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WOR - too much "New York?"

W

wadio

In radio, one thing you can count on is that when someone comes up with a good idea they'll generally beat it to death! The current thinking at WOR seems to be to counter all the national syndication at WABC with local content. But is it, "too much of a good thing?" I think it is.

Mark Simone has proclaimed that WOR will be Mayoral Campaign Headquarters in the coming year. John Gambling this morning has spent an inordinate amount of time drilling down into various City budgets. Joan Hamburg has always concentrated on NY restaurants, theaters, etc., OK. I don't know what the afternoon host is up to because I can't stand listening to her but, the few times I've punched the 710 button in the car, she's been yammering about local stuff.

WOR's potential audience extends beyond the 5 boroughs, and even NY residents aren't necessarily obsessed with local NY politics. I believe in the value of live and local shows, but not to focus excessively on local minutiae. A local show provides the flexibility to zoom local when events warrant it but to broaden the scope with a local perspective at other times.
 
While you have to make sure your topics appeal to as broad of a audience as possible...I feel it's always best to own your backyard first. WORs current 6+ share indicates they have nowhere to go but up...but first your must build a foundation. They apparently are trying to offer listeners, something WABC can't. Good luck to them.
 
Hey, let's give the folks at WOR credit for trying something different. Many of us have been complaining for years about the need for local talk radio.

It's going to take them a while to find exactly the right mix that works, but hats off to them for experimenting.

Unfortunately, for local talk fans, we all know that down the road WOR will offer much more nationally syndicated programming produced by the Premier unit of station owner Clear Channel. That destiny has always been crystal clear.

So, enjoy the local while you can, and don't be too thrown off by the very WOR showing in the holiday ratings. That was a time of change and distraction for regular WOR listeners. The station will get its act together and attract a larger audience as time goes on.
 
I don't fault them for trying and maybe they'll find the right mix -- I hope so.

I've been a big fan of John Gambling's show and have always felt he achieved a good balance of national vs. local topics -- but not this morning! If the drumbeat of local department heads discussing their budgets continues, the only appointment radio for me on the "new" WOR will be John & Ken.
 
Gambling focuses on things like the what the NYC board of edu met about too much, and other things about NYC schools. It's not interesting to me, when I'm driving to work in NJ in the morning to hear about school budgets.
 
New Jersey 101.5 is only doing slightly worse than WOR in the NYC market, and that station is very New Jersey-oriented and doesn't cover the whole market. It also does very well in various NJ markets. Taking their formula and applying it to NYC might prove to be a good idea.
 
So for years everyone bitches about WABC being too syndicated. WOR is actually trying to do something local for a change, and now people are grumbling about that. C'mon!!

YES it SHOULD be NYC focused. 8 million people in the city alone. There will be other regional topics too.

The big problem with WOR is it still sounds like "World's Oldest Radio". Hamburg sounds like my grandmother's grandmother. All of those weekend shows are aimed at 65 to death demo. Dave Ramsey is a snooze and not local at all. Jury is still out on Mark Simone, but being on that station makes him sound older to me. Gambling is coasting in the morning right now.

They need some form of controversial host to stir things up and get the station some attention. Right now, it's like MOR/milquetoast radio, even with the local hosts. Joan talking about restaurants and her corns... compelling radio. Simone was talking about old theaters this morning... even more compelling radio. Who cares about old theaters? Leave that to WNYC to cover and talk about some of the things going on in the city and surrounding areas right now.
 
On NYRMB Kevin T. explains why WOR audio sound so bad:

"WOR is transmitting "HD Radio", which causes the bandwidth of their analog AM audio to be reduced to only 5 kHz, which is indeed not much better than telephone quality. WABC, on the other hand, is transmitting the full 10 kHz AM audio bandwidth allowed by the FCC. If you have a wideband receiver, you will definitely hear the difference!"

So in other words, there is nothing CC could do to change things? I'm not a radio engineer, so my guess was that it was due to the WOR studio equipment etc. which CC would certainly afford to upgrade...Now there may be no hope for WOR no matter who owns it.
 
qwerty809 said:
On NYRMB Kevin T. explains why WOR audio sound so bad:

"WOR is transmitting "HD Radio", which causes the bandwidth of their analog AM audio to be reduced to only 5 kHz, which is indeed not much better than telephone quality. WABC, on the other hand, is transmitting the full 10 kHz AM audio bandwidth allowed by the FCC. If you have a wideband receiver, you will definitely hear the difference!"

So in other words, there is nothing CC could do to change things? I'm not a radio engineer, so my guess was that it was due to the WOR studio equipment etc. which CC would certainly afford to upgrade...Now there may be no hope for WOR no matter who owns it.
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It has nothing to do with the studio equipment. As long as WOR transmits an HD signal, it must limit its analog bandwidth to 5 kHz, to prevent the analog signal's sidebands from interfering with the HD carriers and vice versa.

Not the smartest move I've ever seen as an engineer...making the signal that makes a station its money sound like crap...but about 200 AM stations apparently think that's OK.
 
WABC broadcast in HD for some time and nobody complained about Simone's audio then. The lack of "robustness," which seems to be the complaint, is more likely related to mic'ing or audio processing, IMO.
 
John Gambling is still the best thing that WOR's got going. Good guests get asked good questions and I like the mix of national and local news. A local talk show is not just a show that takes place in your studio but still sounds like Rush or Hannity. Local shows cover local stories and John does that.

Mark simone wasn't any big deal at WABC and I think a steady diet of him will turn off more listeners that gain them. He is a short abrasive know it all who has no problem telling a caller what he thinks. Also his topics are old and his guests are even older. His interviews many times sound like they are recorded on a cassette machine and the overall quality of his show is below par.

Why would one think that a failed GM at WABC would do anything but follow his same one note plan at a new station. His hires so far do not impress me. Tom Cutty (what a lot of talk experience he has) and Mark Simone? More of the same in my mine!
 
Simone and Tom Leykis (who were colleagues at the old PIX 102) are cut from the same cloth. You just described him to a tee, OC3.
 
John Gambling is still the best thing that WOR's got going. Good guests get asked good questions and I like the mix of national and local news.
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Until yesterday's show, yes. The future is what you need to keep an eye on. My gut tells me there might be a directive over there to shift more local, maybe to the extreme. That's how talk radio got to be all politics all the time. More politics was a good, refreshing idea at first but it was taken to the extreme. Just a hunch ... time will tell.
 
Mark Simone is a like a pinch hitter in baseball who hits triples or home runs, and then when he's made a regular player, his batting average is 245. He's a good person for needing a fill-in host or hosting special shows at the station, but not a regular host.
 
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