Clear Channel Communications now "iHeartMedia"

[cbs2newengland 71]

 

For now WOAI has a decently sized news department. WOAI has a nine-person news department. I guess only the best for iHeart's first station... Well it comes at the expense of KQXT and KZEP who have one local DJ a piece, 92.5 K-BUC which is just automated out of another city, Hot 104.5 also has no air talent (yet).

 

KJ97 was lucky enough, as Clear Channel's 2nd station, to have all live and local DJs, I think as recent as last year, but are now to down to two, on morning drive and middays. They used to have Travis Moon doing afternoons but was replaced very recently with Scotty K (from Power 96.1 in Atlanta), and they have Big D from 101.3 KDWB doing nights (that's how ridiculous this is, two guys from different CHR stations, one 2,000+ miles away, do a quarter of the day on a country station).

 

 

Going back to WTVN, well, WNCI there has a full fledged local morning show, so maybe they get priority over a full news department. It's like Clear Channel says you can only have so many people per market cluster, decide where you want to use them. And pick wise, we will not fill their position if they leave. (Columbus and San Antonio are similar size markets so I would think the staffing levels are about the same).

 

I'm so glad we don't see this crap in TV...yet.

 

Some iHeart stations are better run than other stations within the company, I'll won't name them, for the sake of remaining on topic and avoid comparing apples to grapes.

 

However I agree on the TV part. The mergers with Sinclair and Gannett might be the first warning alarms of TV consolidation. If you thought CC was bad; wait till those groups get bigger. Then we will suffer with duopolies of the Big 3 networks instead of a Big 3/Smaller 2 duopolies. That will be very tragic when that spreads to larger markets.