Rod Fritz is fired, who is next?

[Scott Fybush]

On 4/2/2018 3:12 PM, Rob Landry wrote:

> Because in the end there can be only one NPR news station in Boston. One 
> station will win, and the other will lose, and be looking for another 
> niche to fill. That's the nature of business.

With all due respect, I disagree - and I think the ratings and revenue 
figures for the last few years back me up. WBUR and WGBH have each found 
distinct flavors for themselves within the larger "public radio news" 
format hole.

WBUR is the more traditional approach - a little more staid in their 
delivery, a little more serious in their talk content, a little more 
tightly tied to the network. (They produce Here & Now for NPR, after all.)

WGBH has a flavor to it that's more like commercial radio, which makes 
sense when you look at who's running it (Phil Redo, ex-Greater Media). 
Aside from the lack of commercials, "Boston Public Radio" in middays 
sounds very much like what commercial talk radio sounded like 15 or 20 
years ago - which, again, makes sense considering who's hosting.

Especially during morning drive, there's a huge amount of flexibility in 
the network clock to localize the NPR newsmagazines, to the point where 
there's probably barely 50% of the hour devoted to network content. 
(That huge flexibility actually causes headaches for those of us at 
smaller stations, because it creates big windows for us to try to fill 
with local content and far fewer resources than GBH or BUR can throw at 
it.)

The marketplace seems to be saying that there are distinct audiences for 
both approaches - and that they're both growing at the expense not of 
each other but of the listenership that would have gone to WRKO, WHDH or 
WBZ a generation ago.