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WTAM

skiwest

skiwest

I tuned in shortly after 10:00 pm to listen to the
Bill Cunningham show, but it was just dead air. Eventually some commercials ran, but then back to nothing. Where is the Great American Bill Cunningham?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
h, I noticed the dead air also. Didn't stick around long enough to see if anything came back on it. Figured maybe they turned in their license and no one noticed.
 
The Diamond said:
Someone forgot to pay the electric bill?
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I hope you're not serious. A station with the power cut off would not be transmitting "dead air" or anything else. You'd hear a distant station that occupies the same frequency or just a buzz of manmade electrical interference.
 
As I said, commercial were airing periodically, but they were followed by long periods of silence. Maybe the Great American took the night off but WTAM was unaware and had no other programming lined up for the time slot.
 
Sounds like a problem switching between local automation and the satellite channel feeding the program. Way more common of an issue than you think.. and can happen pretty easily.
 
skiwest said:
As I said, commercial were airing periodically, but they were followed by long periods of silence. Maybe the Great American took the night off but WTAM was unaware and had no other programming lined up for the time slot.
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its very very likely thats not even remotely close. if he was taking the night off, thered be a re run/best off, fill in host or the syndicator would tlel stations thered be nothing feeding that night. .but syndicators almost never ever ever do the later
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
Sounds like a problem switching between local automation and the satellite channel feeding the program. Way more common of an issue than you think.. and can happen pretty easily.
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I've heard instances of top-of-the-hour dead air when the switch from Premiere to ABC News didn't happen (they aren't carrying ABC news anymore apparently). So you'd get 5 minutes of dead air until a local spot plays and then Coast to Coast AM starts rolling. There have also been audio clashes (two different feeds on at the same time, or a feed and a local element), etc.

There's nobody watching the store after hours at WTAM anymore. The Cleveland engineers are constantly driving all over North East Ohio fixing and putting out fires at all the other markets: Youngstown and Akron as well as Cleveland.
 
I would hazard a guess that if this was KFI or WOR or even the mothership WLW it wouldn't happen because those stations are "important". WTAM is just a little cog in a smaller market among the 5000+ wheels that make up IHeart. It's not worth it to them to spend any extra dollars on equipment or personnel. The halcyon days of the 50,000 watt 1100 flamethrower serving 38 states and half of Canada are gone. I wonder if their stream was also affected. Probably, if it is fed from the studio output.
 
Santa fe said:
I would hazard a guess that if this was KFI or WOR or even the mothership WLW it wouldn't happen because those stations are "important". WTAM is just a little cog in a smaller market among the 5000+ wheels that make up IHeart. It's not worth it to them to spend any extra dollars on equipment or personnel. The halcyon days of the 50,000 watt 1100 flamethrower serving 38 states and half of Canada are gone. I wonder if their stream was also affected. Probably, if it is fed from the studio output.
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Yes, b4ecause if the program didnt make it to the air signal, it didnt make it to the console, which is what in essemnced feeds the stream
 
MediaLover said:
It seems that a lot of the news/talk stations in the area are on autopilot a lot of the time. Not just WTAM, but also WERE, WHLO, WHBC, even WNIR. Weekends have become a wasteland, especially Sunday nights.
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WTAM does air news at the top and bottom of the hour, even on weekends. Although I suppose it could be a newscast recorded early in the day and repeated for the remainder of the day.
 
I can confirm that Bill Cunningham did not air that night, somebody forgot to flip the switch at WTAM. Instead, we were treated to an episode of Bloomdaddy, on endless loop. I tuned in after 1:00 am that night, hoping to hear Coast to Coast. Instead I heard the same "best of" Bloomdaddy episode, repeated over and over again on loop until Wills took over at 5:00 am. Apparently, no one was minding the store that night, which doesn't surprise me. WTAM is a shadow of it's former self.
 
Brian K said:
I can confirm that Bill Cunningham did not air that night, somebody forgot to flip the switch at WTAM. Instead, we were treated to an episode of Bloomdaddy, on endless loop. I tuned in after 1:00 am that night, hoping to hear Coast to Coast. Instead I heard the same "best of" Bloomdaddy episode, repeated over and over again on loop until Wills took over at 5:00 am. Apparently, no one was minding the store that night, which doesn't surprise me. WTAM is a shadow of it's former self.
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No one forgot to flip anything.. there was like an error in the automation and or satellite receiver....
 
Santa fe said:
WTAM is just a little cog in a smaller market among the 5000+ wheels that make up IHeart.
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You exaggerate by a factor of about six times the number of stations they actually have.
Santa fe said:
It's not worth it to them to spend any extra dollars on equipment or personnel.
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This is a station that bills about $8 million, and is within the top 200 billing stations in the country... out of about 10,900 commercial stations (not counting translators) in the USA.
Santa fe said:
The halcyon days of the 50,000 watt 1100 flamethrower serving 38 states and half of Canada are gone. I wonder if their stream was also affected. Probably, if it is fed from the studio output.
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The days of stations serving huge areas (at night only, for the most part) died with the advent of television. That is seventy years ago. When I started DXing from northern Michigan in the very late 60's, KYW/WKYC was not a particularly reliable signal at just 300 miles.

The real issue is that an inflation-adjusted revenue comparison shows radio to be off by about 60% since 2000. And, of course, WTAM is an AM station and AM listening is down to around 5% of all radio listening, mostly concentrated among people over 55 or so.
 
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