Posted on 07/28/2014 3:18:32 AM PDT by sneakers
Quinn and Rose are off the air, and we await word that they are returning soon. Meanwhile, our friendly group of dedicated FReeper Q&R fans will meet in our usual spot - same time, same station - as we always have! So grab your coffee - or whatever you choose to start your day - and drop in for some political chit-chat, or just to shoot the breeze! We are all coming from - or going to - work, but we all stop in to say ‘hi!’ Feel free to join us!
snap!
Good morning!
Aren’t you off this week?
I was supposed to be, but DIL got a new job and needs a babysitter. I worked a deal with my boss to work half a day and use comp time to babysit in the afternoon Mondays and Tuesdays and all day Friday. For four weeks. That way, I don’t use vacation time to babysit.
Got little sleep last night. Not a good day to babysit for the first time! Mr S is off. He’ll help!
Mornin’ everybuddy!
Absolutely need sleep to babysit! Saturday we had all 5 kids all day! Then I had to go to work. It was supposed to be the same Sunday but mrs p6 took them all to daughter’s house where they can play in a fenced in yard.
Morning A.M!
Good morning AM!
Been awake since about 3:00 am. To make matters worse, Mr S announces he’s going to work after all. DIL starting at the same bank he works at. Also, I see the critter from last year found it’s way in to our garden again. The war is ON! >:(
http://www.redstate.com/2014/07/28/maliciousness-not-incompetence/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdKzjG0qUaE
There is no question BO and the rest of the rat leaders are intentionally working to create chaos that would topple the West as well as Western theologies. Cloward Piven strategy as Quinn used to say.
For a time, it worked, but then a funny thing happened: even without Rush or the Bucs, KDKA’s relentless local focus overcame its AM dial position, while Clear Channel budget cuts began to erode whatever numbers WPGB had started to build up. The Pirates rights went back to CBS in 2012, landing on “Fan” KDKA-FM (93.7), and then last winter Clear Channel abruptly pulled the plug on the “Quinn and Rose” morning show, replacing it with a regional show based at WWVA (1170) over in Wheeling, West Virginia. At one point earlier this year, KDKA(AM) boasted nearly four times as many listeners as WPGB, leaving 104.7 as by far the lowest-rated full-market FM signal in the Pittsburgh market.
So when rumors began to swirl this summer that WPGB was due for a format change, the only real surprise was that it had taken Clear Channel so long. As our sister site RadioInsight first reported over the weekend, the next chapter for 104.7 appears to be country, though the flip may not occur until Labor Day weekend.
Country, of course, is another CBS Radio specialty in Pittsburgh; WDSY (107.9) is usually right at the top of the ratings, often in a neck-and-neck battle with Clear Channel’s flagship rocker, WDVE (102.5). That makes a 104.7 flip to country a perfectly typical page from today’s Clear Channel playbook: the new station won’t necessarily be designed to challenge Y108 for ratings dominance, just to shave enough of its ratings away to keep WDVE as a dominant first-place player. (Two more Clear Channel FMs, top-40 WKST-FM 96.1 and classic hits WWSW 94.5, are also near the top of the ratings alongside WDSY and WDVE; the fifth, modern rock WXDX-FM 105.9, is lower in the overall numbers but attracts a young male demographic that’s much more valuable than WPGB’s older talk audience.)
*Assuming a WPGB flip is really in the offing – and, again, there’s been no official announcement yet from Clear Channel and may not be one for a few weeks yet – there are plenty of questions to answer, both short-term and longer. For instance: where do the major syndicated pieces of the WPGB lineup land? Across the state in Philadelphia, CBS Radio’s WPHT (1210) was happy to reclaim Rush Limbaugh after Premiere moved him over to Merlin’s WWIQ (106.9), a much shorter-lived attempt at FM talk. Would Limbaugh’s former Pittsburgh home, KDKA, take him back? Right now, that noon-3 slot is home to KDKA veteran Mike Pintek, leading into the KDKA afternoon news block.
If KDKA doesn’t want Rush back after a decade’s absence, the options grow less impressive very quickly. If Premiere wants to clear more of the existing WPGB lineup, there’s Clear Channel’s lone AM in the market, WBGG (970 Pittsburgh), as a possible option to flip to talk with not only Rush but also Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Coast to Coast overnight. But that 5 kW facility is seriously signal-challenged, even with an impending FM translator on tap. (The translator would put the 970 programming on FM for the core of the market, but wouldn’t do much to fill 970′s significant signal nulls in the suburbs.) And WBGG already serves a useful purpose in the Clear Channel landscape. Even as a low-rated ESPN outlet, it reinforces the strong sports image that’s a secondary focus at its FM rock sisters, WDVE and WXDX, which hold the broadcast rights to the Steelers and Penguins, respectively.
Other options for Premiere become even bleaker: Birach’s WWCS (540 Canonsburg) picked up Fox Sports when 970 went to ESPN. Disney’s WDDZ (1250 Pittsburgh) has one of the better AM signals in town after KDKA, and it’s been quietly on the market for a few years now. Would Clear Channel, not generally a net buyer of stations right now, want to pick it up as a new WPGB AM outlet? And there’s WJAS (1320 Pittsburgh), another pretty good AM signal that just changed hands from Renda to Frank Iorio. Its standards audience is aging fast – could it be reborn as a talker?
Even if all of this turns out to be speculative, as indeed it may, it’s increasingly clear that stations like WPGB that try to plug into a national talk lineup with little or no local content don’t have much of a future on FM, or even AM. As we’ve explored previously in this column, Clear Channel failed with its attempt to launch a new talker in Boston (WXKS 1200) against established players, even with Rush on its lineup. In New York, Clear Channel’s reborn WOR (710) runs a nearly identical signal to WPGB and remains mired low in the ratings.
You don’t need us to point out the lack of vibrancy in the talk format these days, especially not when even some of the format’s creators, such as former Clear Channel talk honcho Darryl Parks, are doing so far more eloquently than we can. But it’s worth noting in this context that Premiere’s very fat contract with Limbaugh is nearing an end, and that’s the one event that could precipitate a huge change in the format’s direction. While Limbaugh’s overall numbers remain stronger than any of his talk competitors, the experience of stations such as WPGB, WXKS, WWIQ and WOR (not to mention KEIB, the Los Angeles AM where Clear Channel relocated Rush from giant KFI earlier this year) would seem to suggest that the Rush Limbaugh of the 2010s can’t single-handedly carry a station the way the Rush of the 1990s could. As we’ve noted elsewhere, there’s a solid argument to be made these days that heritage stations like WHAM in Rochester, WGY in Albany or WTIC in Hartford do well these days as much in spite of Rush as because of him. Why else, after all, would we see failure after failure from stations that carry Rush and Hannity but lack all the other elements – strong local news, local talk personalities, sports, etc. – that the heritage stations still use to succeed?
(Those are generally the exact elements that the ill-fated progressive talkers also lacked a few years ago, which raises the question of whether it was the politics or the overall programming elements that did those stations in. But we digress…)
*Back to Pittsburgh, then: if Clear Channel is indeed planning to drop a “104.7 the Bull” or a “B104.7″ into the market, it would be the third big country competitor in the region. In addition to CBS Radio’s big gun, WDSY, the new country outlet would have the potential to cut into the numbers at Keymarket’s “Froggy” trimulcast, WOGF (104.3 Moon Township), WOGI (94.9 Oliver) and WOGH (103.5 Burgettstown). It’s those signals, which primarily reach Pittsburgh’s southern and western suburbs, that would appear to have the most to lose from a second full-market country station in town.
Great....what we need is another Country Music Station. There are only like 3 here. If 104.7 goes country, it will be removed from my presets and predict it will go the way of all stupid radio stations.
They’re doing it because country makes money. In Boston where I’m from (though I visit Pittsburgh twice a year), WKLB 102.5 was the only country station and little by little it went up in the ratings till it wound up #2, #1, in the top 5, etc.
Clear Channel had a weak FM station playing electronic dance
music and a few weeks ago abruptly changed to “101.7 The Bull” playing “hot new country”. The idea was to maybe cash in on country’s popularity but also to “shave points” from other
stations.
Greater Media owns WKLB, the longtime country station. If Clear Channel takes away even part of their audience, it helps out their own pop hit radio WXKS-FM. The same thinking is here. When “The Bull” debuted, they promised a commercial-free summer (to build an audience) and don’t have any DJs, and a very narrow playlist (”This Is How We Roll”, “American Kids”, etc). Suddenly the Net was jammed with people praising the new station—no doubt Clear Channel employees being told to do so! So Clear Channel figures the talk audience is older, etc., less desirable, but wouldn’t they
do better with younger people, younger women especially?
(The accent on “hot new country”—the new station said, “now you have your own station and your parents still have theirs”—made WKLB dump its longtime Sun. country oldies show and start accenting that they’re “#1 for New Hit Country”)
As the article said the big country station in Pitt. is 107.9...the other ones like Froggy are from surrounding areas and may not cover the whole “market”. So they figure
put it on 104.7 and take away from WDSY and all the Froggys.
Boston never used to really be a big “market” for country but when WKLB started to get really big ratings, it became “me too”. No different than if a station playing pop hits does really well—whaddaya know, some other station changes to pop to try and siphon off some of the audience...Know what you mean.
Good morning n’@! Everyone!
So happy to hear your DIL has a LOCAL job (and not going to leave the area) :) Enjoy the day w/BabySneaks...when she naps YOU nap too :)
Was thinking of you and Greg this weekend...did the large (scary looking) lumber yard fire affect you at all?
Nothing much new here...I thought 2 more weeks of my crazy carpool but 20 yr old son may get an extra week of work (he needs$) so it might be 3 now (light at end of tunnel that I no doubt drive thru on a tight schedule while gulping a pop tart and coffee as I go).
Sigh.
Enjoy that little bundle of joy today! (PaGrandbaby grabs cheeks to give a kiss, and looks into my eyes and asks “Mimi gots cooookiez?)
<3
4 country music stations?
Why, that’s almost as many as Zanesville!
Am hearing secondhand Quinn and Rose could wind up on WJAS 1320, apparently via a Voy forum on Pitt radio.
other posts on same board doubt it though...
>Also, Frank Iorio’s WJAS (just sold to him by Renda)is going talk with Quinn and Rose. Cardille, Bogut, and Shovlin are not part of the station. Shovlin may or may not be out at Renda. Cardille will be gone, and Bogut may do something with KQV.
http://www.voy.com/187343/ A few Pittsburgh radio rumors for you: 104.7 switches to country format. 970 takes the syndicated shows from 104.7. A new signal is moved in to move the ESPN Radio stuff to.
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