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WLOQ - The end of the live and local era?

A

AnotherCat

Changes in the air for heritage smooth jazzer WLOQ, which always prided itself on being non-corporate, live and local.
Long time (30 year) personality Joe Francis, one of the few real personalities left on the late night shift, or any shift for that matter, was cut and that shift is now automated. Weekends are being voicetracked to some extent. Long time personalities are having their shifts cut shorter and responsibilities cut back. If I'm not mistaken (I may be though) their new PD came from a station that was automated in most dayparts. Could "The Network" be far behind. That would be tragedy for this station, which was one of the few independents out there!

Heres the link to the discussion on the Orlando board
http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,71079.0.html
 
SJ on WLOQ was the founder Herb Gross' passion.  Herb was the one who hired Joe Francis in 1977 to be the Operations Manager and start WLOQ.  Herb was a very hands on owner.  Extremely passionate about the station and it's image and was this way for nearly 30 years.  At the age of 81 in 2006 he was still involved 100% in the music decisions, on-air content and staffing and had an active hand in promotions/marketing.  But, in April of 2006 his family (two sons and wife) went to court and Herb was removed from an active roll and changes began.  Until Herb's removal from the day to day programming operations in 2006, the station offered live programming 24/7 with the exception of a few hours on the weekend with some syndication (Dave Kozshow...etc) and that was board-op'd. Until that removal date in 2006 the station was still playing music via CD off of four decks.  Commercials had been played for years off of a 360-Instant Replay unit and just before Herb's exile, WLOQ began playing spots off of Digi-Link.  Herb was okay with the spots going to the Digi-Link, but he did not want music to be played via hard drive...he was fearful of ease of automating the station and it losing "life".  He wanted the personalities to pay attention to the music and felt bringing in automation (even live assist) would cause a loss in the "feel" for the music by the airstaff and many would just coast.  He fought Scott Studios from being installed, but shortly after his exile in April of 2006 Scott Studios was brought in and the rest is history.  Before Joe was terminated this month...PM Driver Dave Mills (there ten plus years) was canned earlier this year. Dave had been hired by Herb years back when Herb heard him in Minneapolis. Will Joe be the last? Unfortunately I don't think so.
 
I think it's both amazing and sad that stations are using automation more and more. Like jocks make a lot of money. It seems to me there should be at least one person at the station listening to what is going out over the air.

Long before I got into radio there were 3 people in charge, the jock, a board op and a transmitter engineer. Now management can't even pay one person?
 
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