WHYY-FM is offering more Delaware News coverage during the day

[MikefromDelaware]

With WHYY-TV channel 12 having shut down it's Delaware Tonight newscast this past July, WHYY added more Delaware news coverage with Mark Eichmann and Tom Byrn on WHYY-FM during their local news breaks for Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and other local news breaks during the work day. Granted, it's not as extensive as what either WILM or WDEL is offering, but you can now get some Delaware news along with the NPR network news magazines at the same time on 90.9. One thing 90.9 could do that would make those drive time programs more useful for Wilmingtonians would be to also add Wilmington area traffic info along with the Philly traffic. WHYY also has more Delaware news online at www.WHYY.org. Starting this Friday night at 10pm, a once a week Delaware news magazine called "First" will air on Channel 12.

 

[DX]

Good for Tom Byrne and Mark Eichmann that they "landed" on their feet! WHYY management made promises along these lines (to increase the Delaware coverage on WHYY-FM) as managers pulled the plug on "Delaware Tonight". However, interestingly, WHYY-FM does NOT have a Wilmington city of license, in contrast to TV 12. Technically, you can't satisfy your obligations to your primary city of license by a "bait and switch", where you attempt to serve that city of license on ANOTHER station! Of course, this is all theoretical with a distracted FCC that is now preoccupied with constructing a regulatory framework for the new technologies.

On "Mike from Delaware's" suggestion that WHYY FM integrate Wilmington traffic reporting: Sounds good; probably more hassle for WHYY FM that it would be worth, however. A Philadelphia traffic service is probably not inclined to mess with Delaware. Delmarva Broadcasting has its own traffic franchise which obviously it's not going to share. And Clear Channel Delaware has some kind of exclusivity deal with its Delaware traffic service. Difficult to see where WHYY FM could go. Anyway, WHYY's still-overpaid management has bigger fish to fry.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

Well, in a perfect world, yes Channel 12 would either have to provide real Delaware coverage or lose its license. But the case could also be made for Channel 61 WPPX (ION television) which is also licensed to the city of Wilmington. They do even less than WHYY, far less. The only reference to Wilmington is their once an hour legal ID that is so small that you need a magnifing glass to read it. Also in a perfect world WHYY's channel 64 Seaford would be doing some local downstate Delaware news and other programming, possibly live coverage of the annual Punkin Chunkin and the Apple Scapple event, both held in their part of the state.

But alas, the FCC hasn't truly cared about Delaware's lack of local television since WDEL-TV had the NBC TV affiliation taken from them to make Philly's channel 3 WRCV happy as they didn't like a competing sister affiliated station so close. Rather than the FCC telling NBC and WRCV too bad the decision to strip WDEL-TV of its NBC TV affiliation (the radio station was allowed to keep the NBC radio affiliation) made WDEL-TV an independent station back in the day when there was very little other programming available other than network shows. So it wasn't surprising that WDEL's owners eventually sold the station and got out of the TV business in Wilmington. That started the end of local Delaware TV as WDEL sold off channel 12 in 1955. After that two different owners until 1958 when WVUE went dark ending Wilmington's local TV market forever. Since 1963 when WHYY-TV was moved from Channel 35 -Philly to Channel 12 Wilmington, we've had this situation where channel 12 has offered what they did which probably kept the FCC off their backs and today as the FCC doesn't give a hoot about such things, we probably should be glad that WHYY is offering a once a week Delaware news magazine and some Delaware news on their Philly FM and Website. It still is far more than Channel 61 WPPX is doing.

The bottom line for this is, if Wilmington was located where Dover is, we'd probably not be having this discussion as the central Delaware version of Wilmington would be far enough away from Philly and Baltimore that it's channel 12 and channel 61 would probably be network affiliates serving the state, much like Salisbury's channel's 16 and 47 do for Eastern Shore Maryland. Maybe even channel 64 would be its own station as well trying to be a Wilmington station from Seaford like today's channel 12 and channel 61 are trying to be Philly market stations even though they're supposed to be Wilmington stations.

Delaware will never be a state for local TV, just like we'll never have local airline service here either for the same reasons(even though Wilmington's train station is the 11th busiest in the nation and a number of shuttle bus companies make big money shuttling Wilmingtonians to the Philly airport). Wilmington is too close to Philly. That is Wilmington's achillies heal.

 

[DX]

Agreed, Mike. If a monstrous storm suddenly lifted the entire Wilmington metropolitan area and deposited it somewhere in rural Kansas, we'd have at least five or six commercial TV stations, affiliated with ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and PBS respectively, maybe a CW or indie station as well! But alas, it is not to be. And that might explain the anomaly of a radio market below the Top 50 with two commercial stations still doing locally-originated news hours in A.M. drive, around midday, and 6--7 P.M.!