A look back to 1991

[Kevin Vahey]

I have always had a fondness for the Buffalo market having worked there 
30 years ago when WUTV started.

What amazed me was WKBW 1520 was ignored by the locals. WYSL at 1400 
owned Top 40 and WPHD was a great FM signal.

WGR was the powerhouse with a great daytime signal with WBEN a close 
second. But WGR felt like family, much as you see with WGN and WCCO.

I do find it amusing that the 1230 slot has done well in recent years 
after its WNIA days that would have made Simon Geller look like a big 
time operator.

TV wise it was a fantastic market for local news with 2 WGR 4 WBEN 
(WIVB) and 7 WKBW.
Irv Weinstein was a legend, and Steve Rowan hired from CBS made it 
interesting.

But the metro area died.

Sidenote, at least back then people in Toronto watched Buffalo news as 
CBLT and CFTO were boring.


On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 11:14pm, Scott Fybush wrote:

> It's only similar on the surface, really. Unlike Boston, Entercom quite 
> literally owns the AM audience in Buffalo. There's no WBZ to compete 
> with - WGR and WBEN are it as far as mass-audience AM signals go, and 
> the only other full-market-coverage signal that could conceivably 
> compete (1520) is also owned by Entercom. Entercom also just spent 
> $10.5 million to buy out the FM signal that was competing with WGR on 
> sports.
>
>
> So Entercom effectively bought itself a monopoly there, and WBEN and 
> WGR do well almost by default.
>
> s