NYC’s WWRL-AM Ends Progressive Radio Programming (NYC affiliate for Schultz, Hartmann, Rhodes)
WWRL 1600 AM, a longtime progressive radio station that included LGBT programming as a major part of its lineup, is changing its format, according to its staff. Beginning January 1, all of the station’s current shows will be off the air, as WWRL becomes a Spanish-language broadcaster. Access 1 Communications, WWRL’s black-owned parent company, notified employees about the coming changes via e-mail and phone calls on Friday.
“It was a business decision,” says John Campanario, host of the popular LGBT talk forum, Out And About. Speaking to GBM News, Campanario explained that advertisers have been pulling away from talk radio, resulting in lower revenues for WWRL. “The antics of people like (right-wing talk show hosts) Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have put advertisers off talk radio, across the spectrum,” says Campanario, who is also a digital marketing executive with the station. “This is happening nationally.”
The station was home to such notable personalities as veteran talk show host Mark Riley, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Armstrong Williams. The LGBT community was served by its Equality Pride Radio line, including the Out And About show, which was expanded this fall to a two-hour live program, Clay Cane Live, with the well-known journalist and his co-host, J’Nara Corbin, and The Karel Show, among others. Introducing daily LGBT-oriented content on New York City broadcast radio was a first in the local industry, and signaled a weather change in the medium. “We were very happy to do Equality Pride Radio,” Campanario observes, “and I think LGBT radio will find a new home in New York.” The 86-year-old station has always been a New York institution. Beginning with its first broadcasts out of a home in the Woodside section of Queens, during 1926, WWRL always had a multicultural, progressive style. In 2006, WWRL adopted its progressive talk format, which led to the addition of Equality Pride Radio in recent years.
full: http://gbmnews.com/wp/archives/9734
New York Amsterdam News: WWRL to replace progressive and Black shows with Spanish programing:
WWRL
The Black-owned talk radio station WWRL is switching to a Spanish-language format and leaving its progressive format behind, according to sources close to the AmNews. The silencing of yet another Black radio station is scheduled for January 1.
The station gave employees the news on Friday via email and phone calls. Employees informed the AmNews that the station is citing low advertising revenue coming in as a factor for the change. All current programming will be off the air.
Former WWRL morning host Mark Riley writes about the decision:
But make no mistake. It took awhile to get to the current tepid, mind numbing state of a medium that years ago exercised its ability to enlighten and provoke audiences. Trouble is, when people get used to the mediocrity on the air , they listen, accept, and eventually revel in it.
That’s precisely why radio is dying, and that EVP is blissfully unaware of his or her role in its passing. To really understand the death of US radio, you have to go beyond my small role in the medium through the years. You have to know what radio used to be, and its potential for shaping rather than reflecting the public’s awareness of music and public life.
The problem keeps getting worse in the post-Fairness Doctrine/Telecommunications Act era. What we're seeing is CONSOLIDATION:
In New York City, the two major news/talk stations are corporate owned. WOR 710 after being locally owned for several decades fell into the dirty hands of Clear Channel in August 2012. And WABC 770 is owned by Cumulus Media.
For the past several years, WABC has aired the Cumulus standard lineup of right wing talk radio and is the flagship station of right-wing radio icons Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin. However, thanks to more corporate shindigs, Rush and Sean will move to WOR in NYC in a week. The new Cumulus lineup effective 1/2014, all times Eastern:
12pm-3pm: Dennis Miller (this is Limbaugh's old slot)
3pm-6pm: Michael Savage (this is Hannity's old slot)
6pm-9pm: Mark Levin
9pm-1am: John Batchelor (actually a decent NPR-lite talk show that also covers science & the humanities)
1am-5am: Red Eye Radio
Most of these shows will be produced out of WABC facilities, except Savage (KSFO) and Red Eye (WBAP). (And Levin actually broadcasts out of the DC area, but his production staff is in NYC.)
And for Clear Channel, whose talk shows are distributed by Premiere Radio Networks: again all times ET:
12pm-3pm: Rush Limbaugh
3pm-6pm: Sean Hannity
6pm-9pm: Andy Dean (he's contestant Andy Litinsky from The Apprentice)
1am-5am: Coast to Coast AM
What's happening is that the Clear Channel-owned progressive stations KNEW in San Francisco and KTLK in Los Angeles are flipping to conservative talk. As Talkers.com confirms, KNEW's new daytime schedule will be the standard Premiere Networks lineup, and as the host himself confirmed, Todd Schnitt will be on the station too (presumably 6pm-9pm). KNEW has had financial advice host Dave Ramsey in the daytime; he's most likely going to 9pm. (Talkers also says that KTLK's afternoon drive host is to be determined.)
Those stations are the "second string" talk stations for those markets, as Clear Channel also owns talk stations with stronger signals there, KFI in LA and KKSF in SF. Those stations used to have Rush. But as Sean Hannity has moved from Cumulus to Premiere, Clear Channel has discarded the progressive shows to keep Hannity in LA and SF because Hannity will be off his current affiliates there (KABC in LA and KSFO in SF).
Not only is there the McDonaldization of commercial radio, stations like WWRL that dare challenge the political establishment with left-of-center shows go under and switch to non-controversial, "politically correct" formats I could say like sports, foreign music, religion, or oldies.
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