WILM improvements

[WTUX]

Since I complained about how bad WILM sounded after the move to New Castle, I thought I would comment on how it sounds now. The audio is crisp, clear, none of the earlier distortion. The automation sounds like its working most of the time I am listening and the overall sound of the station using automation sounds far more professional.

I am also noticing some new ads during the afternoon, including businesses in Elkton and Middletown.

Of course, I am displeased that my choices at 3pm are Jerry on WDEL and Shawn on WILM (he gets old REAL fast - at least Rush is funny). As my local station of choice is WDEL, I wish they were airing something I could listen to.

 

[QzarDE]

I'll agree that the sound quality of WILM is much improved. Congrats to CC for ironing
out a lot of the kinks that happened in their move..

As for WDEL, well....It's either Rick or Gerry. Pick your poison.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

I agree, Sean Hannity gets old quick (he always seems angry, except when he's promoting himself and his tours). Rick and Jerry, in my opinion, spend too much time trying to be advocates for what ever hot button issue they think important in Dover. Al's show is more interesting as he'll discuss both Delaware issues and national issues.

If I were WILM, I'd air Glenn Beck from 9am-12noon, put John Watson on after Rush (3pm-5pm), and run an afternoon newscast from 5pm-7pm. My guess is Watson would beat out Rick and Jerry. Air Hannity's show after Jim Bohannan. I'd also only use sound from the Fox newscasts and produce a real newscast on the hour and 1/2 hour sort of like WDEL does by using CBS sound for their national stories. It's hardly a newscast that's worth listening to when Fox spends 1 minute of their 3 1/2 minutes of actual newstime promoting American Idol and trying to pawn that off as news. WILM's problem is trying to do a mid day newscast, at 11:30. It would be better from 12-1 as WDEL does, but Limbaugh starts at noon. So rather than do a mid day newscast, have the afternoon newscast from 5pm-7pm.

 

[WTUX]

Back in the 50's and 60's, the Wilmington AM stations ran mid-day 15 minutes newscasts.
At 11:45, you had WAMS. At noon, there was WTUX (braodcast from J B VanSciver). At 12:15, WDEL started theirs. Growing up, we rarely listened to WILM, so I have no idea what they did. As time went on, WDEL expanded theirs to 30 minutes, then the full noon hour.

So historically, WILM having its report at 11:30 is not unusual. Weird in this day and age, but historically acceptable if you do it consistantly.

 

[Al Johnson]

If I were WILM, I'd air Glenn Beck from 9am-12noon, put John Watson on after Rush (3pm-5pm), and run an afternoon newscast from 5pm-7pm. My guess is Watson would beat out Rick and Jerry. Air Hannity's show after Jim Bohannan (sic).

When this topic was discussed/debated on the news/talk board a while back, the guy from ABC indicated their deal with WILM (and other stations) required that Hannity be carried live.

As I recall, Watson was on against Jensen solo and was trounced badly. Better they should pick up Beck and keep Hannity.

Bohannon's show is run overnight. After Bohannon (including his newscast) is morning drive.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

When this topic was discussed/debated on the news/talk board a while back, the guy from ABC indicated their deal with WILM (and other stations) required that Hannity be carried live.

As I recall, Watson was on against Jensen solo and was trounced badly. Better they should pick up Beck and keep Hannity.

Bohannon's show is run overnight. After Bohannon (including his newscast) is morning drive.

When contract renewal time comes, WILM will certainly have ratings data by then that would show whether or not Hannity is good for WILM. If its shown to not be good for WILM then if I were the PD I'd renegoiate the terms so that his show didn't have to be carried live and I'd also move Bohannan back to his original 10pm time slot live and air Hannity and Levin after Bohannan before morning drive time. I don't know what the ratings showed when Watson and Jensen were head to head in the morning. It's interesting though, that if Jensen was trouncing Watson as you claim yet Jensen's time slot was changed to the afternoon. However, even if Jensen's numbers were better than Watson's back then, Jensen has the added burden of Jerry Fulchur. I'm not opposed to having the point counter point hosts (actually I think it's a great idea), it's just that Fulchur is so nasty and angry all the time which gets old, sort of like a liberal version of Sean Hannity. So Watson might be able to beat that duo out in ratings.

 

[Al Johnson]

Jensen was moved (or moved himself since he is program director) to put the station's better known and established personality against Rush and let the new guy face the weaker competitor in the morning.

If you were the program director at WILM, you wouldn't have much say in adding or dropping syndicated shows, moving them around, or deciding which news broadcasts to take (any more than the current guy does). These decisions are made at the cluster, regional (Philadelphia) or corporate (radio division in Cincinnati) levels. Clear Channel has a corporate deal with Fox to syndicate their radio news broadcasts and place them on a certain proportion of the talk stations (usually the dominant one they own in any given market). Clear Channel has an "arrangement" under which it clears Hannity in almost all markets in which it has talk stations and ABC/Citadel gets Rush (unless the two companies both have talk stations in the same market). However, if for some reason local Clear Channel management did try to "renegotiate," it is highly likely WDEL would be very happy to have Hannity back and cleared live.

It's been a while, and old posts have been removed from this site, but I vaguely recall people posting to say they preferred Fulcher to Watson when Fulcher filled in for Watson. I also recall they said the same about Loudell.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

When Jerry Fulchur was at WILM, he was less angry, and I did enjoy hearing him fill in for Watson. But something has changed in the past few years and Jerry is difficult for me, at least, to listen to for any length of time. Maybe he didn't change, but I did. Allan Loudell is a great talk show host. Yes, he always did a great job filling in for John Watson, but Loudell isn't going to be doing talk, he's doing news and interviews and does a great job at that too.

Your point about how Clear Channel works does probably explain some of what goes on at WILM these days. WDEL probably would jump at the opportunity to have Hannity again IF they weren't forced to air Levin. It seems to me that was the issue that broke WDEL's back the last time around and how WILM managed to get Hannity. But your point is well made, meaning that WILM isn't going to make any of those changes, other than when Watson some day retires, then WILM's Clear Channel masters will probably put Glenn Beck in Watson's old time slot.

As far as Fox radio news is concerned, its hard to take it seriously as a newscast when they try to make who's left on American Idol a news story, but as you said, WILM's management doesn't have a say in that either.

 

[Al Johnson]

When Jerry Fulchur was at WILM, he was less angry, and I did enjoy hearing him fill in for Watson. But something has changed in the past few years and Jerry is difficult for me, at least, to listen to for any length of time. Maybe he didn't change, but I did.

Probably he changed.

When air talent changes stations and changes their "act," it's usually because their new employer wants them to. In this case, the air talent is sitting right next to his PD. (Even if the PD is not the "decider" at this station, the "decider" is in the same building and knows what's going on.)

Talk radio thrives on angry (angry hosts, angry ditto-heads calling in), or at least a lot of programmers think it does.

However, if Fulcher is angry and the PD is not, something else may be at work: Paired hosts doing good cop - bad cop. Fulcher is the bad cop. Where the PD is also the "conservative," having his "liberal" opponent be the villain makes the "liberal" host (and therefore his opinions) less appealing to the audience. When a "conservative" station has a token "liberal" paired with a "conservative", the "liberal" is set up as a straw man, either by being personally unappealing or by being ineffectual (see: Alan Colmes).

 

[MikefromDelaware]

Where the PD is also the "conservative," having his "liberal" opponent be the villain makes the "liberal" host (and therefore his opinions) less appealing to the audience. When a "conservative" station has a token "liberal" paired with a "conservative", the "liberal" is set up as a straw man, either by being personally unappealing or by being ineffectual (see: Alan Colmes).


That's an interesting point. Fulchur gets to play the part of the "angry liberal". Yes, your example of Alan Colmes on Fox (a conservative network) is a good one. Sean Hannity will have liberal guests on his show, and on the rare times I've listened, he'll try his best to get the liberal worked up so that they'd get angry. However, some of these guests are wise to him and when they keep their cool and just discuss the issue, they (in my opinion) win the discussion (even though Hannity will claim he won). It is interesting that you can hear liberal talk on NPR and none of the so called "libs" sound angry. Of course it's NPR and even when there's a conservative on, they also don't sound angry; maybe yelling and ranting just isn't their thing at NPR. Maybe they give each person some Prozac before they go in the air, just to keep them all mellow. Seriously, it does demonstrate that liberals can discuss hot issues in an intelligent way without foaming at the mouth.

One would think, that in a market like Wilmington or Philly both of which are "Blue" counties liberal talk would do ok in the ratings. Of course, that latest ratings with the PPM for Philly showed WHYY-FM (NPR) in 11th place on the 12+, not bad for an NPR station. I wonder where they place in Wilmington. I've noticed that quite often there are callers on "Radio Times" from Wilmington or Newark DE. Who knows maybe NPR via WHYY-FM skews higher than either WDEL or WILM in the Wilmington 12+ ratings. Unfortunately the non-comms don't show in the Wilmington 12+ numbers.

 

[WTUX]

Mike, Fox is only following the trend in radio news. CBS's 5 minute newscast this morning included the winner of "Dancing With the Stars" as if it was a news item. KYW runs a minute or so of movie, celebrity, musician "News" prior to the bottom of the hour shore weather. Mutual nearly always included a "weird" news item as the concluding story. What Fox is doing is nothing new.

 

[Al Johnson]

One would think, that in a market like Wilmington or Philly both of which are "Blue" counties liberal talk would do ok in the ratings. Of course, that latest ratings with the PPM for Philly showed WHYY-FM (NPR) in 11th place on the 12+, not bad for an NPR station. I wonder where they place in Wilmington. I've noticed that quite often there are callers on "Radio Times" from Wilmington or Newark DE. Who knows maybe NPR via WHYY-FM skews higher than either WDEL or WILM in the Wilmington 12+ ratings. Unfortunately the non-comms don't show in the Wilmington 12+ numbers. [/color]

Public radio numbers are available online at RRCOnline.org[/org]
The bad news is since the Wilmington market doesn't have a public radio station, the Wilmington market is not listed.

Wilmington, like many "rust belt" cities in the Northeast, has substantial Black, Hispanic, union and blue collar populations, many of which identify with the Democratic Party because of their social class and may even vote Democratic out of perceived economic self-interest but are not really liberal or progressive in their views overall. Based on general demographics, I think Wilmington might be a good place for an urban talk station but based the numbers stations get now, Wilmington does not seem to be a good market for local radio, AM radio or local radio, in general. Out of market listening is extremely high. The two AM conservative talk stations together approach the low-end of what leading conservative AM talk stations get in other markets. The local sports talk station is doing nothing but it's owned by Clear Channel and carries Fox Sports. Clear Channel distributes Fox Sports and wants it cleared.

The more I think about (and the more I read this board), Wilmington seems like a prime market for satellite radio.

 

[wheatstone]

It may be useful to remind everyone that Wilmington - due to geographic size and proximity to Philadelphia - simply doesn't have that many radio stations. When you only have five viable New Castle County stations, (I'm being generous to 1290) it's impossible for local stations to ever have the majority of listening based on the amount of spill into the market. Put Wilmington in the middle of Kansas or somewhere else and it would have twenty local stations and its own TV stations. Harrisburg is a good example. So I don't think we can blame Delaware stations for not having 20 shares.

As for WHYY, look it up, they are tied for 16th with a 2.2 share 12+. Respectable. But not enough to justify launching a liberal talk station serving Delaware. NPR does a good job already, it would be hard to beat that number. Plus, the most expensive format on the planet is local news talk. Good luck making any money.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

Thanks for the info. So WHYY-FM is ranks 16 in Wilmington and 11 in Philly. So more people are listening to NPR in both Wilmington and Philly than many people would have thought. You're probably right, the Wilmington market probably isn't large enough to support it's own liberal talker and WHYY-FM does a solid job and now they do have Delaware news stories, etc which is a major improvement of past years. They have a pretty decent signal in Wilmington, so it would appear that the NPR programming is competing with Wilmington's two AM talkers (WDEL and WILM). WWTX 1290 Fox sports talk apparently has next to no one listening so they don't count.

Speaking of NPR stations, it will be interesting to see if WRTI at 107.7 (Classical Music daytime/Jazz at night) starts showing up in the Wilmington 12+ numbers now that they have a solid signal in the Wilmington area.

It would be interesting to see how Jerry Fulchur's numbers (on WDEL) are that last hour when he's alone as compared to the other three hours he co-hosts with Rich Jensen.

I agree that if Wilmington was located where Dover DE is, it would have more radio stations and probably a couple of its own TV stations. Location, location, location.

Apparently CBS radio is doing the Fox thing of promoting one of their TV shows as a "news story". That's not the same as Mutual's weird news story. CBS used to use a light story sometimes to end their news too. TV news does this too, as in the special interest (human interest) story, a feel good story to make up for all the blood, guts, and misery they just flashed into your living room. That's not the same as making a "news story" that actually is a promo or plug for a TV show, in my opinion.

 

[Al Johnson]

As for WHYY, look it up, they are tied for 16th with a 2.2 share 12+. Respectable. But not enough to justify launching a liberal talk station serving Delaware. NPR does a good job already, it would be hard to beat that number. Plus, the most expensive format on the planet is local news talk. Good luck making any money.

Look it up where? Please provide a link?
Philly public radio numbers are posted at RRC Online but not Wilmington.