Bob Levy’s first Selfie
WOBM-AM and its AM simulcast partner WADB-AM in Monmouth County New Jersey (Jersey Shore) have dropped oldies music to pick up Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity. The station is owned by Townsquare Media (Oaktree Capital). This is likely fallout from the Cumulus move to merge their Dial Global and ABC music formats. You can’t have two stations in the same market carrying the same show.
Bob Levy and wife Marianne have done the morning show for 20 years.
As an oldies outlet WOBM/WADB used a horrible 1970s-type top-40 reverb on all their programming, including during Lakewood Blue Claws baseball games. Fortunately the new format has brought an end to that absurd practice.
Though I’m a big Mets fan, at least I can now listen to Rush and Sean in the car when the Mets (on WOR) fall behind by 7 runs in the second inning.
A quick story from the WOBM/WADB oldies era: Before Townsquare clustered their stations 20 air miles away, WADB’s studios were near a local mall. When they transmitted dead air for 20 minutes or so as I was driving around, I went to the station and told them they were off the air. The receptionst seemed stunned that anyone would notice and said she would tell one of the engineers when he got back from lunch.
Well, now you can get Rush/Sean and company on THREE stations in that area: WOBM/WADB, WOR, and WPHT – all with local daytime signal quality. lol
CC, you’ve reminded me of something interesting, at least to me. Years ago, WPHT (WCAU at the time) put a very listenable daytime signal over my area, which is along the ocean. But over time, the signal has gotten worse and worse, and now it’s barely tolerable here. It’s not like there are new interfering local AM stations now so I am going to attribute this to station owners being unwilling to invest in maintenance and improvements, especially for AM outlets. Cumulus (and the old Citadel) have let the once crystal clear WABC 770 signal out of Lodi deteriorate dramatically, and I can only conclude that it’s due to keeping costs down.
WOBM cannot be heard in New York and only fringe in Philadelphia. It’s located in its own Arbitron/Nielson MARKET #53). Syndication exclusivity is based on markets, not whether an out of market signal can also be heard. I know you understand that CC.
I wonder what Townsquare’s long term plan is for all their unviable tiny market radio stations. That were really out front creating radio station web sites with streaming, but what’s the value of capturing eyeballs when nobody is listening to the station?
The most viable theory I have is the FCC has floated the idea of paying people to turn in their AM radio station licenses. They might also be negotiating clout if the FCC repurposes the former analog TV channels 5 and 6 as additional FM radio space (possibly pure digital rather than HD Hybrid)
No longer as analog, BTW, but the same channel is used for digital.
What part of repurpose was unclear? The FCC would move the few remaining VHF digital stations elsewhere to clear the deck for a new FM service or possibly new high speed broadband of some type.