when Clark Howard took a vacation for a couple weeks and got subbed by Rush. Dumping Clark for Rush may have seemed like a good idea at the time but not any more.

So what to do to FIX it? Forget WSB. There is no practical way GST can hope to imitate WSB and win. Their stick is too big. They have too much money, and they have daytime hosts at least until someone retires. At the same time, the listeners should not expect GST to be WSB. So what GST should be is different.

1) Find a good local morning host and stick with him or her. Offer Royal Marshall more money than God.

2) Think about moving Rush against Boortz. A 1-day delay won't matter when Rush is spouting the same thing every day. If Rush cannot hold his own against Boortz, then maybe it's time to rethink having him at all.

3) With Rush moved to AM, put in a new local guy against Clark, or hell,

3) put in Dave Ramsey and let him have a shot at Clark. This would be an interesting fight.

4) unleash the afternoons and let it do what it does best, or just give up and bring in something better. You can't strangle it AND hope for big numbers.

5) Lose the Braves. When bidding comes up, fight for it but only enough to look interested. LET the big stick outbid you and run like hell.

6) Evenings. Book somebody with spark.

7) Late nights are OK. Coast To Coast is solid.

9) Early AM, traffic is required in this town so forget longform shows. Unfortunately the big stick will win this fight. Put on Whoopi until dawn. Just break in with traffic every 90 seconds and run ads for another 60.

Some very interesting ideas. I don't see many ways that GST can even try to be like WSB. Clark Vs. Ramsey is an exception. that's an apples vs apples cpmpetition. Boortz Vs Rush would be interesting but it's Apples vs Oranges. Boortz is a loose cannon and as a Libertarian doesn't toe the Conservative Republican party line like Rush does. Boortz and WSB will win but GST might be respectable there. Rush Vs. Hannity might be even more interesting.

Braves: To tel you the truth I don't think WSB wants the Braves back. I think they are more interested in The Falcons based on their current schedule in promoting the Dawgs (moving the coach's shows to Monday night instead of Sunday night). The fans might want the Braves back on WSB but I don't see Cox wanting to lose money buying their rights anymore.

There is one thing that WSB really should improve on and it won't take too much effort to do so. Mellish is awesome but during off hours, weekends, and holidays WGST has someone available at the drop of the hat. What about during breaking weather during off hours bringing in one of the meteorologists that always seems to be roaming around upstairs at WSB TV at the Big Stick? Captain Herb Emory is at the heart of Traffic at WSB but he isn't available 24/7 and as such there is always someone else available. Why not the same for weather?

oh and Royal Marshall. I don't see Royal leaving WSB. if GST offers him money my bet is that Boortz will beat it himself if Cox doesn't want to match (Neal has that much money).

 

[trusty]

OK. Here's what I posted a few weeks ago on a thread that was on its way out. Maybe it'll get more play here with the proper topic.......

Quote from: Surfer on July 11, 2006, 09:22:26 pm
“First, I'm not sure any local presence will help talk radio on the AM band. With one notable exception...ALL NEWS.”

I too have been thinking about the need for an all news format that would fit perfectly on GST if IT IS DONE RIGHT. That takes care of the "local" issue right there. You could have clear-sounding traffic reports with alternative routes (solutions to problems). Team up with the Weather Channel again for 24-hour (not pre-recorded) reports. Throw some "news entertainment" in there, too - pull from the other local CC stations to get TRG and Randy & Spiiff's "slant" (and funny bits) on the LOCAL news.

Put the Kimmer on 96Rock in the afternoons and, for cryin' out LOUD, give the guy some SUPPORT instead of firing them. Make the only breaks in news programming be Rush in the afternoons and the Braves at night.

Play to the urban audience at night. Present the news & offer solutions to special problems within 285. Bring in some SSSteve or Ralph from Ben Hill type people and have them fit into maybe a more hip news format.

Don't TRY to compete with WSB. Act like WSB isn't there - you are providing a needed service to ATLANTA, and you're gonna get the listeners involved in what's going on around the area. Act professional - people know who you are (You don't have to remind them every 12 seconds.).

Don't worry about the signal. If they want you, they will find you (just like you did WAKE or WQXI when you were a kid and lived on the outskirts of town.). Stream 24 hours on the internet and contract with Mom & Pop stations to carry your nighttime (and even daytime) signal in Rome, Athens, PTC, Gainesville, etc. Team up with other CC news stations in the top 25 markets to reserve 25 channels on satellite for people who want DETAILED news in a particular market.

In other words, SPEND SOME DAMN MONEY! It won't cost as much as you think it will. Listen to KRLD/Dallas online; check out what they do, and the style in which they do it. Send someone out there to find out how much they are spending to get the most bang for their buck. (I've heard some people in Dallas "complain" about KRLD. Big deal; listen to the station. Atlanta doesn't even HAVE what a handful of people in Dallas complain about. So, if people are going to complain about GST, they will be complaining about what GST DOES instead of what it doesn't do.) Get a GM in the Atlanta group that will go to San Antonio and TELL them what we need instead of asking them.

You've got the money. You've got the talent (at least some of it left). And you DO have the creativity - but just don't realize it. Don't focus on your limitations. Don't focus on your signal. Don't focus on WSB. Don't focus on talk talent. Don't focus on your past screw-ups. You had something good going in the early 90's with great potential. You can get it back - it's there!

Focus on the future. Make news!!