Radio: Stormageddon

We were due.

If you live in a four-season climate, you can count on at least one crippling snowstorm per year.

We got ours Friday afternoon through late Saturday night.

It had all the stormageddon qualities – high winds, near-zero visibility, and snow measurable in feet.

The highway patrol reported that their count of accidents on the interstates and highways hit triple-digits.

Even the airport was forced to close when its team of plows working the runways couldn’t stay ahead of the accumulation.

Remember when you had to travel in a severe storm, radio – especially a news-talk format - would serve as a lifeline?

Now let’s go to WTAM, the news-talk station in Cleveland.

During a gridlocked Friday afternoon rush hour, its host Mike Trivisonno told his listeners that the storm was “nothin’.” He accused the television meteorologists of overestimating the storm, and that it would actually produce around an inch and a half of snow.

True, nearly every snowfall is advance-promoted on TV newscasts as severe, especially during the sweeps – but, clearly, this one was the real deal.

WTAM is owned by Clear Channel, which also owns two other news-talk stations in Ohio: WLW in Cincinnati and WTVN in Columbus. The storm is travelling up the state from the south. You’d think they’d be linked since what was about to hit Cleveland had already impacted those markets with treacherous weather.

A while back, Clear Channel downsized its traffic report department – and now lacks a sufficient staff to cover the region during inclement weather conditions. That was evident on Friday.

But on WTAM we heard that the storm was “nothin’.”

Other Cleveland stations were in usual programming. Those few with live hosts made sporadic comments on weather, based on what they were seeing out of their studio windows.

The only news and information that came close to accuracy came fron television newscasts and their station web sites.

I don’t hold accountable the local radio stations’ management. They did their best with what they have at their disposal, which isn’t much. They don’t count the shots, they don’t revise the budgets and downsize the staff. Corporate does.

Fish stink from the head.

The latest babblegram from David “Fumbles” Rehr and the NAB insists that radio still does “localism.”

Could've fooled me.

And Fumbles – let me answer your claim that new localism proposals would put small market stations out of business.

Let’s fast forward to early Saturday afternoon. The storm is still raging - and I’m travelling in it.

I got weather updates and road conditions from the local TV stations, which were doing continuous coverage of the storm – but we’re talking about a high-wind storm that’s dumping inches per hour. Conditions change rapidly.

I put WTAM on. They’re carrying the Cavaliers game.

I hit scan. Nearly all voice-tracking or syndication.

I finally hit upon a station providing constant updates on road closings and other pertinent storm information.

The station?

A locally-owned 500-watt daytime; 57 watt night suburban neighborhood station from Oberlin, Ohio – about 35 miles southwest of downtown Cleveland. WDLW-AM.

They’re known as the “Kool Kat” and carry a locally-programmed and hosted oldies format – a real oldies format. Fifties, sixties, early seventies. They’re one of the stations I listen to when I’m on terrestrial .

They updated road conditions and community news after every song or two. Since it’s an oldies station – and its songs are mostly two to four minutes in length, one was never more than two to eight minutes from an update.

It’s a veritable local station, which carries local newscasts covering their city of license and surrounding regions - including all of Lorain County.

Maybe that's how they're able to sell time.

Oberlin is in one of the fastest-growing counties in the state, which makes its localism even more important to its emergent population.

A few years back, I was telling a manager of Cleveland station about this “Kool Kat” station – and how impressed I was with how they served their region.

He dismissed them a “local yokels” and predicted they’d be out of the format and carrying full-time syndication within a year.

Guess what? Those yokels are still doing local programming and were the most dependable and conscientious at being local during the season’s worst storm.