[BC] MUTUAL CUE TONES

[Rich Wood]

------ At 12:09 AM 2/2/2010, Broadcast List USER wrote: -------

>But, they didn't need to ruin the Mutual brand.
>Frankly, it was a pretty good brand.

As you probably know I spent 10 years at WOR, New York. It was one of 
the original flagship stations for Mutual. I consider it to have been 
a terrific brand. I was fortunate in being able to rummage through 
the archives at 1440 Broadway. Rumor has it that Mutual wasn't 
appreciated by the government during WWII. Like the criticism of 
CNN's coverage of the Gulf War their reporters reported what they 
saw. They broadcast a lot of criticism of the war and were accused of 
being "un-American." Sound familiar? The government used the same 
reasoning they've used with all wars after it. It, allegedly, 
demoralized the troops, caused loss of confidence on the part of 
citizens and didn't tow the government's line. CBS got the same attacks.

The complaints stations had was the use of the NBC and Mutual newsmen 
and announcers on both networks. That meant the same people were on 
competing stations in the same markets.

I believe there were more newspeople in the WOR/Mutual newsroom than 
the entire staff of WOR today. I've seen pictures of the newsroom 
swarming with people. By the time I left the newsroom was about a 
quarter of the size. The rest was for Producer and Talent cubicles. 
Such a staff wouldn't be sustainable today, especially at New York 
rates. WOR still often beats the All News stations in AP news awards. 
WOR is still a Mutual affiliate as well as ABC. It uses ABC for 
Newscalls and wall-to-wall coverage of major events. Mutual newscasts 
were used overnight. Except for late night and overnights all 
newscasts originated at WOR.

The initial stations were already legends in their markets. The 
network, at one time, was the largest in the industry.

I'm not sure you can blame Westwood for dumbing down the network. 
Remember it was owned by Amway (those great broadcasters) before 
Westwood bought them. It originally was like AP, a collaboration of 
contributing stations and a great brand.

Rich