re : WBZ drops sports on weekends

[Mark Shneyder <mshbc@bu.edu>]

>From: Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>

>I hope that despite the lack of competition, WBZ will do it right and
take
>weekends seriously.  There is NO throw-away time period in a major
market...  

It cant do worse than has for the past 3 and a half years. At least
now they can live up to their claim in the promo..."...all news
every day" or whatever it is. A network newscast of some kind would
be a good start.
      
I think their lowest point came when Israeli prime minister Rabin was
assassinated on Nov 4th,1995 and WBZ stuck with reporting sports scores.
There was no update until top of the hour newscast. For a major market
news/info station of WBZ's caliber that was not one of the better moments
in their 75 year history of serving this part of the world.

I actually liked the quality of WBZ's weekend sports product.

But with so much pressure on CBS radio stations right now to keep
the bottom line looking solid it got very hard and unattractive to sell
weekend sports such a fragmented audience. It gets
too expensive to keep producing this kind of programming because you
cant charge premium dollar on weekends. And, if you're an advertiser
trying to reach males 25-54, you'll probably get a better return on
you advertising money from the folks on Huntington Ave.

>Regarding sports, I thought at least one of the shows was leased-- Calling
>All Sports, I believe-- it is Norm Rescha (forgive the butchering of his
>name) who hires people and pays them, not WBZ-- or am I wrong about that? 

Yes, CAS is leased. Resha is the EP. He even fired Bell a year or two ago.


- -M

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