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WILM board ops

O

odomski

Guest
First off, I can tell this board gets no activity, in the wake of the WJBR thread being moved to the Philadelphia board (since it seems the Philly board is the place to talk about Delaware stations...which is outright stupid).

Anyway, on to why I started this: I was listening to WILM early this morning around 5:30 a.m. (I travel from New England to Delaware overnights...it's alot easier to drive overnight, for me anyway). I caught this guy named Ben doing a headline update. He said "Now let's check some of our top stories." With his voice going 80 miles per hour, he read outdated headlines (the first headline was about the new University of Delaware president...which was leftover from Friday...because the new Prez was named on Friday)...then he read another headline which I didn't catch because he was talking too fast...he didn't do the weather, no temperature, nothing...then he said "Now time for the A.A. Forum on 1450 WILM Noozraydeeoh). He didn't play the A.A. Forum tape right away, as it seemed like he was going to. He aired 10 straight minutes of PSAs. Then he ran the A.A. Forum program. (By the way, the "guest" on the Alcoholics program sounded like he was drunk!). I have heard this board op/anchor a few other times...and he's done the same things that I describe above. I don't care if it's a weekend overnight or not. The board ops need to learn the concept of a progamming log and backtiming. I don't want to hear these B.S. excuses that they don't pay them very much, so how can they get quality people...or whatever other blah, blah garbage excuses I have heard in the past. I did that shift when I was at WILM (yeah, the hours suck but someone's got to do it...I did ALOT more at WILM as well...on top of doing overnight board-oping), and it's not very hard to follow a programming log the correct way...and it's not hard to backtime in to and out of a program properly.
 
A suggestion would be instead of airing 10 straight minutes of PSAs, why not do a short newscast from 5:30 to 5:35 or so...with a quick weather and temperature update? For example, if the Alcoholics program is only 20 minutes long, just do a short newscast with weather and maybe a sports story or two. With sports, there's always a final score for the Sixers and/or Flyers...or a local college game...or a preview to a pro or college game to be played that day. Just because the program log doesn't say to do a newscast, those early morning hours are pretty laid back, and you can go against the log for a few minutes. I highly doubt management would get upset if the board op did a short newscast instead of airing 10 minutes of PSAs.
 
Shawn,

Sad as it is to reduce this to the lowest common denominator, consider the source. The quality of WILM has sunk so deep, ten minutes of PSAs might be the best sounding thing on the station outside of Joe LeCompte.

Annie Nefosky seems to be getting worse instead of better on the morning shift (Joe Backer as managing editor as a possible cause), Natalie Sannuti is just terrible, and Watson is...well...Watson.

I don't know if it was Loudell's exodus, low pay, Clear Channel, or what, but WILM is barely hanging on as a credible and quality service. The best thing that could happen to the air sound is a (close to) total housecleaning.
 
Having worked at CC in Delaware and knowing how they operate, I feel confident in GUESSING that what you heard was a voicetracked (yes...VOICETRACKED) news segment that was not updated. And that misfire probably caused the 10 minutes of PSA's. I did not work there when they took over WILM, but I did when they had the old WJBR-AM 1290. That station was notorius for many minutes of PSAs when there was a sunspot flare up or satillite issue. Sad.........but probably true. Voicetracking NEWS! What a sin. But that would explain why no temperature, etc.
 
Most stations which air news in off-hours now use v/t. The last live news person records the news for the next five or six hours. The dead give-away is when the weather report does not include actual instument readings. And yes, the average listener picks up on that. I've had listeners tell me that when they heard me do a particular news cast, they knew it was recorded because I did not give the temperature!

That is what sets WILM apart from news outlets such as KYW, WINS and WCBS. They are in markets which can still afford an over-night news crew. The Wilmington market simply does not have the revenue base to support that scale of operation.
 
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