Tuesday, May 22, 2012

5.22.12 Bee-otch of the Day: Cumulus Media



Bee-otch of the Day honors are awarded Monday through Thursday, Bee-otch of the Week is awarded Friday on Chuck69.com.


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Name: Cumulus Media
Age: 15
Occupation: broadcast giant
Last Seen: Atlanta, GA
Bee-otched For: not knowing their audience

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Well, at least we don't have Citadel Broadcasting to push around anymore.

Too bad Cumulus is still making mistakes.

Some time ago, Cumulus had a cluster in the Ann Arbor market and they sold it to Clear Channel. While Clear Channel owned these stations, they flipped AM 1290 - a station with a long history of low ratings, plus the fact that it only broadcasts with a whopping 500 watts during the day and 26 watts at night - from Oldies to Progressive Talk. The station became WLBY for "LiBeral" and carried programs from Air America. The station had its best ratings in ages.

But then, Cumulus decided to repurchase the stations it sold in Ann Arbor in 2009. Even though they told the press that they had no plans to change any of the formats, WLBY flipped from Liberal Talk to Business Talk.

You guessed it: their ratings - in the words of the late great Adolphus Raymondus Vernon Agopsowicz - went to 0.0.

(And yes, that's the real name of John Vernon, aka Dean Wormer. Thank his parents.)

After three years of no ratings and finally realizing that Business Talk has no ratings, WLBY has finally switched back to a mainstream Talk format. However, these days, "mainstream" means "conservative". Of course, with the recent launch of the Cumulus-syndicated Mike Huckabee program, you guessed it, WLBY is now carrying the three-hour borefest live from 12-3 p.m. There are some hold-overs from the old Business Talk format, including Dave Ramsey, which airs after Huckabee.

But what might be the dumbest move in regards to WLBY is that from 5-8 p.m., they're now carrying (drumroll please).... HUUUUUUUUUUGE. Yep! Good 'ol Bill Simonson's three-hour douche-fest now airs on WLBY on a two-hour tape delay. Is Cumulus smoking crack? HUGE HAS NO RATINGS HERE IN HIS HOME MARKET OF GRAND RAPIDS!! Many - like myself - have been hoping for his dismissal from WBBL for some time, but sadly, Cumulus has too much faith in him.

Let's remember something: Cumulus made headlines when they dumped the Dixie Chicks from their Country stations in 2004 over Natalie Maines' Bush-bashing at a concert in England. When a big company like Clear Channel or Cumulus runs a Progressive Talker, they'll do their damndest to make sue that it's only on their weakest signals so it won't get ratings and so the likes of Rush Limbaugh can tell his audience of retards that Liberal Talk doesn't work. Case in point: name some 50,000-watt Rush affiliates. I know! KFI, WABC, WLS, WJR and WTAM to name a few. Try to name a 50,000-watt omnidirectional Liberal Talker and the crickets begin to chirp.

Look, Liberal Talk can be extremely successful in Ann Arbor if the big radio companies can get their fucking heads out of their asses. Christ, hasn't Cumulus looked at WAAM 1600's ratings? SHITTY! WJR does well in A2, but WAAM and their second-rate BS doesn't. Sadly, WAAM's locally-owned, but it's owner, their afternoon talker "Thayrone" is a conservative nut job who couldn't make it in public radio.

Local radio: where the listener comes last.


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