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What are Pittsburgh's Biggest Radio Failures?
- Thread starter F.M.Hertz
- Start date
But Cingram, in 2004 or whenever it was that B-94 went to K-Rock B-94 most definitely was not getting an 11 share. The ratings went up with Howard Stern from what B-94 was getting.
I wouldn't have played Clint Barmes at shortstop ahead of Jack Wilson five years ago, either. Today, however . . .
I wouldn't have played Clint Barmes at shortstop ahead of Jack Wilson five years ago, either. Today, however . . .
I'd always heard the story of Hammond taking the tonearm off a record while it was playing on the air, but now we have confirmation of it, at least once. Jimmie Lunceford definitely would have been too far out for him.
Still, WNUF stayed on the air from 1967 to 1984, which is more than could be said for anything that replaced it. The earlier-mentioned WWCL, Classy 101, lasted a year or so before becoming WXXP with alternative rock, and was a dreadful execution of what elsewhere was a very successful concept by a gifted programmer (at KVIL, Dallas, among others). Harmon and Holiday had to be the worst morning act in Pittsburgh history.
Still, WNUF stayed on the air from 1967 to 1984, which is more than could be said for anything that replaced it. The earlier-mentioned WWCL, Classy 101, lasted a year or so before becoming WXXP with alternative rock, and was a dreadful execution of what elsewhere was a very successful concept by a gifted programmer (at KVIL, Dallas, among others). Harmon and Holiday had to be the worst morning act in Pittsburgh history.
I'd always heard the story of Hammond taking the tonearm off a record while it was playing on the air, but now we have confirmation of it, at least once. Jimmie Lunceford definitely would have been too far out for him.
Still, WNUF stayed on the air from 1967 to 1984, which is more than could be said for anything that replaced it. The earlier-mentioned WWCL, Classy 101, lasted a year or so before becoming WXXP with alternative rock, and was a dreadful execution of what elsewhere was a very successful concept by a gifted programmer (at KVIL, Dallas, among others). Harmon and Holiday had to be the worst morning act in Pittsburgh history.
Still, WNUF stayed on the air from 1967 to 1984, which is more than could be said for anything that replaced it. The earlier-mentioned WWCL, Classy 101, lasted a year or so before becoming WXXP with alternative rock, and was a dreadful execution of what elsewhere was a very successful concept by a gifted programmer (at KVIL, Dallas, among others). Harmon and Holiday had to be the worst morning act in Pittsburgh history.
F
FreddyE1977
Guest
spurg said:
Ironically, despite the name I cannot recall a station that had less class.
"Milt" Also Placed Tape or Scrached out Tracks On LP's , And the Biggie No Talking Durning the Big Band Show 7PM to 8PM, As he was Eating Dinner To the Music. Don Gable Filled in one Night Opened the Mike and gave the Weather. When he came in the Next day he had been replaced.
. Milt was the Man , Along with Partners They Built Three AM radio Stations in the Late 40's 1570 Beverly Mass, 1570 East Liverpool Ohio, and WESA 940 Charleroi Pa. The East Liverpool Station Address was 404 North Ave Pittsburgh 9 Pa.
. Milt was the Man , Along with Partners They Built Three AM radio Stations in the Late 40's 1570 Beverly Mass, 1570 East Liverpool Ohio, and WESA 940 Charleroi Pa. The East Liverpool Station Address was 404 North Ave Pittsburgh 9 Pa.
PHIL Z said:
They actually hired me with that in mind. But there was no way Washington Broadcasting was going to give the owners what they wanted for it. It was nowhere near worth the money it eventually sold for.
For the record, WTKN-AM 970 (formerly WWSW) went talk in May of 1982 with a format largely supplied by ABC. They had Doug Hoerth and Scott Cassidy locally. Additional evening programming came from NBC Talknet. The talk format on 970 ended in January 1988. ABC Talkradio's lineup included psychotherapist Dr. Susan Forward, Owen Spann, Michael Jackson, psycholists Dr. Toni Grant and Dr. David Viscott, Ira Fistell and Ray Briem. Later psychologists Dr. Joy Browne, and Dr. Sonya Friendman replaced Forward and Grant. For the last year or so of the format 970 picked up ABC evening programming including Sally Jesse Raphael and The Radio Show with Tom Snyder. Raphael had previously been carried on 970 through Talknet along with Bruce Williams.
argentarius said:
I actually enjoyed listening to SJR and called in a couple of times and talked to her.
Just skipping through the thread: Bogut's move to WTAE cost KDKA a million bucks in the first six months, before the ratings stabilized with Cigna (as his replacement.) The dough didn't end up in WTAE's pocket, tho.
We played music on KDKA because it kept the demographics down where the agencies liked them. All-talk stations tend to have a very old listenership; it was even more noticeable and less forgiven back then. Now that things are more fragmented it's more accepted. It wasn't about having people "listen to us for music", it was not chasing away all the 40 year olds who didn't want talk shows jabbering in their ears while they made lunch for the kids. KDKA had a vast cume. Not chasing them away was a strategy.
We carried the Penguins because it was vastly profitable. It was a barter deal; the Penguins absorbed all expenses and took 2/3 of the spot inventory. The station got 1/3 of the inventory, which it sold (certain major categories like beer & auto were reserved for the team sales) and kept. This was unlike most sports contracts (at the time) where the station bid on the rights, hired the announcers, absorbed travel and engineering expenses, sold the time and hoped the revenue was greater than all the costs, including prodigious rights fees. Usually it wasn't, or was marginally profitable. During the Pirates awful "drug" year we got killed; no sponsor would touch it.
Doug Hoerth was let go because his ratings sucked. They always sucked. Everywhere he went. He had a devoted, boisterous, but narrow audience which never translated to ratings. I liked him personally, and gambled on him twice, but it never paid off big, for me or anyone else that I know of.
Michelle Madoff was a disaster. We tried her out for a week as a guest host and she was actually OK, if a little green. But then the first week was mostly all local issues where she was knowledgable. A few weeks later somebody called in and said "What do you think about the famine in Darfur?" and she was clueless, and we knew we had a problem. (It was more than that, of course; just illustrative.)
Most sports formats were not instantly successful; indeed, in the early days most tried to emulate WFAN and failed. That station, it should be remembered, already had a successful morning show (Imus) from the WNBC format, onto which they grafted another 20 hours a day of sports. They started from a strong AMD; others who tried started from no morning show, and did not hit their stride for several unprofitable years. On the AM dial you make your money in AMD and to a lesser extent PMD. All the rest is filler. (As formats continued to fragment it became more obvious that a 2+ share could work, but that took time - both for owners AND for advertisers.)
To the list of disasters I would add KDKA-FM's vastly expensive attempt to get into Beautiful Music with the WPNT conversion, just as Beautiful Music was falling off a cliff. (Most of the cost was promotion; the format itself is cheap.) Of course that mirrored Westinghouse's entire entry into the FM Beautiful Music world all over the country, with similarly terrible results. (Short term it was OK, they mostly bought already going franchises. But when the format crashed, it crashed everywhere.)
As a thank you for the Bogut move, KDKA Radio and KDKA TV went after Myron Cope the following year with an offer that more than tripled his salary. We didn't really want him that much, but we did enjoy putting a dent in WTAE's pocketbook. (We also made a bid for the Steelers, with similar results. To that point we had not been aggressive in that game; we preferred the Pirates, which gave us a far greater volume of programming: 180 games versus a little more than a dozen.)
I heard from people inside that the Steve Hansen era was a disaster. Total. Internal morale in the toilet, terrible decision making, more. I wouldn't know; I wasn't there. I do know that there was a PD, grafted in from a Beautiful Music station just prior to Bogut's departure. That one was a disaster, attempting to bring BM formatics to the station in an attempt to lengthen listening spans. By, for instance, cutting down as much news as possible during the music shows, instructing Bogut to do his show with less talking, and... well, you get the idea. (This alone would not account for Bogut's move to Ardmore Blvd, but having your boss, and your bosses' boss be entirely clueless couldn't have helped.)
Yeah, barely a mention of Bob Prince. Color me surprised.
We played music on KDKA because it kept the demographics down where the agencies liked them. All-talk stations tend to have a very old listenership; it was even more noticeable and less forgiven back then. Now that things are more fragmented it's more accepted. It wasn't about having people "listen to us for music", it was not chasing away all the 40 year olds who didn't want talk shows jabbering in their ears while they made lunch for the kids. KDKA had a vast cume. Not chasing them away was a strategy.
We carried the Penguins because it was vastly profitable. It was a barter deal; the Penguins absorbed all expenses and took 2/3 of the spot inventory. The station got 1/3 of the inventory, which it sold (certain major categories like beer & auto were reserved for the team sales) and kept. This was unlike most sports contracts (at the time) where the station bid on the rights, hired the announcers, absorbed travel and engineering expenses, sold the time and hoped the revenue was greater than all the costs, including prodigious rights fees. Usually it wasn't, or was marginally profitable. During the Pirates awful "drug" year we got killed; no sponsor would touch it.
Doug Hoerth was let go because his ratings sucked. They always sucked. Everywhere he went. He had a devoted, boisterous, but narrow audience which never translated to ratings. I liked him personally, and gambled on him twice, but it never paid off big, for me or anyone else that I know of.
Michelle Madoff was a disaster. We tried her out for a week as a guest host and she was actually OK, if a little green. But then the first week was mostly all local issues where she was knowledgable. A few weeks later somebody called in and said "What do you think about the famine in Darfur?" and she was clueless, and we knew we had a problem. (It was more than that, of course; just illustrative.)
Most sports formats were not instantly successful; indeed, in the early days most tried to emulate WFAN and failed. That station, it should be remembered, already had a successful morning show (Imus) from the WNBC format, onto which they grafted another 20 hours a day of sports. They started from a strong AMD; others who tried started from no morning show, and did not hit their stride for several unprofitable years. On the AM dial you make your money in AMD and to a lesser extent PMD. All the rest is filler. (As formats continued to fragment it became more obvious that a 2+ share could work, but that took time - both for owners AND for advertisers.)
To the list of disasters I would add KDKA-FM's vastly expensive attempt to get into Beautiful Music with the WPNT conversion, just as Beautiful Music was falling off a cliff. (Most of the cost was promotion; the format itself is cheap.) Of course that mirrored Westinghouse's entire entry into the FM Beautiful Music world all over the country, with similarly terrible results. (Short term it was OK, they mostly bought already going franchises. But when the format crashed, it crashed everywhere.)
As a thank you for the Bogut move, KDKA Radio and KDKA TV went after Myron Cope the following year with an offer that more than tripled his salary. We didn't really want him that much, but we did enjoy putting a dent in WTAE's pocketbook. (We also made a bid for the Steelers, with similar results. To that point we had not been aggressive in that game; we preferred the Pirates, which gave us a far greater volume of programming: 180 games versus a little more than a dozen.)
I heard from people inside that the Steve Hansen era was a disaster. Total. Internal morale in the toilet, terrible decision making, more. I wouldn't know; I wasn't there. I do know that there was a PD, grafted in from a Beautiful Music station just prior to Bogut's departure. That one was a disaster, attempting to bring BM formatics to the station in an attempt to lengthen listening spans. By, for instance, cutting down as much news as possible during the music shows, instructing Bogut to do his show with less talking, and... well, you get the idea. (This alone would not account for Bogut's move to Ardmore Blvd, but having your boss, and your bosses' boss be entirely clueless couldn't have helped.)
Yeah, barely a mention of Bob Prince. Color me surprised.
The above was probably the most interesting post I have read on these message boards. No offense to anyone. But this is exactly why I love to read these boards. Kudos Mr. Starr. 8)
The Penguins question was actually about the decision to carry the games in 1970, long before hockey became mainstream and a time when KDKA did very well with its regular night time programming.
loeper said:
Yes. It would sell in the 10s.
Rick Starr does not weigh in too often on radio message boards, but when he does it is always informative and authoritative, as seen here.
Surely off-topic, but I bumped into Rick Starr twice. I worked at the Lehigh University college station and I spoke to him when he visited - he had been on the staff there the year before. Years later, when I heard he was at KDKA, I phoned - mainly to track down some mutual friends who were in broadcasting. He had a sharp assistant screening people who wanted to talk to him. She asked how I knew Rick. I said we had worked at the same college radio station. She said, "Oh, you knew him at Penn State?" When I replied, "No, at Lehigh, he never was at Penn State as far as I know," she put me through. Rick was gracious, but didn't know the whereabouts of our common friends either.
Surely off-topic, but I bumped into Rick Starr twice. I worked at the Lehigh University college station and I spoke to him when he visited - he had been on the staff there the year before. Years later, when I heard he was at KDKA, I phoned - mainly to track down some mutual friends who were in broadcasting. He had a sharp assistant screening people who wanted to talk to him. She asked how I knew Rick. I said we had worked at the same college radio station. She said, "Oh, you knew him at Penn State?" When I replied, "No, at Lehigh, he never was at Penn State as far as I know," she put me through. Rick was gracious, but didn't know the whereabouts of our common friends either.
F
FreddyE1977
Guest
Boss Radio said:
Wasn't that around the time Ed King died suddently? Perhaps they were scrambling.
I think the Pens' biggest mistakes were the two times they abandoned KDKA for pop-whistle
signals on KQV and WTAE.
FreddyE1977 said:
They were committed to the Penguins before they had any awareness that Ed was ill and Party Line would be ending.
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