WILM drops Monica Crowley on Saturdays for reruns of Rush

[MikefromDelaware]

This happened a few weeks ago where WILM decided to drop Monica Crowley's show on Saturday afternoon's and air reruns or so called the week in review of Rush. I don't mind Rush during the week, but frankly it's not worth hearing a second time, so now I tune out. I think WILM made a mistake in doing this as Monica Crowley's show is conservative too, but her approach is different from Rush so even though she's saying basically the same thing, politically, it comes across fresh and different from a woman's point of view, rather than as a rerun. Any thoughts.

 

[WTUX]

Personally, I do not like re-runs of talk shows. But when you paying that much money for a show, with a limited number of people who can listen during the week, running some of it again on the weekend makes sense.

Many music radio PD's (Rick Sklar at WABC and the guy who ran KBIG) insisted that the week day crew also work a week end shift, hiring only 1 or 2 dj's for swing duty. The KBIG PD put it this way in a Broadcast Mag. article in the early 70's: "Week-enders give you weak-ends". I never forgot that. Of course, I was reading that on a Sunday afternoon, as a week end DJ!

It also serves as marketing for the week day show. Someone listening may really like it or really hate it, so much so that they will start listening during the week.

 

[bk1808]

Running Rush's week in review is usually to reduce the cost of clearing the show (which is usually lower for CC stations, thank for others, BTW) and CC stations usually run Premiere shows wherever possible. I'm actually surprised that they're not running "At Home with Gary Sullivan" and "It's the Weekend with (WLW's) Mike McConnell.

 

[K-Tel]

No big loss there. A Rush rerun is better than a live Crowley.

 

[jimwalsh2001]

Many music radio PD's (Rick Sklar at WABC and the guy who ran KBIG) insisted that the week day crew also work a week end shift, hiring only 1 or 2 dj's for swing duty. The KBIG PD put it this way in a Broadcast Mag. article in the early 70's: "Week-enders give you weak-ends". I never forgot that. Of course, I was reading that on a Sunday afternoon, as a week end DJ!

True...except that all those weekend shifts were live. "Reruns" are a proven tuneout.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

There's a couple schools of thought on this one. One is weekenders give you weekends. That isn't always a bad thing. Get good weekenders and you have a good product that would attract weekend listeners. The downside to having the same shows, like the same DJ on the weekends, as a voice tracked show vs their live show during the week is that the loyal listeners have already heard those routines or chatter and probably will tune out. With a weekend show, you might make some changes to the music lineup so to add some other songs that don't get played during the week to give the weekend show its own format, so to speak so that it has a different yet same sound as the weekdays. Also, if you have the radio on all week long at work do you really want to hear the same stuff on the weekend? Work routine vs Off time routine. Same with Rush. He's entertaining, but once you've heard the stuff, a rerun would be boring and a definite tuneout for most people.

WHYY-FM does not air the same programming on Saturday and Sundays as they air during the week. I enjoy their weekday programming, but look forward to hearing Car Talk, You Bet Your Garden, and Prairie Home Companion on Saturdays. I would not listen to reruns of any of the weekday shows any more than I listen to reruns of Rush. I used to tune in to WILM on Saturdays to hear Monica Crowley, but once they started Rush reruns they lost me.

In WILM's defense, they do air a local home fixit show, a local money/politics show, and Kim Kommando giving their morning and early afternoons on Saturdays a difference from their weekday programming and I do tune in sometimes to those shows, but then they blow it with Rush Saturday afternoon. The other problem with Rush's so called week in review is some of that stuff is old news by time Saturday gets around and the story may have developed much further than where Rush is with it on Monday of the past week making it seem even more out of place. So if I were running WILM, I'd go back to Monica or some other live Saturday talk show and drop the weekend Limbaugh reruns.

 

[WTUX]

Your point about the news changing is my main issue with a re-run of talk shows. But since his show is segmented by the quarter hour, the network can put together a "best of"
show that avoids the hot topic of the day and focuses on the more general issues. You could also borrow heavily from the "Open Line Friday" shows, where Rush talks about everything from his sex life to his golf game to his pet cat (I loved how he closed his show one day: "Do you like cats? I do too! Wanna trade recipes?" I nearly drove off the road).

While you probably aren't home to hear WILM's Sunday line-up, they have a very popular live garden show on Sunday morning that has been a fixture there for years. And from the promo they run every ten minutes, they now have a "Green Home Show" Sunday at 11. The yuppie "I'm Greener Than You Are" promo offends me so much, I would never listen, but it may be popular.

There are definitely two schools of thought. Some PD's like special shows on weekends, or at least popular shows that really would not work on a daily basis. For AM radio, I share that point of view, and did that at WNRK. The other school is to promote your weekday line-up by exposing your weekend audience to as much of your weekday line-up as possible. I share the view of WABC's Top 40 PD Rick Skylar that for music formats, that is the way to go. Since N/T really does not go over well with the "listen at work" crowd, WILM is taking the best approach: some live/local specialty shows and re-runs of their heavy hitters.

Of course, I don't hear anyone talking of a weekend Hannity show. But it would be easy. Take a show. Any show. He says the same thing every day. You could take the one show intact and just re-run it Sunday afternoon. What he said two weeks ago would be just as relevant.

 

[Caveman]

She is talentless and has zero broadcasting abilitiy/skill.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

I have to disagree. I listened to Monica fill in for Laura Ingraham on WNTP 990 and if I remember correctly I heard Monica's delayed broadcast in the evening on WDEL a couple of weeks ago and she did just fine. She's no Rush, but then again, she probably isn't trying to be Rush, which is a good thing. Only Rush can be Rush. She's doing her show her way, which to my ear is just fine. It's the same spin, just done in her style rather than Rush's or Hannity's style.

It's the thing I don't like about Mike Gallagher (haven't heard him since he was on WILM), but back then he came across like a Rush wanna be so a little bit of that went a long way and then I'd tune out. A copy of the real thing is never as good as the real thing. There is only one Rush, as there is only one Paul Harvey, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Billy Graham, etc. So we'll have to agree to disagree.