Where was radio?

[cflradio]

It is one of my pet peeves. Where was radio when we needed information on the storms that ripped through central Florida last night? It's a real shame when we can hear only syndicated programming and we are about to suffer from storms like last nights. Living in Deltona I had to tune to television for information on what was happening. What a shame! We had to wait until 5 AM this morning for any radio coverage and that was from Orlando. The only station in Deland is a very small operation and their signal at night is unobtainable. Daytona? Not until 6 AM this morning did we get reports and then instead of allowing Marc Williams to take over and give us complete coverage Black Crow ran their silly snoozer "Wake Up Daytona". (I do listen to WNDB via the Internet) Where have all the radio people gone? I am silly enough to believe that radio stations were supposed to serve the community. Oh, forgive me; it's all part of the new golden rule; them that has the gold makes the rules and gets more of the gold. Silly me.

Bob
www.cflradio.net

 

[muskrat14]

Where radio always is between 7p and 5a, running voicetracks and syndication. It's been years since stations have had overnight jocks -- night jocks were next. You could fire a cannon down the hallways of CC, Cox and Infinity after 7p and not hit anybody. Most stations can hold airstaff meetings in a phone booth.

It comes down to risk/reward. The major groups have decided the price of paying for live bodies from 7p-5a is too high vs the two or three times a year something like this happens "off-hours." They'll roll those dice, take the short-lived PR hit and count their coin.

Radio has, for the most part, forgotten how to do this stuff. Let's just simulcast the TV, or play music like nothing's happened.

 

[RussAllen]

You could fire a cannon down the hallways of CC, Cox and Infinity after 7p and not hit anybody.

I'm pretty sure that 102 JAMZ has a live/local night jock. Don't know about overnights though. It's a damn shame what happened to WCFB's tower and about the people that lost their lives.

 

[smedge2006]

Not to dis the idea of overnight jocks or support emptying the hallways, but if there had been someone live at 3 or 4 a.m. when these storms hit, the only ones to hear it would have been the relatively small number of overnight listeners. I'm all for live and local, but buying a weather radio is the only sure way to make sure people sleeping in their beds get notified. That, or build sirens all over the place, and I can't see the justification to build something that would get used maybe once every ten years.

By the way, The Villages has a live-and-local radio station WVLG 640. How did they do in storm coverage? How about
WLBE 790 in Leesburg?

 

[eatspaste]

Not to dis the idea of overnight jocks or support emptying the hallways, but if there had been someone live at 3 or 4 a.m. when these storms hit, the only ones to hear it would have been the relatively small number of overnight listeners. I'm all for live and local, but buying a weather radio is the only sure way to make sure people sleeping in their beds get notified. That, or build sirens all over the place, and I can't see the justification to build something that would get used maybe once every ten years.

For the record, the National Weather Service in Melbourne did it's part - and quite well. You can go here ( http://www.srh.weather.gov/mlb/surveys/020207/index.html ) and view all of the warnings and statements that they issued. It isn't too often that they issue warnings that say:

THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND LIFE THREATENING SITUATION. THIS STORM IS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING STRONG TO VIOLENT TORNADOES. IF YOU ARE IN THE PATH OF THIS TORNADO...TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY!

TAKE COVER NOW! TAKE COVER NOW! TAKE COVER NOW!

IF YOU LIVE IN THE VILLAGES OR LADY LAKE...COVER NOW!

But it goes back to the point of getting people to hear the warnings at 3AM. The NWS did it's part. If every AM and FM station in the area did an EAS activation and had live jocks talking about it and local TV went live and local - still, how does that wake people up 9 minutes ahead of a storm?

 

[Snafu]

If you took all of the stations in Orlando and added up everyone in every station who was at work at 3:30am you could drive them all to McDonalds in a Honda Civic. We in radio gave away the community interest thing about a decade ago. We didn't want to interrupt our precious format, so if you want news about the tornado ripping through your neighborhood or the Space Shuttle blowing up in front of you, go someplace else. We can't make money on death and disaster.

Truth be known if you don't have a second generation weather radio and you live in Central Florida you are taking a big risk.

 

[PaulBWalkerJr]

When I was at WTIR/Travel Info Radio 1300AM from March to December 2005, that happened to be the time when Hurricane Wilma passed by us.

I was on the air frfom 6pm that night till 6am the next morning with local updates every 20 to 30 minutes in between CNN Programming.

The only other live and local jock I noted on the air was at about 2:30 or 3:30am on either 102JAMZ or Mix 105.1.

Kinda odd, only one FM in Orlando and One AM in Melbourne/Cocoa were live overnight that time....

 

[MN Maniac]

What? Are you telling me that local radio is supposed to provide public services like severe weather information? You mean they're actually supposed to serve the communities they're licensed to? As a public trustee?

You must have been reading those FCC regulations again!

Now, it's just "buy as many as you can and run 'em cheap!"

Any wonder why time spent listening to local radio continues to DROP each year?

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Even if there wasn't anybody there at 3:06AM to give warning, there should have been someone at the studio at 3:25AM to continue giving warning to those and summarize damage as best as he/she could.

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,18649.0.html <-- Fairly similar situation in Evansville in late 2005...

I had been looking at the storm prediction center charts for several days before the Evansville storm hit, and I knew I had this particular weekend off due to other committments. But before I left, I made sure someone would be covering my regularly automated station early Sunday morning. We got severe thunderstorm warnings, but no damage. But a live person was on the air at 2:30 Sunday morning talking about the weather.

My point: severe weather is predictable, even days in advance. It won't break a station's budget to have someone cover four to six evenings or overnights a year. Therefore, when severe weather is predicted, someone should be there to talk about it.

Period.

 

[KE4KLS_Radio]

The reality of this is even though many stations are unmanned in the overnights, you would think their EAS and program interrupt switches would be set to respond to severe weather such as tornado watches and warnings, and broadcast these alerts... If I recall (from working at a station some time ago), the program interrupt switches can be turned on to include broadcasting severe weather alerts from NOAA instead of just non-weather emergencies... Am I correct, and if so, it would seem to make sense for stations to ensure that all emergencies including weather bulletins from NOAA would be broadcast?

 

[RobynWattsV2.0]

A question from someone that is out of the market:

How does the media coverage of this outbreak compare to the tornado outbreak from 1998? Both storms were very similar to each other, in terms of how people were forewarned ahead of time as well as the time of night they had hit.

 

[Deano]

Not to toot our own horn but I was live on Z88.3 from 6:45 PM Thursday (when the first warning of the event was issued for Flagler County until 9:00 AM Friday morning. After 9 AM we shifted from storm coverage to post-storm coverage with the Z personalities interviewing the various emergency management and law enforcement agencies as well as the Red Cross and Florida's Blood Centers so that the listeners who were impacted could hear official info and listeners who were spared could find out ways to help.

As the EAS LP-1 for Central Florida we activated EAS 19 times on Thursday night/Friday morning. The warnings I sent did pass through all the Clear Channel and Cox stations in Orlando and Melbourne automatically. I don't know if they passed through the CBS Radio stations in Orlando or the Black Crow stations in Daytona.

The Z88.3 air studio is equipped with state of the art software so that we can extrapolate data from the NWS radar sites in MLB, JAX and TBW. We take severe weather VERY seriously.

 

[KE4KLS_Radio]

Deano,

I have to say that you guys at Z88.3 do and excellent job of getting weather alerts out to the Central Florida listening area, in many ways much better than most of the commercial stations. Kudos and thanks to you and Z88 for keeping us informed during the storm and follow up!

Bill in E. Central FL

 

[minordistortion]

I was "live and local" one night, Mother's Day as I still remember, we had several thunderstorm/tornado watches/warnings....... As I was passing the information along on-the-air.....I finished up my report, turned off the mic, and went to turn up the speakers in the studio, and was zapped by a bolt of lightning that had passed through the board!! It through me back several feet, and scared the crap out of me more then anything!! The board took most of the bolt!! My arm was a little sore, mainly the next morning!!! My PD was listening, and knew right away what had happened. He called the ambulance, and later contacted our boss!! What did he have to say you might ask???? Well......here is what he asked....in this order.....

*Are there any damages to anything??

*Did we go off-air??

*Let's let the jock go home, so he can rest up for his double shift tomorrow....OH YEAH....by the way......is he OK??

 

[P-R]

Hats off to Deano and the Z-88ers that decided to launch "'Wake-A-Friend'! Very good idea!

 

[KevinFodor]

I do not know the market, so it would not be proper for me to comment or criticize any particular station. But, in a general sense, I would hope at least one station, or one cluster has at least one employee in their building overnights to be able to handle EAS responsibilities (and, at the very least, record a "weather alert" that could air, and be updated on multiple stations). If not, shame on them. I suspect, though, you did have stations that broadcast the warnings. They were, probably just not the "music FM's".

I work for an LP-1...someone is always here, even if the stations are voicetracked, or computer programmed.
That person is taught that it is their responsibility to get information on the air and, to notify programming and news management ASAP who will come running to assist if the emergency warrants.

However, if your favorite station is that lame, may I suggest spening 20 bucks on a weather radio that will activate and broadcast the EAS warning right into your bedroom or den. It works, even if your favorite station doesn't.

 

[Snafu]

If you are living anywhere in Florida and don't have a second generation weather radio you are taking a big, big risk.

Radio hasn't been about news and information for the largest part in the better part of a decade. By our actions we told the listening audience to go to CNN if they wanted news or The Weather Channel if they wanted weather. We'd just play the commericals and songs you already know.

Yes, every station should have a live human being in the station 24/7 for situations just like this, but it won't happen until the FCC forces it. The stations in the market largely did the best they could with what they have, but just like any other radio market that isn't very much for very many these days.

Had the storms hit at 3:45pm rather than in the middle of the night we might have had a chance.

 

[KevinFodor]

I realize this might be an "ouch" for a few in the business. And, believe me, I realize that most of today's radio programmers are highly overworked and pushed to their limits.

But, one part of the PD's job is to be "on call" 24/7 in case of emergency.

When I was PD of a station in "tornado alley", I slept with a weather radio right next to my ear. When it went off and it was a tornado warning for a county in our primary service area, I jumped out of bed, hopped in the car and rode off to the station, even at 3 in the morning. I knew our EAS box had transmitted the warning and, being only 15 minutes away was able to get on the air quickly. Eventually, we rotated certain trustworthy programming employees in an "on call" rotation. The deal was: if it was your night "on call" and the weather alerts went out, you went in and went on the air.

There are ways radio stations can fulfill their committments to the community in times like these. These
situations are ones in which, for a few minutes at least, one should forget how overworked they are,
how unappreciated they feel and remember that little extra effort could save lives.

Don't let anybody on these boards, or anyone else tell you it can't be done, because it can. It just takes
commitment to your communities.

 

[Radio-X]

I realize this might be an "ouch" for a few in the business. And, believe me, I realize that most of today's radio programmers are highly overworked and pushed to their limits.

But, one part of the PD's job is to be "on call" 24/7 in case of emergency.

AMEN! My former PD, though she was tough and took all the overtime, would broadcast 24/7 if there was a hint of bad weather in the area. She once stayed on around 48 hours straight during a hurricane...while the other local stations were pulling music off the bird or simulcasting a TV station from 60 miles away.

She was tough, as I said, but she's one of the dwindling "community minded" OM/PD's left in the world

Radio-X

 

[radionative]

I've been out of Orlando radio for years, so I'm not up to date on the latest. Are you telling me that there are not even board ops working overnights in Orlando anymore?

Is it all computer-based?