• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WLW news light must be burnt out

E

ElwoodBlues

Guest
Too bad that covering breaking news is no longer a priority for radio. My brother-in-law, who lives in the Cincinnati area, called me because he knows I'm a radio nerd... His power's been out for 4 hours, and with the storms that have blown through today (700,000+ customers without power in the tri-state area). His one source for news, was his battery-powered radio, and he was wondering if there was a radio station that would have coverage. WLW? Nope, the Reds are more important. WXVU? Nope. WKRC? No, but ironically the intro for the Glenn Beck show samples some old cold war civil defense message telling folks to grab a radio and go to a fall out shelter. At this rate, if we ever did have to tune-in from a fallout shelter, I'm not optimistic there'd be anyone left on the payroll at these radio stations who'd know what to do. Breaking news? Don't we just ignore that and keep playing music? Where's the Hannity feed? What a joke.
 
You must have tuned in late. I heard them break into the game around 2:00PM. 55krc was off the air for about an hour, so was 1160 WDJO. 102.7 WEBN was off during part of the Bengals game as I had to switch to 1530. Glenn Beck talking about a fallout shelter, hahaa. I guess you heard that when their transmitter came back up.
 
John,

I was talking about it before 2 o'clock on WGRR and so was Danny on Warm 98. We were sharing information between ourselves and using it on both stations. I was taking calls and giving updates on weather and traffic every chance I had which was between just about every song and at every break. At the time I left the station at 3, there were already close to 400,000 customers without poer. And, in fact, I heard Danny on WGRR as late at 8 o'clock tonight still talking about it. Quite afew stations went off during the wind. Channel 12 even went off during the Bengals game. I didn't hear WLW, but I'm sure they broke in, especially if microbob says he heard it. Maybe you'd be more optimisitic if you tuned around some more.
 
Clear Channel was a joke. A disgrace. "When You Need to Know" my eye. Reds on 'LW, KRC was off the air for at least two hours between 3 and 5:30, evidently because no one thought to drive to Cold Spring to fire up the generator. When it finally came on, instead of moving the Reds game to it and covering the weather on 'LW, or even having the coverage on KRC, they replay a Glenn Beck? Inexcusable.

A WLW news person DID do some short inserts in the Reds game, so at least we know they were aware of the situation, but to have 4 AM's, the second of which seemed to need only electricity and to have a generator on-site, shows what's left of the crew that made radio compelling.

At the very least, Brian Thomas should have been on the air at KRC taking phone calls.

"Miss a Day - Miss a Lot" was never more appropriate. They missed one hell of an opportunity to show that they still have a game (and not just the Reds).
 
For certain, a little egg on the Big One's faces. Other than that, I heard Darryl Parks anchoring of coverage after 10 and it was good that they skipped the national Cunningham show.

In Dayton, WHIO did and continues to do a yeoman's job starting with news coverage and going wall to wall after 9pm (I'm a little puzzled as to why only Fox News reports in the 7pm hour with a syndicated program. WHIO continues wall to wall coverage today.
WHIO AM and FM took turns being off the air as well as Channel 7. At one point WHIO AM and WING were off the air as well as the other Mainline stations. WEEC was still off this morning (allowing a very rare chance to log WMMS), and WBZI and it's simulcast sisters were also off.
 
I got WMMS last yr for 30 seconds playin Nomore Mr Nice Guy here in Cincinnati.

Max-fm is still out so is 14 wpto was back on but out again 48 wcet 43 from indy 38 and 25/ Air one 90.1 94.3 105.9 are all still out.
 
And you guys are just noticing this about WLW now? Seems to me the news imaging has been more important than the actual news content for a very long time now.
 
gr8oldies said:
For certain, a little egg on the Big One's faces. Other than that, I heard Darryl Parks anchoring of coverage after 10 and it was good that they skipped the national Cunningham show.

In Dayton, WHIO did and continues to do a yeoman's job starting with news coverage and going wall to wall after 9pm (I'm a little puzzled as to why only Fox News reports in the 7pm hour with a syndicated program. WHIO continues wall to wall coverage today.
WHIO AM and FM took turns being off the air as well as Channel 7. At one point WHIO AM and WING were off the air as well as the other Mainline stations. WEEC was still off this morning (allowing a very rare chance to log WMMS), and WBZI and it's simulcast sisters were also off.

Was also displeased with CC not taking full advantage of their network and better delegating Reds, etc while covering the storm better. Agreed that HIO did better in Dayton when they were on. WBZI was back on Monday late morning and did a phenomenal job covering the area there Roy anchoring and field reports from Bucks and Gregg, disapointed their Eaton repeater wasn't back up sooner. Didnt hear anything from WING but I could've missed it. Pretty disapointing all and all with some of the coverage from the more abled stations that did make it without xmitters going down.
 
The fact that you guys are surprised this happened, surprises me. Com'on guys. Clear Channel is reaping what it has sown over the past five or so years. Cutting people to make the bottom line look good to Wall Street. And the fact that KRC was off the air for several hours isn't suprising either. Put one of today's engineers in front of a diesel genset and they will be lost since they can't find the USB port or ethernet port. I'd be willing to bet anything that the genset hasn't even been started in six months.

This is the "new" Clear Channel. The question is, who is now going to step up and fill the void?
 
At least WLW did a much better job than 840WHAS (who had almost ZERO local coverage - I guess Rush is much, much more important) of acting in public service. Expect quite a few complaints to the FCC in the next couple of weeks.

Has WLW been cutting their nighttime power these last two nights, having been on generator power? (Do they know to/how to?) Their signal in Oxford, less than 25 miles away, was extremely weak last night.
 
I checked the winds in Louisville, Indy and Columbus and they were not nearly as bad as in Cincinnati and Dayton. Could be why it wasn't as important to WHAS.
 
Well, I did hear Scott Sloan giving school closings last night on WLW on XM, at :15 and :45, doing a good job reading every one.

They also had calls from people, including one from a Duke Energy worker.

I wonder how the rest of Cincinnati radio covered it, living in Charleston, SC.
 
Arbitorn said:
I checked the winds in Louisville, Indy and Columbus and they were not nearly as bad as in Cincinnati and Dayton. Could be why it wasn't as important to WHAS.

We actually had 75mph gusts here in Columbus.... 60% of Franklin County (where columbus is) was without power at one point before they started restoring.
 
kc8kfg said:
At least WLW did a much better job than 840WHAS (who had almost ZERO local coverage - I guess Rush is much, much more important) of acting in public service. Expect quite a few complaints to the FCC in the next couple of weeks.

I don't know what WHAS you were listening to, but the WHAS in Louisville broke into programming to cover the wind storm. I was leaving the Bengals' game and was listening to WHAS the whole way home and had a very clear idea of what to expect when I got here. Go check out the Kentucky message board if you want to know more of what they were doing.

BTW, WHAS does not run Rush on Sundays. They repeat his show on Saturdays. Get your facts straight before you post again.
 
Arbitorn said:
I checked the winds in Louisville, Indy and Columbus and they were not nearly as bad as in Cincinnati and Dayton. Could be why it wasn't as important to WHAS.

The winds at 1pm Saturday in Louisville were gusting to 59 mph, at Ft. Knox to 64, and at Huntingburg, IN to 61 mph. WAVE 3 had at least 2 of its weather staff blogging on their website (WAVE3.com), and they are the ones who supply weather information to 84WHAS. If HAS failed to pass along the weather information, it was probably because whoever was turning the knobs on the board failed to make that decision.
 
robmadden1 said:
I got WMMS last yr for 30 seconds playin Nomore Mr Nice Guy here in Cincinnati.
Uh... what?
Max-fm is still out so is 14 wpto was back on but out again 48 wcet 43 from indy 38 and 25/ Air one 90.1 94.3 105.9 are all still out.
Someone better tell Max-FM that the DSL went out again...
 
Arbitorn said:
I checked the winds in Louisville, Indy and Columbus and they were not nearly as bad as in Cincinnati and Dayton. Could be why it wasn't as important to WHAS.

Louisville airport reported a peak gust at 77 MPH with sustained winds at 60.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom