Wednesday, August 26, 2009

WLIT names new morning show

WLIT-FM announced its new morning show team - with a familiar voice.

That's because the new morning man (Sean Valentine) has worked in Chicago radio before - he was the morning personality for WKSC-FM from 2001 to 2003, before Drex took over.

And like it was when Valentine was doing mornings at WKSC, his new morning show will be piped-in from - you guessed it, Los Angeles.

Both WLIT and WKSC are owned by Clear Channel Communications.

The move is being made after the Adult Contemporary outlet canceled Melissa Forman's show after two years of low ratings.

Joining Valentine (from a studio in Chicago) is former WNUA personality Karen Williams, who will provide traffic and weather, and Irma Blanco, formerly of Mancow's Morning Madhouse, when it was on WRCX, one of the forerunners of WKSC on the 103.5 frequency.

The festivities begin Sept. 2.

Thought: Was going to put the headline on Twitter first, but when you have a rant, 140 characters isn't just enough.

This is by far, the most stupidest move Clear Channel has made.... this month. This from a company that has a history of making them, and this inane move gives us just more proof of how Cheap Channel continues to destroy radio.

This new morning show is nothing but a sloppy cut-and-paste job Clear Channel has foisted on its Chicago Adult Contemporary audience. If this company can surprise veteran employees by giving them the pink slip unexpectedly, ushering them out the door at a moment's notice by mailroom employees, and having their stuff they left behind being thrown out the windows, what makes you think they have any respect for their listening audience? With this move, they have admitted local voices don't matter anymore.

And don't give me this economy bullcrap. With more than a few local television stations expanding local programming (from adding local newscasts to adding local sports, talk, and magazine shows) across the country - even in this shaky economy, this move makes Cheap Channel even more foolish.

Clear Channel may be headed for bankruptcy because of its heavy debt burden - which could force the company to sell off stations. Maybe its all for the best, because Clear Channel has already inflicted enough damage on the radio industry.

4 comments:

mushu_jj said...

I completely agree T-Dog about your thoughts on Clear Channel. They've ruined radio in almost every city where they have a major impact. What they don't realize is that the localism is what keeps radio going, not piped in music.
They would probably get themselves out of debt and back in the green if they dropped about half of their stations and spent the cash they got from them localizing the existing properties.
Bring in a small news department in each city and run local content on all stations at different times, formulated to the formats desires. Some formats like AC and other older skewing properties could perhaps even have longer form local newscasts. Other formats like Active Rock and Hot AC could have sportscasts. Its just sad, because small market radio is making money in a lot of places but the CC stations in these medium and small markets stand no chance whatsoever with voice tracked crap.

T Dog said...

Thanks mushu_jj. Nice hearing from you again!

C.R. said...

In my market Clear Channel just had a disappointing book. The Classic Rocker they own did well and saw ratings increase, but that's it for the cluster as everyone else was down. Their heritage news/talker did ok, but not like they used to do when it was locally owned. They should see ratings increase in the fall with college football coverage. The Hot AC had a terrible book, they recently began piping in Seacrest in afternoon drive and apparetly it is not helping. Their sports station doesn't show up and their new Country station barely shows up, just like the crappy signals of these stations in parts of the market.

I also have a problem with how they took the money and forced all their news/talk stations to run Fox News at the top of the hour over the proven products that those stations weredeciding, on the local level, to run. There are those of us that boycott and want nothing to do with anything that comes from Faux Noize Lies, err I mean Fox News Channel.

Then you have Ryan Seacrest. CC mandates that all of their top 40 stations run him. Apparently, in markets where they don't have a Top 40, they put him on a Hot AC. At least that is what they did in my market. But it won't work because listeners to that station largely listen at work and may not want to hear all of that talk and celebrity gossip. Plus they get killed every book by a locally owned Top 40 that is live and local 24/7.

mushu_jj said...

Hey CR, one of the reasons CC runs Fox News at the top is because its only a minute in many formats instead of 5 for ABC News (the best radio news out there). I know other radio companies that did that too. You know why they do it? So they can throw more commercials in per hour and not have to run as many for the national product. While I don't find the 1 minute all that bad for being 1 minute on Fox, its still just 1 minute and very very rushed.

Sadly, in many markets, KISS is the only top 40 left and often times its on a station that has a metro-only signal so the traditional regional Top 40 station is gone and gets turned into another lite rock (just what we needed!) or worse, one of those Jack or Bob stations. Seacrest does not belong on Hot AC either unless its the weekend AT40 show (which isn't a bad Sat. night option). They really don't care in my opinion about the books anymore because their stations are so cheaply put together that they don't need great ad rates to make money.

P.S. to T Dog, love your blog and great following you on Twitter these days!