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How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
A very interesting piece from veteran Buffalo broadcaster Tom Langmeyer, who spent years with WBEN-AM and is now an executive with WECK. He asks a great question: if you're a music station, what do you do when a calamity happens in your city? Does the music stop because of it, or do you continue to play the songs because that's the format and what people expect?
His answer is obvious: cover the story, or you risk having listeners tune elsewhere to find out what's going on and they may never quite hear you the same way again.
"A music station that’s responsible as a broadcaster will get those listeners back and they will be more loyal, knowing that if something happens, the station won’t hide it and pretend things didn’t happen so somebody can hear one more song. Music radio can be a great escape and a great experience for people, but that means sometimes you just have to tell them “This just happened and you need to know it.”
How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
- Radiowiz
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Re: How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
Long story, extra short. Don't be a "Digital storage" station.
RadioWiz & RadioQuiz are NOT the same person.
RadioWiz & THE Wiz are NOT the same person.
- mace
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Re: How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
Several years ago a mild tornado touched down in Vaughn. Toronto was under a tornado warning and the sky was a sickly, mucusy shade of green. That evening, CHFI dropped their music format and began simulcasting 680.
- RadioActive
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Re: How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
One thing that he doesn't mention, though, is that most music stations don't have huge news staffs and they're generally not there beyond the morning and afternoon run weekdays. Anything that happens outside of that time is likely to make it difficult to get everyone together in a quick fashion.
It happens that WECK owner Buddy Shula had the foresight to operate what we used to call a "full service" radio station. Those are becoming increasingly rare and that's a shame. This happened on a Saturday afternoon, when I'm guessing a lot of Buffalo music stations were on autopilot, with no one even at the station. Tough to mount coverage when there's nobody home but a computer.
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Thread Starter- RadioActive
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Re: How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
mace wrote:
Several years ago a mild tornado touched down in Vaughn. Toronto was under a tornado warning and the sky was a sickly, mucusy shade of green. That evening, CHFI dropped their music format and began simulcasting 680.
I remember that day very well. I was driving home from the newsroom at the time, and I kept looking up out of the windshield at the green sky, as the sun was setting. It was positively eerie. I also recall seeing sparks coming off the hydro wires for some reason. Needless to say, the traffic was a mess and I was relieved when I finally made it back to my house.
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Thread Starter- MJ Vancouver
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Re: How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
I remember on 9/11, virtually every channel on television switched to coverage of the terror attacks. Stations with no network news affiliation simulcast CNN, as did numerous cable channels. The only exceptions were childrens/preschool channels such as YTV and Treehouse.
It was the only time I can remember almost every TV channel, Canadian or American, showing the same thing.
- ED1
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Re: How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
Reminds me of this video a tornado in Manitoba, and the video also captured what was airing on Power 97 in Winnipeg...
- zed
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Re: How One Buffalo Music Station Covered The Supermarket Massacre
At least Power 97 had live announcers on air at the time and they referrenced the tornado activity in the area.