Does WTAM even care on weekends?

RadioInsight Community Forums Midwest Cleveland Does WTAM even care on weekends?

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This topic contains 12 replies, has 9 voices, and was last updated by  tim131 1 week, 1 day ago.

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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  • #183035

    Ray
    Participant

    WOW. Paid programming….Tribe baseball….Brinda’s ANNOYING post-game rant….

    Hey Nathan, how can this be feasible in the long run when I’d rather puke bad Chipotle food than tune in two of seven days?

    (Robert Johnson blues album on as I type, turning the steaks on the grill in 3 minutes…..but I miss my radio.)

    #183042

    skiwest
    Participant

    Very embarrassing for a 50 kw station.  Did Brinda ever take any calls?   I was listening for quite a while and it was just him rambling/ranting.

    Several years ago, there was a freak snowstorm on a Sunday in late April.  I was at home and my power went off. I tuned in to WTAM on my battery  operated radio to keep informed.  They keep airing the same pre-recorded weather statement by AJ Colby all day that must have been recorded either Saturday night or early Sunday morning.  The weather statement by Colby was saying something like “cloudy with a chance of snow today”.   Unbelievable.

    #183048

    radioperson
    Participant

    Very embarrassing for a 50 kw station. Did Brinda ever take any calls? I was listening for quite a while and it was just him rambling/ranting. Several years ago, there was a freak snowstorm on a Sunday in late April. I was at home and my power went off. I tuned in to WTAM on my battery operated radio to keep informed. They keep airing the same pre-recorded weather statement by AJ Colby all day that must have been recorded either Saturday night or early Sunday morning. The weather statement by Colby was saying something like “cloudy with a chance of snow today”. Unbelievable.

    WTAM has not been a well run radio station for many years, and certainly one of the worst 50Kw clears when it comes to news and weather integrity.  I won’t even go into the fact that they hired a neanderthal as an afternoon talk host who attempts to talk about world affairs with all the knowledge of a drunk at a bar.  Maybe they think it is entertaining to hear a moron who can barely speak attempting to discuss weighty issues, but I find it embarrassing.
    The real news leader in the market is the KSU NPR station, WKSU, which has a whole wall of regional and national news awards.
    #183053

    tim131
    Participant

    I’ve been mentioning this for several years…and got a lot of pushback from others on this site.

    The reality is, once the internet and social media became HUGE with a majority of Americans (and worldwide), advertisers and their ad dollars followed consumers to on-line. It’s estimated by multiple research firms that up to 50% of all US ad dollars go somewhere on-line.

    Those dollars have to come from somewhere. They’ve been shifted from radio, TV, and print to on-line.

    Thus, stations have declining ad revenues and less money to pay and staff highly-skilled on air (and off air) pros. Cut corners, more automation, more mistakes, poorer quality programming.

    Radio may still reach 93% of Americans at least once a week at one time or another, but the time spent (TSL) on any radio station has dropped significantly. This per ARB/Nielsen.

    And, many large, national & even local, 1-location business have figured out how to spend much less on advertising on line and get good, sometimes great results for their businesses.

    This is radio’s #1 problem & a challenge they really can’t do anything about. It is unfortunate, but reality.

    • This reply was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by  tim131.
    • This reply was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by  tim131.
    #183056

    Yekimi
    Participant

    Radio may still reach 93% of Americans at least once a week at one time or another, but the time spent (TSL) on any radio station has dropped significantly. This per ARB/Nielsen.

     

    I call B.S. on this statement. I think they include somebody just walking by a car that has its radio on as they walk past it into the store or when they’re in the store and the store is playing some radio station at a low volume in the store office as they walk past it. Guess the other 7% that DON’T listen are either deaf or dead……and they may have died waiting for the commercials to end before the station actually got back to music. Won’t say which station I was listening to [other than it was an Iheart station] in my car but I basically had to drive 22 miles at 55 MPH and sometimes lower and in that time span I heard the station play exactly ONE song from the time I left my house until I arrived at work. Rest of the time it was commercials or a PSA or the company itself promoting its IFartRadio Music Festival…..wonder if the artists will be limited to one or two songs so they can jam 25 minutes of ads between sets for a captive audience.

     

    #183064

    tim131
    Participant

    As a former on-air personality in 3 pretty big markets (way back when) then for 3 decades a local, radio advertising sales rep: I agree totally. Radio on many stations run way, way, way, way too many commercials.

    3 or 4 spot clusters an hour, of up to 10 commercials per cluster. That is f$!@$-crazy. It drives listeners away, and screws the very people (advertisers) who pay money to reach those listeners and provide stations the revenue they need to be in business.

    I miss the days of “…at least 52 minutes of music this hour…”. That means 8:00 minutes an hour of spots, and maybe ONE 30-second station promo. Cleaner, much less clutter, better served the 2 most important people in any radio or TV station’s life: the listener (viewer) & the advertiser.

    WHY are commercial loads out of control now? Beyond greed. Stations have crippling debt. Ad rates per spot have fallen like a rock, thus they have to try to run more ads at cheaper rates per spot to try to hit their revenue goals.

    But, in doing so, they are destroying their business, and driving folks to the web, You Tube, and so forth. (And, that doesn’t even begin to address bland, boring, heavily automated, non-local content programming).

     

    • This reply was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by  tim131.
    • This reply was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by  tim131.
    #183067

    John Basalla
    Participant

    “Won’t say which station I was listening to [other than it was an Iheart station] in my car but I basically had to drive 22 miles at 55 MPH and sometimes lower and in that time span I heard the station play exactly ONE song from the time I left my house until I arrived at work. Rest of the time it was commercials or a PSA or the company itself promoting its IFartRadio Music Festival.”

    You may have heard a computer automation glitch that nobody caught.  Some years ago, I turned on WQAL on a weekend evening and heard nothing but commercials and promos back-to-back, non-stop.   Although I was curious, I stopped listening after no more then 20 minutes or so.  I called the station on Monday and they said that they had a computer problem where it got stuck airing nothing but spots.  They key point is that nobody caught it, or was there to catch it.  The voice-tracking system may have been programmed incorrectly causing the problem, who knows.

    #183068

    Nathan Obral
    Participant

    You’d be very hard-pressed to find a talk radio station of any sort that doesn’t carry a large allotment of brokered programming, heavily sponsored programs or endless marathons of Purity Products/Media Power infomercials on the weekends. WTAM has done a combination of the three in some form or another since the late 1990s.

    Like it or not, it’s easy money for those stations. It also kills off any sense of wanting to listen in on the weekends, but the aging demos who comprise the core audience for talk radio aren’t inclined to listen on the weekends anyway.

    Recorded in Ultra Stereo, the ultimately superior cousin to Normal Stereo!

    #183069

    Yekimi
    Participant

    “Won’t say which station I was listening to [other than it was an Iheart station] in my car but I basically had to drive 22 miles at 55 MPH and sometimes lower and in that time span I heard the station play exactly ONE song from the time I left my house until I arrived at work. Rest of the time it was commercials or a PSA or the company itself promoting its IFartRadio Music Festival.”

    You may have heard a computer automation glitch that nobody caught. Some years ago, I turned on WQAL on a weekend evening and heard nothing but commercials and promos back-to-back, non-stop. Although I was curious, I stopped listening after no more then 20 minutes or so. I called the station on Monday and they said that they had a computer problem where it got stuck airing nothing but spots. They key point is that nobody caught it, or was there to catch it. The voice-tracking system may have been programmed incorrectly causing the problem, who knows.

    This was after 2 PM on a weekday afternoon when there should have been someone at the station. If it was an automation glitch that no one caught ON A WEEKDAY WHEN SOMEONE MORE THAN LIKELY WAS THERE it just proves to me that even THEY don’t listen to the crap they put out over the airwaves.
    #183071

    dannykewl
    Participant

    I totally gave up on WTAM for any useful info. They were the one station I looked to to give me 5 minutes of news on the hour at least, and talk about current events/news during drive time. It’s sports, sports, sports and more sports in the morning. I know Cleveland is a big sports town, but really, with several other sports sources on the dial. First 10 minutes of every half hour in the morning after the news seems OK, then at 15 and 45, sports. The the news may start on the hour or half hour, but is usually 1-4 minutes late, often following a series of commercials. Weekends and game day … I realize you don’t interrupt the game for news, unless it’s something really spectacular. But you have the pre-game and post-game shows, why can’t they give us news and weather on the hour and half hour for a couple minutes? Hard to go online when you’re driving and want to know what’s going on. And very seldom does WTAM take over during severe weather. I used to listen to WNIR during bad weather, and people from Cleveland would call in there and report what’s going on in their back yards, on their streets, and  any treacherous streets and traffic lights out. WTAM should be using their 50 kw for the whole NE Ohio region. I now depend on WHK for news and talk, and even they don’t deliver on the weekends. I haven’t logged into this board for some time, but this topic caught my attention. I don’t care if Triv is good or not, as long as there’s news and real community involvement, not just jaw jacking.

    #183072

    tim131
    Participant

    For many full-service features like weather, weather radar, severe weather, forcasts, temps; sports scores, major news stories; even local traffic reports…go to your smart phone/computer on-demand 24/7 on line. Why wait for a radio station?

    I know most of you guys here are radio & TV fans. I was too for many decades.  For many things, we just don’t need radio or TV stations that much any more. It’s sad. It’s changing your mindset. It’s reality in 2018+.

    Times change. Just the way it is.

    • This reply was modified 1 week, 4 days ago by  tim131.
    #183082

    michael p
    Participant

    The thing that tickes me off about WTAM is that they never start the news at the top of the hour.  During Triv’s show it’s even worse, the 3 PM news does not begin until 7 to 10 minutes past the hour.

    I’ve just about totally tuned out WTAM except for Indians games now.  In addition to the variable news times the use that stupid people meter dual tone watermark in their audio.  Yes it’s audible and its annoying!

    #183122

    tim131
    Participant

    Most Indians games are simulcasted on TAM’s sister station WMMS 100.7.

    In the Akron-Canton area, Wooster’s WQKT 104.5 carries all Indians games.

    Cleaner signal, wider coverage on FM. Less noise than many AM stations have.

     

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