I Remember as a very young child hearing radio-TV simulcasts of shows like Arthur Godfrey and even Jack Benny. They seemed to work to my young ears.
A portion of Arthur Godfrey Time was for a time simulcast, and because the format was essentially that of a radio variety program, it worked okay. Benny's program never was simulcast, for a lot of reason, one being the network was afraid of audience fratricide. A number of the old radio scripts were reworked for television with added visuals and gags, and a couple of the TV programs were built around producing the radio program, sort of a 'show within a show' theme. This may have been what you were recalling.
Wonder why morning drive programs like the Today Show or its ABC/CBS counterparts or whatever MSNBC is doing with Morning Joe (Scarborough) can't be simulcasts on the radio.
Not a bad idea, strickly from a carriage point of view. Visuals aren't exactly a strongpoint with any of those programs. On the other hand, WBZ runs the audio for Sixty Minutes on Sunday nights, and it often comes up short without the visuals which are often integral to the story lines. Still not bad for passing the time considering the junk often run on Sunday night, but not exactly anything you'd want to hang your hat on in a competitive AMD environment.
We are all very mobile in the morning and I for one don't have the time to sit in front of a TV.
Back in the 80’s, some associates and I had the idea of taking a network of local stations with half decent signals in high population areas (think WKOX, WJDA, WESX, and the like) and leasing all the time between 10am and 4pm and running the audio tracks of all the television soap operas. Just the nature of the programs (dialog heavy, continuous, endless, storylines) would have made it a natural. We would have turned female numbers which would have made advertisers’ eyes water. Unfortunately, the lawyers checked and reported that the rights fee arrangements would have been a nightmare (too many players at the TV show level, and all with reasons for having their hands out.) Damn…it would have been beautiful. I still think it would have worked.
I would work for me to hear the Today Show et al on the radio and the local hook-up could make it an easy sell at low cost of local talent and the networks could charge more to their national sponsors considering they expanded their listening base and range.
That’s a pretty tough sell, especially since most television ads don’t work real well on radio. You’d also have an AMD show with little or no local content, which has only worked with a few major players (Imus, Stern) and would be pretty easy to counterprogram.
At that, I don’t think Imus on MSNBC was sold as a combo.
Sure, the programs would have to be rescripted somewhat to describe to a radio audience what they cannot see, but that is not difficult.
There’s a reason radio play by play is so much different from television play by play. Not easy to tweak to everyone’s satisfaction. But, as long as you stuck with the talking head morning shows, shouldn’t have to rescript anything. Plus TV clocks are essentially chiseled in stone, so you could even automate it.
Remember all of the confusion over pre-empted shows during the pre-season? That may have hurt Carr's show....
Except that the home opener was April 10th, the book started on April 15, and during the entire book the Sox played exactly 3 weekday day games, of which WRKO carried precisely zero.
Now, people may have thought that WRKO was going to have a 4 hour pre-game show everyday and decided not to bother to see if Carr was on, but that’s pretty unlikely. I know that some circles are trying to use this as an excuse for Carr taking a hit in the book, but it’s just spin.
Regards,
TSB
