You’re important when you’re in media and people know you by your first name and don’t even know your last name.
Lionel is similar to Steve Malzberg, except the opposite politics. Lionel has been on basically every talk station in New York, never finding a permanent home. Lionel is an attorney and very smart and persuasive, unlike Stephanie Millet or RFK Jr.
About a year ago Randy Michaels bought an FM station in Camden NJ (across the river from Philadelphia), turning Harold Camping’s Family Radio station into a Conservative talk station.
New York’s Lionel is going to try his hand at getting the residents of the City of Brotherly Love to talk politics at 6 AM.
That is interesting. There is a long history of personalities, radio and tv, going back and forth between NYC and Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the second largest city east of the Mississippi and is less than 100 miles from NYC, connected by many fast lanes of interstate/turnpike with people passing you if you drive 70 mph..and with a 150 mph passenger train running in parallel.
Did I mention that the coverage areas overlap in the most densely populated state in the nation?
Stu from Glenn Beck’s show worked at Radio City in Midtown but refused to move his family from Philadelphia, so he was commuting every day, which is insane, but apparently not unusual
The WWIQ story is much bigger and growing. According to a moderately reliable source, the backers of Merlin are pulling the plug on Michaels. They want to sell the station to CBS. The morning guy was Al Gardner, who had been at WBT in Charlotte and Randy lured him to the job. The rest of the day is the premiere lineup – Beck, Rush, Hannity – and that lineup is kicking WPHT (The CBS talk station’s) butt with no promotion.
Before signing his deal with CNN, Glenn Beck was doing his radio show from Philadelphia – the mayor of whom encouraged Beck to leave the city. The newly elected black mayor had proudly announced “this is our city now”. Beck had been off the air for years, and then WOR dumped him when old man Buckley died. Of course, now Clear Channel owns WOR. Change is in the air
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/03/15/controversial-article-published-in-local-magazine-has-mayor-nutter-asking-for-investigation/
Beck, Rush, Hannity were all heavily promoted by WPHT… until it changed strategies to become a local talker with all local hosts.
Everyone wants to own their own content. WHPT may be taking a Chicago Cubs approach where winning doesn’t matter to them so long as their expenses are lower than everyone else’s and they can be a farm team to the national talkers they own.
The PPM’s just came out – the top line public numbers show 2.5 share, WPHT at 2.1
Your point is duly noted – ratings don’t matter if advertisers don’t buy. My sense is WWIQ-FM’s signal is not even very good – it’s a class B, and at least when Camping owned it, was just piggy backing on the tower of a low power AM religious station. I haven’t heard if they moved or improved the antenna.
They don’t need to improve their antenna with this approach. You can pick up the WWIQ signal at the antenna farms of WAEB and WILM, to the north and south, and most of the way to the WABC transmitters in NJ. How many stations on the car radio dial should have Rush/Hannity? WILM can’t be much more than 30 miles away.
Timing is everything – the mayor of Philadephia thinks white people talking openly about how he is ruining the city should be tracked down by the human rights commission. 1st amendment doesn’t apply in Philly
http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/18/philadelphia-mayor-talking-about-race-in
Sure, we all have freedom of speech, so long as what we say has been ‘approved’ by those who are in power.
Can you say, the situation is getting ‘nuttier’ by the day? As I’ve long believed, something big is coming on or around the Spring Equinox, 2013.