Monday, October 29, 2012

While the storm gets bad in NY, Cumulus runs canned radio on WABC

From my friend, Jerry:

Cumulus is doing canned syndicated talk on WABC, New York while millions are without power. At least they don't have to listen!

9 comments:

  1. I cannot think of any programming decision by a major market AM station which would be better grounds for revocation of the license.

    Utterly shameful.

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    1. I think it's because WABC lost electricity? I know that rival WCBS-AM880 lost power last night and ran a simulcast of another station (a buddy of mine is a WCBS on-air talent and texted me all of this yesterday).

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  2. Alan Colmes was live from NY. CuMucus has no excuse!

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  3. Especially while 1010WINS has lost their AM transmitter.

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  4. they have no ability to broadcast. good effort.
    hey, maybe some of you prepared folks can send them some of your earthquake kits! i'm sure that'll help a lot!
    this is much worse than even the quake of '89.

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  5. What happened to, "In the public interest, convenience and necessity?" Note to Cumulus, the better part of valor in this case would have been to kill the transmitter and save the electricity for those in need.

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  6. According to a post on the NY Radio Message Board, the opposite happened -- WABC bumped the likes of Limbaugh and went all-news during the storm.

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  7. What do you expect? Cumulus has shown blatant disregard for public service, and they treat their employees very badly. It's common knowledge that their SF 'cluster' of stations has lousy morale, as people are overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated.

    The Dickeys only motivation is to make money. They could care less about quality or creativity. Some of the people that have been put on the air, particularly at KGO are astonishingly amateurish.

    Cumulus is also very lucky that KNBR has a great signal and a solid reputation from the years that Susquehenna/Pfalffzgraff turned them into a sports powerhouse.

    Meanwhile, Cumulus blew up KGO and are starting from scratch with a new format, trying to challenge the perennial all-news station, KCBS with less staff and fewer traffic reporters. Perhaps that radical plan needed to be implemented, but it was handled very clumsily by Cumulus and the result is that the station plunged to 13th in the Bay Area in terms of listenership.

    The sooner Cumulus gets out of the radio business, the better things will be for local radio. One also has to wonder just what their business plan is. They don't seem to have a clue in that department. Unfortunately this is a bad company that looks like it's here to stay for awhile, and that's a shame for bay area radio listeners. One could always count on high quality snd public service in the past, but the stations owned by Cumulus are
    not nearly as professional or as enjoyable to listen to anymore.

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  8. it's not just Cumulus. It's all of them. Same thing

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