Worcester Magazine Best of Worcester 2009

[RobertLoggia]

Four Awards for WTAG: Best Radio Station, Best Source for News, Best Radio Personality, Jim Poilito. Also, Best Example of Coming Through for the Community, Editors' award for WTAG's ice storm coverage as the "shining media moment of 2008."

 

[WCRiNsider]

Very well deserved, but what about Worcester's Worst? Did they mention the 50,000 watts of dead air during the ice storm WCRN provided during those 3 days? How the owners didn't want to spend money on fuel for the generator or how the engineer didn't go out to the transmitter to check on it because there was "nothing we can do." Nothing we can do? Just sit in the dark and listen to a hand crank radio set at 580AM.

 

[DanStrassberg]

Editors' award for WTAG's ice storm coverage as the "shining media moment of 2008."

No doubt, naming your competition and knocking them in official communications (press releases, etc) is considered the worst of bad form in the PR business and in broadcast time sales. But since snide, under-the-breath comments about competition by sales reps and others in station management can't be controlled, such comments presumably are made but would be disavowed if quoted. Still, with all of the heat Clear Channel has taken around the country for its failure to serve the needs of communities where its stations are located and the repeated assertions that this failure is the result of ownership by a big national company that doesn't care vs small local owners who do care, it would seem totally appropriate for WTAG's sales reps to make a big deal of how their big-company-owned station served its community in a time of need while the locally owned competition completely fell down on the job. Seems like somebody has to figure out how to deliver this message without sounding TOO nasty.

 

[ArtSpooner]

In my opinion WTAG definitely deserved their award, but these awards are suspicious. Some restaurant that I nor any of my friends had ever heard of, won 13 awards. It appears that the voting can be manipulated. I don't go out a lot, but at least I've heard of all of the other establishments who were winners in other categories or runners-up.

 

[The Original]

Worcester Magazine's "Best" awards are often rigged. While working at WNEB, our morning man, the late Paul Larson, went full-throttle in his efforts to make sure he always won the "Best Morning Radio Personality" award. The "Best Of" publication is a gimmick to attract more attention and readers to the magazine. As for WTAG, it really did deserve all the recognition it received. Their new morning man, Jim Polito, is off to a great start in less than a year's time and their ice storm coverage was excellent from beginning to end. As for WCRN, they really dropped the ball. In their old Main Street studios, they put in a generator and then another at the transmitter site on Shady Lane in Leicester. They should have been fully operational during the storm. A major blunder. But that's what you get when you have an engineer whose idea of repair work is nothing more than shoving the broken piece of equipment in a box and mailing it back to the manufacturer to be fixed.

 

[WCRiNsider]

But that's what you get when you have an engineer whose idea of repair work is nothing more than shoving the broken piece of equipment in a box and mailing it back to the manufacturer to be fixed.

I'm speechless! It is 100% true. If something breaks you do without it (no matter if it is a microphone, speaker, cd player, processor, satellite receiver, etc.) until it returns. (And usually it is delayed being fixed due to lack of payment.) We are pretty good at learning to make do with what little we have.