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What are the better small market stations in Kentucky
- Thread starter pioneer71
- Start date
C
cvfd1615
Guest
Any station that has local programming, local DJ's and any station that isn't owed by the big bastards.
IMO.
IMO.
I must agree...the local station that has the guy who also works part time at the hardware store playing requests for the locals is far better than the "best" station run by a computer...no matter how 'non-professional' the talent may be judged to be. Now...how many of these stations exist in KY...or anywhere?cvfd1615 said:
I don't know of any in KY. right off hand but just across the southern boarder is a station in Tennessee that fits that description. WBNT in Oneida, Tn. runs Live programming with live announcers even on the weekends. I don't know for sure if they are 24 hrs or not but I was pleasantly surprised one weekend while traveling to the Big South fork area to tune them in and hear someone live, and yes you can tell the difference between Live and voice-tracked.
Does Frankfort count? The two FMs in Frankfort have the big guys in Louisville and Lexington beat. Local jocks local news and local high school sports.
pioneer71 said:
Check out the Bowling Green area stations....most of those are ran local most of the time.
C
cvfd1615
Guest
BobOnTheJob said:
I concur, back almost 8 years ago I use to work at WMMG part time on the weekends and would play requests, give away stuff... Was I great? No... However, I was local, I was live and people could actually call in to take a request and actually get to hear the song they requested. Sadly those times are horribly gone.
Uhm, alot of your small stations are live during the day but switch to satellite at night so there are still some out there their just really rare.
One example is a small 3000 watt station in Breckinridge Co, WXBC 104.3 is live from 6AM to 6PM then switches to Satellite programming... I will say they sound better then some of these Clear Channel, Cox, etc stations.
That's a great start but in the past, the phones at live stations melt down in the after 7PM time slot, which sadly is now when even the live stations trend to pot up the satellite. People work and go to school during the day hours--radio tends to be more background then...if I had money for x number of live hours a day on a music intensive station, I'd readily swap 10AM-3PM for 6PM-11PM. That's just based on my far past experience playin' the hits when radio was all-live.cvfd1615 said:
As far as smaller stations with live programming, WKYQ and Electric 96.9 in Paducah are live from morning drive til midnight... and while our overnight guy is in studio, he VTs to do news prep for all of our stations. But he jumps in live for severe weather updates, etc.
WKYQ has two jocks plus a newsperson and a live traffic reporter every morning, a jock and traffic guy afternoons. Our weekends are live 24 hours on Saturday, with the ubiquitous countdown shows on Sunday, but someone in studio in case of weather/news bulletins.
Friday and Saturday late nights are our regionally famous Outlaw Hours, also done live to handle the massive requests for country party music.
We want the live presence during off hours to help update our local news website, WestKentuckyStar.com. Our four-person news department handles it six days a week, but the jocks keep an eye on it nights and weekends.
We're pretty proud of our news and weather commitment, and our news website. Plus, we still use our weekend and graveyard shifts as a farm system for homegrown talent -- the majority of our staff started out part time here (including me reading Saturday morning news in 1977), and Electric's newest night jock just moved up from weekend work last month.
WKYQ has two jocks plus a newsperson and a live traffic reporter every morning, a jock and traffic guy afternoons. Our weekends are live 24 hours on Saturday, with the ubiquitous countdown shows on Sunday, but someone in studio in case of weather/news bulletins.
Friday and Saturday late nights are our regionally famous Outlaw Hours, also done live to handle the massive requests for country party music.
We want the live presence during off hours to help update our local news website, WestKentuckyStar.com. Our four-person news department handles it six days a week, but the jocks keep an eye on it nights and weekends.
We're pretty proud of our news and weather commitment, and our news website. Plus, we still use our weekend and graveyard shifts as a farm system for homegrown talent -- the majority of our staff started out part time here (including me reading Saturday morning news in 1977), and Electric's newest night jock just moved up from weekend work last month.
cubnut said:
Got a lot of respect for you guys at Bristol. You do great work! We all work our tails off at WKDZ-FM in Cadiz as well. Live all day in a small town (>3,000 people) is something to be proud of. Hey, we've carved out quite a niche in the Clarksville-Hopkinsville Market as well!!
This is based on 1 hour of listening, but WFMW Madisonville on 730 was a refreshing listen this morning. The jock was nothing extraordinary, but he was live and local, playing current country hits & tidbits of local info. At 7AM, they dove into a 30 minute live newscast including obituaries and then at 7:30, a local public affairs program. Possibly the most amazing thing is that during the hour I spent with them, I heard NOTHING that was satellite delivered...no Fox News Radio, no ESPN Sports Ticker, no Accuweather meteorologist...not even any agency spots. This was authentic live and local radio. I can't say if they do that all day, but for at least 1 hour, my belief in the existence of "radio the way it should be' was restored.
BobOnTheJob said:
My first ever "mainstream" radio station job was at WFMW in late 1998-99. Great station that taught me A LOT in a hurry! They have a sister FM in WKTG (25,000 watts I think). They are live for most of the day. At night they run Cody Allen (gag) and then pick back up with local in the early morning drive slot. Danny Koeber is the PD there (morning show host), the other two jocks there bounce between the AM and the FM during the day. They run iMediaTouch Automation there now. When I was there, we were still spinning things on records, CD's, and carts! They have a BIG signal for a station their size too!!! Can hear them all the way down here in Murray!
They do carry network news from ABC Radio at the top of each hour during the day and possibly the night. Local news is recorded throughout the day parts, sans mornings and possibly 5pm news cast. Weather comes from WFIE-TV in Evansville, IN during the day as well. You can tell when they are VT'ed because weather sponsors are recorded spots leading into the weather which will usually be delivered & recorded by a WFIE-TV staff Meterologist. They also carry local Madisonville North Hopkins HS sports and St. Louis Cardinals baseball. They do a great job and sound perfectly fine to me. Reminds me a lot of where I'm working at now!! That's a good thing too!
WSON 820 and 96.5 (Henderson) gets my nomination. Their music programming is all ABC Radio Network satellite Oldies, but the local news programming is excellent. News Director Bill Stevens may be one of the hardest working folks in radio today.
The TV allocation for Madisonville became WAZE, right? Just a different licensee.
PTBoardOp94 said:
I'm not sure WFMW (then owned by Hubert Wells and Elmer Kelley) ever actually applied for a TV license. In the early 50's, the WFMW studios were located in a bank building at Main and Center. When they bought out WCIF, and thus had both an AM and an FM, they built new studios on the north side of town. The AM tower was either already there, or they relocated it from atop another downtown building.
They built what was considered a state-of-the-art studio building, capable of handling AM, FM, and TV (if they ever got a TV license). I don't know if they ever actually applied for a TV license, but when they built the studios they prepared for that contingency.
WAZE was much, much later and, to my knowledge, was an operation unrelated to Wells and Kelley. I think the original allocation that Wells and Kelley had considered ended up with Kentucky Educational Television.
oxford777 said:
I've spent a lot of time in that building up on the hill and I never knew that TV could've been part of the operation there. How odd. Station(s) are still in the hands of the Kelley family I believe. Bob Kelley was the GM/Owner when I was there and I believe he's still there.
DJOnAStick said:
All I know is at the time the facility was constructed, Wells and Kelley told folks around town it was built to include a possible TV station. Wells had some health issues circa 1970 and sold his part of ownership to the Kelley family. Wells then became an executive with the local Chamber of Commerce. As you said, I think the Kelley family is still involved in ownership, management, or both.
The original point here is well taken. WFMW/WKTG's competitors (WTTL/WYMV) ceased to be "live and local" a few years back when Conway Smith's heirs sold the stations, while 730/93.9 still are to a significant degree.
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