[Syndicated] Automated radio stations

Hall

SatelliteGuys Master
Original poster
Feb 14, 2004
18,409
3,199
Germantown OH
Two "local" radio stations operate in a way that I had some questions about and I don't want to ask over at radiodiscussions.com as they tend to be tailored much more towards people in the industry....

One of them, WLZR, has a morning show with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. Now I know perfectly well that he's not sitting in Dayton doing the show and I actually read somewhere that he pre-records the show the day or night before and does it in a very short time. All he does is record his "commentary", song introductions, etc and someone else just inserts them between songs. Makes me wonder if he's on other stations around the country at the same time or different times.

How does that work ?

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Another station, WXEG, runs the syndicated Rover's Morning Glory show. This setup is pretty bad.... I've had the 'show' playing on my computer while the radio is on - the show is 100% talk, but the local radio station somewhat randomly inserts songs over the show. If they did it right, the listener would never know, but they don't. Songs will end and the hosts will be talking in the middle of a sentence, discussion, etc. There's never song introductions or "okay, we're back..." after a song. On Monday morning, whoever was running things on the local side was asleep or something ! All morning, they did the song insertion but forgot to shut off the morning show's feed ! Most of the time, the songs they played were their usual stuff, but quite a few times they played instrumental music. I tried to Shazam them and most weren't identified but one did come back as Pandora (Original Mix) by Alecx Boheme.

Is that not unusual nowadays ?
 
When Dee Snyder was here on WMRQ in Hartford he was actually here. I use to run into him all the time out shopping and at the Hartford Wolfpack games.

Now I believe he is Syndicated.

Around here almost all of the stations are automated. Many have a live morning show, and then a live drive time show, but the rest of the day its voice tracked.
 
alot of smaller stations are partially automated.

When I was in Minneapolis there was a locally owned station that was automated from 6pm-5am during the week and most of the day on Saturday. They played Classic Country from Dial Global Radio (formerly Jones Radio) which is just that.....programming for automation
edit: now its part of Westwood One
http://www.westwoodone.com/index.php/country/classic-country

At the lakehouse the main station is totally automated (same classic country) but they have a "morning show" for like 2 hours and they have high school sports
 
It looks like someone at WXEG is paying more attention as I haven't heard any glitches during the times I flip to them.... The "Rover" guy, whose show gets messed up, actually was criticizing the stations that don't carry the whole show (the ones that play their own music and "mute" him) and specifically called out WXEG and mentioned the same things I described above !
 
Properly executed, automation is a PLUS to both the owner/operator and the listener. Granted, there will always be glitches, but..for it to WORK, whomever is in charge of programming has to pay attention to details like segment length, commercial lengths, mandatory fill breaks, audio levels, processing to match incoming satellite programming to local content, and so much more. Well executed automation saves money and provides a good product, but satellite delivered programming is in no way local, and can't substitute for a staff that lives and works in and near the town the station is in.

Badly done...it's horrible. (Automation.)

We only take CBS news from satellite, the rest of the day is literally PROGRAMMED here every day. We can't afford live 24/7, but we sound "lively" with attention to detail. That's what's missing in many stations these days, especially some AM's and smaller FM's that are co-owned with bigger stations. Often the "big one" gets the personnel and someone pulling the short straw is told to "watch over' the smaller ones, and all they care about is "sound IS on the air." Not the quality of it.

The fight goes on...

Just be glad that this is radio, not brain surgery or any kind of medical field we're discussing...."Can you say, Malpractice? I thought ya could!" (in many radio markets.)

BTW....I forgot to mention, we're the "WION" folks you'll find in the forums here on Satguys.
 
During this morning talk show, the local station isn't "following" the talk show 100%, so it seems that there needs to be a person sitting somewhere inserting music, commercials, going back to the syndicated show, etc.

I finally cross-referenced this station's "on-air" staff today - of the (11) listed, (9) are from this list (Active/alternative rock)

I know without a doubt that this setup is "better" for the station owner/operator as one 'syndicated' on-air personality can replace many, many, many at stations ALL OVER the country. What makes it better for the listener ? It seems as though there are fewer commercials.... although I'm not certain of that.
 
Just because someone is inserting music over part of the show does not mean that someone is sitting at your local station saying "lets play music here."

On many of these shows the stations pay to carry part of the show but not the entire thing, what the syndicator does is puts in inaudible cue tones which automatically plays music, commercials etc. In playing with our new radio setup for SatelliteGuys radio I was playing with these tones from a few satellite services and found that some of these shows send out queue tones at the wrong time, sent the tones more then once etc...

Now I can't say if this is happening with this Rover show or not but it is quite possible.
 
Presume there are these cues and sent at the wrong time (on purpose ? :D), when it gets screwed up, no one fixes it though. The things I described in the OP weren't a case of 10-15 seconds and someone realized it and fixed it, it was entire songs. I recorded a few of them on my phone and just listened to one of them - it had two songs playing at the same time.
 
Just checked the station's FB page - they don't allow "posts", only comments to things they post (the station changed from harder, new rock to ??? - they play everything from Lourdes to Stone Temple Pilots to Mumford & Sons to Linkin Park, so that generated a lot of complaints on their page, no doubt). Anyway, under a "promo" for this Rover show someone posted

Could you please stop playing music during his show???? It transitions very poorly

and they responded within an hour with

This will be fixed very soon Kevin!
 
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