[BC] EAS alert tones in movie preview ad

[Tom Spencer]

Actually, Emmis does a pretty fair job of keeping someone around most of 
the time for news; they have a reputation to uphold.

Do you remember Fred Heckman?  You should - he was WIBC's news director 
when Tony Kiritsis went ape; Fred was the only guy he'd trust to get his 
grievances out...  The story went national - quite unusual for what was 
then considered "Naptown", the "Cornfield With Streetlights".

Lots of controversy about the reporter becoming part of the story, but 
it did lend a certain reinforcement to the station's news department's 
reputation...

And that trust has more or less remained through an ownership change, a 
couple of format changes, and a frequency change; not all of WIBC's 
ratings are due to Rush, after all...

The only station to consistently out-pull WIBC is WFMS - running 
Country, and promoting the heck out of themselves...

There's several people in the building even overnight, when the stations 
(WIBC 93.1, WLHK 97.1, WYXB 105.7, WFNI 1070) are running in autopilot - 
if something breaks, someone from the news department gets a call...

and if weather threatens,  someone stays with it.

Elections, ditto...

Cost vs Profit

And although Jeff Symulian keeps trying to take Emmis private again (and 
failing), the larger market Emmis stations are all doing reasonably well...

Jeff has hinted he might be willing to sell off one of the NYC stations, 
or both of the Chicago ones... but that's just business.

No, in spite of having a background in sales, he knows enough to keep on 
doing it right... and the numbers generally bear him out.

Now, could it be improved?  Probably.  Would it be cost-effective?  
Maybe.  It would depend on what got improved and what got shuffled 
around to support any improvements...

(If you want the fingernail history, it was at one time:

WIBC, 1070 <that's the one, BTW, that kept firing the old CONELRAD 
receiver at pattern change>; 93.1 has been a bunch of different calls, 
including WIBC-FM, originally; 97.1 was WSVL-FM, Shelbyville.. it was 
Jeff's first station; he rimshot it into Indy - no big trick, since it 
was a class B; it's now WLHK, running "Hank FM - semi-automated country; 
plus carrying Colts Football... and 105.7 was the original WTLC, running 
R&B and soul. Also a Class B FM; now runs "Soft AC" as "B105 point 7"  
That one was a three-way swap-around that saw 106.7 - Greenwood, rimshot 
A - become WTLC-FM under Radio One's tender care and I believe the 
Danville FM rimshot going to the commercial classical folks as "Symphony 
107" <They also got AM 810, which had been a Sarkes Tarzian station 
running light classical before being sold off; Blaine might remember 
what it was between being WATI and WSYW> in the deal, somehow>.)

Rich Wood wrote:
> ------ At 02:54 PM 11/12/2010, Tom Spencer wrote: -------
>
>   
>> The guy/gal that reads the AP "wire" off the computer screen...
>>
>> Don't forget, Indy is a Top 50 market; so SOME stations maintain a "news
>> department" of sorts...
>>     
>
> How comfortable does that make you feel? Suppose there were a local 
> disaster like Three Mile Island. Does that guy/gal with those reading 
> skills have the training to actually gather news? Can anyone picture 
> an FM station going wall-to-wall with a qualified news team in a 
> local emergency even in a major market?
>
> I can't.

-- 
Tom Spencer
PG-18-25453 (nee' P1-18-48841)
http://radioxtz.com/