It can work (was: let's be civil...)

["Bill O'Neill" <billo@erols.com>]

<snip> As much as I enjoy full service radio, 10 min newscasts twice an
>hour, a couple of 5 min sportscasts an hour and a ton of
>commercials...starts to wear thin after a while.  If WHDH was still making
>tons of money doing full service, my guess is that they would have kept
>doing it...same with WBZ.

You are describing morning drive at the old WHDH (their info blocks were a
bit tighter than that.  Usually back at it after 6 or 7", sports was 1.5
mins.)  Jess/Pudge did a great job of making the transitions bearable.  With
the right clock and talent, perhaps a new crop of listeners would discover
what worked so well.

(I await the standard list retort that people want a news button, a sports
button, an AC button, a CLX button.)  I don't think people surf to get a
different genre-need met.  That would presume listeners have an ecclectic
motivation to survey different styles of music as they do the drive.  Don't
think so.  The staff in my office in Newton has had WROR-FM on in the bkgd.
and one person noticed that it's the first station that everyone has tacitly
agreed upon, with no button pushing on the tuner.  My feeling is that ROR is
the closest thing to the music sound of full service that I can recall, and
the music mix is the "only if it lived in the Top 10 A/C chart for
squatter's rights" singles.  Injecting a very tight
trafficweathernewsandsports kicker in each half in other dayparts would be a
good menu, esp. with a known news talent/voice to work the elements.
File this under, "Yea, but whaddayuknow?"
Bill O'Neill

------------------------------