Ed Schultz Rips Cincy Affiliate

From Ohio Media Watch:

It's not often when a syndicated talk radio show host takes one of his own affiliates to task on his show, live, but that's what Jones Radio liberal talk host Ed Schultz has been doing this afternoon.

"Big Eddie" launched right into Cincinnati affiliate WSAI/1360 "The Revolution of Talk Radio", the Clear Channel liberal talker which recently swapped positions with sports WCKY/1530. We missed his first litany of complaints, but just heard Schultz take his Cincinnati station to task again.

"You can't develop revenue and ratings with dead air, double programming, programming playing on top of each other," said Schultz, apparently in response to listener complaints about how WSAI has been operating.

And bridging the radio and political worlds in his rant, Schultz said: "I just want to know if there's as much dead air over on the conservative station. I just want to know if there's someone who can answer that question."

Schultz says Clear Channel AM operations director Darryl Parks responded to his earlier comments via E-Mail, denying the complaints alleged by listeners.

The Fargo ND-based host also complained that the station hadn't been marketed properly even in its earlier incarnation on 1530 AM, and noted that he "hadn't been asked to cut liners for 9 months".

(more at link)

Comment: I've listened when the station was on the more powerful 1530 frequency. As far as I'm concerned, it's a complete joke!

WCKY is a 'latchkey' operation run by automation software. The automation program would do all kinds of crazy things, such as air two programs at a time, broadcast satellite-delivered news or actuality feeds as they came in (over whatever was currently on the air). Liners would air for several minutes back-to-back. Shows abruptly cut off. The wrong shows aired (I recently heard the live feed of "Majority Report" instead of the scheduled tape-delayed Randi Rhodes one evening). Anything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong with WSAI/WCKY. And Clear Channel-Cincinnati wonders why ratings have been somewhat weak compared to other affiliates.

I'm sure nothing's changed since they moved programming to the lesser-powered WSAI.

For a company like Clear Channel in a big market where they own so many stations, they should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen. Somebody should send in a computer tech to see what's going on.