Re: WROC TV & AM- CBS
> Rochester is a pretty big market to bypass. Also, wouldn't WROC -AM and
> WROC-TV both being CBS be a good match?
Yes it would be a good match if you wanted your network to be associated with two separately owned broadcasting operations that continues to be in last place compared to their competition.
As you may or may not remember, a number of years ago WHEC-TV was the CBS affiliate in Rochester. But then, back in the 1980s I believe, Channel 10’s management decided to dump CBS and become the NBC affiliate because NBC was the number # 1 network at the time for both programming and especially network news. (NBC still ranks number # 1 for the ‘Today Show’ and ‘NBC Nightly News’)
A close friend of mine, who worked for FOX affiliate WUHF at the time, told me that CBS executives tried to convince the then owners of Channel 31 to dump FOX, which was still in its infancy as a network at the time, and go with CBS. WUHF’s management decided to stay with FOX. So, according to my friend, CBS had no alternative but to go with WROC TV if they wanted a TV affiliate in Rochester.
The last Nielsen ratings book showed that, with the exception of noon, Channel 8 continues to draw half the viewing audience of Channels 13 and 10 at 6 & 11p.m. Some industry experts believe 8 does well at noon only because they have ‘The Price is Right’ as a lead-in.
Now taking into account what I just told you about TV, if you are a CBS executive shopping around for a radio station to carry your network, wouldn’t you want that radio station to have an audience?
With the exception of the Winter 2005 book (12+), WROC-AM has never generated above a 1 share. Yet looking at the book over a period of time one can see that 990-AM, which is owned by Crawford Broadcasting and targets an older audience, normally averages between a 2 and 3 share. And their signal is much better than 950’s. So if you have the choice of WLGZ-AM and WROC-AM, which station would you first approach to carry your network?
Of course this again is just speculation because Infinity could sell off their Rochester cluster to another broadcasting entity, which in turn could change the format of one of their stations by targeting WHAM and WXXI’s audience by carrying a news/talk format on an FM station, say like the ‘Zone’.
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